Show HN: Are you a Climber? Thrutched, Version 2 | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Are you a Climber? Thrutched, Version 2

thrutched.com

15 pointscsytan16 comments

I am a climber and thanks, I haven't heard of this before and would probably find this very useful.

edit: climbing comes up on HN every few months, we should start a mail list or figure out where everyone is and plan a trip or acquire gym partners.

I'm a climber and I don't see this gaining traction against supertopo, 8a.nu or rockclimbing.com. No reason not to give it a shot though.

Not trying to slay the giants yet, but I'll give it my best shot.

Rock on with your bad self! If you can differentiate with some kind of value not currently available or poorly implemented elsewhere you've got a shot.

Supertopo's the home of crusty legends, dirtbags, and the ocassional crusty legend who is also a dirtbag and a luddite. While the forums there frequently serve as THE source for up to the second info on what the hardman crowd is up to the signal to noise ratio is fucking abysmal. Clean that up and you've got something.

rc.com and mountainproject are basically identical in their strengths lie with an active younger community and good route databases. rc.com tries to be too many things to too many people though so the implementation is muddled, whereas mountain project looks like crap and gets maybe half the traffic but the route content is typically much better that rc's. Clean up RC's mess, harness their community and somehow figure out a way to get the same kind of quality content as mountain project, and again, you've got a shot.

8a is spraylord paradise and home of anyone who's ever dreamed of scoring that big chalk sponsorship. I'd leave well enough alone here.

Edit - BTW, given the domain name, you wouldn't happen to be hanging out with offwidth climbers would you?

Appreciate the beta on climbing sites!

To be honest, I'm a relative newcomer to the climbing world. I've been at it for a year, and still haven't found a news site or forum that is as addictive as HN.

Re offwidth climbers -- Nope, not really. Do they have a reputation for thrutching?

"thrutching" may be the only term in the english language that sufficiently encapsulates the act of offwidth climbing, even when you're doing it correctly.

I like it. There is definitely a need for this sort of information in the community.

For some reason markdown isn't working right with my first post. Specifically the embedded link:

http://www.thrutched.com/freedom-of-the-hills

Also it would be nice if there was room for opinions even when creating topics. I know your community page[1] says submissions should be factual and neutral. There are all sorts of things I wouldn't post based on that. For instance my favorite summer alpine climbs in the Rockies... Since it would be neither factual or neutral.

[1] http://www.thrutched.com/community

That's a good point.

I wrote that when I was working on the "every topic is a wiki page" feature. I was in the mindset of how wikipedia operates, but I see your point that it would exclude a lot of interesting posts. Removing it for now :)

Fixed it for ya. Thanks for the post!

New design, clearer focus, bug squishing, and lots more! Thanks to all who offered advice on the last post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1915280

I'm a climber, and this is pretty sweet! You might want a real logo at some point.

Thanks! I'm not a designer, but will definitely think about a better logo in the future.

How about a link to dismiss the about box? Once I've seen it, it just takes up space.

Excellent to see you iterating so quickly - are you split testing any of your design elements?

Thanks Matt, I just made a changed so logged in users don't see the about box.

Nope, haven't been doing any sort of split testing -- not enough traffic!

Well defined focus, crystal clear. nice design.

I guess this can be duplicated for any well defined community.

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