Moderators Help Page

This page describes how the volunteer moderators system works, and has answers to some of the most popular questions about becoming a moderator and using the moderation system. If you can't find help for your problem here, then please Contact us and we'll be happy to help.

Q1: What is Moderating?
A Crag Moderator is someone who volunteers to manage and maintain the route information for a particular crag. This may involve things like uploading missing routes, checking existing data for mistakes, putting the routes in crag order and dealing with email requests from other users about that particular crag. You can volunteer for a single crag or an entire Country; it is up to you. All we would ask is that you have a good local knowledge of the area and some time to dedicate to Logbook data maintenance.

Q2: How do I become a Moderator?
Any crag without a Moderator has a 'Volunteer to moderate' box at the bottom of it; just follow the instructions. If there is already a moderator then they will be listed on the crag page. If you would like to volunteer for an area or region, then email us first. We are always keen to accept new information for less popular climbing areas but please read the section on Database Heirachy below first.

There is also a list of crags that we need volunteers for at Most Wanted! Crag Moderators.

Q3: How do I use the Moderators pages?
If you have been approved as Crag Moderator for a particular crag, then use the Find a Crag page to locate the crag. Click on the 'Moderate this crag' button at the base of the list of routes and you will be taken to a moderating page where you can order the routes, upload new routes, and edit the individual route information.

Q4: Route grades?
We support the common grading systems of UK (HVS), French (F6c), American (5.11b) and Australian (26) grades. The ROCKFAX site has more about Route grades, including a helpful conversion table.
There are also grading systems for Aid climbing (A0), Scottish Winter (VII), Alpine (PD), Water Ice (WI3) and Mixed (M4) climbing. Please Contact us if you want to add climbs into the database which aren't covered by any of these grading systems.

Q5: Bouldering grades?
We support the common international grading systems of Font grades and V-grades, including the recent additions of V0+/V0-/VB for the easiest problems. There is also the option of including a UK technical grade next to a V-grade. eg, "V0- 4c". The ROCKFAX site has more about Bouldering grades, including a helpful conversion table.
For problems that just have a UK tech grade (eg, "5b"), then either add them as a boulder problem with a suitable V-grade, or add them as a trad route with the grade of "none". eg, most of the climbs on Southern Sandstone are listed like this.

Q6: Changing grades?
Please use the grade for a route/problem from the most recent guidebook, rather than your own personal grade. Note that if you change the grade (e.g., because it was a mistake, or when a new guidebook comes out) then any grade votes will be deleted from the system.

Q7: Duplicate climb names?
If you get submissions of duplicate climbs (eg, misspellings, missing apostrophes) at one of your crags, then you can just delete the duplicates using the normal 'edit climb' interface. If users have that climb in their logbook or wishlist, then you'll be offered the chance to move those ticks to the correct climb entry.

Q8: The Country/Region/Area of my Crag isn't in the Database?
If you find that a crag is not listed in the Crag Database then you will be prompted to enter it. When entering it, you are asked to select an 'AREA' in a pull-down menu with a lot of areas listed on it. For the most popular destinations, these areas are well-defined but many crags across the world still don't have AREAS, REGIONS and even COUNTRIES defined and hence they won't appear in that menu. If you are moderating a lot of crags in an area then please help us properly define AREAS and REGIONS before you start adding lots of crags and routes since it will make moderating easier and it will also make it simpler for others to upload new crags correctly.
The information we need is as follows -

COUNTRY > REGION > AREA > CRAG > ... Routes
(eg. Spain > Costa Blanca > Calpe Area > Penon > ... Valencianos) At the lowest level we have ROUTES (which we don't need at this stage). These are all part of a CRAG which will have many ROUTES, and a CRAG is part of an AREA which has many CRAGS, an AREA is part of a REGION, and a REGION is part of a COUNTRY. It is necessary for the system to work that we have all these levels properly defined otherwise the system will break down. If you wish to prepare a list of data for a Country then all we need is a list with the various REGIONS, AREAS and CRAGS listed. Sometimes people have problems defining different REGIONS, especially in smaller COUNTRIES where separate AREAS are usually enough to cover all the climbing. In this case we still need a REGION defining so it is important to come up with something. Usually 'North', 'South', 'East' or 'West' can be used to work around this problem. It doesn't matter if a COUNTRY only has routes in one REGION, we just won't bother defining the other REGIONS, but we do need a REGION for every crag. If you are unsure about this then Contact us before starting to work on a huge list.

Q9: Climbs on the wrong crag?
If you get submissions of climbs to the wrong crag, or you want to split a very large crag (over 200 climbs) into several crag entries, then please Contact us with the details and we can move the climbs for you.