I think this might sound stupid but it might be a cool idea, if doable. It would be helpful If someone who was really knowledgeable about being an ST and adding rivers and info on this website would give a crash course regarding such. Reading comments on the forum it seems like I'm not the only one that sometimes has a rough time. In the NY area it would be cool to run a river say in southern Catskills and then do the crash coarse. This way, people can feel like they are not traveling all that way just to learn something. I think this would be doable since there would probably just a few of us (if any hopefully) that would be interested I figure the Catskill are central to many in NY.

Jay,

Can you describe what kind of problems you are having?

Pretty much all the problems I have are either due to genuine bugs on the AW site or issues with the obsolete operating system I'm running at my end.

As regards to everything else, I tend to find the job of creating and maintaining a river description mostly straightforward. But I've also done it a lot and am reasonably familiar with html.

Other folks might not feel it's as easy. I know there have been mentions of the difficulty of attracting and retaining Streamkeepers, perhaps some insight from people who have had difficulty might help us all.

/Skip

Some of the problems had to do with bugs and therefore wasn't do to my lack of knowledge. But other problems are due to the fact that I'm a CI (computor illiterate). eg. I read that I should make a 'hard copy' in case something goes wrong I wouldn't lose all my work. But I didn't know how to make a hard copy. SO many times I'd spend an hour compossing someting and lose all my work. (I just recently learned how to use a program (I forget which one) where I can use spell check ect, file it and then make a copy and paste on AW.
I still cant figure out how to upload videos (worse, I cant get them on my computor now Grrrrrr) but cant upload the ones I do have filed.
I still find sometimes getting the Lat and Long tedious
Some of the pics I put up will enlarge when you click on them, some will not. I don( know why.
Another neat thing I wish I knew, sometimes someone will write; 'if you want, you can paddle down to river X, for a description of that river click here' , then when you click there it brings you to that river description. The best I can do is go to that other river, copy the URL, then go back and paste. It works, but does not look as nice.
I actally got go back to some of my work because I didnt know about spell check, changing color, changing writting stlye ect and there's a bunch of other icons and I have no clue as to what they do or how and/or why to use them.
So, most of my lack of knowledge is not necessarly unque to AW, but some things are.
Outside of this, are there inexpensize altimeters that can be bought that can be used to get a reading at a put-in and take-out so I can put it's true MPF on AW? I ask this because I put up a creek on AW and the gradient lines show the last half to be 60 MPF but going down this creek sugests to me it might be more like 70 or better. Gradiet maps help but if there's three gadient lines through say a mile long river with one line just above the put-in, one just below the take-out, it makes it vauge to me what to write. (a little over 60 or a little less than 100).

Jay,

I think you have a very interesting idea. The most active streamteamers in my area are people that feel free to call me with problems and who get together to with each other to experiment on the pages. It is easy to feel isolated when working computer projects, but teamwork, comparing notes and learning how other do stuff, can make it much easier and more enjoyable.

I am not on the east coast, so I can't help much but give you encouragement, but I will try to do something similar here in California and see how people like it.

Paul

I am putting a roll-back feature into the river database starting in six months. In our committee meeting we wanted the following outcomes:

1 -- List the features that really make STing difficult.

2 -- Fix the problems

3 -- Run a training and recruiting campaign

Go ahead and start a thread on features you know are difficult and what doesn't work quite the way you want.

I'll jump in with my interpretations and you can tell me if I am right. At the end of that, hopefully we'll have a good list.

Thanks,

Ryan