Discuss Surfing forum policy changes here

unluckyforsome

No, leave things the way they are now.

@Kippy

I never ment to offend anyone by saying beginners should use MSW to find spots but that's how I did it and it's served me well.

I apologise if I did offend you, but i stand by what i said.

I love bringing new friends out surfing with me, I love helping them out whenever I can. Nothing can beat the look on someones face when they catch their first wave and pop up.

But that map should be taken down for the benefit of the Irish surf community.

This forum needs to have credibility to grow. It wont have that while that map is up and therefore hurts the surfing community that uses boards.ie

Kippy as a beginner you would greatly benefit form proper advice that experienced surfers can give here but wont because of the map.

For the benefit of everyone it needs to be taken down.

dmg10

No, leave things the way they are now.

Just as a response to the safety angle, if someone gets into trouble at a more popular break, the chances are there'll nearly always be someone around to see you in trouble. A lot of the sensitive/quieter spots are off the beaten track a little, therefore if anyone gets into trouble (beginner or advanced, anyone can get into trouble), there's very often nobody around to see you, apart from whoever you might be with. There's one spot on that map that has a description of 'easy rip'.....completely not the case and whoever put it up obviously hasn't seen it when at a certain point in the tide it develops a rip that goes across the beach that weaker paddlers would find very hard to paddle across to home. Also, by having descriptions on a map that's linked to boards.ie, beaches change with erosion and channels (and therefore rips) develop over time. Who has the responsibility of updating those maps when that happens to mark it from 'safe' to 'warning'. Descriptions will very often be old and not relevant to the current workings of the beach.

Sorry, I'm just a bit of a safety freak when it comes to stuff like that :-)

cornbb

Mods and admins are currently looking into this. Thanks to everyone who tried to make a good contribution.

(If you're tempted to start a new thread because you haven't had your say yet, don't. We may decide to open this one again. Please wait to hear back from us).

cornbb

Just a reminder that mods and admins are actively discussing this behind the scenes and hope to have an update on changes (if any) within the next day or 2 (we're all busy people).

I hope ye will agree that this thread has been mostly productive and cordial. Let's try to keep it that way in the forum in the meantime. Cheers, cornbb.

cornbb

We've removed the link to the map. No other rule/policy changes have been decided upon, but we will re-write the charter/rulebook of the forum over the next couple of days. I promise that we will try to take everyone's opinions on board when we are doing this.

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this, both the surfers in this thread and the admins who have been looking at things behind the scenes. I hope that everyone will recognise that people are polarised on this issue and that we are doing our best to keep everyone happy, although we will never be able to make everyone happy.

Someone mentioned a beginner-specific map, i.e. a version of the map with spots that are suitable for beginners. Obviously, it wouldn't contain the sensitive spots that have been the source of the debate here. I'm sure that that would be great for the many beginners/intermediates on this forum without pissing anyone off, if someone would like to take that on as a project we would be happy to sticky it.