Mountain Project - Web 2.0

I have stated in a previous post, I use a number of web 2.0 tools. The one that I will highlight in this post is a site call www.mountainproject.com. The purpose of Mountainproject is to be a social community of rock climbers that share information on climbing areas, routes, and conditions. It also has a few forums for talking about general climbing topics. From what I understand of the site, there are four guys that act as the main system administrator. They do the programming, feature improvements, and some content. It is not their full time job, but instead a hobby. There are 62 mountain administrators. They own specific areas, these can be states or countries. Their role is to police, add content, and organize the their area. They don't get paid. It is just a contribution to the community. These people change every know and then but I am surprised at how long they stay in the role. Many have been their since 2002 when the site started. After that there are thousands of individual contributors. I am one of them. I use the site to get information on climbing areas, routes, conditions, and to meet people. In addition I also contribute content. I have been a member for the past 1 1/2 years. In that time I have contributed 317 items to the site. Some are simple like a comment on a site about conditions or the route. Others are much more involved. I have developed 28 route pages, 8 areas, and added 67 pictures that document the routes. When I add a picture that documents that route I take picture in a specific fashion that allows others to understand the route. I then move it into PhotoShop and add important pieces of information to the picture. I would say each picture takes me 1 hour. In total have probably put 100+ hours into the site development. Here is a link to a page that includes both what I climbed and what I added to the site, link. To encourage people to add content the site provides people points. You don't get anything for the points, just a ranking. Last year I was ranked 493. That is low. It means a lot more people are putting up a lot more information. I know a few of these people. They put in 10 hours a week or more adding content. It is a way to help be part of the community. Here is a picture of a route area that I create. This one is just outside of Barcelona Spain. In an area called Montserrate.

As with all of my Web 2.0 organization it also has a real life aspect. I don't just do this in cyber world. I go out and climb. I meet others that climb. I talk about what I have logged, and we help each other place content. It is using the web to help "real life" not replace it. I see this as an important piece of Web 2.0 for the vast majority of society. I realize that there are people that enjoy and will stay only in a internet world. They will have Facebook friends that they never meet, or different personalities on websites that never see "real life", but for a lot of people the value of Web 2.0 is to build a community that is shared between "real life" and the internet. The internet becomes a tool to organization, communicate, and stay in touch.

Robert