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Scottish Hills

Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Paul Webster » Tue Aug 09, 2022 8:01 pm

At what pace can you cope with them? I have 300+ Trs that were Scottishhills only, and I imagine you don't want an avalanche. I put one up about Ben Aden last night as a memorial to Shills, but when should I put up the next, tonight, next week, next month? There may be a lot of people who would like to, but I don't know how many have kept copies in their own computer.


It’s really up to you - it’s you doing the work! Good quality content is always welcome. Remember any sh links won’t work.

I find somewhere like here much more useful, and the 'barrier' that having to put effort into a report means that the quality is here in a way that some crappy Facebook group it isn't.


I used to think we needed to make it easier to post reports from mobiles; 80% of our viewers are on mobile these days. It actually works fine. But then I realised that if it was as easy as Facebook, then almost all reports would just be strings of photos that quickly fade into history, rather than building as part of a more permanent resource. Writing a quality report is always going to be best done with a keyboard!
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby WalkWithWallace » Wed Aug 10, 2022 7:44 am

Maybe it will go full circle, and forums will make a come back. :think:

I'm on a few FB hiking groups but unfollowed most of them, much prefer the chat on forums and posts are easier to find.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby matt_outandabout » Wed Aug 10, 2022 8:17 am

I do wonder.

I had the misfortune of joining a couple of groups - a bothy one and a Scottish hills/walking/Highlands one.

The bothy group was dominated by 'loud' members who's sole intention was to post in 'fake' old Scots and party at every bothy they went to - the final straw was someone wanting to buy a scrambler motorbike and trailer to carry in enough supplies for the night....

The walking group was huge, huge numbers of inexperienced walkers and the only reply to 'what hill?' question became Ben Aan and make sure you've got your yoga pants on for the summit selfie.

FB and Twitter are in my view dominated by the bits, the gobby and the scammers now. The marketplace is worthless. The group's generally poor. There only good thing is being and to keep up with some wider friends. Twitter is just an argument.

I don't need that negativity.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby malky_c » Wed Aug 10, 2022 9:12 am

Sgurr wrote:At what pace can you cope with them? I have 300+ Trs that were Scottishhills only, and I imagine you don't want an avalanche. I put one up about Ben Aden last night as a memorial to Shills, but when should I put up the next, tonight, next week, next month? There may be a lot of people who would like to, but I don't know how many have kept copies in their own computer.


I find the best way to add reports without swamping the forum is to tick the 'walk note only' box on the report form when you are writing it. That will then only display the report in your personal blog (where others can still see it). If you want the reports to eventually be searchable by others, then you can go back into the report a couple of weeks later (when it would be off the front page of forum topics) and untick the box again. This will make it appear in the forum, but way down the list with the other topics that were posted at the same time as you originally submitted the report.

If you went down that route, I'd still recommend you put some of your classics on the front page of the forum for all to read!
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby jupe1407 » Wed Aug 10, 2022 11:10 am

matt_outandabout wrote:I do wonder.

I had the misfortune of joining a couple of groups - a bothy one and a Scottish hills/walking/Highlands one.

The bothy group was dominated by 'loud' members who's sole intention was to post in 'fake' old Scots and party at every bothy they went to - the final straw was someone wanting to buy a scrambler motorbike and trailer to carry in enough supplies for the night....

The walking group was huge, huge numbers of inexperienced walkers and the only reply to 'what hill?' question became Ben Aan and make sure you've got your yoga pants on for the summit selfie.

FB and Twitter are in my view dominated by the bits, the gobby and the scammers now. The marketplace is worthless. The group's generally poor. There only good thing is being and to keep up with some wider friends. Twitter is just an argument.

I don't need that negativity.


I had to opposite experience on the bothy page I joined a few years back. It was dominated by a guy called Hollis (long since banned i assume) who was permanently raging at the author of the Bothy Bible to weirdly obsessive lengths. There was certainly a vibe of "its our ball and you're not playing with it" towards newcomers there. To be fair it doesn't seem quite as bad now.

The hillwalking FB pages are pretty much as you describe, with a stunning combination of stupid questions (what hill should I climb, I live in Glasgow),attention-seeking Instabores and guys who think climbing Ben Lomond once in 1984 makes them Reinhold Meissner when it comes to telling off newbies who ask GPS questions.

Still, you do get the odd useful snippet of route info and some of the arguments are tremendous entertainment.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Caberfeidh » Wed Aug 10, 2022 11:24 am

matt_outandabout wrote: Twitter is just an argument.


Oh no it isn't! :D
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby matt_outandabout » Wed Aug 10, 2022 6:10 pm

Caberfeidh wrote:
matt_outandabout wrote: Twitter is just an argument.


Oh no it isn't! :D


Ah, a bot is revealed.... :wink:
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Mal Grey » Wed Aug 10, 2022 10:37 pm

Sorry to hear of the loss of a great resource.

Interested to hear other's experiences of the "self-publisher". I also had an approach, which I declined, to publish some of my (few) reports on SH. I declined, but was pestered in an odd tone until I got fed up with it and said 'no' more strongly. That was actually a major factor in me stopping to visit and post on there. I wasn't aware of the larger story there, nor that some were being published without consent!

I find Forums far superior in content, searchability and depth than FB groups, though am guilty of being in quite a few (mostly canoeing orientated). I find the Scottish hills/walking/touring ones particularly poor at times, well described by others above. There are exceptions: All Things Cuillin is a great resource with plenty of mutual respect, mostly because its "curated" properly, which clearly takes a lot of time, by Adrian Trendall between guiding on the ridge.

I keep an eye on the viewing figures & post figures for Song of the Paddle, as I've been on there so long. It feels that views are still high and similar to what they were, but the numbers of active posters & replies is far fewer. For example, I once worked out, maybe a decade ago, that most "blogs" (Trip reports) got replies from around 10% of the views. Now its maybe 1 or 2%.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Glengavel » Thu Aug 11, 2022 7:50 am

Caberfeidh wrote:
matt_outandabout wrote: Twitter is just an argument.


Oh no it isn't! :D


That's not an argument, it's just a contradiction.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby matt_outandabout » Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:01 am

Mal Grey wrote:.

I keep an eye on the viewing figures & post figures for Song of the Paddle, as I've been on there so long. It feels that views are still high and similar to what they were, but the numbers of active posters & replies is far fewer. For example, I once worked out, maybe a decade ago, that most "blogs" (Trip reports) got replies from around 10% of the views. Now its maybe 1 or 2%.


I've all but given up on Song of the Paddle. Tapatalk has just ruined it for me - masses of pop ups, constantly having to relogin, Tapatalk spam and pushing of other forums. And I'm ok tech wise - I manage some of our IT and 3 websites at work! As Mark said, so many people browse on mobile - and on mobile SotP is a pain. And so I occasionally login on a computer.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Caberfeidh » Thu Aug 11, 2022 8:50 am

Glengavel wrote:
Caberfeidh wrote:
matt_outandabout wrote: Twitter is just an argument.


Oh no it isn't! :D


That's not an argument, it's just a contradiction.


Oh yes it is! :lol:
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby WalkWithWallace » Thu Aug 11, 2022 2:49 pm

Stop the bus, can you compare your friend's hill logs on here? Loved that function on SH for planning trips. 8)
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Mal Grey » Thu Aug 11, 2022 3:31 pm

matt_outandabout wrote:
Mal Grey wrote:.

I keep an eye on the viewing figures & post figures for Song of the Paddle, as I've been on there so long. It feels that views are still high and similar to what they were, but the numbers of active posters & replies is far fewer. For example, I once worked out, maybe a decade ago, that most "blogs" (Trip reports) got replies from around 10% of the views. Now its maybe 1 or 2%.


I've all but given up on Song of the Paddle. Tapatalk has just ruined it for me - masses of pop ups, constantly having to relogin, Tapatalk spam and pushing of other forums. And I'm ok tech wise - I manage some of our IT and 3 websites at work! As Mark said, so many people browse on mobile - and on mobile SotP is a pain. And so I occasionally login on a computer.


I don't get the Tapatalk issue myself: it just behaves as before but is hosted by Tapatalk now, the only difference is I sometimes have to login again (but it remembers my details so this is just an extra click or two), normally maybe once a week? Plenty of others have had your issues though and I do think its a major factor in the reduction of posts. Do you click "stay logged in"? I get absolutely zero Tapatalk spam, and no other forum pushing and neither should you if its working correctly as that's what John (MK) has demanded from them. I think the original implementation may have been slightly flawed, with confusion between new Tapatalk accounts and SOTP Tapatalk registration. I only have the latter. I think. Maybe! You could always pm Magikelly if you're bothered.
I agree on the mobile issue, its not brilliant! But I mostly dislike mobile views for other forums too, basically even a modern smartphone screen is just too small for me, and I find WH just the same.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Moriarty » Thu Aug 11, 2022 6:47 pm

jupe1407 wrote:
I had to opposite experience on the bothy page I joined a few years back. It was dominated by a guy called Hollis (long since banned i assume) who was permanently raging at the author of the Bothy Bible to weirdly obsessive lengths. There was certainly a vibe of "its our ball and you're not playing with it" towards newcomers there. To be fair it doesn't seem quite as bad now.

The hillwalking FB pages are pretty much as you describe, with a stunning combination of stupid questions (what hill should I climb, I live in Glasgow),attention-seeking Instabores and guys who think climbing Ben Lomond once in 1984 makes them Reinhold Meissner when it comes to telling off newbies who ask GPS questions.

Still, you do get the odd useful snippet of route info and some of the arguments are tremendous entertainment.


I'd say the same vibe is migrating into the limited forum space. Certainly see a large upward trend in asking for advice posts similar to FB. Perhaps a bit less of the eye-wateringly bad advice so far.
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Re: Scottish Hills

Postby Senja » Fri Aug 12, 2022 8:44 am

A real shame - was always my preferred site (no constant nagging was a big +). I doubt it ever recovered from the photobucket vandalism. It was always easy to find the hill report you wanted there
Still keen on SotP a constant source of inspiration as I do use water in a lot of my walks - got a serious walking over Loch Lomond islands habit now. Hope it survives.

The only serious monstering I have ever had online was on that bothies site because I dared suggest that other people has walked the Watershed before a certain relative of a prolific poster.

Never used Facebook.
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