A-B-C of Hiking Community - http://www.abc-of-hiking.com/community/
The Focus of this community is to provide a forum for people to submit photos and articles about hikes they have done. It also gives members the opportunity to discuss online their experiences of hikes the have done.
People can interact with others on the site by: Posting photos, posting to the message board, submitting articles and photos and by joining and showing their support and recommendations for hikes they have done. It also provides tips for safe hiking and provides wallpapers for peoples computer backgrounds.
People choose to contribute to this community in order to share their experiences, inform others of tracks they might not know about or inform people of risks. People can meet like minded people through the site and discuss tramps they have done, all with the ambiguity of anonymity.
A typical entry of a new member of the community
Hi from Australia
Monday 18th May 2009 at 5:29:42 PM
jstevenson4
Rank: Fanny Packer
Hi All,
Im fairly new to hiking but have always enjoyed outdoors. I have done alot of MTB riding but got a bit sick of pushing my bike up hills so have swaped it for a backpack. Looking forward to exploring the world with only whats on my back.
Ethical issues that may arise are around people finding out other members personal details and using it against them, whether to track them down in their region or spam them with junk emails. People could be victims of bullying over the site or images could be saved to other users computers and used commercially.
The benefits of this community are great as they provide instant connection with people from all over the world to talk about tramps and find out key information quickly and easily over a computer. If people are planning to travel to a region and do a tramp using this site will allow them to research, compare and contrast tramps in that area and gain a local opinion so they can sort out an itinerary for their trip. This online community provides huge amounts of information however its reliability can be questioned as it is all provided by members, however the majorities intentions will be good. This community allows silent observation before participation allowing the user to feel comfortable before proceeding with membership and postings.
This online community cannot provide face to face discussions and meetings unless the members are in close proximity to each other, this raises issues around safety however.
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