FAQs

Help build our FAQs. Send us your question with FAQ as the subject through our contact page.

Why is there more than one type of blog on The Conch homepage?

Team Conch are a gobby bunch so we’ve separated out our own blog posts from everyone elses. (Ego much?)

The Conch blog = our infrequent, often inane but sometimes spectacular musings on the nature of adventure. If you want to hear more from us, you can also find us on:

• Twitter – @shellshocked
• Facebook
• YouTube

Community blogs = your frequent, stellar stories about your latest adventures.

Why has my adventure rating fallen?

Your rating falls each day you’re not active. This isn’t to take away from the sense of achievement you should be feeling after that skydive or mountain biking trip. It’s just that adventure is fleeting. When you’re having one, you can feel it… but not for very long.

The Adventure Rating application aims, as truly as possible, to reflect your sense of adventure. To maintain or increase your score, you have to keep being active and adventurous.

Is The Conch for adventure sport experts?

Yes and no.

If you’re into adventure and the outdoors, The Conch is for you. Our focus is on building a community of people from all adventure sports and all levels of experience.

Whether you’re an athlete, a weekend adventurer or someone who just needs to find what’s out there and try something new, we see the value in your ideas and advice. We want to see more people trying all adventure sports and activities. To achieve this we need all of you, talking.

I’m part of an adventure sports club. Can we set up an adventure rating league of our own?

Absolutely. There are 4 pre-set leagues on The Conch, based on your level of experience (Rookie, Intermediate, Expert, Professional & Athlete).

In addition, you can create a league around any group of people. We’re not just talking about friends and colleagues. Be creative! Imagine a bit of friendly competition with your street, your postcode or everyone with the same name.

To create a league, log in and click on ‘Adventure Rating’ and ‘Edit Profile’ in the top navigation. Just add the name of your league in the ‘Institution’ box and it will be automatically created.

To join an existing league, just add the name in the same box and click the ‘Update’ button.

How can I get involved in all the cool activities I find on The Conch?

The Conch is a great place to get inspired and find new activities to try and people to try them with. First of all, try searching for activities and locations to find out what’s going on in your area.

If you’re based in the UK, we have a number of Club Conch events in the pipeline. More information will be posted on here in the coming weeks and months.

What is the 5 star rating on all my pictures and videos?

All content on The Conch is rated out of 5 stars. This determines how quickly it is validated and becomes publicly available. Before it is validated, your uploads are only visible to members who are signed in.

Once validated, the 5 star rating determines how high up the page an upload is displayed. The higher the rating, the easier it is to find.

So if you like something you see on The Conch and want to share it, go on and rate it!

How is the adventure rating calculated?

We keep the actual algorithm pretty quiet. The process however, belongs to the whole community. Adding an adventure sport to the adventure rating application involves talking to experts in the sport about what makes it adventurous. We drill deep down to find the criteria that make a sport more or less adventurous, then build it into our algorithm.

It’s always changing. It will never be finished. We need your help and feedback to help measure adventurous activities as perfectly as we possibly can.

If you have feedback or are an adventure expert and would like to help refine the algorithm, contact us.

I registered on the site but my activation email did not arrive. What should I do?

First of all, check your spam folder. To ensure emails from The Conch end up in your inbox, add info@theconch.com to your address book.

If you can’t find the activation email in your spam folder, contact us with your username and we can activate your account manually.

My adventure activity isn’t included on the adventure rating. Can I get it added to the system?

The Adventure Rating application will never be finished. There will always be more sports and new ideas about how to refine the algorithm to reflect your adventurous nature more accurately.

We want as many sports as possible on the system. To tell us which ones to add next, log in to The Conch, click on ‘Adventure Rating’ and ‘Edit Profile’.

Add the name of the sport into the box labelled ‘Activities you would like to do in the next 12 months’. These sports are flagged up to us as priorities for the Adventure Rating application.

I’m really passionate about my sport but there’s already a group dedicated to it, hosted by The Conch. Can I become the host instead?

Yes please! Just contact us with your username and the name of the group and we’ll transfer the group over to you.