Re-revisited: photos per thread limit?

Since I have an 18 year old son, I don't have much trouble resizing and posting pictures. But a lot of my ski partners who take great pictures of ME can't figure out how to post their pictures. So, whatever we do lets try to make it easier to get the pictures up. I do like the big photos and three seems like a good number, if only to keep the wordsmiths in business.

Michael

I like the conditions report idea. maybe just a template could be provided for conditions reports as an option that provides some structure to what might be included (but not required). photos might still be useful for a conditions report. agree that it would not have to be separate from TR's if there's a way to differentiate, or highlight that a conditions report is included. just a thought.

I'm glad to see such respectful discussion (not that this is at all out of the ordinary on TAY) and so much creativity brought to bear on this subject.  My thoughts, briefly:

Sometimes I see identical reports on different sites, with the only difference being the number of photos embedded. I almost always find trip reports here (with the three photo limit) far more entertaining than those posted elsewhere which include lots of photos. There are exceptions, of course, but in general I've stopped reading trip reports on Those Other Sites. 

I like the fast-loading qualities of this site, even though I've got what to me seems a relatively fast connection (average ±100kb/second).  I often log on from far slower connections, and I do not want the site tailored to those favored with the latest and greatest download speeds.  What's more I do not like to wait, do not like to scroll horizontally (which I find I must do for photos wider than 800 pixels), and do not like to wade through massive numbers of photos in search of minimal bits of text.  I would rather read a well-composed, entertainingly-written report than look at most photos of the same trip.  Perhaps this qualifies me for geezer-dom, but I greatly value written and spoken language.

I admit that I had taken for granted until this very thread that the primary purposes of trip reports, in order of importance, are 1) reporting on stability, coverage, snow quality and access conditions, 2) sharing ideas about areas and specific routes for backcountry skiing, and 3) entertainment.  It sounds as if I need to reconsider my assumptions about, at least, the priorities of others.  I would suggest that others, as well, might benefit from considering carefully the needs and desires of people much like myself....of whom there must be at least a few remaining in the known universe.

I note that this site remains a non-commercial, highly functional labor of love by, for the most part, Charles.  I trust that those who would complicate his life or render more expensive his voluntary offering to the rest of us will step up and kick in contributions in whatever form to help compensate.  In saying this, I hope it's clear that I'm not just talking about buying an occasional Zazzle t-shirt.

I would add only that I find reconsidering this issue, whether in public conversations like this one or in private exchanges with deliberate or accidental violators of the photo-per-thread limit, tiresome.  I admit that the need to do this at ever-increasing frequencies may be a function of the age in which we live....or at least the medium in which we now post trip reports.  If so, I suppose I ought to just chin up and get used to it.

Hope that contributes and does not in any way detract from the discussion.

enjoy,

Mark

Conditions vs Trip reports captures our two basic needs nicely!

Separate forums for each are needless. Who wants to go to two places for that? But better adherence to a more standardized report format could be used, with three headings in order 1) Trip Summary, 2) Conditions Summary, 3) Trip Report.

1) a sentence or a short paragraph which gives dates, time, location and route. Example: Day trip to Camp Muir departing from Paradise at 10:00 am back to car 4:00 pm skiing upper Muir Snowfield and Nisqually Chutes. Another example: Overnight trip to Mt Shuksan via Sulfide glacier camping on lower glacier, skiing same.

2) is one paragraph of conditions, which should include NOT every inch of the route, but just the weather (sun, rain/precip, clouds, temp, wind), snow coverage, new snow amount and snow conditions on the primary downskiing route. This is probably best extracted after you've written 3), the full trip report.

3) is everything else in any form you want, poetic, literary, journalistic, flashback, whatever.

PIX: I like lots of pix (especially right now with a 2 yo kid and another due any day, which means I am living vicariously through y'all - probably the best way to experience Phil's Coleman crevasse huck!). 5 per day makes sense plus some thumbnails and/or links. If you have more great/informative pix then that you are probably a Skoog or Hummel and should get a sponsor's exemption.

Thanks for reopening this, Charles.

JimmyO

Sometimes I see identical reports on different sites, with the only difference being the number of photos embedded. I almost always find trip reports here (with the three photo limit) far more entertaining than those posted elsewhere which include lots of photos. There are exceptions, of course, but in general I've stopped reading trip reports on Those Other Sites. 

I think you need to be careful in ascribing the cause here. There are a lot of counfounding variables that go beyond photo guidelines, including general tone of other boards which is attributable to many factors including the founders' philosophies, approach taken by moderators, etc. You won't tend to find identical reports across TAY and NWhikers, but I'd still encourage you to check their reports out if you haven't already. I think their general forum tone is more TAY than CC.com or Ttips or TGR (kind of makes sense, given that it's locally brewed and not overly frequented by serious adrenaline junkies), so it's a decent comparison. I find that my interest level in their reports to be at least as high as my interest level in TAY reports, and I'm much more of a skiing addict than hiking addict. There are some heavily photo-burdended reports there that don't hold my interest, just as some text reports there (and here) fail the same test. But on average, I find that the more photo-rich reports there have more communication value than the photo-poor reports tend to. And I don't know if I'm as old as you, Mark, but I'm fast approaching the age where AARP will be sending me their mailings  . I grew up with Life Magazine and National Geographic as well as the local newspaper and tons of books (kids do still read books don't they???), and so I guess I just don't think of the "photo essay" as being some sort of thing that only those kooky young kids are doing, nor as a digital-era-induced scurge (and sure, digital cameras make it easier to put crap out, but so does a keyboard, as the various photo-free TAY flame wars have shown). To me, it's a potentially rich and deep form of communication.

Regarding Silas' creative notion of separate boards for conditions versus more creative reports, I'm thinking the line is fuzzy at best and this sounds like a LOT of work for moderators if this is going to be enforced (I already feel bad for you guys at having to move TRs from Random Tracks and vice versa). JimmyO's notion for a prescribed format to break out key information might be nice if people generally tended to follow such guidelines, but the don't and won't. Perhaps if some people started doing such a thing regularly, some percent of others would follow along, but you'll never get universal adherence to such an approach.

Robert Wrote: You may be on to something there.  We could have TR's and CR's.  I don't know if they need to be in separate forums, but some method of differentiation might be worth while.

1-picture is worth a 1000 words!
pin'- (X-Gen. visual word-smith)