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No information about 0 bolts #1370

Open theSCRAG opened 10 years ago

theSCRAG commented 10 years ago

Consensus tasks:

ie:

visual bug: Some views have no information about 0 bolts. No distinction between 0 bolts and N/A bolts is possible.

views: route list in crag route
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brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

Can you please give an example URL and/or a screen shot highlighting where it's wrong?

Sent from my iPhone

On 14/03/2014, at 9:20 PM, theSCRAG notifications@github.com wrote:

visual bug: Some views have no information about 0 bolts. No distinction between 0 bolts and N/A bolts is possible.

views: route list in crag route

custom pdf

Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHubhttps://github.com/theCrag/website/issues/1370 .

theSCRAG commented 10 years ago

route list http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/world/area/12490231

route view: http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/world/route/433891623 (ok: N/A bolts -> no information) http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/world/route/433814760 (wrong: 0 bolts -> should: Height: 12m Bolts: 0 Pitches: 20 ) http://www.thecrag.com/climbing/world/route/433832994 (ok: 3 bolts -> information in route header: "...Height: 12m Bolts: 3 Pitches: 2..." )

brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

Ok, lets put aside the issue with the various forms and views being inconsistent and focus on the semantics and why we'd want this at all. In my mind n/a and 0 mean the same thing on a trad climb. I would not want to show 'Zero bolts' ever on a trad climb page in any view. You don't get bolts on a boulder problem, or an ice climb, or a deep water solo, so they are all in the same boat and I don't want to show them there either. If we went to the logical extreme then the bolts field would be disabled if the route's style wasn't 'trad'. However the exception to this is 'mixed' routes, under our system a trad climb with bolts, shows up as mixed eg:

image

So currently because of the 'mixed' rule adding a 'zero bolts' label doesn't add a lot of value because it's already implied. The only problem with the current system is that you can't easily say that a route is mixed without saying how many bolts it has, so adding a new option 'some bolts' makes more semantic sense (or having a 'mixed' type, or allowing multiple types, both of which we considered)

So is the guts of this a cultural one - ie in some places 'trad' means 'needs some trad gear' but in other places 'trad' means 'is 100% trad'? Is that the heart of why this is important?

scd commented 10 years ago

I like the idea of 'some bolts'. It solves a big problem of somebody knowing roughly how many bolts but not knowing for sure. Wrong information is really bad because it may lead to people bringing the wrong gear, however the idea of 'some bolts' means that people who know their are bolts can just put that in without worrying about the exact number.

The other big issue is how do we know if a route has been assessed for bolts or not. N/A does not tell us whether the route does not have bolts or the information has not yet been provided. This is actually a pretty big issue for our database in particular where different users have different philosophies in entering data. Some users are just entering route names and grades and leaving the rest of the information for others to complete.

So where does the 0 bolts fit in? Maybe to say that a route has been assessed.

brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

Ok but if 0 means we know it's got none, and 'n/a' means 'we just don't know', then in either case I'd still not want to show 'zero bolts' anywhere. @theSCRAG? Perhaps another way of cutting through this, is there a published guidebook or similar that has a '0 bolts' in use we can have a look at?

leemcdougall commented 10 years ago

I think if you renamed "N/A" to "unknown" it would overcome alot of confusion, especially with editors (routes with "unkown" have this information missing, routes with 0 bolts have been confirmed to have 0 bolts), and if possible grey out the option to add the amount of bolts to a route if it has the style Trad, Boulder or Ice as this is intrinsicly given.

scd commented 10 years ago

In summary we should do the following:

(moved list to top)

theSCRAG commented 10 years ago

First, maybe I described "n/a bolts" bad - sorry for that. I mean no information about bolts. If a user add or edit a route and select (or do nothing) the entry of combobox with the empty string. This means we have NO informations in database - but maybe the route have bolts...we just don't know. But "0 bolts" is a real information for rock climbing routes. (Of course not for boulders and DWS) So it's a logical discrepancy for me, if I don't see "0 bolts".

Furthermore, I didn't thought about useful combinations with route styles. Because I think there is no clearly rule.

I catch up now....here same samples and problems:

"Ice climbing" could have belay station and some bolts for protection in parts there the ice is thin.

"Mix" is not a very good term. Now I look to http://www.thecrag.com/article/styles for your definition. But I never heard/read this in Europe. Here "mixed climbing" is a combination of ice climbing and rock climbing with M-rating. see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mixed_climbing

"Trad" it's not very common here and maybe there are some different definitions. Here we use often the english term "clean climbing". But this could be 100% free of bolts or also have belay stations. Clean route with 1 bolt means normaly that it has a belay bolt on the top.

Conclusion: I think it would be very hard to find an international valid term for "trad" and so on. Without a clearly defintion of route styles it makes no sense to find complicated rules to grey out bolt fields.

hm, difficult...I will think about a better solution...

leemcdougall commented 10 years ago

I thought the same as theSCRAG, NA/unkown should not be the same as 0 bolts 0 bolts means we know for sure this route has 0 bolts NA/unkown means we have no idea if this route has bolts, there is no information That was my impression

brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

It's funny you gave an example of an ice climb that may have bolts and dismissed DWS and Boulder, yet I know examples of both DWS and boulders that do have bolts! So yes we need to be flexible and open minded. But in both of these cases I'd want the option to have bolts, but never want to show '0 bolts'.

So then in some areas it is expected to see '0 bolts' on routes, and in other areas a lack of bolts and style of 'trad' is a safe assumption that there is no bolts. If we want to be flexible and allow the editors of each place decide which system to use then the only correct solution I can see is that we add 2 extra choices:

On the topic of 'mixed' yes it is more of an Australian term (we have essentially no ice). Changing this is a much bigger topic and we might need to revisit some of the ideas we had when we first made that decision. Roughly I think a more correct solution is to allow multiple styles on the same climb, so an Aus mixed climb is 'trad + sport' which might show as 'mixed' in brown like 'trad', and in europe that would be 'trad + ice' or 'trad + alpine' would show 'mixed' but in blue like 'ice'. There are other complexities like perhaps allowing a different style on each pitch of a long route. But lets leave this for another day :)

theSCRAG commented 10 years ago

okay, I know also a boulder with bolt. I thought this is a very silly example - but it's theoretical possible. So it seems we have to be flexible and open for everything. @Brendan: I agree to you, that it isn't useful to show everythere "0 bolts".

I think these two options are the best idea and support this!

Maybe some users don't know, if "n/a" means "n/a information" or "n/a bolts". So we should find a better term for "n/a". Something like "n/a bolts"? Furthermore we have to add a chapter ""bolts" in help page http://www.thecrag.com/article/Styles. Sometimes a user take the wrong option - that's the remaining risk we have to accept.

"some bolts" is nice to have. But not necessary for the zero-bolt-problem. Further idea: "many bolts" for routes which have so many bolts, that nobody counts them. And there are no bolt signs in a topo, because it's not interesting for climbing.

This discussion is long enough. For problems with terms like "mixed" and so on we should better open a new issue if neccessary.

brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

Ok perfect. I'm happy with simply "No bolts" instead of "n/a" and then it's much clearer.

scd commented 10 years ago

I have to create another field for 'no bolts', 'some bolts' and 'many bolts'. We need to get this aspect of the discussion right, because it involves a database change and the bulk of the work.

If we have 'no bolts' then we don't need 0 bolts? This would require a data migration for existing routes with 0 bolts set.

Currently 'n/a' is linked to the variable being undefined (ie means 'unknown'). So changing this to 'no bolts' would cause some problems.

Possibly a deficiency with unknown bolts is that when you create a boulder problem the default will be unknown bolts. Creating different default rules for different route types is possible, but then begs the question what do we do about existing routes. Ideally when you create a boulder problem the UI could default to 'no bolts', but when you create a trad route this would default to unknown. Because of the requirement for data migration implement different default rules for the UI can happen much later.

brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

No, the default is currently 'n/a' which should remain the default and just be relabelled 'unknown'. 'no bolts' is new but will not show in list view an is semantically almost like 'not applicable' . '0 bolts' is semantically different to 'no bolts', already exists and will show in list view and elsewhere. There should be no migration at all. New routes don't need any special rules and the use of both new value is up to the local editors to optionally use.

I've already moved to todo list to the top of the issue and straightened it out.

scd commented 10 years ago

I am pretty close to being fully on board with the tasks at the top of this discussion.

Is the 'many bolts' setting also worthwhile putting in.

brendanheywood commented 10 years ago

I'm ambivalent about the 'many' vs 'some'. In terms of display I'm not sure what to show for many, maybe the carabiner icon and then 'lots'. It would make searching via bolts a bit harder, maybe instead something like '20+ bolts' would be more useful than simply 'lots' and a more tangible search filter. For most climbs the important thing is really the maximum number of bolts on any pitch. If it is under 20 then people should be able to count it or guess quickly, and to me 12-15 bolts on a 60m sport route doesn't qualify as 'lots' so 20 feels about the right number for me.

lordyavin commented 6 years ago

I back the "some bolts" idea. Need it a lot for multi pitches where only some dangerous sections are protected by bolts. The exact count isn't important because it is a mixed route.

Mdemaillard commented 4 years ago

+1

georg-d commented 3 years ago

+1 for distinction "0 bolts" and "unknown" instead of one common "n/a" +1 for "some bolts" because interesting and helpful when entering info out of memory -1 for "many bolts" because it's causing many complicated follow-ups (GUI, interpretation,...) without considerable benefit - if we once in a while need it, just put some words in route description, and it's a temporary state as sooner or later someone has the capacity to count the bolts

We lost an aspect mentioned earlier: How to give info that belay anchor of trad/ice route is bolted but no intemediate bolts exist? Help (question mark icon besides "Bolts" field) currently says "excluding anchor" which is in line with "1 bolt triggers mixed". Idea: Split "0 bolts" into "0 bolts" and "0 bolts but bolted anchor" and do not explicitly consider "route with intermediate bolts but missing a bolted anchor" because this is a rare edge case (at least in my experience) thus could be noted in description instead. Like this, we do not need one more database & GUI field, and still can have information on bolted anchor of trad/ice, also in search.