User:Caraliss/sandbox

Cara Lisser

Mika LaVaque-Manty

Honors 240

20 September 2016

Climbing the Write Way

At first glance, the Wikipedia article about Free Solo Climbing seems unusually concise; this is not in itself a fatal flaw, but when combined with uncited and opinionated ideas the article dampens its ability to be completely reliable even with accurate information throughout.

Free solo climbing is a popular extreme sport, so there should be a wide variety of available information but the overview fails to mention much about the origins, early stages, or give any details foreshadowing what will come later on in the article. The overview does however give a great summary of the basics behind free solo climbing to give the reader a general mental picture and understanding. The writer does this concisely which is a coveted task.

The article also gives a detailed, but boring list of notable injuries incurred for people while practicing this sport. To make this section less biased against the sport, the writer could also explain how climbers have survived tragic falls and ways medical teams work with climbers for their safety outside of the sport (Whitehurst). The laundry list of injuries is longer than the explanation of the sport which gives the reader a heavily biased portrait of the sport as dangerous. The article too quickly rushes to injuries without first detailing any successful career free climbers like Alex Hannold (Rich).

Free solo climbing is also a passion sport at its core. The writer does include a section on motivations, but this section is far too brief to be substantial. Because there are so many dangers listed, there has to be equal amount of research dedicated to the positivity that comes from free solo climbing. There should be more citations and research done, possibly including a case study like one about John Bachner who accomplished many firsts for the sport while eventually falling and failing (Sy).

Nevertheless, Bachar and countless others contributed many innovations to the sport that are invisible in the article. For example, Bachar invented a special device called the “Bachar ladder” to aid in training and increase the safety of the sport. There should be an entire section about the safety of the sport not only the cases where people were unsafe to prevent a biased opinion after reading (Wikipedia).

The writer of the article also makes common reference to a 5.14 magnitude climb without explaining to the reader what this means or how to compare this number. This is very bad because the reader has nothing to compare it with and must then just take the author's tone as proof that this number would result in a very unusual and hard climb. But, not many other writers seemed to have collaborated with this page because the Talk page is comment-less and baren. More contributors would give this article a more rounded focus.

Overall, this article gives the reader a broad sense of what free solo climbing is but does not carry enough specific evidence or research to be a true encyclopedia article, which is Wikipedia’s goal. The article has a warning at the top of its page telling the reader about uncited material, so any keen observer would then be hesitant about trusting this as a source even though it gives accurate concise information at its core.

Bibliography

“Free Solo Climbing” Wikipedia, accessed September 18 2010.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_solo_climbing

“John Bachar” Wikipedia, accessed September 18 2010. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Bachar

Rich, Nathaniel “The Risky Appeal of Free Climbing” The Atlantic, November 2015.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/11/the-cliffhanger/407824/

Sy, Stephanie “Passion or Recklessness? Rock Climber Falls to Death” ABC News, July 2009. http://abcnews.go.com/Travel/story?id=8061175&page=1

Whitehurst, Lindsay “Rescue crews help in Little Cottonwood Climber” The Salt Lake Tribune, December 2009. http://www.lexisnexis.com/hottopics/lnacademic/