[highrepute]

Oh I actually took it down cause it got bin voted to death so assumed no one  thought it was any good so wasn’t worthwhile having a video, wasn’t too bothered about the dab as I did it without dabbing 

All that bin voting seems strange

[Dingdong]

I guess they all pathed it and thought it was log 

[Johnny Brown]

.

Not so much now but in the past I have really struggled to post on the internet because of fear of being critisized. Especially on here. I would have done something, that I was genuinely excited about,  thought it was cool and wanted to share with the community. Only for it to be diminished in some way (usually Adam Long retro-claiming what I thought was a first ascent coupled with some.kind of put down).

Sorry about that, wasn’t intended to put down, just a statement of what happened. Not sure we’ll ever arrive at the correct etiquette for retro-claiming stuff, as it does tend to cause disappointment. On the other hand how would you feel if you discovered you hadn’t done an FA but no one had told you so as to boost your ego. Better, or patronised? If it’s any consolation it has happened to me many times too, and for anyone claiming non-cutting edge problems in the Peak it’s highly likely to happen. You say ‘usually’ suggesting there were other times?

I wouldn’t regard myself as a habitual retro claimer but Bonjoy has suggested to me I should claim more stuff so a) it gets written up, and b) I don’t have to be a subsequent buzz kill retroclaimer. The problem is (apologies for being patronising but I genuinely can’t see a way around it) it wouldn’t occur to me to claim this as it was, to me, just something I did on a crap day in a desperate search for dry rock, and my assumption is anything at this grade has probably been done and it was a bit eliminate, and it really would not occur to me to start trawling about looking for prior claims. Would you, honestly, have thought it as cool and as worth sharing if you didn’t think it was new? Say some guys you didn’t know just pointed it out as they were leaving?

A big part of climbing for me is messing about around the lines as well as on the lines and that has always been the case for a lot of people. We tidy them up for the guidebook, but that doesn’t make it a complete record of everything that has been done, particularly for bouldering. Even now we have the web there is a strong argument for not writing up everything as otherwise you end up with too much noise and not enough signal. But we all go through that phase of being excited when we think we’re about to get in the history books. Sorry, it’s patronising again I’m sure.

[Fiend]

The counter to that is: If you didn't think it was worth claiming at the time, why was it worth claiming when HighRepute crops up with it?

[remus]

The counter to that is: If you didn't think it was worth claiming at the time, why was it worth claiming when HighRepute crops up with it?

If 'first ascent' is taken to mean the first person to climb that particular line (which I think is the generally accepted meaning), then it seems important to retro-claim something if someone else puts it forward as an FA, even if it is a bit of an awkward situation.

[Fiend]

Well yes but... One could just accept the fiction of a claimed first ascent. It's not like anyone dabbed or anything....

[petejh]

Not wanting to speak for JB but I think it's probably more nuanced than that.

Not bothering to claim a FA of something often just occurs because somebody assumes a boulder has been done before them, and also not claimed, so you can see it as something more likely than not already 'existing' but without a clear record. If it was in a guide it might be entered: 'done by anonymous, 19xx'.
But often nobody bothers to officially record it as such in a guide. So that when somebody else comes along later and does some FA (again), they might think they've done something new. And record it as a FA. The 'retro-claiming buzzkiller' then crops up to hose down this offending upstart, but they aren't necessarily saying 'no it was me who did this first' - they're saying 'yeah I've also done that but I assume it was also done by 'anonymous' back in the mists of time before me'. So they're not really 'retro claiming it' they're just pointing out that it isn't a new thing, but no-one really knows who did it first. Just that it wasn't the latest first ascentionist.

On the other hand retro-claimers who are only claiming a historic FA when they see that somebody else now wants to.. yeah that takes a bit more explaining to justify why they consider it important now that there's a challenge, but not important back when they did it.

[Dingdong]

The best retro claims are the ones where you’ve had to shift multi-ton blocks from under the boulder and people still try to retro them  there’s definitely chancers out there

[Johnny Brown]

Yeah there are a couple in the Peak!

It’s nowhere near as bad as Yorkshire was twenty years back though, it was quite difficult to even get to a claim as you’d be proactively shut down as soon as you tried anything different.

Mostly what Pete said. I do think it is important to maintain the historical record, because if we get to a situation where that isn’t the core point it will soon end up in a ridiculous situation where FA credits get handed out like Tory peerages. But, more relevant to the case in point, as I get older I feel more strongly we shouldn’t be trying to record every variation. Not only is there not room in the guide, I think it’s a dead end. We should leave some space for people to experiment around the main lines without there being prescribed rules, grades or names.  That avoids all the shit discussed above, as long as you can enjoy climbing without a tick or a claim.

[highrepute]

.

Not so much now but in the past I have really struggled to post on the internet because of fear of being critisized. Especially on here. I would have done something, that I was genuinely excited about,  thought it was cool and wanted to share with the community. Only for it to be diminished in some way (usually Adam Long retro-claiming what I thought was a first ascent coupled with some.kind of put down).

Sorry about that, wasn’t intended to put down, just a statement of what happened. Not sure we’ll ever arrive at the correct etiquette for retro-claiming stuff, as it does tend to cause disappointment. On the other hand how would you feel if you discovered you hadn’t done an FA but no one had told you so as to boost your ego. Better, or patronised? If it’s any consolation it has happened to me many times too, and for anyone claiming non-cutting edge problems in the Peak it’s highly likely to happen. You say ‘usually’ suggesting there were other times?

I wouldn’t regard myself as a habitual retro claimer but Bonjoy has suggested to me I should claim more stuff so a) it gets written up, and b) I don’t have to be a subsequent buzz kill retroclaimer. The problem is (apologies for being patronising but I genuinely can’t see a way around it) it wouldn’t occur to me to claim this as it was, to me, just something I did on a crap day in a desperate search for dry rock, and my assumption is anything at this grade has probably been done and it was a bit eliminate, and it really would not occur to me to start trawling about looking for prior claims. Would you, honestly, have thought it as cool and as worth sharing if you didn’t think it was new? Say some guys you didn’t know just pointed it out as they were leaving?

A big part of climbing for me is messing about around the lines as well as on the lines and that has always been the case for a lot of people. We tidy them up for the guidebook, but that doesn’t make it a complete record of everything that has been done, particularly for bouldering. Even now we have the web there is a strong argument for not writing up everything as otherwise you end up with too much noise and not enough signal. But we all go through that phase of being excited when we think we’re about to get in the history books. Sorry, it’s patronising again I’m sure.

Thanks for the reply Adam. Perhaps I shouldn't have singled you out, it's just occurred to me I'm guilty of what I'm complaining about. I mentioned that one specifically because I thought it was amusing rather than offensive.

I've got no problem with retro claims, they're kind of expected, but they can be disappointing like you say. And, going back to Stones point, could dampen the spirit of an enthusiastic person new to developing. It would be a shame to put someone off for the sake of a little bit more tact.

My point of view is that if I think the information is useful to others then I'll share it. So it's case by case and my personal opinion. But I probably lean towards sharing as a way to enrich others climbing experience rather than keeping things not recorded. Which is not to say I haven't also left stuff unrecorded.

Since you asked, the other retroes I can remember were the direct start to profit of doom, that you retroed on behalf of BB, and an alt finish to kidneystone. That might be it, I'm not keeping track, although I recently joked that Ive had more things retroed by you than I've had first ascents.

It sounds like we're doing similar things "messing about around the lines" but if you're keeping that as a personal experience and I'm sharing for others (not happy with my wording here) then we might continue to clash in this way. Which is interesting to observe.

[chrisbrooke]

Earlier posts re: women reminded me of a recent experience. I’m a pathological poster and consumer of beta vids. Love making them and watch as many as I can of other people’s. Just because I really like bouldering.
Anyway, I saw a vid of a young female doing Jerry’s Finish (tagged 6C) with the high flakey jug. I was going to post along the lines of ‘I don’t think the jug is in for the 6C version’ but stopped due to remembering previous iterations of this thread. If it was a bloke I more likely would have, but I didn’t want to be a ‘bloke crapping on a female climber on the internet ’. Is that kind or is it patronising? 

She didn’t do the problem she claimed, but at the end of the day, whatever…. No skin off my nose. But I observed in myself a definite reluctance to even try to ‘uphold standards’ on account of her being female. Which is to say I held her to a lower standard…. which is presumably sexist and patronising.
 
Ultimately I guess I don’t see it as my job to be beta police, not least as I’ve no doubt I’ve committed infractions myself. One reason I never link to any of my stuff on here. My ego is too fragile to enter the lion’s den 🙂

And it was interesting to read above conjectures about different reasons for posting (male affirmation, female just sharing a passion). Could be something in that, although again, I wouldn’t pedestalise females and their snow-white motivations to the extent that I see them as immune to the dopamine hit of likes and fire emojis 😂

[stone]

Chris, your videos are superb. They've done so much to get me psyched to dabble more in grit bouldering -Thanks!

About the purity or otherwise of seeking fire emojis - I don't see any contradiction between someone seeking fire emojis and yet not welcoming umpire style scrutiny of the ascent in the post. I know Fiend thinks the dog and baby post analogy is bogus but I'm not sure it is. People may be delighted in getting comments saying their baby is adorable. Perhaps that is impure or whatever. But it's nevertheless just basic politeness not to make a negative comment on such a post. My impression is that many bouldering videos are posted with a similar mindset. So I don't think you were being patronising at all and were right to play it safe in case that was the fact. If people do want umpire style scrutiny of their video, then perhaps they should expressly ask for that when they post.

Perhaps some sort of #toughjustice tag could be added by those seeking intense validation from no-holds-barred scrutiny of their videos.

[Fiend]

  Dabby Christmas everyone 

May your SJW armour shine brightly, may your skin underneath be thin, may the need for validation and grade-ticking be as strong as the self-security is weak, may your starting positions be high, may adjacent problems be in reach, and may the ground, the pads, the trees and the spotters all be "IN"

[Johnny Brown]

Since you asked, the other retroes I can remember were the direct start to profit of doom, that you retroed on behalf of BB, and an alt finish to kidneystone. That might be it, I'm not keeping track, although I recently joked that Ive had more things retroed by you than I've had first ascents.

That’s interesting, I don’t really remember either of those retro claims (good memories of that prow under profit tho, great prob and def worth recording), but for the record at no point did I make the connection that they were all by the same person. So there was definitely no ‘ffs this guy again’ motivation. Have we met? Easier to make connections when I know who people are (I only found out who Moo was a couple of years back, despite knowing him pretty well offline).

Merry Xmas all, this Yule may all your dabs be tricks of perspective and none of your claims be rescinded.

[Bonjoy]

Without delving too deeply into the nuances of the discussion I would make one observation. This is more based on climbing around another cohort of short people, that is children.
Well meaning more experienced  climbers/adults, don't bother to explain problem rules to the climber in question, or even suggest they don't really matter or aren't applicable to the less experienced climber. The climber takes this on board and only finds out they've had smoke blown up their arse  when they post a video online, which is naturally quite a jarring way to find out that boulderers care about rules. Much better not to be patronised in the first place really. And expecting the wider climbing community to uphold the original deception just seems like two wrongs not making a right to me. Obvious caveats apply etc.

[stone]

Without delving too deeply into the nuances of the discussion I would make one observation. This is more based on climbing around another cohort of short people, that is children.
Well meaning more experienced  climbers/adults, don't bother to explain problem rules to the climber in question, or even suggest they don't really matter or aren't applicable to the less experienced climber. The climber takes this on board and only finds out they've had smoke blown up their arse  when they post a video online, which is naturally quite a jarring way to find out that boulderers care about rules. Much better not to be patronised in the first place really. And expecting the wider climbing community to uphold the original deception just seems like two wrongs not making a right to me. Obvious caveats apply etc.

I think you mentioned before that you found it embarrassing whenever your 12yo son shouted "dab!" at total strangers at the crag. But perhaps getting a horde of little kids scampering around as beta police is the kinder approach for you guys who care so much about whether other people are folllowing rules. In India, there has been a long running public health effort to encourage people to use toilets. One approach was to recruit lots of little kids to go after anyone defecating outside.https://medicalxpress.com/news/2014-11-indian-children-defecation.html

[petejh]

If we could crowdfund buying some whistles and hi-vis vests for kids to patrol the cromlech boulder in the school holidays and shaming any tourist shiteneering? I'd donate. The roof crack area's an open sewer.

Stone, despite essays worth of posts I'm still not really clear what your reasons are for making all this stink about the dabs thread. I'm getting vagueness about how some people, who you've mostly never met and not directly asked (?) might not like it?
Or is it about female participation in climbing? Or some other group? Can you please just put it in simple terms so an idiot like me can understand why you think this thread and the culture it represents is 'a bad thing'. Some evidence would also be good.

[stone]

Seriously, I think it is always much better to convey potentially awkward stuff face to face rather than online. I think japey comments online are an especially grim approach. To be honest, to me, that comes across as being at least as motivated by the esprit-de-corps derived amongst the mockers than for public clarification of bouldering rules (obviously I can only guess as to other peoples' motivations but that is how you are perceived by me at least).

As I said, I don't have a camera. A couple of times, friends have videoed me when I've been stuck trying to climb (routes), mostly to convey to me what I was doing wrong. That's been super helpful. Once I actually ticked a route whilst being so filmed and a friend posted it up and I've linked to it willy nilly. Anyway, a stranger came up to me at the crag to tell me that he didn't consider I'd climbed the route because I'd pre-clipped a bolt. I hope I wasn't exasperatingly dismissive. I think I said that I'm not really a sport climber, more a leisure roper -I often say that. He didn't seem at all pissed off though. I didn't feel at all put down or hurt. I think that was thanks to the sincere, non-mocking  and face-to-face way he told me. Perhaps you all see this as an example of how he failed though. Perhaps a mocking online pile-on would have at least got me to take the video down and perhaps would have changed how other people climb that route. I don't know.

I am not always a total blundering oaf when it comes to aligning with expressed views about rules. I stopped pre-clipping a bolt on one route when a friend told me she thought that pre-clip was bollocks. I agreed with her when she pointed that out. I also regret that I spent so long using a cheat stone at the start of Nemesis. I was initiated with the cheat stone when I started trying the route and went along with using it. Because I love that route and can't do it -I'm always on it, I guess I did more to promulgate the cheat stone than anyone else. Rob Napier is at least as short as me and didn't use the cheat stone. He told me Keith had done the first ascent from the ground, so that was how he was going to do it too. I didn't take the hint. Much later someone told me they had the impression that the cheat stone upset Keith a lot more than he was letting on. Use of the cheat stone was creating the mis-impression that the route wasn't great from the ground to the top as a three-star-classic should be. I stopped using the cheat stone more out of courtesy than anything, and belatedly found out that it is great from the ground to the top (I haven't climbed it though  ). I'm sure Keith often amicably told me the cheat stone was bollocks and it fell on deaf ears. Evidently to get through my thick skull it took actual (second hand) reports of upset.

I guess the conclusion of all of this wittering is that I do think it is OK to convey to people that you find the way they are climbing upsetting to you and that you consider climbing for everyone at large is improved by other people complying with your rules. However, I think that should always be done, face-to-face and in a sincere way making it obvious that the entire motivation is a wish to improve the enjoyment and climbing experience of everyone, not least the person who messed up (in your view). As we've noted before, the online mockery approach is very damaging. It is stopping a cohort of people from publicly posting videos and that is impeding inclusion and basically making climbing for everyone impoverished (apart from lanky blokes who hate seeing other people at the crag).

[Fiend]

Petejh - Patreon? And maybe need to cover a minibus from Nant Peris and some lemonade and crisps in the Vaynol after?

Stone, I'm not sure how your own, quite different experiences, followed by repeating the assertion about online mockery, actually answers Pete's request for evidence.  Out of curiosity I wonder if the ground level beneath Nemesis has dropped over the years due to erosion, occasional flooding, mud compacting (from you hammering it down with a cheat stone  ). Are you doing exactly the same start as Keith and is that fundamental to the challenge and quality of the route??

[Dingdong]

The only thing that seems shitty about this thread is that it’s not usually really calling out the people who are dabbing but used as a vehicle of mockery and to take the piss out of them in an obscure forum they’ve likely never heard of. There’s the caveat of course that some users of this forum post their own dabs or the dabs of other users but to me it seems that the majority of posts are of random dabbers who aren’t being directly called out.

[Duma]

A plethora of beta videos (especially if they are invalid ascents) does not enrich the climbing scene. You may like not having to work out the moves for yourself, but that doesn't make it an overall "good".
Working out moves is part of the fun for lots of us, and is seriously undervalued as a skill, mainly due to said beta videos being everywhere.

[Fiend]

Okay time for some #realtalk as some of you are missing the point. Sure curbing false claims / dubious practises / invalid ascents, and educating people on that is a worthy aim for the benefit of the community. But it's not the point.

The point is having a good laugh and a little light bantz taking the piss out of people who have been daft enough to deliberately publicly post a video of them dabbing, and even dafter showing no shame and claiming they've done the problem.

Polite education shouldn't get in the way of a bit of good old "Great beta for walking along the pads'" and "Should have just climbed the tree and ignored the rock" and "Great to see that 1940s combined tactics live on with that spotter assistance".

Sure the dabbers might not find it as rib-tickling as they really should, but there's an easy solution to that - cure the problem not the symptons - by not posting dabbing videos. No dabbing, no mockery, nothing to fear.

[stone]

A plethora of beta videos (especially if they are invalid ascents) does not enrich the climbing scene. You may like not having to work out the moves for yourself, but that doesn't make it an overall "good".
Working out moves is part of the fun for lots of us, and is seriously undervalued as a skill, mainly due to said beta videos being everywhere.

No one has to look at bouldering videos (or watch other people climbing IRL as that would equally apply to your points).

There is also the psyche, inspiration, element that comes from them.

Are you saying that because you don't like watching videos and don't want others to, mocking is good because that frightens people off posting and you want that aim?

If you are really saying that, I'm just offering a counter opinion.

[stone]

Fiend, many people express much the same view point as that regarding online mocking of eg people expressing mental health experiences. I find that view mystifying in that context and in this context too.

[Duma]

I don't care about dabs, or using whatever holds you like, or even posting videos of said tactics - people can do whatever they like - unless you claim to have climbed a problem/route which does not include, the ground/those holds/a cheat stone/preclipping the 3rd etc etc. In which case yes, I think its fine to point out that they haven't done the problem. And yes, I think attempting to stop the proliferation of dabbing/traversing into the next route/preclipping half the route when claiming to have done a particular problem/route is worthwhile, and this sort of stuff is often proliferated through beta videos of invalid tactics.

Are you saying that because you don't like watching videos and don't want others to, mocking is good because that frightens people off posting and you want that aim?

No, I would have thought that was obvious.
Your posts on this thread appear to assume that more beta videos=good. I was pointing out that this is not necessarily true. Maybe for you, but not all of us.

Questions for you stone:

Do you think its ok for people to post videos claiming to have climbed things they haven't? Do you think there might be some knock on effects if it was considered unacceptable to point out when people have made a mistake/aren't aware of the rules/are obviously cheating? (and take the piss out of them in the last example, but not the first two)