New Features for MP: What's Coming

We'll be working on some new features over the next couple months and thought it would be fun to let everyone know what we're thinking.

• Star ratings for photos - with nearly 300,000 photos, being able to rate photos with stars (like you rate routes) will make it easier to highlight the better ones, and potentially hide some where space and bandwidth are a premium (like the mobile app).
• International route ratings - we have an increasing number of international routes and climbers. Ratings won't translate perfectly (we will internally store the rating in YDS, but can display any translation), but it should still be pretty good.
• Topo photos - we might be able to let users draw route lines, bolts, anchors, etc directly on photos that are uploaded to the site, so we can develop "topo photos" like you see in many new guidebooks.
• Adopt an Area or Route - this might be a range of features, including the ability for users to suggest improvements to an area or route (that involve the original submitter or admin to accept), or possibly the ability to adopt and area or route that has been abandoned by the original submitter.
• Fixed Hardware Database - we have a start on this - here's an example but it could go a lot further. This could be a huge benefit to climbers, organizations, and land managers that work to make climbing safer for all of us.

Any thoughts, suggestions, or totally new ideas are welcome!

Awesome awesome awesome!

FTW. Can't wait. I love the Adopt idea. There are some areas on the site that I climb regularly that need some help in terms of info and such. I'd love to give them a facelift.

Awesome!

Yes to the topos! The "beta photo creator" is operating system dependent, so something directly on the site would allow linux users (and face it - a lot of climbers are engineers and scientists) to contribute as well without a huge hassle.

I have another idea: the usual left-to-right ordering of routes is usually a pretty good way of organizing routes on a cliff line, but isn't very helpful for boulder fields. If you're already planning to add an online image editor where users can draw basic lines and symbols, could you add the ability to draw boulders on a satellite or aerial photo (or even just a blank background with N/S/E/W indicated)?

I always thought that a notes section would be cool! Something only you can see that could work on the app. For example rack beta for that tricky gear route in eldo that you don't want to spray to the world about, but you'd like to save notes electronically.

Topo photos would be awesome...especially if placed in the iPad/iPhone/Android platform. Then a user could take a photo and draw the topo on the spot and then submit the photo. Imagine how many routes would have quality topos immediately added to them.

I would also love to see thumbs up/thumbs down on comments of routes. Often times the best beta is found in the comments and not in the actual description and it would be nice if that surfaced to the top. I started a thread about this a while back. mountainproject.com/v/likin…

The new site looks great! Can't wait to see what bringing all the geospatial data to the mix will do to the site!

These are great additions. I especially like the idea of having the international grades available. Here in Kyrgyzstan we use the French system and it is just too confusing to be switching back and forth all the time when using MP. I also like the fixed hardware idea. This is great stuff!

Is there any way you could add the ability to make "groups" of routes?

It would be really handy if I could make a list of all the Roach Classics, for instance. Or my favorite tower climbs. Or all early-season ice in Colorado. Or all moderate alpine scrambles.

The ability to make a list of routes that is independent of the actual climbing area's page would be super handy.

Nick Wilder wrote:* Fixed Hardware Database - we have a start on this - here's an example but it could go a lot further. This could be a huge benefit to climbers, organizations, and land managers that work to make climbing safer for all of us. Any thoughts, suggestions, or totally new ideas are welcome!

Regarding this, is it possible to allow the "Position" field to be a range instead of a single entry? For instance, I establish a new sport route with nine lead protection bolts/hangers all the same. Instead of creating an entry for each of the nine bolts, I'd like to use "1-9" in a single entry.

Nice -- Thanks especially for the work on international route ratings!

Ty: I thumbs up the thumbs up idea. I would keep it just at "likes" rather than ratings in both directions; on rc dot com it's not that useful, as sometime randomly anonymous people will down rate people's comments.

Page: Lists is an interesting idea! See summitpost for one way this could work. Their database is confusingly complex, but it allows any combination of things to be grouped into new objects (photos, routes, mountains, trip reports). I like the idea of being able to find lists of favorite crack climbs in the northeast, or favorite photos of aid climbing, stuff like that.

It would be helpful if you could sort your contributions/ticks by climbing area.

I know I should have put this in the last thread, but is there any way we can have the location of the photos pop up when they rotate through the home page? I'm much more likely to click on one if I know where it was taken.

Great stuff!

Great list.

There was also an old idea kicking around a while back that aimed to revamp the 'Top Contributor' list based on the number of 'Great' contributions they had made, rather than being based solely on the number of contributions.

windows phone app

Peter Franzen wrote:Great list. There was also an old idea kicking around a while back that aimed to revamp the 'Top Contributor' list based on the number of 'Great' contributions they had made, rather than being based solely on the number of contributions.

Post lots of boob shots and you will be top contributor for sure!

Dan Flynn wrote:Nice -- Thanks especially for the work on international route ratings! Ty: I thumbs up the thumbs up idea. I would keep it just at "likes" rather than ratings in both directions; on rc dot com it's not that useful, as sometime randomly anonymous people will down rate people's comments. Page: Lists is an interesting idea! See summitpost for one way this could work. Their database is confusingly complex, but it allows any combination of things to be grouped into new objects (photos, routes, mountains, trip reports). I like the idea of being able to find lists of favorite crack climbs in the northeast, or favorite photos of aid climbing, stuff like that.

Dan, yeah, this is exactly what I am talking about. MP is so much more organized than SP, but this feature is one thing I would adopt from them. I want to be able to click on a route list and see all my star ratings highlighted so I can see what routes I have done and which ones are still hanging.

To extend this even farther, maybe have a way for people to rate or collaborate on lists so, as a community, we could make the best list of XXX type of climbs. Searching by star rating can be helpful, but maybe I just want to make a list of the single highest-quality route on every 14er (and have other people help me make it).

Also, kudos to the ideas being considered already; the topo lines and fixed hardware data would be incredibly useful!!!

That all sounds awesome to me. Looking forward to it!

Guy H. wrote:It would be helpful if you could sort your contributions/ticks by climbing area.

Definitely

I'm sure this should go in the app thread, but has there been any talk about using phone gps to show areas within a certain proximity? I go on a lot of road trips and it would be nice if I could open the app, and ask what areas are within say 50 miles of my current location. Like a google maps search feature?