up vote 5 down vote favorite

The title pretty much says it all. I've always just thought of indoor climbing as a subset of climbing, which is an outdoor sport (and I know nothing about either one). But is it legitimate here?

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4 Answers

up vote 10 down vote

I think if a sport/hobby has both an indoor and outdoor equivalent then questions about the indoor aspect make sense here. The one additional item that should be added would be that the sport/hobby takes place in nature, not just outside, and I recognize that's open to interpretation.

I guess I would say that questions about indoor basketball are not appropriate even though you can play basketball outside, it's not a sport/hobby that has anything to do with nature.

Climbing, which has an indoor component, is a very nature influenced outdoor sport, so I think that is appropriate.

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Although there are indoor climbers who have never touched real rock, I would suspect they are the vast minority... I see indoor climbing as a workout gym to prepare for that big trip. Besides, its a good gate-way sport to draw people to the outdoors. – LBell Feb 24 '12 at 2:16
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There will be more overlap with indoor climbing and other TGO topics than there will be with indoor climbing and other sports topics, so it should stay here. – Russell Steen♦ Feb 24 '12 at 21:09
up vote 2 down vote

We might want to liaise with Sports Stack Exchange, as they already have : See these questions

We don't want to duplicate effort, but I agree - it may be appropriate for some questions.

I think the particular question we do have here on Outdoors is probably best served over on Sport if it stays as it is.

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Just a note, they only appear to have two indoor climbing questions so it's no clearly established in either place yet. (just to add clarity, not state a preference) – Russell Steen♦ Feb 21 '12 at 22:09
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Absolutely - I think the conversation will be worth having with them though, to save duplication of effort. – Rory Alsop Feb 21 '12 at 23:53
up vote 2 down vote

If indoor climbing will indeed be allowed then I think the 'about' should be changed. Currently outdoors.se/about has the following "Don't ask abouts":

  • Anything not directly related to outdoor activities
  • Questions that are primarily opinion-based
  • Questions with too many possible answers or that would require an extremely long answer

You can argue that indoor climbing is related to outdoor activities (as @JustinC has nicely done in his answer), but it is definitely not directly related so keeping this will create confusion.

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have there been questions about indoor climbing on this S.E.? For a lot of the questions I see, the OP may have been climbing indoors when the question occurred to him/her, but the question tends to be general enough to apply to both indoors and out. – DavidR May 3 at 20:30
up vote 1 down vote

This an old question, but just for the record -

I'd recommend that an "indoor climbing" question be off topic here only if it was narrowly focused on something that was non-applicable to outdoor climbing. For instance, the rules and scoring system of climbing competitions, or competition results. Otherwise, the questions would be appropriate here.

If a beginning indoor climber wanted to ask a basic question that applied to both indoor and outdoor climbing (for instance, questions about knots, belaying, toproping, climbing shoes) I don't see any reason to push that to the sports stackexchange.

At least in the US, climbing gyms are how most people (even outdoor climbers) begin climbing. A beginner's experience at a climbing gym will be largely similar to climbing at a toproping cliff, only with higher levels of institutionalized safety.

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