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You've provided a great service to both this group and the Facebook groups, John, even if the FB groups drive you around the bend these days! Hiking is going through a new renaissance era - it's the 70's all over! - and there is an endless stream of new hikers with the same new hiker questions. I don't mean to suggest that those questions are unworthy or trivial, but I appreciate that responding to the same questions for 14 years could get old.

I can confirm that the Reddit JMT group is like a less organised version of the FB groups, you're not missing anything. I think the PCT reddit group may be a little more useful as an active "real time" posting forum by people on trail.

Insta - well, it's really just about the pics!

Thanks again for everything you give to this community John, we all owe you a debt of gratitude (and the rest of the great moderators and admins, lest we forget!).

Regards,

Lange

On Thursday, 24 March 2022, 12:30:28 am AEDT, John Ladd <johnladd@...> wrote:

This was my first social network group for any purpose, probably first in 2008 or so. It is still my favorite.

Because of the larger size of the Facebook groups I have needed to be very active on them in order to recruit for the survey. I love to stop them because the Facebook algorithms lead me to waste and inordinate amount of time. I'm looking forward to the time when I can give up my admin duties there.

What I like about this group is that the email format leads people to give longer and more thoughtful replies. Rather than just state an opinion, people give the reasons for their opinion and often some indication of their level of experience generally, or with respect to The Sierra Nevada range.

It also avoids the annoying socializing, and all the repetitive pictures of the same beautiful place. At least not anywhere near as often as on the Facebook groups. People here also seem to feel less compulsion to brag about their accomplishments or to downplay their mistakes.

The group is almost unfailingly polite. When I first got on the group there was a lot of misogyny and ridiculing of people who had not adopted the same ultralight gear that is favored by hikers who have to cover 25 mi a day in order to reach the end of their hike before the end of the hiking year.

There seems to be less encouragement of people who seem to be making decisions that put themselves, their hiking companions and search and rescue people at risk.

I see no reason for anyone to be a member of both this group and the Facebook group, with one exception. If you want to find a hiking companion or someone who might share transportation you are better off seeking that on the Facebook groups.

Among the Facebook groups the one I'd most recommend, for our women members, would be the ladies of the JMT, although I think they sometimes try to encourage people to do things that are pretty clearly beyond their current capabilities.

My least favorite are the various yearly class of JMT groups. I do not understand why someone would join a group that has very few long time experienced JMT hikers and mostly consists of persons who are attempting the JMT for the first time or who are particularly fond of the social aspects of Facebook groups.

Among the Facebook groups I prefer the long-standing all year JMT group. It is well moderated and the admins do decline some posts where they are clearly repetitive, seem to be self-promotional or where we can easily give someone a definitive action by declining a proposed post while giving a reason to them why we are doing so.

Well none of the groups come including this one, particularly good about using the search function before asking a question that has already been well covered before, there is less of it on this group than on the Facebook groups.

I also find JMT videos on YouTube pretty much useless. They're often put up by first time JMT hikers and stress how accomplished they were and how beautiful they conditions were, without realizing that they may have just been lucky to avoid bad weather or a nasty fall due to lack of preparation or poor equipment choices, etc.

I particularly like the fact that the average experience level of people who post or reply to posts seems to be much higher than on any of the Facebook groups and certainly higher than your typical YouTube presenter.

I don't know Twitter or Reddit at all so I can't comment on them, nor on Instagram, though I really doubt that they are any better and seem likely to be even worse than the Facebook groups.

I'm trying to learn how to voice dictate using better enunciation. However, I do often have the voice equivalents of typos, occasionally really embarrassing ones.

So thanks everyone.

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John Curran Ladd
415-648-9279