UKH

Hi James, if you're reading this, we are working on the "Atlantic Coast of Cornwall" guidebook. Several members of our team, including myself, have tried to contact you via this site to sort out details of the climbs you have added to the UKC logbooks in the guidebook area. If you see this, please could you get in contact, or if anyone knows James or has climbed with him, please could you message me. 

Thanks.

I have popped Spidermonkey09 a message on Facebook.

Thanks, but that's someone else, we're trying to contact https://www.ukclimbing.com/user/profile.php?id=229221 

Ah, sorry Mark

Not completely sure how anyone would be able to dislike this post. Mark is, as I and other members of the Atlantic Coast team have been, trying to get in contact with James who has added a considerable number of routes to various parts of the Atlantic Coast. Some of these have already been climbed by myself, Pete Saunders, Mark Kemball, Iain Peters, Dave Hillebrandt, Dave Viggers, Will Hornby, Pete Greening, Pat Littlejohn, Dave Garner and others. None of us feel remotely proprietorial over the area. It is likely that Richard Nadin climbed some of this stuff many years ago whilst living in Wadebridge but didn’t write it up.  It would be really helpful to the team if James got in touch so that we can clear up some of the confusion of duplication and the style these routes have been soloed in, add these routes to topos and the script. We are completely willing to share current script and photographs as well as meeting up and getting some good quality action shots of his routes. We want the guide to be as definitive a record as possible of the climbing development of the Atlantic Coast. 
 

James Mann (Atlantic Coast Guidebook Team)

From previous experience, it's not worth wondering why people vote some stuff down, because it doesn't make sense.

Keep up the good work with the guide. Given how good the Baggy/Culm one was I suspect this one is going to be similarly special.

Hope all's well otherwise too, it's been a while!!

A good reason to abandon them, then? They only seem to cause confusion and negativity.

Maybe I should have caveated that...

I think within this particular circumstance, where there's simply a rouge vote to a completely innocuous post, they don't make much sense; however, more generally I actually think they make a lot of sense, because they often show the undercurrents of thought and feeling within a thread.

I suspect this is the reason why, when asked, people have consistently voted for them to remain in place.

The problem is their anonymity. If you make it possible to see who has voted +/- I am sure the voting will be more considered.

Especially so when 'pile-ons' pretty much amount to bullying, eh?.  Usually we simply just don't know what they mean and sometimes it's plain depressing (why UKC/H rightly acted on obits).

Ask yourself why these forums are at about the same traffic level as two decades back and are so old, white and male and maybe try asking some friends who don't post why that is so, especially women. Asking the tiny proportion of climbers and hillwalkers who do post here is simply not a fair sample of your potential user population.

It's hardly not like Facebook failed to research and discover that negativity is bad for growth and for advertising income. UKC/H goes from strength to strength as a site, in content, volume and diversity, except for the forums.

Yes, it's strange that nearly all other SM platforms only have upvoting/likes...

Apologies for the thread derailment.

Somebody please find James!

It's easy to inadvertently hit a vote button with your thumb when mindlessly scrolling if your phone in your left hand (obviously your right hand is on the car steering wheel). Or this is what I assume when a post of mine gets a down-vote.

Possibly a person thinks that putting an anonymous user name next to a real name in any post and in particular a thread title, is an infringement of the personal privacy, they have elected to have when signing up to a UKC account.

Or it could be something else or a clumsy thumb.

I am right handed but scroll with right thumb, tending to hit all sorts of unintended functions.

Are websites designed for left thumbed scrolling?

BTW I tend to drive with my left knee, keeps hands free and leaves a foot for the throttle.

I think if you think about this for five minutes and where it would lead, you may come to the conclusion that this is a terrible idea.

You can just turn them off in User Options if they bother you.

Depends how you categorise UKC. Pure "social media" typically only has positive automated responses. But it's very common for discussion platforms to have downvotes or other forms of negative reaction as well, and I find them informative as an expression of the balance of opinion outside those who can be bothered to respond.

I wouldn't have thought it was THAT difficult to work out why the post attracted a down vote. Although it wasn't me, not knowing any of the interested parties when I first read it I thought there was a hint of suspicion in the OP, after all Cornwall has seen its share of controversies - and if I thought that, then others may have done too.

To be honest, I'm not fussed about the downvotes, all I'm interested in is in contacting James. If you look at his logbook, you can see he has claimed a large number of first ascents in our guidebook area (Atlantic Coast of Cornwall), they have been given reasonable descriptions and also topos - exactly what we want to see - it makes our job so much easier. Initially, we took these claims at face value, but there is a problem, for nearly all his routes he has not recorded the style of ascent or a partner. Various members of the team have tried to contact James through UKC without a response, we have asked around amoung various groups of SW climbers and no one seems to know him, if there is anyone reading this who knows him, please contact me. 

From the topos and descriptions, there is little doubt that James has been there and probably ascended the routes, however if they were shunted, as we feel could well be the case, then they don't count as first ascents and can't go in the guide.

A group of us from the guidebook team spent Wednesday afternoon walking up and down  Trevose, sorting out where his lines go. I've now sorted the routes into left to right order and where his lines had already been climbed shifted his logbook entries. The grades he had given prety much agreed with what previous climbers thought. We had intended to repeat some of his routes to check them but the sea was far too wild and we didn't fancy drowning in the name of guidebook research! Until we hear from James about the style of ascent or someone else repeats the climbs (they look worthwhile), I have had to leave them as "unverified" in the UKC logbooks.

Good news, I have heard from James, his new routes were free soloedafter an abseil inspection and cleaning.

Just a note, but I would have no problem with routes that haven't been lead, but have been cleanly toproped going into guidebooks, in fact I think they probably should go in. Tbh, I'd be happy with known projects going in as well, though I appreciate that people probably don't want to advertise them!

Not trying to criticise - I'm very grateful for the work that all guidebook writers do.

Perhaps there's a more purist ethic in Cornwall but this is what happened in the Eden Valley. Toproped lines were recorded as NL and acted as a spur to local activists.