Responding to Tom's comments from the original standards thread:

Originally posted by Tom Dunlap
Just a thought on wordsmithing.

Standards, by part of the above definition, come from an authority. Along with the authority to set the standard comes the responsibility to enforce the standard. Is this what we're looking for?

Who is going to take the responsibility to enforce?

Maybe it would be better to think along the lines of guidelines or ethics like other disciplines have.

Agree with Tom that guidelines are the way to go as opposed to attempting to enforce/punish etc. That would require a tree climbing police force Hmm, sounds interesting: there you are bat hanging over a kiddie play area and a tree cop (blue helmet w/flashing headlamp and shiny black boots of course) swoops over from a nearby tree and snaps on the cuffs at 50 ft.

Point being that it's important to widely distribute credible guidelines throughout the tree climbing community before the sport takes off in a commercial way.

An example where standards have come too little too late is in the mountain biking world. Various mountain bike organizations have attempted to establish standards for ethical behavior but have been overcome by commercialization and marketing forces that emphasize high risk, high impact activities. Makes for good equipment sales and plenty of uninformed mountain bikers are eager to act out these fantasies in sensitive ecosytems.

Since rec tree climbing is ahead of the commercialization curve at this point it is a critical time to get buy-in and cooperation from the equipment retailers and get the standards out there.
-moss