[Dave Flanagan]

[edit]Put this on TheShortSpan board,  wanted to hear what you lads thought[/edit]

There are various bouldering websites that use a voting system to grade boulder problems (such as http://www.yorkshiregrit.com/ and http://bleau.info/). This a very democratic system where everyones vote counts equally.

I don't think this is the best way to grade problems.

Firstly when does one decide that the grade is stable? After how many votes does the grade become offical, does the offical grade need a majority or does it need a large quorum? If it just required a simple majority then one vote can tip the balance.

Secondly, one doesn't know who is casting the votes, it could be someone very well travelled and level headed or it could be an egotist, strong beginner who doesn't have a clue about grading. I think that some people are in a better postion to offer a grade for a particular problem. For example John Gaskins while a very experienced and skillful climber might not be the best person to be grading Font 5's simply because he is so strong. Likewise someone who is very tall, Pierre say [edit]hes very tall[/edit], might find a long reach easier than the average.

Grades are just opinions, everyone has one but some peoples have more value than others.

Discussion is the way forward, gathering as many opinions as possibile, these opinions are not as simple as just a number though.

[Stubbs]

Word - I think yorkshire grit suffers a lot from people spending ages on a hard problem at their local crag, getting every move wired and then thinking it's easier than the grade given, just because they've spent so long on it.

The other main problem seems to be (as you mentioned above potentially  with Gaskins) strong people going to new areas and suggesting that V3's are probably worth less than V1, just because they found them simple.

I think the comments section of Ygrit deals with this quite well, as you get to see the attitude of the people grading. Maybe making people make a comment with their grading vote would make the process even more transparent, as long as people took it seriously.

[Sloper]

I think what happens with the internet is what happened 'way back when' but is simply faster and more people can get involved.

Of course the muppets, strong, tall, talented, egotistical and dishonest can get involved, but wasn't that always the case?

I think we need an agreed international panel for grades up to V8, I'll put myself forward in the short arsed thug (30 - 40) category.

[chris]

grades are always gonna be subjective no matter what you do. its a case of 6 of one and half a dozen of the other. Take my good self and ukb's very own comp star Dobbin. We climb together all the time and guess what... were better at different things hence certain problems feel harder for him than me and vice versa. Although he is shockingly weak :wink:

All im sayng is that climbers are not alike in ability and more importantly attitude and therefore view grades differently.

For me grades are a guide. One problem maybe 7c and another 7c+ but  they may both feel the same... so do i go online and downgrade the harder one??  No course i dont because it probably just suited me, and i cant be bothered to be honest.

In my experience let someone else grade the problems apart from Ru as everything will be 7b+

oh and johnny welford everything will be 7c

and yes youve got it...never let si o'connor grade anything as it will be 8c

[Fiend]

Shouldn't this have been a poll so that we could vote on it??

[Moo]

I think grades get wielded about too much, like they are the law or something. It would be refreshing to put up a guide book of an area with a canny few problems, but no grades carrock fell would have been an ideal opportunity in the lakes, just to see how it developed, if the vast majority did the grading, as opposed to the ascending few.

[Paz]

I think it shouldn't be, (with routes anyway) not because it's prone to undergrading by mutants but because it's prone to overgrading.  If you have n suggested grades in increasing order of difficulty 0 <= g0 <= g1<= g2 <=.....<= gn then the mean ((g0+g1+g2+...+gn)/n) is just shite, prone to overgrading, and manipulatable.  I think rockfax effectively use the median g[n/2], which is hunky dory unless like me you think three quarters of the people voting on the website upgrade routes they keep fail on, regardless of the reason, but it probably sells lots of guidebooks but I believe this is becsue they effectively say `there there it's alright we found it hard too' as opposed to 'of course it's hard when you don't have the skillz'.  I'd be amused to see the extreme harsh grade g0.  The problem has been climbed by some person at some time at g0.  It'd give you a lot of sandbags, but life would be boring without them and we'd get burnt off, and it isn't likely to affect popular problems.  You could also allow for a typical number of mutants m << n for whom the problem is piss, then choose gm.  Or as Dave says, just select whose opinion you listen to based on what grade they climb, especially for power/strength problems which will feel piss if you're more than strong or powerful enough where as a moderate endurance problem might still get an endurance superstar a bit tired if the moves aren't too far below their strength limit (I've lost my routes track here).  So as sensible as selecting people's opinions based on their grade sounds, to define all grades simultaneously this way if you're not careful might land you in a world of circular logic.  Maybe you have to accept that grades evolve, and it's a complicated history dependent process.  I just hope that some way of defining grades can be found that converges.  That's why I suggested g0, though I'll feel silly that I ever suggested this if it turns out that everything ends up V0.

[AndyR]

I t........

 :freak:  

[dave]

Paz spits the math like a steven hawking chewing Fermat's tobacco.

At the end of the day as far as grades go, I'm right, and every fucker else is wrong. As for shorties.....don't get me started :nopity:

  :wink:

[clm]

its all 6b to me.......