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Adiabatman's avatar
Adiabatman
Explorer
May 10, 2017

BLM Web Presence

The BLM has made what I consider a bone-headed decision. They have already taken down their formerly very good web presence and are in the process of moving campground information to recreation.gov. You can still find a handful of the old pages, but they can't amount to more than 5% of what there used to be.

The information being posted on recreation.gov is, for the most part, no where near as complete as that available on the old BLM pages. In many cases, other than stating that camping is allowed, there is nothing about number and type of sites, fees, amenities, season, etc.

I've contacted the BLM and all they will say is to be patient while they move to recreation.gov.

And while speaking about recreation.gov, why does it treat locations that don't accept reservation as fourth-rate cousins? Up until a few years ago, recreation.gov presented all locations, reservable or not, in the same fashion with lots of information. Now the information provided for non-reservable locations is pretty useless.
  • THe company that ran rec.gov lost the contract and a new bunch took over. They seem to be inferior to the old company.
  • Adiabatman wrote:


    I've contacted the BLM and all they will say is to be patient while they move to recreation.gov.

    Well, how about being a little patient...???
    Seriously, though, this happens all the time. People always gripe about the new layout/format of this or that website. Every time Microsoft changed Windows, people griped. Eventually, you become accustom to whatever new format exists.

    Not to say specifically what's going on in this case, but many web developers are trending toward websites that work better with mobile devices instead of desktops/laptops. Developers are moving away from having both a desktop and mobile version. When this happens, the amount of information available is often greatly reduced.
  • It seems the federal sites are going through changes one at a time. ACOE just went through theirs back in Feb. I think it was.
    But typical goverment they don't get the new stuff working first.
  • WTP-GC wrote:
    Adiabatman wrote:


    I've contacted the BLM and all they will say is to be patient while they move to recreation.gov.

    People always gripe about the new layout/format of this or that website. Every time Microsoft changed Windows, people griped. Eventually, you become accustom to whatever new format exists.


    I'm not complaining about the format, but the lack of information that used to be available.
  • Adiabatman wrote:
    WTP-GC wrote:
    Adiabatman wrote:


    I've contacted the BLM and all they will say is to be patient while they move to recreation.gov.

    People always gripe about the new layout/format of this or that website. Every time Microsoft changed Windows, people griped. Eventually, you become accustom to whatever new format exists.


    I'm not complaining about the format, but the lack of information that used to be available.


    I second that, the website has taken a turn for the worst, that's for sure!!
  • I contacted Recreation.gov about their web site being inaccurate. If you look at most BLM sites listed there, clicking on the "View Official Website" at the top of the page either returns "page not found" on the BLM website, or now I'm noticing that they take you to a "buy a map" page.

    The response from Recreation.gov... Thanks for letting us know. I agree with the OP, the original information pages were much more useful.

    If you are determined, you can probably find most of the orignial information you seek via https://archive.org/web/

    Unless you know the original URL, you will need to search the various BLM field office sites historic URLs to get the URLs you want. Won't be easy, but I think could be done.

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