UKC

Posting it here rather than emailing because I figure the community might have opinions. I think it would be really useful for logbook entries to have an optional "public notes" field. My logbook is private and I have no desire to change that, but particularly with winter I sometimes want to leave public feeback on conditions and things to help other people. I guess "feeback" does similar, but I see the feedback field as for less ephemeral things that will stay relevant for a long while. Being able to leave a note that goes in the logbook "timeline" alongside "hidden, 19/02/24" would be quite useful I think.
  
What do people think?  

Personally I think there'd be a bit too much overlap with the feedback feature, as I dont see any harm in having stuff like conditions etc. in there. I guess feedback could get a bit cluttered if it's used for conditions, but if that started to happen then tools to manage that would be a better option than another long text field imo.

Yeah - maybe a way to make feedback time-limited then? Or a tickbox to allow the logbook notes from a private logbook to be made public? It seems a community disservice to quest up something that's in poor nick and not share it, but the feedback section doesn't feel like the place to do it as things stand. 

I agree. People get funny about the feedback feature and defining what it is for. Personally, I think it would be good if you could have a private logbook but still make a public note for a route, e.g. "absolute sandbag", "it only gets 2 stars but is 4 stars all day", "replaced tat today", "5b seems spot on and plenty of gear if you have microwires", etc.

I use my logbook as a climbing diary, and no one wants to read my long entries. Consequently, I often miss out on the grading and quality of climbing debates that are the very essence of logbook chatter. As things stand, this ends up in the route feedback box, despite prompts to avoid discussing grades/quality.

Also, I think the grade/star tabs to the right are not as useful as individual comments...

For sure. My first bit of research on any route I'm specifically thinking of doing is to filter out the entries without comments and then read through the logbook.

Indeed... anything that I expect to struggle on, I try to absorb as much info as I can, e.g. "enough gear" might make me go for it, whilst "terrifyingly bold" might make me choose another route!

I do think any comments should have logger's name attached. But, being able to make public and private notes on each entry might be helpful for lots of people. E.g. public logbookers can privately keep beta notes on projects, private logbookers can casually insinuate that both the route and all previous ascensionists are soft, and there will be double the material for that satrical "best of UKC" IG account... Best of all worlds.

rather opposite, my logbook is public but i'd like to be able to add private notes eg detailed gear beat for me if going to repeat, which would be too much spraying for other i think

we have 'talked' about  feedback aging on here - esp on sport routes often its out of date here re-bolting has occurred for example.

I feel like I’m missing something here. Regardless of whether it is “feedback”, a logbook comment or a guidebook entry, routes will change and information may become out of date. 

well yes but ....  if a route's feedback says dangerous lower-off do not use, and its been rebolted that old comment should be 'aged' deleted etc  as it puts people off  heres the thread i was talking about ...   Mainly convenience as lots of put of date comments just make it untidy!

  https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/rockfax/ukc_flag_feedback_as_out_of_date_...

Feedback appears at the top of the logbook whereas comments appear as part of the logbook entry. My personal opinion is that ephemeral observations like winter conditions should logically appear as part of the logbook entry because they will naturally fall down the logbook as more people log the route. It's not very useful having feedback from November 2021 on snow conditions appearing near the top of the logbook page for the route, for example, and if everyone used the feedback section for that it would quickly become so unwieldy as to be impractical.

I’d agree on snow conditions, but not with regard to dangerous bolts where it’s typically going to be much longer before the feedback is out of date

Add a function for any user to be able to mark feedback as out of date/wrong/obsolete, which then notifies the crag moderator, who has the option to delete it?

Quite a lot of folk put 'amazing nick', 'crap snow' etc in their entries from time to time. Doesn't seem to add much clutter. But as noted, it's too ephemeral for the feedback feature. Too bad I guess.

That's exactly my point. I'd quite happily do the same - but my logbook is private.

Logbook comments appear on the My Conditions page, which is by far the most useful page to get an idea of current conditions.

I don't think feedback does appear on My Conditions (?) so, for me, logbook comments are the best place for any discussion on current weather related conditions.

Any option that would lead to having to click on multiple pages to view conditions comments would be a step backwards.

Agree with this, and frankly not just for winter - I'm thinking of the climbs that turn out to be so green etc (there's a VD at Birchen I'm thinking of where you can't see from the bottom that you be stepping over onto an arete that's pure lichen). After I realised people on here seem to get horribly judgmental about folk from their logbooks, I'm def keeping it private! Then again I'm not too fussed if this is done in the feedback section.