> Maybe it's a cultural difference.

It appears that you are confused with West European camping, which is where you drive two days to the south of France (most of which stuck in traffic), pay large amounts of money for a patch of perfectly flat grass where you are allowed to park your car and set up your tent. In a grid pattern with hundreds of other tents. Where there is a building nearby for toilets and showers. And a swimming pool plus live entertainment for the children.

OP appears to be talking about camping in nature.

A “campsite” is a relatively flat and relatively root/stump-free patch of dirt. That’s it. Also tents are generally not made out of the canvas material you linked that yurts and teepees might be made from.

Tents are generally made of a very wuick-drying, thin synthetic.

And like the other person said, this does make it seem like you’ve potentially never been camping but i don’t want to gatekeep the definition of “camping”. My version is carrying everything I need on my back for two weeks and walking 10-15 miles each day to the next campsite (read: “patch of dirt”, preferably near fresh water). Other people “camp” in RV’s though, so.

Camping is just the bit about sleeping at night. I’d call your version hiking/walking/backpacking depending where I am.

Of course it's not.

"A campsite is a designated area where individuals can set up bedding, sleeping bags, or cooking equipment, such as stoves or fires. This definition encompasses any location that allows for sleeping or cooking, regardless of whether it includes a tent, lean-to, shack, or other structures."

I would note that camping also involves sitting in campchairs talking, reading, singing, etc.

And

> I’d call your version hiking/walking/backpacking depending where I am.

The hiking/walking/backpacking is what nerdsniper does between campsites:

> My version is carrying everything I need on my back for two weeks and walking 10-15 miles each day ==> to the next campsite <==

Despite his phrasing, he of course is not saying that hiking == camping.

Of course what's not what? If you're going to attempt to be a pedant, you need to also be precise.

Have you tried hammock camping? I only tried it at a campground, so, maybe there are some downsides I missed for the real backpackers. But it was pretty cool to not care about roots, the flatness of my patch of ground, or anything like that.

I have! And i do love it. Hammocks generally benefit from very dense forest/tree cover just in case it’s raining!

Natural fiber canvas tents take to water about the same as your tee shirt does. Which is to say perfectly fine. Soaking them for a few days or even weeks shouldn't really bother them if the water is not warm and stagnant (like a nice clean lake). The biggest killer is storing them still wet.

That's a dangerous conspiracy theory.

> the term campsite conjures up a place with tents already there

You've never been camping. Ok.

I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

In England, we can’t just pitch up a tent in the woods, we need to pay for a campsite where there’s other tents.

I suspect, from their description, this person is from a different country again, where camping may happen in large open steppe with lots of other yurts.

Nothing you wrote contradicts anything I said about camping. Someone else suggested that "campsite" just means the area covered by a tent and its groundcover, which is closer to the "mental image" of the other person who wrongly believes that tents got waterlogged, but is the arch opposite of yours. I've camped in the woods, on open steppes, and in designated camping areas in French and English towns. In each of those cases I brought my own tent, but I've also "glamped" and stayed in existing canvas-sided structures, from Yosemite to Mont St. Michel.

Also, this is about a campsite a few inches of which is in a lake, and people moving their tents. But apparently paying attention to the actual context is optional for some people.

I’m not trying to dispute your version of events. I’m just offering a suggestion of what teekert had in their mind when they thought of a campsite, to better help you see where the misunderstanding comes from. Given they replied with agreement, I hope I captured it accurately.

I also feel it was unnecessary to dismiss their experience as “not camping,” just because it was different to yours. It turns a learning opportunity for us all into a needlessly toxic argument.

> I think you’re viewing this through your own cultural lens where camping can be totally solo (in the woods?)

Allow me to correct myself: I meant to say I believed you were referring wild camping, away from a commercial site (either alone or part of a group).

> None of this is responsive to my comment that you are responding to ... I find that quite toxic.

You find it toxic that I won’t join you in an argument that only you want to have?

> Again, your notion of my experience of camping does not come from anything I actually wrote ... that's quite toxic.

I just woke up an hour ago. Did you find that toxic, too?

Yeah, this.

I’ve been camping, on trips that ranged from “park on the side of the road and set up a tent” to “hike four days carrying everything” and also “drive to campsite, walk into permanent managed tent”. Sounds like you’ve only done a more limited range of camping trips.

Why would noticing that someone had "an extremely limited notion of camping" make you suggest that they had no experience at all? And if you are familiar with the form they mentioned, why would you act like you aren't?