Why an editor for conversion tables?

Communicate Climbing Grades Universally

Managing Complexity

Using this editor insulates your project from

Get the Benefits of Each Alternative

A grade-conversion editor:

Existing Solutions

at some point, ranges will be added to sofware converters. first whole numbers 1 for 5.1, 5 for 5.5, 10 for 5.10. Then maybe decimals for 5.10a,b,c,d 10.2, 10.25, Or your keep sticking narrow numbers in an existing for conversions. By the end, your internal series is "the one true grading system".

Why another?

Grades conversion has been addressed many times; There are tons of alternatives.

This project takes a novel[1] approach.

We shape our tools and thereafter our tools shape us.
– Marshall McLuhan Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Building another converter in one of those categories would be unlikely to do better. For the authors of tables and images, the medium enforces significant boundaries. Writing a software converter offers a bit more wiggle room but the common contstraints have nudged most developers towards a similar path and similar results.

This site doesn't have a "canonical" grade converter.
It offers an alternative to software, images, and tables.

What's in a converter?

There's not too much that we ask of a grade conversion tool beyond is this grade like that grade?

Other Notes

The one thing this site does well, is model climbing scales in a reusable way.

More

Also, grade input is an issue

There are no well-established solutions to grade input. It's not hard, but it's also not simple. Supposing someone is building a collaborative online guide. What is 5.10+? is it…

  • pretty much the same as 5.10c/d?
  • roughly in the upper half 5.10s? because 5.10- and 5.10+ cover the lower and upper halves of 5.10
  • the upper third? because the sequence goes 5.10-, 5.10, then 5.10+?
  • harder than a 5.10d?
  • a particularly sandbagged 5.10 that's should probably get re-graded as 5.11, but "it's always been 5.10"?
  • similar to 5.10/5.11? should you write 5.10/11 instead?

Does the app allow slash grades like 5.10/11 5.10/5.11 or 5.10c/d?

This can feel pedantic, but people have lots of opinions. Suppose you've projected 5.10cs and find a 5.10+ that looks great. You're expecting that 5.10+ is analagous to 5.10c/d. If the uploader meant that it's closer to a 5.11, then the communication was bad. The grades weren't doing their job.