I suggest we draft David Lockleer. He is a good writer no matter what you think of his wild and wooly posts. When I was editor of the UTG Newsletter we had tons of cave trips that were two paragraphs. March 3, 1969 John Fish, Charlie Loving, Susie Holstrom, Marsha Meredith, Ed Alexander and Elmer Gantry wnet to Lantry Leads. The team mapped 14 feet and climbed out into a sand storm and returned to Austin.
That was the sort of reports I got. Things like going to Uvalde and Mason's Ranch and caving there. Sleeping in the bunk house. Sloshing around in the cave and getting to the syphon and needing more gear to push it. One of the things we recorded were the participants. Anyone could write a blurb and did. We did not have e-mail. We sometimes got the reports on the back of a napkin at the CHuckwagon Caver table. On Wed, Oct 26, 2016 at 8:38 PM, Bennett Lee via Texascavers < texascavers@texascavers.com> wrote: > I've thought about this a lot over the past year. I'm of the same opinion > of Mixon. I think the Texas Caver should be a record of caving in Texas. > We live in a social media world, and most of what's happening gets posted > to social media. However, social media is fleeting. Anyone remember > Myspace? Only 8 years ago it was the most popular website in the world. > Who's heard of it now? What's going to happen to Facebook in 10 years? Or > even now...can you find what someone posted to Facebook a month ago? > Social media isn't an archive--it's constantly drowned out by new content. > > And as Minton points out, very few trip reports or caver activities get > written specifically for caver publications. The bulk is short blurbs > dumped to email lists and social media. But if we collect enough of these > short blurbs over three months, we'll have a nearly complete Texas Caver. > > So how do we harness this? > > I propose authors tag posts appropriate for the Texas Caver with > #TexasCaver to make them easier to find. For example, when Marvin Miller > or Joe Mitchell posts their Government Canyon or Deep Survey trip reports > to CaveTex, Geary Schindel's quick write-ups of the LaChance Sinkhole digs, > someone writes a book review or light review, tag them with #TexasCaver at > the beginning or end of the post. Then every three months someone does a > quick search for #TexasCaver and grabs pages of content for the Texas > Caver. That's far easier than perusing all the CaveTex exchanges and > social media posts for content. And more importantly, it grabs a snapshot > of caving in Texas using the most popular way to communicate today--social > media--then preserves it in the Texas Caver in perpetuity without anyone > having to write anything extra (other than #TexasCaver). > > As far as the Texas Caver becoming a "picture magazine", I actually like > that. I'm a bit biased because I love both taking and seeing cave photos. > But in my defense, photos are huge part of documentation. Robber Baron has > amazing old photos (albeit very low-res) gathered from these archaic things > called "newspapers". The photos show people standing in passages we have > to crawl or stoop walk through now. We were actually able to match these > old photos to specific locations in Robber Baron so we know where to dig > for potential buried passage. Even more dramatic, I've seen photos of > Endless Cave in New Mexico before people came in with saws and harvested > whole walls of cave formations to sell at Carlsbad Caverns back in the > early 1900s, and then photos of the same locations a hundred years later > post-harvesting. You can talk or write about these things all you want, > but to actually SEE them puts them into a whole new perspective. 50 years > from now, where are you going to find similar photo documentation? > Someone's 50-year-old Flickr account? Some low-res photo printed on > water-stained copier paper in the TSS archives? If anything, I think the > Texas Caver needs MORE photo documentation. That's just my opinion, and > like I said, I'm biased. > > But back to my main topic...what does everyone think about using > #TexasCaver to flag content? > > --Bennett > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Texascavers [mailto:texascavers-boun...@texascavers.com] On Behalf > Of Mark Minton via Texascavers > Sent: Wednesday, October 26, 2016 3:56 PM > To: texascavers@texascavers.com > Subject: Re: [Texascavers] The Texas Caver > > Here in the East at least one publication, The Potomac Caver, (from the > non-NSS- affiliated Potomac Speleological Club) does exactly what Bill > Mixon suggested. The editor gathers articles and trip reports that are > posted on various email lists and elsewhere, and reprints them. I think > very little of the content is written specifically for the newsletter. > There are also usually a few photos included because either the trip > reports contained them or gave web links to online galleries. Everything is > in black and white. This does indeed provide a good, if not complete, > archive of reports, especially covering Germany Valley (Hellhole, Memorial > Day Cave) where a lot of PSC members are active. > > I don't know how much time the editor spends on the bimonthly > newsletter, but she spends almost no time trying to drum up articles. I see > no reason why this couldn't be done for the Texas Caver, at least until it > gets back on its feet. > > Mark Minton > mmin...@caver.net > > On Wed, October 26, 2016 4:02 pm, Mixon Bill via Texascavers wrote: > > > > Quite aside from problems with the timeliness and quality of the Texas > > Caver, I am concerned about its very nature. It seems to be intended, > > these days, to be a picture magazine, not a record of Texas caving. I > > guess I'm old-fashioned, but I don't think that posting something > > worth recording about Texas caving to Facebook or the Texas Cavers > > e-mail list fulfills our obligation to history. The Texas Caver ought > > to strive to be a permanent record of what's gone on. I'd love to see > > all those on-line reports about Colorado Bend, Government Canyon, and > > similar project weekends or TCMA work days printed in the Caver. I > > don't care if they are in 9-point type at the back with no > > illustrations at all. They will at least be in the NSS, TSS, etc. > > libraries on paper (and perhaps on the web, > > too) in fifty years. Can the same thing be guaranteed by the archive > > of the Texas Caver list or some grotto's Facebook page? > > _______________________________________________ > Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com > Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/ > texascavers@texascavers.com/ > http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers > _______________________________________________ > Texascavers mailing list | http://texascavers.com > Texascavers@texascavers.com | Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/ > texascavers@texascavers.com/ > http://lists.texascavers.com/listinfo/texascavers > -- Charlie Loving
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