UKC

What probably started off as a small entry on ukc is now monstrous! The whole entire guide comes under one entry, so it’s really hard to quickly and easily find anything. It needs splitting up into areas. How do we do this? Maybe a good lockdown project for someone who knows about this. I know you can add to crags but how do you split them up? Maybe something for moderators? 

Pop over to the Moderator forum, then either ask to be added as an moderator or suggest a sensible way to split up the sectors or crags.

Sorting crags is pretty simple (a lot easier on a computer rather than a phone) and quite enjoyable, though I think I quite like sorting things, I'm sure some people would think it's horrible.

I can understand your frustration, I had a go at sorting Chulilla during the first lockdown, which I'm confident you know is all thrown onto one page (here) and somewhat of a mess too. 

Hi Rachel

I don't know the area so I can't comment on the actual data but to me, that looks like quite a well kept crag. The moderator is Dannyboy who is one of the best UKC moderators.

We much prefer big crags since that is by far the best way to stop people adding multiple buttresses, crags and then repeat climbs. Assuming they are listed left-to-right on each buttress, and the buttresses are roughly left-to-right down one side of the valley, then back down the other, then I would say this is the preferred way to list an area like Leonidio.

It is possible that it could be split into Upper Valley, Lower Valley, Coast or something like that however that would be the extent of what I would recommend. This would be quite major crag surgery so it would require a staff moderator to do this so I will have a look later with Theo who I know has been there.

As for not being able to find something, does the search bar not find the routes in the way you want to? There is also quite a sophisticated filter option and you can make it into 2 columns.

Thanks

Alan

I have to agree with Rachel on this. The UKC Leonidio page is a nightmare to work with, especially on a phone. I'm not saying it's not well kept/moderated, it's just become far too big and cumbersome. Finding a specific crag either requires a lot of scrolling or trying to use that horizontal list of crag names. Once you have found the section you're looking for, woe betide anyone who clicks on a route because you then have to spend ages searching for the right section again when you go back to the crag page! 99% of the time I want to find a crag on UKC I just google UKC followed by the crag name. Seems by far the easiest way. Splitting into upper valley, lower valley IMO makes things even worse though. This has been done for Ailefroide and requires you to know which section a certain crag is in. A separate entry for each crag would be far easier to work with in my view. 

P.S. This all sounds very negative but is just meant as constructive criticism/suggestions. It's still a fantastic resource!

For Ailerfoide, - and other areas too - if you know the crag name you don't need to know where it is for the search box to find it,

Chris

Not really. I just tried this for the Face Bouc sector for example. Search for that on the UKC crag search and it appears right at the bottom of a very long list (which I never saw on my phone and only found by switching to my PC). This was despite being spelled(spelt?!) correctly and appearing behind a whole host of other irrelevant crags. And "La Gorge" sector didn't appear at all, even if you add Ailefroide to the search string. Whereas Google found them both immediately, hence why I always use the Google's functionality when looking up crags.

I am using a laptop and La Gorge and Face Bouc both appear in a search - but as you say, at the bottom of a long list which isn't ideal. Maybe something for the techies to have a look at?

Chris

Are you using the search box at the top of the crag page Rob (not the one on the find crag page)? For example, if I climb on the crag Mars, I type 'mars' in the search bar and that crag appears. I can tick the routes or, if I tap on one, then I use the back button to go back to that found set. If you are using the search system and it isn't doing what you need then let us know since we can tweak it.

Interesting you say Ailefroid since I sorted that recently. It had 25 separate crags one of which was a boulder with 5 problems that also appeared in another crag. One was a crag with one type of route only then there were some which were huge hillsides but in amongst that would be a single crag of 16 routes as a separate entry (which frequently have their routes entered twice). Many were located in the car park. Ailefroide really was a mess and precisely the sort of crag we desperately try to avoid. I do take your point about having to know ow which section of the valley the crag is in though which would tend to support a single entry for the area being better.

Alan

  Rachel is right. I've just returned from Leonidio and found the UKC site very cumbersome. (the guidebook is also pretty poor in terms of organisation and simplicity of use which doesn't help).

   Leonidio is a large spread out out area along the lines of Kalymnos but not so well developed. It therefore needs to be treated in the same way. ie.In Kalymnos if I want to find climbs on Gerakios I stick it in the index and find it amongst a handful of crags under "Myrtles" and go from there. I cannot do the same thing in Leonidio for eg.Douvari (crag). I get the whole of Leonidio (probably equivalent to to whole area Argininonta valley on Kalymnos).

  The good news is that the basic info and organisation on the UKC Leonidio site is good. It is the accessing of it which is the problem.

Again, are you using the search box on the crag listing page?

Cheers

Alan

I hadn't really used that search box to find sectors before, thanks for pointing it out. As a user I am probably doing what I find most frustrating as a developer and not using the available features! However if I click on a route and then press back, I find occasionally it puts me back to my original place in the list but more often than not it just chucks me back to the start of the crag page which can get frustrating. 

Again just want to reiterate, all this is just meant to be constructive, overall the resource is so useful/impressive.

As for Ailefroide, I can completely see why you did what you did. Pros and cons to both methods as always.

Chris - Yes just got La Gorge to appear, must have mis-typed (probably also why I utilise google for most of my ukc searching, it handles my sausage fingers well!). But as you say, at the bottom of a long list which I only saw on my large screen. Definitely something for the devs to look at to not automatically prioritise crags over sectors.

  Pretty much the same reply as Rob Kelly!  I found the list at the page top but that's not in alphabetical order. I now see the search function above it but didn't before. My fault but it seems to be a common fault!. I guess the issue is confusion from having different formats for different locations.

  Like Rob, I don't want to sound negative because I know that a lot of effort goes into making it work and the basic info is very good.

No problem Rob, we appreciate the feedback.

Let me know if the search bar then back arrow doesn't sort the problem of retaining the crag state.

The main crag search on the base Logbook page is an old one which could probably do with an upgrade for sure. It does give some bizarre results. However, in your example, 'La Gorge' is always going to be difficult since there will be hundreds of Gorges.

Alan

It does look equivalent to putting the whole of Borrowdale under one crag entry...

If you click on a route and then go back to the crag page, the behaviour is a bit inconsistent. For me sometimes it saves the point you were at, sometimes not. And using the search bar, clicking on a route, and then going back to the crag page always resets the crag page and puts me back at the  beginning.

I think Paul has just spotted a problem here which he is correcting.

Very useful threads these since they kick us into correcting things a bit.

Alan

Yeah we’re not moaning at the actual data or anything, fair play to dannyboy it’s all correct. It’s just that it’s absolutely massive. Say I want to look at a crag and have a browse for some good/ popular routes it’s just not possible. On a PC maybe it would be ok but I bet a big portion of your users are on a tableT/phone now. If I click a route, it’s then impossible to scroll back to where I was. It needs splitting in to zones. Not crags but some sort of zone type thing.

as others have mentioned, it’s like having all of Kalymnos under one entry. There are probably 2500 routes in leonidio!!! UKC is really well setup but this entry has just got too big. On a phone it’s a nightmare. I’ll add routes I’ve done, but I just can’t browse the database. A bit of a split would do it a world of good! 

Hi Alan 

thanks for taking the time to reply. Sorry if I came across rude in my OP, that wasn’t my intention I was just trying to draw some attention! 
 

I have used that scroll across search feature, and it would/does work well when there aren’t too many crags and they are in the same area. But for leonidio some of the crags are 45 minutes apart driving. 
 

It needs the same set up as Kalymnos. They are basically identical, leonidio maybe even bigger?

who has some suggestions as to how it should be split up? The guide is split into 5 zones? Although as someone else mentioned, even this is still a bit unintuitive.

Thanks Rachel but I still think the solution is in using the search functionality we have at the top of the routes list. Have you tried that? Or the filtering options?

Alan

Having been to Leonidio a few times I would agree with Rachel that separating the current mega crag up would make more sense in this case.

As it currently stands it's a ~40min drive(!) from the eastern most crag to the western most crag. Crag level info like approach notes, the stats tab and crag comments and latest ascents don't work particularly well because they're spread over such a diverse range of crags and buttresses. Things like sorting also don't work particularly well (e.g. sorting by grade).

I know you quite like larger crags with buttresses used to seperate thigns off, so the grouping used in the guide (and current crag in the logbook) could work well (area a, area b etc.) 

I've got a similar problem the crag below. Slow loading times on the moderation page, particularly on the mobile version, which makes it difficult to moderate. I sent a message to the logbook editor about getting this crag divided up but never got a reply.

https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/crags/ostmarka_bouldering-20071 

i used the app last year (great) and used the search/filter facility and it saves time instead of scrolling but IMHO it's far from ideal.  I go to a crag (not really a buttress) and want my app to treat it like that, i don't walk from one to another (generally)

I find it very interesting, from a UX aspect that many users are giving the same feedback and the developers are saying (in effect) 'you are doing it wrong' !  I think you should step back a bit and consider the feedback from you users (why are they not finding these facilities, how do they use the product, blah blah), you normally pay for this testing.

Also its not like you don't have a solution(though asking mods to do it manually is a pain when a few lines of SQL could do it  quickly and accurately)

cheers - meant as  a positive to improve the product not slag RF

This is a fair point and probably reason enough to break it up into separate crags. But in the meantime, can you not just load up the Leonidio page and use the browsers "find in page" function? I do that for the bigger crags and works just fine

Like I said I do use it, and it’s not really searching that’s the problem but more the user friendly of just browsing. Imagine having the whole of Tremadog or Llanberis under one entry, sort of akin to that!

I guess this boils down to the definition of crag, buttress and sector. Oh and area. 
 

Area groups numerous crags into one place. In this case Leonido/Kalymnos/Eastern Grit

A crag is one continous formation (or group of formations) that can be separated into buttresses, faces or sectors.  The important thing is that the Sectors are connected by access paths. So you park at one place and all the sectors are accessable to you. Albeit for bigger places alternative parking places might be adviced. 
 

But If there is no real access path connecting the sectors, they are not sectors but different crags. 
 

having everything under Leonidio crag is like having all the problems in Trois Pignon as one crag & marker. So no Sabots, Cul du Chien, 95.2 but those would be different Sectors under Trois Pignon. Not really optimal me thinks. 

Completely agree with Rachel. 

Leonidio isn't one 'crag' with different 'sectors'.  The climbing area consists of a long valley (and some side-valleys) with many crags some of which could be sub-divided into sectors themselves.

There's at least 30 mins drive between some of the crags, and even the crags local to the town have different parking and approaches. 

Thanks very much for the feedback. In response to you, and others, we are looking at this but it is useful to find out how people use the system before we redesign it.

Search Box

Rachel, you say you do use the search but in your first reply you said you "have used that scroll across search feature". That is something different and really only designed for desktops. The search box is the text entry box above the 'scroll across list' of buttresses. Is that what you mean?

That is actually really powerful for finding buttresses or climbs. It also has the even more powerful filter on the right which means you can find "all the three-star routes between 6a and 6c" on the crag for example. I would suggest that this is more useful for bigger crag sets than smaller ones.

Separate Small Crags

There are many reasons why we want to avoid listing everything in small crags. I personally find it really annoying on a list of several close together crags where I have to navigate between them all the time and actually scrolling to find suitable routes becomes a right pain. However, the main problem is that it makes moderating so difficult. Everyone has a different definition of 'crag' and so we get all the mish-mash sets I described at Ailefroide which often result in multiple versions of the same routes, buttresses and crags.

Smaller Areas

I can see there is a case of splitting Leonidio up and we will look at the best way.  We changed something earlier so that searching for a buttress on the main crag page will find the buttress ahead of crag now. So in Rob Kelly's example of trying to find 'Face Bouc' at Ailefroide, that now returns it at the top of the list. That should get around the problem he noted of using generic crags like 'Leonidio - Top of the Valley' and not knowing which bit the crag you are searching for is in.

Kalymnos is arranged in this way since it is in wide areas rather than after the names of the actual crags (although if you put 'Kalymnos' in our crag search, it finds two crags not in Kalymnos in the pull-down. It does return loads of them in the list below after you click 'Search' - not ideal).

Another example is Val Pennavaire where we have split it into areas rather than recording every little crag with a dozen routes on it separately.

So we are interested in feedback here. 

Thanks

Alan

Hi

For me, the start of this issue is the back button not returning you to the original position on the crag page. 

I agree with people above, when you're at a crag, you quite often look at the routes left and right, spot one at your grade and click on it to read the description, check the rating and read the comments etc. You might do this 3 or 4 times before deciding on the next route

At the minute when you're in a route page, when you hit the back button on the browser, it throws you back to the top of the crag page, miles away from where you were. So you have to scroll down again or search, trying to remember the spelling of the routes you have done, or the sector your at. 

so for me, and I don't know if this is feasible, the biggest gain would be that once you've looked at a route and hit the back button on the browser, it takes you back to the same point of the page you came from, not all the way to the top. 

Thanks, and thanks for a fantastic resource

 Mick

I do agree, it's a nuisance if after checkin' out a route at the crag pressing back, takes you to miles away were you are.

I would also raise the point that when you're at a crag, you expect all the routes are said crag to be accessible by a bit of walking. If I browse the crack for routes while there, I do expect that with a bit of walkin' I can get to the base of said route. Can this be done in Leonidio, yeah I'm sure it can, but I also venture to guess that it won't be a short walk...

But if grouping sectors into one big crag is your thing, then how come Stanage is numerous crags? After all, it's one escarpment that you actually can access all routes by walking. AFAIK that is not the case with Leonidio. If you follow your own logic, you should have Stanage, Higgar Tor and Burbage as a single Crag with even more sectors... prolly should include Bamford Edge as well into the mix... In fact by geography it's pretty spot on (about same square km).

I guess the reason is that we have written guidebooks to Stanage el al. and have given the organisation of the routes/cliffs a lot of thought. The Leonidio stuff is largely user-generated, and no one had the time/knowledge/expertise to sort it in anything like the same detail,

Chris

Actually I do think a similar split has been done at Margalef, which has been rather big before and is now split in three valleys more or less. 

I think walkability is not a generally applicable rule... In some of the (mountain) crags I moderate, I put the single summit as buttress with its usually few routes. Walking between the various routes would be a full on mountain adventure, let alone in a day... See also Civetta group in the Dolomites... 

Yeah, mountain routes are a bit different...

But mountain routes are not crags per se. And certainly not sport climbing crags, where you clock up route after route.

This would be really appreciated, something I've noticed but never understood why it works sometimes and other times it doesn't as when using a phone it is annoying having to refind were you were on a long linnier list even with the filter options available.

Regards searching for something I usually use my browser's 'find in page' function on my phone in top right hand corner or ctrl+f on a pc, basic, simple quick and effective solutions many people don't know exist.

I much prefer big crags. I agree totally it is a complete pain when there are many many crags close to together on the map.

Yes, this does work, although the crag search box on each crag page we have been highlighting in this thread does that much better. It finds Buttresses, Routes and even searches route descriptions, and will return all the results and remove the ones you don't want making the list smaller.

Alan

Ok, so we have now split Leonidio up into the five rather unsexily named guidebook areas A, B, C, D and E.

No match for crag id:28421

We have also tweaked the Crag Search page here https://www.ukclimbing.com/logbook/map/ so that it now returns better results when searching for a buttress within a crag. Exact match on buttress is given a higher weighting so they should rise to the top of the drop-down menu list. This is useful if, for example, you don't know which letter area of Leonidio you were climbing in, but you do know what crag/buttress it was.

In another change, we have improved this so that if you search for a buttress in the Crag Search page, it now takes you straight to that buttress when you implement the search.

We have also tried to make the back button work better but this isn't quite so easy due to the variation in the way browsers work. We have made some improvements though so it should be better however we are going to try and improve this a bit more.

Alan

Good effort Alan. I can confirm that searching for "Kalydna" took me to the right part of "Kalymnos - Masouri area" and clicking on a route then back took me back to the right place too (on a Mac in both Chrome and Safari)

Paul and Andy really! but appreciated.

Thanks.

Yeah I think it’s an improvement. As bot standard as the naming is, at least a bit less overwhelming now. The search function is good (especially for showing a whole sector), and clicking back on my phone keeps me in the right place. Good work!

It would be handy for someone that knows the areas to head to each crag page, click on the Update this Crag button and change the map marker locations since they are all on top of each other at the moment.

No match for crag id:28421

Cheers, Paul.

Thanks team for your fast action and listening to the people! For me it’s an improvement 

Done

Much appreciated

nice work team

Hi Alan,

Just to let you know that the back button works fine on my Windows 10 laptop running Chrome, but on both my tablet and mobile, both running Android/Chrome, it takes you back to the top still. It looks like it just reloads the whole page again, but keeps your at the top. This is same even when I selected the buttress tab at the top first to take me to the buttress, then selected a route, pressing back, either on the tablet itself or the browser just resets you to the top again

Thanks

Mick