Censorship policy

RopeWiki admins have occasionally been asked to remove information from RopeWiki. Our policy is generally that more information and awareness is the solution to most problems and obscurity is a weak and temporary protection that often does more harm than good. In all matters, there should be a bias toward freedom of information and ease of access to it. Some more detailed rationales are listed below, as well as the few exceptions we have.

Specific scenarios

Protecting readers from themselves

It is sometimes claimed that information about a particular route should not be published because that may cause an unprepared reader to attempt the route and injure themselves. If there are dangers, more information is the best defense against attempting an inappropriate trip, not less. It is always up to the reader to sufficiently prepare himself or herself to safely navigate a route; RopeWiki cannot and will not attempt to take on that burden. Saying that a particular page does not sufficiently prepare a reader for the route it describes because it does not include or emphasize some piece of information implies that other pages *do* sufficiently prepare a reader for the routes described in those other pages. That is not true; no page on RopeWiki prepares a reader to navigate the route it describes, and it is dangerous to imply otherwise by selectively censoring a particular page.

Limiting environmental impact

It is certainly true that human travel through most natural areas results in impact to those natural areas which can degrade the experience for others and/or intrinsically-valuable natural features. Limiting where route information is published may reduce this impact, so therefore some people request that impact-sensitive routes be removed from RopeWiki. We do not agree this is a productive remedy, however, because 1) there are many places on the internet where route information can be published so removing a single outlet will do very little to contain the information and 2) RopeWiki is particularly well-suited to communicating the importance and means of minimizing impact. Because of this, we believe that removing route information from RopeWiki will likely increase the number of impact-insensitive visitors.

There are additional reasons we do not believe RopeWiki censorship is an appropriate tool to limit environmental impact, but also believe the above reason suffices by itself. The one major exception is caves, as explained below.

Limiting risk of closure

Similar to human impact, some people would like to limit information about a route in order to limit traffic through that route to limit injuries or incidents that may prompt land managers to close that route. Our response is nearly identical to that of human impact: greater awareness of the risks (of closure, in this case) is more productive than trying to contain all information. As an additional benefit, greater awareness of a threat of closure is likely to prompt organized attention through advocacy groups like the CAC. This should generally result in better compromises that pay more attention to access concerns than if the land manager quietly closes the route without much public visibility.

Route is described elsewhere

In almost all cases where a route is described in sufficient detail on some other site (e.g., Yelp), we think the benefits of additional context, warnings, etc that can be provided in a RopeWiki page clearly outweigh the potential costs of marginally increasing the visibility of that route (both are accessible from a Google search). So, if a route is described in sufficient detail elsewhere, there is a very strong presumption that it should not be censored on RopeWiki.

Closed routes

Instead of trying to limit information to routes that are closed by land managers/owners, we believe more information will lead to better decisions by responsible potential visitors. For those intent on violating the closure regardless, publishing the information will at least make it more likely the trespassers will avoid the hazard or impact that is the purpose for the closure. For more reasonable potential visitors, detailed information about the closure is likely to give them greater understanding of why the closure is necessary, and therefore make them more likely to respect it. In addition, the closure information helps the community interested in access to organize and petition for that access.

Exceptions

Caves

Caves are uniquely fragile: even a careful, well-meaning visitor without the proper knowledge or skills is likely to irreparably damage formations that take thousands to millions of years to form. Likely because of this, most specific information about caves has been successfully limited to Grottos, and RopeWiki should not be the first publication to expose those extra-fragile resources to substantially increased risk. In cases where information about a cave has already been widely published elsewhere, the rationale against publishing information about them does not exist and so the general RopeWiki bias toward open information applies.

Alternate actions

If you have been referred to this page because your removal of information has been reverted, there are still very helpful actions you can take to accomplish your goals. At a minimum, the Red Tape section of the affected area should mention the issue. If the issue is particularly important, you may also consider adding a short note in the Introduction right at the beginning raising the issue and referring readers to the Red Tape section for more information; see a past version of Eaton Canyon for one example.

If the issue affects multiple canyons/areas, it may be useful to create a page dedicated to fully explaining the issue, and then linking to that page from each of the affected areas/canyons with only a brief description introducing the link on each canyon/area page. See, for instance Eaton Canyon closure.

If you still feel that this policy does or should not apply, and/or that these alternate actions do not address the issue, please feel free to contact either Ben or Dav privately to explore other possibilities.