TAY Atmosphere

I've mostly lurked around and posted every so often. usually i write something up then just close the window cause i don't feel i really add anything. Though every now and then i have my moments.

I have definitely met some great people off the site to ski with. Telemack, jeff_S, Jen, alecapone (well more just in passing), and others that had just been in the same area that i met with with mack. So it is a great community with plenty of friendly people. Also had some great gear recommendations and discussions with all manner of people (even Scotsman who recommended the awesome Flylow higgins jacket to me)


As for the actual site, i do feel theres some sections and areas that could use some work. but i also understand it would take time and Marcus alone probably just doesnt have the time.

-A gear dedicated area would be nice. let people post up, in a preferably template manner, how they feel about their skis. maybe add child section for gear reviews and gear advice/recommendations since i do notice people like to get tips/ideas on what gear to select.

-The lift service area i feel could benifit as well. I've been all over in my head as to what could be done with it but im sort of at a loss. in its current state, and this is 100% my opinion, i think it is just cluttered and theres quite a few "useless" posts. I dont mean to offend cmskier or dkk but i feel daily threads just arent needed when conditions really arent changing. And i dont mean any offense as towards dkk or cmskier again. There has to be a more efficent/different method other than just daily threads IMO.

-The TR section. I htink everything has been already said so wont go into detail.



Now, since i was sort of both bored and curious i did take a look at the software for the site. SMF 1.0.6. to be exact. I mostly looked around at the "mods" section and there are quite a few "mods" out there that might be beneficial. I noticed a couple for the ignore user (since some people mentioned they would want it). There was also a mod for external picture hosting. basically theres just tons of options out there. One i rather like is the "new threads" option.

So marcus if you would like i am willing to go through and try to help with the more "software" side of things. I have no desire to moderate nor feel im worthy of it. But i dont mind scrounging through the list of mods and sending you links to potentially good ones. or i would be willing to try to do it myself but would definitely have to do some practice offline first. but from the guides i read on the SMF site it really doesnt sound all that hard. i have minimal experience but if you'd like any help (even if its just a search monkey) shoot me a pm and i can send you links to interesting things i've found.

To paraphrase the famous words of Rodney King post the Los Angeles riots of 1992 and keeping with Filbo's inspired K-9 analogy: Can't we just...git along little doggies?

Shouldn't institutional reform be based NOT on "possible" abuses of power but rather on "probable" ones? for example, if Marcus wanted out, do you really think he would close it down (possible) or would he seek someone else to take it over (probable) be it a person or a group? Is there really any meaningful risk of shut-down?

Is anyone among those fired up for change willing to catalog a list of proposed possible reforms raised in this thread? Seems like a lot of good content/layout ideas, and a range of structural ones.

Jim O'Donnell

Shouldn't institutional reform be based NOT on "possible" abuses of power but rather on "probable" ones?  for example, if Marcus wanted out, do you really think he would close it down (possible) or would he seek someone else to take it over (probable) be it a person or a group? Is there really any meaningful risk of shut-down?

Is anyone among those fired up for change willing to catalog a list of proposed possible reforms raised in this thread?  Seems like a lot of good content/layout ideas, and a range of structural ones. 

Jim O'Donnell

"Possible is mainly objective and  more definable, "probable" is more subjective and requires judgement which we all know can be fallible.
On very complicated construction projects we usually try and create a list of ALL the possible things that can go wrong and then concentrate on having contingency plans for the most probable of that list. Unfortunatley 8/10 times, the problem turns out to be on the possible list and not the probable list. It's like Murphy's Law and an irrefutable law of nature( your peanut butter sandwich will always fall face down on the ground)

Huge thanks to all of you who’ve posted here – overall I’m blown away by the amount and variety of feedback and opinion that’s been offered. Really good stuff. I’ve spent a couple of days digging through it all and have pulled a bunch of topics, concepts and specific remarks that I wanted to address.

I’ll start with some of the easier ground to cover and will break it up into multiple posts, I expect.

Upgrades & Photo Limits
Contrary to popular belief, the primary reason behind the photo limits was never really about hosting (this is all direct from Charles, FYI). The main driver was the desire to A) provide a low-bandwidth friendly means of getting trip reports and encourage people to be selective in their photo posting and not just dump their entire memory card into a post and call it good.

Clearly, reason A is not a huge consideration anymore. High speed internet access being what it is, that leaves us with reason B. To me, this is still a compelling guideline. I’m not inclined to set a hard limit on photos and would encourage folks to pick their best shots that tell the story of the day (and by “best” I don’t mean that everyone has to be Hummel).

So, that leaves us with the current software’s abilities to display photos. The photo attachment works fine, but requires user-resizing and isn’t as easy to use as it could be. It also relies on TAY hosting (which isn’t really a problem, given what we have available). The IMG tag works well and is being used pretty regularly. The Thumb IMG tag, as Amar has pointed out, is broken and has remained so for a while – Charles has tried to troubleshoot that one, but with no success.

Getting the thumb tag working would go a long way toward fixing the issue, I think – several folks have mentioned the way that Northwest Hikers does their photos and, while they’re software is different and the end product wouldn’t be identical, that style is probably what I’m thinking of for TAY’s photos.

There are other reasons to think about upgrading the software, but the photo issue seems to be the biggest. Many thanks to the folks that have offered help on this side of this – my technical background is poor here and my free time to make these changes pretty minimal, so I’ll probably be taking advantage of you all at one time or another. Feel free to post here or PM me if you have other ideas.

More shortly…

Thanks for all your efforts, Marcus!  Any chance of moving the Info Center from the bottom to the top of the Trip Reports page?  It's a long scroll for this troll.  Perhaps the older trip reports could just show a link for each year that expands to the current monthly list?