In reply to Alan James - UKC:
>Well if Beal stop producing their pen then perhaps we need to get a bit worried. I suspect they will be on the ball on this one.
I agree in a way, Beal wouldn't want to produce an item that significantly caused problems, however there is evidence out there that, in the past, Beal rope marking pen caused strength loss in certain situations in certain ropes. The UIAA advice is that you should only use products recommended by the rope manufacturer (
http://www.uiaa.ch/article.aspx?c=185&a=78). Therefore Beal can probably say that it's safe to use on their ropes, but not on other manufacturers ropes.
>I think people themselves are aware enough to search Google and we probably also have our own different ways of using Google.
Are you sure people are aware enough to use Google? They seem to have problems using the UKC search function, which is one of the reasons the FAQs are being requested. I agree that people have their own way of using Google, and my searching methodology is not optimum.
There is a lot of contradictory and outdated information around on ropes and other things. Most experienced climbers (particularly the gear freaks) are probably clued up on this and are happy to investigate further; the beginner climber, ie the people most likely to read the FAQs, however, may not be aware of these discussions and suitable reference points, and should be reminded to look around occasionally and assess the merits of various sources. Perhaps linked Searches are not th best way of doing this but there should be a suitable reminder within each article to check the primary sources for the latest data. With it's wide user base UKC is a good source of info, but it' not a training, standards, testing, or manufacturing organisation so can't really profess to be the authority on equipment care or other climbing practice. Care needs to be taken that the FAQs aren't seen by beginners as the arbiters of all that is right (as we have seen with some people on this forum and Andy Kirkpatrick's generally excellent articles).
I apologise, this has become a bit of a rambling rant over what should be a simple statement about telling users climbing is dangerous and they shouldn't trust everything they see on the internet.