SSORD: Sprawling Single-Owner Route Database

SSORD

A SSORD is a route database owned and operated by a single entity, spanning enough areas that local fidelity becomes structurally impossible. Data in most cases is community-contributed; the control and benefits are mostly retained by the owner of the collection.

This article is about the route-data model specifically. There are platforms that will be recongnizable in this and it's worth noting that this is a critique of only their route-data model. Platforms that run the SSORD model have social features that are outside the scope of this critique.

Incentives

• once a platform starts to chase sprawl, that becomes the priority
• chasing sprawl flattens the model, once you flatten the model, you can't compete in character or area-fit. you have to compete on scale.
• Sending traffic elsewhere reduces contribution probability." This is the strongest version of the argument because it ties sprawl to the platform's actual lifeblood (unpaid labor).
• in even moderately-contested areas there is incentive to not link to other SSORDs; telling a user to find 30% more routes in a competing platform is a sure way to reduce contributions andchances that they ever catch up.

Consequences for the Community

These are not failures of execution. They follow from the form.

• Uniform presentation flattens area character by design. Every area gets the same template: Vedauwoo, Seneca, and Bishop are rendered identically.
• Editorial and organizational decisions are made at scale without local context. This isn't necessairly negligence on the part of those running a SSORD, but a consequence of the model.
• Hierarchies are imposed on communities that already self-manage, often in ways the platform does not reflect.
• A SSORD funnels attention away from local guides. Climbers coasting on SSORD data put off buying a guidebook, then miss the attachements that a guidebook could help the climber create with an area.
• Value flows out of the community, not back into it. A local guidebook author is typically someone with a stake in the place – financially and otherwise, the economic relationship follows the accountability. If this is to happen at all under the SSORD model, it takes a concerted effort and can't be done to the same extent.
• Even if the SSORD isn't taking money directly from the, users leaning on the SSORD have less opportunity/need to buy the local guidebooks.
• Star and popularity ranking concentrates traffic. Highly-rated climbs get more ticks, which reinforces the ranking. The long tail, most of the areas in a region and most climbs in an area, fade from the communities awareness.
• The quality of areas on a SSORD are markedly lower than you see with a guidebook. They rarely include, history, geology, plants+animals, The long tail, most of the areas in a region and most climbs in an area, fade from the communities awareness.

A SSORD can’t prioritize quality over growth because growth is the product. To keep existing, they need to be growing because all the other SSORDs are also growing. The database is only valuable at scale, so scale is always the objective. A SSORD that's not growing is losing the numbers game to the next SSORD. In this race, quality is a secondary concern. There’s no version of a SSORD that says “we have enough areas, let’s go deeper on the ones we have.” That’s not a decision anyone at those organizations would ever make because it contradicts the model. The guidebook contrast is sharp: scope is a feature, not a limitation. A guidebook that covers Red River Gorge is complete when it covers Red River Gorge. That completeness is what allows the editorial work – you know what you’re working with, you can make judgments about what to include, what to emphasize, what to leave out. A SSORD has no equivalent moment of completion and therefore no equivalent editorial foundation.

When climbs and areas get similar treatment, size is what stands out, even if you're only going to get on 15 routes in a weekend, stars at bigger areas are more appealing. When two areas are presented the same way, why bother going to one with 50 climbs if another has 500?

SSORDs scale and uniformity, because that’s all they offer; SSORDs are a database dumped to the public. Their administrators aren’t owners and can’t be expected to act as such. Curation is deffered and many important notes get dumped into the catch-all comments section. It’s awkward at best, and an exercise in detective work/archaeology at worst.

Consequences for Maintainers

maintaining a SSORD is mostly cookie-cutter work. you can imagine features that would be a perfect fit for areas that you're passionate about, but can't implement them because it has to pass the test: does the feature support crowdsourcing and does it scale? This is partially why every SSORD eventually looks like every other SSORD. star ratings, area pages with photo grids, and the comment-catch-all are in featureful topo drawing, local climber profiles, circuts, etc, area out.

If you're on the hook for moderation, you'll know fatigue well. Most of it is mechanical but relentless: spam, duplicates, [ADD MORE]. These same issues keep coming up day after day. The judgement calls are more taxing emotionally. Many of them are open-ended disputes that are best resolved at a local scale. (naming disputes, FA credit) but you're on the hook for being the decider because the SSORD represents the area. You're not the person who should be deciding these things but you're on the hook for making a decision that you shouldn't be making; it should be made by the local climbers with a real investement in the outcome. On top of that, it's certain to to leave someone unhappy. A good maintainer (from the perspective of the community) cares about climbers and climbing culture, and this exactly who this situation is most taxing on.

The moderators who don't burn out are the ones who worry about the SSORD's needs over over local issues.

If you're on the hook for both development and moderation, now you're carrying both burdens. and doing one prevents

This is not a burden that will lighten up. Maintenance grows as the database expands, the interesting features don't, so the ratio tilts further toward maintenance as the site sprawls. A maintainer who started with 50% building / 50% maintenance trends eventually ends up at 10% / 90% without ever choosing it. This is a structural problem. Not something that you can push past.

The people who choose to maintain SSORDs do it for excellent reasons: care for the community, love of climbing, wanting to contribute. Unfortunately, the SSORD model makes moderation under this sytem unlikley to bring happiness.

3. Fragility

Organizations are fallible. and could loose data

Organizations fail . This is not a criticism of any platform – it is a base rate.

When a SSORD fails or changes hands, the community does not recover what it contributed. Licensing terms typically prevent it. Unlike a book going out of print, there is no artifact that persists. The thousands of hours climbers put in are not theirs to keep.

Backups are beside the point. The problem is not data loss – it is that the rights to the data do not belong to the people who created it.

4. What SSORDs Are Not

A local climber maintaining a record for local crags is not a SSORD.

SSORDS are not "all climbing platforms"

Instances of

Tools like Rakkup and GunksApps are not SSORDs. Areas released on these are a bit more mechanical/sterile/flat than you'd get from a paper guidebook, but they're comprehensive and proceeds from the sales head back towards the authors in their local community.

a SSORD is essentially just a database pushed to the public before it’s been massaged into a shape that will do good, and in a format that extracts money from the local community

SSORDs are databases exposed to the public and a database is not a guidebook. No volume of contributed data changes what this structure is built to do. They come with baggage.

Climbing’s written knowledge – its guidebooks, topos, area histories – is a community asset. The SSORD is a structural category for understanding one way that asset gets managed, and what that management costs.

SSORDs have absorbed much of that knowledge while introducing structural problems the community didn’t conciously choose this.: The climbers in Smith Rocks are entirely unaffected by what the folks at T-Wall are doing. Not so on a SSORD.

Renaming a route after a major hold breaks at Rumney doesn't require a regional approval from a private company. Not so on an SSORD, you'll need to reach out to an admin.

in the real world, if you want to publish a guide for an area, you can just make one. If you want to do something similar on a SSORD, it goes through an administratior. This is bureacrocy for the sake of the SSORD, not for the community.

star-ranking model that concentrates attention on a handful of climbs while flattening everything else.

Every area gets the same treatment — Vedauwoo, Seneca, Bishop — each with its own character, history, and community, rendered in the same template. The result treats climbs as inventory and climbers as consumers

Trying to get a SSORD to add friendly features, or replacing one with another will improve improve particular aspects but optimizing features does not change the model.

On top of that, SSORDs don’t last. When they fail or change hands, the knowledge goes with them.

I can think of a few times when an area on a SSORD felt similarly complete to a guidebook. In every case, it was not the product of community collaboration, but the compliation from a dedicated user. For nearly all areas, crowdsourcing has provided a subset of an areas climbs to the SSORD. When the SSORD offers this subset it turbocharges the effects we saw from neuteral presentation and star rankings. A SSORD user visiting an area (and most climbers) prefers convenience and is unlikely to explore on his own. The undocumented subset is entirely unrepresented, increasing the pressure on the documented routes, cutting an opportunity for exporation and letting trails overgrow to the other areas. guidebooks have _much_ better coverage. but they're expensive and visitors favoring convenience won't buy one. stele1 lets you export your data to a web app so your guidebook's data can compete in convenience with the SSORDs in your region

TODO: lighten up on the idea of a database vs database-as-product
A cleaner version: databases are necessary; the question is who owns them, at what scope, and whether they're meant to be the final product or the foundation for one.