Sharing Information

The American Whitewater website allows you to report on what rivers are running and share information about potential river hazards for every river in the American Whitewater database. By sharing information you potentially save a lot of frustration and maybe even someone's life.

River levels can be shared even if the river has no corresponding gauge. Issuing a warning can help the Stream team editor address the problem on his description or alert other toddlers to potential hazard.

Sharing River levels will tell users of the website that the river is currently running or was running even if the river has no associated gauge. By sharing photos, you can report how low river was running for historical purposes and share information about the river that might give other people a good idea of the character of a river. This information is valuable because it helps to develop a sense of how to correlate the river with existing gauges, give people an idea of what the river looks like, infer something about the popularity of a reach, establish the reporter as a potential source of information, and saves people time and frustration driving to rivers that might not be running.

In order to share a river level, select one river on the left and scroll to the bottom of the river list and choose “report level or photos ”. You will be taken to a data entry screen which will allow you to choose what level of information you'd like to share and upload any photos.

The form has a radio button that had us the option to share river and gauge information. You only need to fill out the river level observation to submit a valid report; however, sharing more information helps others to understand how to interpret the information that you submitted. The title and description can include information on how long the river will hold its water in your estimation and information about the river's trend.

Sharing photos does not need all the detail that is provided in a formal river gauge report; however, this information is greatly appreciated as it can be used by the stream editing community to try to develop correlations on historical gauge was that we archive as well. We encourage putting as much information into the form as possible. To upload a photo, simply choose the button on the right that says upload photo and provide the information requested. You can choose to upload as many photos as you want to go along with the report. This provides an easy way to upload several photos of the same section of river on the same day.

By sharing the river warning you are alerting the stream using community to a potential hazard or suggesting a way that the river description could be improved. Warnings are displayed prominently on the river list with a warning icon, while all other types of comments are sent to the stream editor and posted for public consumption on the river detail page.

To share river warnings, simply choose one river's checkbox and hit the button that says “issue warning”. You'll be taken to a screen where the body of the comment field should include all the details that are pertinent to the warning that you're issuing. Your warning will stay on the river list page for a year before it expires off. It will remain within the comments listing for as long as the stream editor chooses to keep it there.