I was thinking it would be nice if there were some section devoted to Hammock-Friendly hanging sites that would identify specific campsites at say a local state park that I could refer to when trying to select a place to go hang.
The idea would be that this fourm section could be ordered by contry & State/Province. Each State/Provience Fourm would have sub-fourms for each properly defined camping facility (e.g. GoldHead State Park, Devil's Lake State Park, Yosemite National Park, etc.). Within each of these sub-fourms would be threads for each properly defined campsite (e.g. Campsite 28, Site E2, etc.).
Within each of these threads users could post of the quality if the site and the availability of proper hangin trees, the distance between trees, layout of the site including the trees, diameter of the trees, apparent health of the trees, and any undergrowth issues.
I would expect that there would be a need for a 'Graded Scale' or rubric of sorts that would define a standardized method of evaluating the sites so as to unify the data and reports. I believe this wil also help to provide tranpanency to the users of the reports as well ease of recording for those making reports. I would suspect that this rubric could exist as a Stick.
I understand that this could imply undo risk for the fourms as it could be misconstrued as an 'Authority', while its intent would not be such.
However, as we have seen on HF, the comunal focus and energy of a 'mass' of consumers who are not happy with a specific vendor has had positive impact and outcomes. I would like to think this fourm section could have similar positive impact. Take for instance a public facility that is not well maintained of undergrowth/poison ivy/etc. if they were made aware of the issues their potential consumers had with the quality of their facility, would they consider changing? (I would hope so!). Likewise, the positive reports of users would surely have positive impact for those same vendors/facilities as their visitor rates would increase.
I understand it's not the intent of the forum to support any one or another vendors/providers, and I do not see this becoming such, however if those that manage the lands we utilize knew that a focused group of people were conducting reports about their facilities, I'd like to think they would do more to provide quality and adequate facilities for us. (Consider the positive impact HF members had to Santee State Park Officials after the last Fall Spwall Hang)
Thoughts?
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