opentrail.org is looking for volunteer contributors
Hey folks! I'm the creator of opentrail.org, a free alternative to farout. I believe what is essentially thruhiker Wikipedia shouldn't cost significant money (out of a sense of crowdsource fairness and belief in broad outdoors access), plus their app has had some very slow-to-fix critical bugs - I think we can do better. I built an app that I think is very nice and works well offline. I finally got around to adding an elevation profile to it this year and hopefully you'll agree it's pretty slick! I got some uptake on the AT but not much on the PCT or CDT (more trails coming soon once these get off the ground) so this post is an attempt to plant the seed and get some momentum behind this chicken and egg problem on the PCT side. Fair warning it's looking pretty sparse right now so I'm not asking you to ditch farout today, I'm asking you to help build the thing that lets future hikers do that. One motivated person can make a huge difference - the AT data was largely seeded by a single hiker (shoutout build-a-bear!)
If you're on trail, and you like the app and the idea, here's how you can help:
- go nuts and drop a marker on every campsite, water source, or any other point of interest you find and think people might want to comment on
- brag to everyone you see that you're helping build this great new community and they too can be hipsters and use it before it was cool
And if you don't like the app please tell me why! What is it missing and what blocked you from using it the way you want?
Also if you have the legal rights to a big data set of waypoints reach out and we can import it directly into the database. You're very welcome to look up all your own farout comments and add them to Opentrail - you retain the copyright to the things you post there. Heck if you're a farout power user with a lot of comments you might even be able to file a CCPA request for a copy of all your submitted comments to make it easy, if you do this and it works definitely let me know and I'll build a way to import it automatically.
FAQ:
Q How do we know I won't just turn around and charge $$ to get in once this is off the ground? A It's got an open data license just like Wikipedia, if I did that anyone could take my database and build a new app, which is exactly what farout blocks me from doing with the waypoint comment data we built for them
Q Are you going to sell my data? A No, there's no tracking cookies, no ads, I don't even collect email addresses. Source code is proof.
Q Nothing is free, how the heck is it free? A My time building this is a pretty valuable donation but I do it for fun and love. The hosting costs almost nothing. As long as people use this app I will keep it online and maintained as donationware.