Sometimes these sites are more trouble than they're worth to those who host them.
I hosted a caves of Lanzarote site for a while, many UK cavers benefited and enjoyed the free guide to the world class caves here.
It's lead to NASA Mars caves scientific involvement and symposiums as a result of the free sharing of knowledge.
But then political types want to get involved, they then use the info to blame existing damage to caves on the basis they think all the vandals accessed the caves through your website only.
In the case of Lanzarote the main vandalism was done by someone called Otero ( his name is spray canned everywhere) in the 90s but the website in the 2010s is to blame if you are a politician
It's palpably untrue and denies the existence of local knowledge that led to the existence of the website in the first place.
What came first the chicken or the egg.
Politicians also ignore Google information, and trip advisor info that spreads more info quicker than any randomly named caving website that's so low down in Google rankings only word of mouth would find it.
Other newly discovered sites within known caves never mentioned on the website were quickly trashed, because local knowledge is well established before the existence of websites.
Although there was no causal link between websites and vandalism it was easy and lazy to blame the website. .
I closed my site and Lauren's continued sharing info through a similarly named site but he too has also come up against problems so has now closed the site down unless you have password access.
It's a good solution.
I am part of the exploration team here on Lanzarote which is reflected with the Craven Pothole club logo on the main page ( of which I am a member)
Lauren's still has the data base of all the numerous caves being found every year ( he is exceptionally motivated) so it will not be lost.
The politicians are now kept out of the loop.
They bought nothing to the table except red tape, blame, exclusion and obstruction.
They make terrible decisions in their attempts to protect the caves without consulting cavers because we don't have PhD s in cavology and are therefore worthless.
Their ignorance only results in more people accessing the caves than ever before because these decisions are made by pen pushers not realists in human psyche.
The gate on Siete Lagos being the perfect example where more people than ever can access the caves because they built a ladder into the cave as part of the gate system, where before only good climbers could access it.
It's a very well known cave on the island and is a right of passage for all the youngsters, even more than ever because of the fixed ladder they called a gate.
What used to be an infrequently visited cave is now well traveled.
One evening I encountered two other groups down there
Well done cabildo, slow claps.
Now there's even more vandalism than ever.
Anyway I digress.
I'm sure the data won't disappear.
Maybe I'm jumping the gun, but sometimes, increasingly so, sharing data online is more trouble than its worth.
I'm definitely converting to a "who you know" mentality now, not because I'm elitest but because I can't be arsed with the ignorant interfering politicians and mithering jobs worths with nothing to offer.
Exploration goes on, we just keep it all behind closed doors now.
