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Climbing is dangerous! Every year many climbers are broken, maimed, and killed. Don't be so foolish as to trust your life to what you see here. I'm not a guide and neither is this web site. If you don't know what you are doing or where you are going, please take a course or hire a guide!

Now here: mtncommunity.org

March 18, 2001 Update

Long story made short: We're live. Go check it out for yourself. More details later.

March 14, 2001 Update

Wow. Where to start. Darren sold all the rights to RCU/RBU to a long-time lurker for $1000. We, as a group, decided not to offer Darren any money for what he was offering. Then Darren went through the Northeast Q&A section of his site and deleted all references to our effort. Classy, huh? We were going to try to work with Mr. "Iplunked Downagrand", but after Darren's little stunt, we reconsidered.

Mr. Downagrand has indicated that he would like our support, but he also told us that "Ultimately, the site will end up being commercialized to some extent..."

Yeah, not interested. We've secured a web server and we have a dedicated crew of regulars ready to post. We're in the last stages of choosing a bulletin board tool, with the input of every former RCU'er that we could contact. mtncommunity.org will be a volunteer-run, ad-free, registration-optional site. The costs for the site will be covered by voluntary donations. No banners ads, no pop-ups. Plus, decisions on the future direction of the site will be made with the full input of the entire community.

I, for one, am excited to get it up and running so that I can get on with being a part of that community of great people. And to celebrate, we're all going to meet somewhere this summer to play in the mountains and drink beer.

March 9, 2001 Update

An ad-hoc working group has come together to create a new place for RCU. We have secured a number of hosting options that, with some small, voluntary member contributions, will allow us to bring RCU back without any ads.

An email will be sent on Monday with more details. If you do not receive the email by Monday evening and want to be on the list, email me with "subscribe" as the subject of the message.

In early March, Darren pulled the plug on Rec.Climbing.Useful. Suddenly the cyber-meeting place of a neat group of people vaporized. Though I was only a regular there for about ten months, it was immediately apparent to me that the "core" group was something special.

I learned a lot by reading posts there, and I hope that a few people learned from some of my mistakes in the Cascades. I also appreciated the relatively low volume of B.S. and flaming.

Darren apparently decided to shut down the site because of rising hosting costs and declining ad revenues. Additionally, a recent spate of flame wars and a subsequent call for action on his part as a moderator probably had something to do with it. Regardless, we all owe Darren for seven years of supporting the site for little or nothing in return.

I emailed some of you recently to see if there is interest in reviving the site. Based on the response to that email, I'm creating this page to say what I'm willing to do and what I'd need in return, to see if you are interested.

So here goes...

I am willing to do the following:

Provide web space and bandwidth on a commercial, high-availability web server.
Setup the BBS and prune it back on a regular (monthly?) basis.
Moderate to some extent
Set up the site with similar look and feel to the original, providing that Darren is willing to provide the modified code that he used. (As of 3/6 he hasn't responded to my email asking about this)
Eliminate all the ads: No popups, no banners, faster page loads.

What I won't do:

Make it a "members only" site by requiring registration or payment for use. This is a lot of work and won't stop the flamers.
Lose money on it. I propose that if the hosting costs get out of control that a voluntary annual fee system be implemented. This would work (because I'm lazy and I believe in people) completely on the honor system: You like and use the site? Send me $5 or $10 once a year.
Compete with someone else: I'm not going to pay Darren for the code or to refer people to the new site. I'm also not interested in trying to make it a "for profit" site in any way.

Why would I do this? Simple, I miss the site and I believe that I get back out of life what I put in. Give a little now, it'll come back around.

So there it is. So far I've received a lot of great, supportive feedback. Let me know what you think by using the email link below.

-Loren
aka CascadeClimber

 

This page was last edited on Saturday, July 03, 2004
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