Vertical-Life
Merging with vertical life causing erroneous route names/errors
Edit: I have credit for master of none, which should be Deja vu.
Rereading this post this morning, my tone is too harsh. Apologies. Just want to get this resolved. (Also, the dozens and dozens of issues is specifically the wrong route names, not my ranking or listing of routes I’ve got credit for sending). Cheers
Hi Scott, I already answered previously to a different thread, but thank you for providing some context re. the guidebooks. "...the only way to get the Jesse Wong book out in time was to literally (by the guidebook authors admission) fabricate the names for climbs out of thin air..." is new to me. This is something we have to discuss with Jesse directly, and so I will not do so here.
To your more specific points. Deja vu was indeed merged with 'Masters of None'. You previously had renamed the route "De je View (Master of None)" [which besides the different spelling is IMO the name we would want given the guidebook situation], but this is not what the route shows up as right now, probably because of an erronous manual merge.
Would it be possible that you send me ([email protected]) a list of the routes that are wrong? If you do so, I will manually rename them to "Name (JW Guidebook Name)" so that people find them indep. of the guidebook they have. As far as I am aware, the made-up named routes which had a merge occur are quite few, and this solution is better than having duplicates. It is important to us that the route lists show correct data, and we do what we can to ensure as much, but of course non-unique routenames pose a challenge.Thanks in any case for your efforts.
Hi Ben,
Appreciate the reply. I think listing both route names with one in parenthesis is a good solution. My main concern is getting a concise listing of the routes in the database with no extras or duplicates.
I spelled Deja vu (De ja view) because that’s how it is in the guidebook and on MP. (Wasn’t sure if perhaps it’s an intentional misspelling by the FA’ist as a reference to the climb or their experience on it)
As to the list of routes to be merged, that’s a difficult one for me as I don’t own the Jesse Wong guidebook. I have a friend who does, we can try to compare notes and find the list of merges. It’ll take some time.
Cheers,
Scott
Ok, thank you Scott! When you have the list (it can also come in portions, as it's all manual work anyway), you can send it to me. I now fixed the spelling of De Je View, as it def. makes sense to keep the FA's spelling.
Thanks Ben, I’ll send that your way when I have it.
I brought this up to a moderator many months ago and explained the situation as clearly as I could but he either was unable to make the change/wouldn’t listen or didn’t understand.
Like any crag, there are established routes and route names. Here in Ontario Canada we have a somewhat peculiar problem. Circa 2016ish our guidebook required a much needed update. Many routes had been added and finding the route you were looking for was difficult at best. The established guidebook with established route names was in the process of being updated and published when another individual decided to have a crack at authoring a competing guidebook. (I came into the outdoor climbing game after this and have absolutely no skin in the game) This became a race to have the first book published as it would naturally result in the higher sales for that book. Both books ended up coming out at about the same time… and the book that presented best on the shelves, with bright and beautiful pictures and colours, is the Jesse Wong guidebook. This is the book that is being used/merged with our southern Ontario crags. Unfortunately, the race to publishing was very close, and the only way to get the Jesse Wong book out in time was to literally (by the guidebook authors admission) fabricate the names for climbs out of thin air. I’m saying they literally made route names up from nothing so they could complete their book and get it to publishers for sale. I honestly don’t care who makes a guidebook. I’m happy there are people willing to put in the time and effort to help the rest of us find our way around a crag. I just want something clear and definitive to work with. But now we have a problem. Those who were currently climbing knew to purchase and continue using the original guidebook authors new guidebook, and those who were new to climbing were lured in by the colorful photos on the cover and inside the new guidebook by Jesse Wong and purchased it. Multiple times I’ve been climbing at our local cliffs only to find beginners out searching for specific climbs, but unable to find it because the route names are not only different than the original and different than the listing on mountain project, but also nobody climbing at the cliff knows that name because it doesn’t exist. It’s completely fabricated. So experienced climbers can’t even point them in the right direction.
The point of this long tale is that now that you’ve merged the 8a.nu listings with vertical life using an incorrect guidebook, and it makes the lives of those in southern Ontario who actually use 8a.nu incredibly frustrating. There are climbs that I’ve sent that are no longer even logged under my name. (Take Deja Vu 5.10a/b at Metcalfe as an example, it’s now called “master of none”... and even though I had ticked déjà vu, it either didn’t get merged with master of none or was deleted…and now I don’t even have credit for this climb.) This example is repeated dozens and dozens of times across our local crags. I had the crag Old Baldy moderated to the point that I had cleaned the crag to the exact listing of bolted routes. (There were a few trad climbs listed, but not many, and I don’t think I cleaned up anything non-sport)
For sport climbing listings it was perfect. (Other than a few NN routes or unknown routes that I elected to leave untouched as one could never be certain what the original tick was for) bottom line…the FA of a route gets to choose the route name. That’s the game we play and those are the rules. But using an incorrect guidebook with made up names is disrespectful to those who FA’ed a route at best. I would imagine this was an honest mistake. But when I went back-and-forth by email with a moderator months ago, they seemed completely unwilling to hear or understand the problem. And I think I explained it well enough to be understood. I would love for this to be resolved. The world is a big place and Southern Ontario is a small place in the grand scheme of things. But to us it matters. If Vertical life is trying to make a product that’s marketable, at the very least, correct listings are absolutely essential.