Hey All,
My name is Jeff and as of last Thursday, my wife Kristen and I are the new site owners.

We are still coming up to speed on things--we just got the last half of the login credentials Monday, and so most of our time so far has just been resetting passwords, updating contact info, and exploring how the software that runs this site is architected. A lot more exploring left to do on that front...

The primary thing I wanted to say in this post is that my wife and I *care* about creating a good experience for users and staff, and starting right now, we are here to support you.

I'm not sure exactly what a good experience for users and staff looks like long term--a lot of questions that need answers first--but in the short term, the obvious highest priority thing is implementing better anti-spam measures. Spam sucks. We haven't ever tried to architect anti-spam features before so if you have suggestions on what to do, use this thread: http://www.rockclimbing.com/...ost=2637993;#2637993

My wife and I both work full time, so it's not all going to get fixed tomorrow or next week or even this coming year, but we're gonna start chipping away at things.

I have a bunch of questions for you guys about the history of the site and where you'd like to see the site go in the future. I would love your help, but I also totally understand if anyone decides to hit the eject button because there's a new owner.

Right now, the plan is:
1) finish the technical aspects of the site transfer
2) get spam under control
3) understand current site staff structure & remove people who no longer want to be involved
4) Have a discussion with the community about where we are now and where we want to take this site--I've got lots of ideas, and I've no problem being a benevolent dictator when needed, but setting future direction of the site is a conversation, not me showing up in my dilbert costume saying "I'm the new owner, now we do things my way" (at least not too often)
5) start to evaluate the current software platform--what parts can we modify, what parts need to be completely swapped out (have you seen http://www.discourse.org? it's light years better than our current forum software, although integrating it with the other parts of the site would be a very complex project)

Regarding site culture:
There are just a couple of things that are non-negotiable based on who I am as a person and what kind of site I want to be associated with. You can sum most of them up as be friendly, treat people, including women, with respect, don't be a jerk, and treat others how you'd want to be treated. The rockclimbing community tends to be a little rough around the edges, thrill-seeking, rules-pushing, heart-pounding awesomeness. No problems there--I was the kid growing up who drove the town roundabout backwards every so often just to feel like a rebel. But I'm not going to tolerate sexually crude remarks or slamming n00bs. People who want to do those things can go find another site. I haven't seen problems with these things so far, but just wanted to set the ground rules.

As far as who are we--my wife and I love the outdoors, particularly the mountains--I grew up in the North Cascades north of Seattle, and my wife grew up in the Rockies of Colorado and although we currently live in Silicon Valley, our hearts pine for real mountains with rock and snow. We're also both pretty nerdy and we like to push ourselves physically and mentally. Kristen's done a half Ironman and I've hiked 50 miles in 24 hours.

[image]http://www.rockclimbing.com/cgi-bin/forum/gforum.cgi?do=post_attachment;postatt_id=6667;[/image]

I first got exposed to rock climbing when I took the Mountaineers Basic Climbing Course in highschool. My current favorite climb is probably the summit pyramid on Mount Challenger, which is only rated at 5.6 if I remember right, but climbing 5.6 in plastic mountaineering boots is a whole different level of difficulty than doing it in rock shoes. Plus it was a difficult two-day approach through some of the most heavily glaciated terrain in the lower 48, so my friends and I definitely felt legit on that one.

If you have questions for me/us, post them in this thread.

Cheers,

Jeff and Kristen

Hi Jeff.

I sincerely hope that you are able to turn this site around, but I am not optimistic about your chances. This site has gone from being a thriving community resource to a wasteland. The majority of the moderators haven't logged on in months and the quality of the discourse in the forum is extremely low. There are other climbing sites that are working great at this time and getting users to come back to RC.com is going to be a challenge. I will look forward to seeing what you can do for this site and wish you much success.

Edit to add -
It has been over 9 hours since the OP and you have had 4 responses. That speaks volumes about the state of this site...

Hi Jeff,

Once upon a time, I ran the day-to-day RC.com operations. I don't have a question, but I do have a suggestion. Don't try to be everything to everybody. Initiate your rules to bring about your goals and the enforce them mercilessly. Don't waste time explaining your decisions to people. Ban anybody who gets in your way. In short, don't be the nice guy. Be the guy for whom his vision of what the site can be is far more important than any one person (or small group of people).

Counter intuitive? Yes. Stands a chance of being effective? Yes. The alternative is to slip into the same trap that everybody who came before you fell for, including me.

Best of luck!
Jay

And that advice would result in creating another "Mountain Project" type site, complete with its heavy-handed moderation and censorship. If that's Jeff's vision, I suppose it's fine to go that route, but this website has always struck an interesting (and I think proper) balance between anything goes and excessive moderation. I think there is some risk in radically altering that balance, in terms of losing long time users who make meaningful contributions.

Curt

Good luck with the project!

Hopefully you have some concepts in mind for bringing up the levels of interrelatedness with the various social platforms. Seems to me that rc could have brought back to life some interaction had they leveraged those connections(367 Twitter Followers, 1872 on FB, last posted to on, humorously enough, April 1st. No Pinterest or YouTube/Vimeo profiles...).

Another thing I see as having the potential for improving people's experiences would be the ability to develop feeds through the use of network groups.

What RC currently is, is hanging on by a string, as was said earlier. Not a go-to place anymore. Hell, nobody even posted about the El Cap Pirate's accident, and I am pretty sure that nobody reading this post hasn't heard about it. Made page 1 of Reddit, there are Response videos to Ammon's video of the carnage being created on YouTube and it went unspoken about here.

yes - that was my point.

The spam almost ended it for me.