Proposal talk:River Difficulty
Discuss Proposed features/River Difficulty here:
Same as WikiProject Whitewater Maps
I think some people are already tagging this with whitewater:section_grade=1/2/3/4/5/6 +/- or unknown and whitewater:rapid_grade=1/2/3/4/5/6 +/- or unknown (see WikiProject_Whitewater_Maps). I may be wrong since I don't know a thing about it, but if it is the same then there's no need for another tag. --Eimai 01:34, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
- Yes this is the same, and there is no need for another tag. We could change the tags we're using, but at the moment this is just duplication. Since there's no reference to WikiProject Whitewater Maps on this proposal, I'm guessing that the proposer hadn't found that page when it was put forward.
- This proposal is quite inactive now, so I'll label it as abandoned, and link to the WikiProject Whitewater Maps page. I'm not trying to rule out any possibility of proposing a different tagging for this, but any proposal will need to acknowledge that another tagging scheme is currently in use.
- -- Harry Wood 18:17, 3 November 2009 (UTC)
The full scale?
IMHO the "International" scale should not be used, but rather the "German" one (which is used across the Europe, and in Australia etc.) The notable difference is that the grade VI does not mean "unrunnable" but "at the top of the (current) human possibilities". The unrunnable water is simply not marked as WW, i.e. a value like "X" should be added. (A cross, simply written as letter "X", is a mark for unrunnable place within the river description, so it fits well also for the unrunnable difficulty of the whole part which is rated.)
In addition, the German rating also includes "ZW" (Zahnwasser) grade, which is used for flat water. In the past, this grade was divided into ZW A, ZW B and ZW C with A being the steady water and C the streams up to 10-12 km/h but without waves (= not qualifying for WW), with B in between. I find this division useful for planning the trips, as the time needed to sail some distance on ZW A and ZW C differs a lot. So I'd suggest the possible tag values being: A, B, C, 1, 1+, 2-, 2, 2+, 3-, 3, 3+, 4-, 4, 4+, 5-, 5, 5+, 6, X (note that 1-, 6- and 6+ are not used in practice, AFAIK).
Note that adding the ZW grade would make the tags like "whitewater:section_grade" a logical nonsense, since ZW is not a WhiteWater. And I am strongly in favour of using the full scale from flat water to unrunnable water rather than marking just whitewater, so that the tag name "difficulty" fits better ;-) --Kavol 22:44, 8 November 2008 (UTC)