ropewiki introduction

[bjp]

I'd like to introduce a site I've been helping with for the past few months: http://ropewiki.com/


ropewiki started out as a replacement for the now-defunct canyonwiki.com, but we've added some cool little features intended to make it a reasonable beta repository also. I've seeded the wiki with links to beta for many canyons, but we hope that original content will continue to grow as well. A small group of users (including myself) have already added a number of previously-undocumented canyons in southern California, but like many things, a lot of the value will only be recognized if it can attract other contributors. Here are some things I think you might appreciate on ropewiki:

1. The site is a wiki -- this is the same proven software that Wikipedia uses, and it allows many people to easily correct, grow, and maintain the content in real time. With a moderator approach like canyoncollective uses, the moderator will always a bottleneck to improvement. Without a responsive moderator, content can go unpublished for months; for instance, my second submission to the Canyon Collective Betabase is still pending from April of 2013.
2. You can instantly update anything -- if someone described something incorrectly or posted bad information, you can fix it! After creating an account (necessary for spam-prevention), it's as simple as clicking the Edit button on the page you want to fix and changing the appropriate text.
3. Canyon pages have automated metadata -- the coordinates, rating, and many other statistics for canyons are updated automatically, which makes things like auto-generated region maps possible (for instance: http://ropewiki.com/index.php/Death_..._National_Park). If someone changes the coordinates for one of those canyons, its marker on the map will update also without any extra work!
4. Regions are hierarchical and dynamic -- Think that the moderator should have divided up Zion canyons into "East Side" and "West Side" rather than lumping them all into the big "Zion" category? No problem! Just create a page named "Zion East Side" and set all the appropriate canyons' regions to that page. A canyon was listed under Zion when it should have been listed under Silver Reef? No problem; just change that canyon's region to Silver Reef -- no moving, renaming, moderator coordination, etc necessary.
5. You can supply detailed geographic information simply by uploading a KML file, and you can view that geographic information on detailed topographic maps in one click. The KML format is very popular and anyone can create content by using Google Earth, caltopo.com, or many other completely free and easy-to-use tools.
6. The data is open and easily available -- Like most wikis, any and all pages can be downloaded in one step from an export page (http://ropewiki.com/index.php/Special:Export) so you don't have to worry about your contributions disappearing if the site ever goes offline.

The site isn't completely polished yet, but I think that's ok -- I've instead focused on getting the framework right so that the data-handling guts all work correctly. Treat the information on this wiki as you would the information on Wikipedia from a few years ago when it wasn't so developed -- just like any wiki, there are surely many errors in the information content, but that's ok because you can fix them!


If any of you are so inclined, I have just two requests:
1) Take a look at ropewiki.com and see if you like it. (A good place to start is http://ropewiki.com/index.php/Beta#C...od_information) If you do, let someone else know that you like it and consider fixing a problem when you see one. If you don't, either post here or drop me a quick line at bWjFpO.calQtech@gmail.com (but with all the capital letters removed) to let me know what we can improve on.
2) If you're posting beta to the Canyon Collective Betabase or other non-personal site, consider cross-posting it on ropewiki.com. The place to add a canyon beta page is here: http://ropewiki.com/index.php/Form:Canyon


Enjoy!

[dougr]

Nice. Checked some of the San Gabriels I know and the route/parking maps are great, the beta good. Clean interface.

[Canyonater]

Nice!