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Is Chockstone going the way of Crag X* ? 24-Jul-2018 At 3:04:26 PM technogeekery

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Yep, its pretty much all over. I've enjoyed much of Chocky for years, but some of the problems have become crit ical.

-Trolls & lack of moderation. Without active moderation and policing of the more egregious trolls, it became an often unpleasant place and certainly not welcoming to newcomers, women, beginner climbers.
-Poor content - many or even most threads now just seem to be a couple of trolls (the same troll with different names?) gargling incomprehensibly at each other
-Lack of good content (not quite the same as above) - my interest in climbing forums is in direct proportion to the quality and regularity of new stories, trip reports, reviews, ideas and discussions. I've tried to contribute over the years, but so hard to post photos and attractive editorial content that I just gave up. I can't think how many photo reports I abandoned in frustration, or were later trun cated or mauled by the software
-Incredibly outdated forum software (maybe contributes to above) - clunky, brown, unattractive, hard to use, no social aspects, no decent database for content etc. Have offered to help with dogwork of updating to modern forum software, but no interest from owner
-Parochial focus on VIC - think the site had excellent opportunity to go from defacto AU climbers website to genuine centre for everything climbing related in Aus - but it would need love, care and hard work, and despite good will and possible input of work from many long term contributors, there seems to be no interest from the owner. And fair enough, it is clearly a sideline - but I do think without a plan to go forward and change with the times, the demise is inevitable

I think it has gone past the point of diminishing returns now, and the core of contributors have moved on, leaving just a shell with some considerable historical interest, and that is about it.

A real pity, as there is no really attractive alternative at present in AU. Anyway, I guess I'll keep popping back every year or two to see if things have changed or the ser ver has final rusted through and I get a 40 4 error. I guess some enthusiastic kids will eventually see the opportunity to work their arzes off for very small rewards and build a proper AU climbing forum, and I'll join that to whinge about the old days.

(Haha - as a parting kick in the bollocks, I got the following error when posting that: "Invalid or Suspicious Input Detected. Press BACK on your browser." I was able to defeat the forum's Content Prevention Engine by putting a space in trun cated)