WalruZ
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Posts posted by WalruZ
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I for one am very much enjoying my visits to waymarks without the distraction of finding the hide-a-key container and scribbling "Lep" on a waterlogged scroll of paper, and instead focusing on the interesting object or information that is available to see at those coordinates.
Me too. I have been trying to mix in some Waymarking with my geocaching and, stats aside, the Waymarking is more 'place oriented' rather than 'hide oriented', and for urban areas that's more appropriate and more interesting overall. The 'geocache' part of the outings pay off in stats still, but the 'waymark' part of the outings pay off in 'sense of place'.
I'm still not so sure that waymarks really work in large open-space preserves and such.
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it happens to me no matter what, pre-approval or post-approval. initial logs always go in with the current date and have to be edited to backdate them. minor pita, but still...
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Actually I can see right now that I could try a group that would be
history / historic markers / california historic plaques
thus, the difference would be between markers and plaques. somewhat opaque though...
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fwiw, it *is* possible to hide offset multi's in NWR areas, it's just more work. I have one in the Don Edwards NWR around SF bay. The physical cache is on public parkland nearby.
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCKXKV
Again, assuming you can find somewhere nearby for a physical, you can do something else neat. What you do is have a list of coordinates, A),
, C), etc. and a list of pictures, each with a number. What a hiking visitor has to do is go to a coordinate and then determine which picture matches at that spot. That letter then gets assigned that number. assuming that the cache is at 37 AB.CDE 122 FG.HIJ, you make sure the numbers work out properly and there you have it - a nice hike with a cache at the end. They are also easy to maintain since the physical cache is probably easier for you to get to if it's muggled. Which is not to say I don't appreciate Waymarking - i marked 3 today. I've just been seeing Waymarking as more of an urban/suburban thing, and caching as more of a rural/nature thing.
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I've been looking for a coherent explaination of why group capability was put into place, how it works and what the restrictions are. In particular, there's some 5-group limit. is that 5 groups managed? or a 5 group membership limit?
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Although not art-like, some of the most desirable objects you can make yourself and leave in caches are ready-to-go micros. I'm talking about just making them to use as trade items. A little cammo tape, a beach safe or key hider, a nicely folded logsheet in a baggie, all the usual. Even a small tup with a few trinkets and a bagged logsheet for those larger caches.
Inexpensive to make, and if you look at logs on caches you've visited, you'll see they are claimed right away.
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Well, i'm part of the California Markers group, and it's set up to only allow official california state historical markers. (there are 1100 of them). However, there are plenty of other historical type thingies scattered about, from city historical markers to plaques placed by local chapters of E. Clampus Vitus. Where would one put "California Historical Markers - other" ?
ETA, believe it or not, Adam was the first Clamper. (banjoes seem to have something to do with it...)
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I would encourage multiple photographs, in particular I would at least require one detail photograph. Much of Lloyds work shines in the details. An example of this requirement is farmers markets - they require an overall shot and a close-up shot of some produce. The same idea works here except the more the better. One thing I find about waymarks is that they are neat to just look at, and more photos makes that mo bettuh.
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one more thing - if you choose a date for a log other than today's date, it uses today's date regardless.
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Two little things:
the url bb code tag seems to be broken in logs, at least a it is in a log i left on my own leland stanford winery WM. it appears to generate html that terminates the anchor tag twice.
when viewing a gallery, either for a log or a waymark, it would be really nice to have next & previous buttons when viewing the large size images, rather than having to look at an image and press back to get to the image index.
hope all is well.
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Ditto. I wouldn't mind being involved in a category like this.
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sounds like that's a yes, visit your waymark, probably when you mark it since you most likely visited it to gather information. I'm good with that.
I would disagree that history of a waymark belongs in that initial visit. history and background that you know would be part of describing the waymark, thus it belongs in the initial marking. Additional history known by others obviously belongs in their individual visits, and I would argue that owners might consider picking up some of that added information and adding it to their existing waymark description.
I have done this with geocaches that were hidden in order to describe some place. I edited the cache page to include additional information received in logs, even sometimes photos or drawings, usually attributing and sometimes linking down to the individual log.
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I'm looking for the community opinion here.
The site currently does not filter out my 'own' waymarks. Is it implied that I post a visit to my waymark?
This would actually currently make sense, as marking a waymark is describing it, whereas logging the waymark is describing my visit to it - which are two different things.
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I guess I am. I'm not doing the best at explaining what I'm seeing. Let me try to describe it from my outside point of view.
there are two boxes on the right side of the directory screen. one is the search box. I can choose home here and get a list of waymarks, regardless of category, in ascending distance order from home (or wherever). So that's waymarks filtered by distance, regardless of category.
there's also location filter. if i click on that, i see a category listing trimmed to just those categories that have waymarks within some distance from my origin (home again for example). So that's waymarks filtered by distance, organized by category.
At least that's what it looks like to me.
Ok, so if I am using the second approach, filtered by distance and organized by category, if i click on a category, my distance filter is 'gone'. You're telling me to 'search' once i click on a category that survived the location filter. why? the category was already returned to be because it has contents within some distance of the origin. shouldn't you just show me those contents and no others?
What am I not understanding?
ETA: I think my feeling about the location filter is that it says "only show me stuff within 50 miles and nothing else, no matter what. (or whatever, it would be nice to have an initial distance selector) -
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If I am not mistaken, this functionality is already in place. You need to click the search button on the right after you enter the category though in order to see the waymarks. Agreed that it's a little confusing because you still see the most recent waymarks despite the category being filtered.
Yes, I know you *can* do that, but it's... dumb. If I put a location (ne, category) filter into effect, and I only see categories that have waymarks that fall within a set distance of the location, then why would I expect to see all the *other* waymarks in one of the given categories when I click on it?
And, if I get a list of say, 12 categories that have waymarks within the distance, using the current (dumb, sorry) functionality, every time i click on one of the categories I then have to click on search to, effectively, re-establish the distance filter I turned on in the first place. Try it yourself. It just doesn't work the way you want it to, at least not the way *I* want it to, and that's what's important, right?
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I think the benefit of Waymarking is that if you aren't into creating waymarks, you get a lot out of it without investing much time into needing to physically go to the places that are interesting.
That's suprisingly true. I recently posted a note to a "captured in lyrics" waymark - Carefree highway - that I might never visit, but just reading about it was cool enough.
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In any case, I stopped by here today, suprised to see this thread still alive, and thought about McDonalds a little more. Here's the thoughts...
1. Fizzy actually has a cache at a McDonalds. In the parking lot.
-- not that that means anything or anything...2. One thing I know about McDonalds is that they generally have unique interior decor. You may not notice, but franchisees are encouraged to attempt to combine some local flavor into the decoration of the dining area. Some do a better job than others. As an example, my nearest McDonalds is in the area of what once was a dairy farm. There are displays of old milk and ice-cream equiptment on some walls. You could argue that a McDonalds category would actually be interesting and worthwhile provided that this aspect of each restaurant was required to be recorded when a new waymark was submitted.
What it comes down to is quality control. The issue with virtuals was who performs quality control? GS? Reviewers? They sure didn't want to listen to the chorus of whining that rose up every time some so-so virtual was turned down. So, we have Waymarking, where somehow the community will perform quality control organically. Maybe. Somehow...
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Anyway, Jeremy, please, here's what I want.
1. Apparently I can search based on an origin, like my house, and I've done that. I would like to be able to filter out a.) waymarks I've 'found', and b.) waymarks I 'own', ie, have placed. This give me a "nearest list". I would also like a few more preset distances, like 10, 20, 30. I would also like the last distance applied saved in my cookie and re-used, thus if I'm looking at a 40 mile distance I would like my default distance to stay at 40 until I change it.
2. If I set a location filter to my house, it trims the category filter to only show categories that are within some distance of my house. I would like that filter to also apply when i actually click on one of the categories. That makes sense. The way it works now (showing you everything in the category, unfiltered) doesn't.
If my demands are met, I will make an effort at adding and logging waymarks. promise.
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It's not just you. they seem to have stopped.
Another thing to consider is that the pq machine might run the query, but the mail transport agent can be stalled and you won't see the query until it's been "kicked".
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I have no idea what any of this means, but hey - a "nearest waymarks to my location" link would be a very welcome addition to the site. It's probably how I would be most likely to look for waymarks.
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(hi fizzy)
I think that concentrating on categories overlooks what is missing from Waymarking.
What's missing from waymark locations is a shared sense of what to do at a location.
With geocaches you find and sign the log. with virtuals you email *something* back to the owner. With webcams you upload your picture. With earthcaches... see virtuals. With locationless you took a picture. In each case there is a clear simple understanding A that you would go there, and B how to demonstrate that you had been there.
"I was there" is fundamental to GeoCaching, and it is totally missing from Waymarking. It is what ties the community together. Without it, Waymarking is hollow.
I've submitted three waymark locations and logged two. Logging requirements, such as they are, are hidden under a "more details" link that has to be explicitly visited for a category. They can be whatever people want them to be. In one case (star wars) the requirement was stated as "Please verify that the item/location is still there and valid." In the other (BBQ joints) there was NO logging requirement at all.
I ended up deciding for myself what I was going to do at each waymark I logged. I've been treating them like photo-virtuals, taking a picture or two and logging them along with my 'log'.
Although I can 'make' that work for myself, that really isn't an adequate foundation to build a shared community on. The poorly voiced critique of Waymarking I hear from my Geo-compatriats is that in Waymarking you don't "do" anything, and I believe that this is what they mean.
The BBQ place I logged? As far as I can tell the waymark owner has never actually been inside the restaurant. Neither has one of the loggers. If that's ok then why am I even bothering? I don't want to just play "my game" - I want to play a game with other people, coordinated through this website. To do so there needs to be some small set of shared rules. Those are missing, and I would push to restore them while you still can.
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As an outlying reference point, consider what I'm doing...
I don't collect coins. I don't even touch them. (my wife does, but we need not go there.)
I buy about 20 or so of significant local coins when I can. They are typically a pretty good deal.
I intend to keep them for some time - probably a few years - and then start using them as FTF prizes. I'm assuming that by then they will be quite desirable, and I'll have a great FTF prize for new caches that only originally cost $3-$5.
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Locationless= Exclude everyone else from the enjoyment of that specific location
Waymark = Include everyone else in the enjoyment of that specific location
It's nice to know I'm not the only person who saw that. Many locationless fans liked the feeling of "getting one that hadn't been gotten yet". They're FTF hounds too. Funny that.
I understand why the McDonald's - like categories exist. The problem with virtuals and locationless is that to make them "great" required editorial control that nobody really wants to take the time or heat to apply. Eg, for awhile virtuals had to pass the WOW test, and there were endless fights about that and lots of hard feelings. Exercising the sort of category control some people think is necessary is just too difficult to do.
Instead, Waymarking tries to establish a sort of open marketplace of categories, where, hopefully, McDonalds will just sink to the bottom and be forgotten, more or less. You help that happen by participating in Waymarking categories you find worthwhile and by not participating in ones you don't.
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I visited and played around with Waymarking when it first opened up. I created two waymarks and logged one. At the time I found the site sort of annoying to use, and... well, there's plenty of caches to be found yet.
Today I revisited the site to log a local waymark that I happened to visit. I see some development work was done. I had some quiet time and decided to just browse the site.
One problem developers can have is that they become too close to their product and lose a newbie perspective. That certainly seems to have happened here. I would like to share some observations and invite others.
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The home page, like GC.com's home page, is inviting, although not very useful for the habitual visitor.
If I search on location filter and choose my home coords (imported, apparently) I get a page that I only now realize is a list of categories that contain waymarks within some distance from my home. This list isn't actually captioned. It's a little thing, to be sure, but a caption would let me know what I was looking at - the first three times I saw the list I thought, "well, apparently it didn't find anything", because I saw no actual waymark listings. Only then did I realize it was a category list.
If I click on one of the sub-categories that contain a match (off-leash dog areas), I see a list of all the waymarks in the category. Hunh? I thought I was filtering by proximity? Apparently I now have to search within the sub-category. Not only that, but although there was a match within 50 miles, when I do the search it tells me there's nothing within 10 miles. I have to expand my search to 50 miles to see the matches that caused the category to show up in the "location filter" to begin with. What's more, I have to do that search-y type thing everytime I go in to a category that had a result.
It appears that the location filter is actually a category filter, a way to keep you from seeing categories that don't have any nearby waymarks. The term "location filter" doesn't properly describe what this feature does. It describes the source of the filter, not what data gets filtered. What's more, functionally, if you don't have the 'nearest' option of the search filter turned on *before* you apply that category filter, you have to re-enable the nearest search every time you descend into a filtered category. ugh. I don't feel this deserves upper-right hand placement.
Anyway, if I retreat to the main page and try the waymark search box, things look better. This seems to give me a "nearest" list, something I can deal with. . It does not, however, filter out my own waymarks or ones that I've found, two things I would expect to see an option for. Seperating "seach" from "nearest" functionality would be a good idea.
Also, Category Search is prominently featured on almost every page, as though it were an important way of interacting with the page, even though it actually takes you away from the page. I would move that away from it's "front and center" placement. That area at the top of a waymark list should be used for elements that allow you to inteact with the list you are viewing. Do you really think that users are going to be spending so much time searching the categories for keywords? Aren't people more likely to be looking for nearby waymarks to see what sorts of things (categories) pop up?
I'm running out of gas here and I have to start my taxes. I strongly suggest that GS get some innocent users in house to do some usability testing of the Waymarking interface. There's too much in the UI that's hidden or assumed or poorly named. I also don't think you've watched enough target users follow, or try to follow "use paths". Those are important, and difficult to pre-judge.
It does look nice though, and it's snappy and solid. kudos for all that. A few UI tweaks and you might be getting somewhere.
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A number of locals report that they found the survey in their spam folders. I checked there but found nothing.
Jeremy, you can stiff those people - I've got your big clue right here. Most really active geocachers are retired. (or they wish they were). An ad or two in AARP would double your membership.
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So, my mother-in-law clipped an article from the Monterey Herald about GeoCaching. Originally published in the LA Times, it contains this quote...
"For [name], an aerospace worker from Agoura Hills, the count is crucial. He ranks third in the world with more than 7,000 uncovered caches, an achievement he attributes to 'power caching'."
"[name] strives to find as many caches as possible. His record is 102 in a day. If [name] can't find a cache within seven minutes he doesn't linger to enjoy the scenery."
"'If you don't find it in seven minutes, you are not going to find it', he says."
"To cut his search time, he concedes, he has forced his four-wheel drive Jeep over hiking trails, sidewalks, and public parkland."
"'I have no qualms about taking my Jeep over bushes,' he says."
WTF?
, C), etc. and a list of pictures, each with a number. What a hiking visitor has to do is go to a coordinate and then determine which picture matches at that spot. That letter then gets assigned that number. assuming that the cache is at 37 AB.CDE 122 FG.HIJ, you make sure the numbers work out properly and there you have it - a nice hike with a cache at the end. They are also easy to maintain since the physical cache is probably easier for you to get to if it's muggled. 
-- not that that means anything or anything...
What's Right With Waymarking
in Getting Started with Waymarking (Read-Only)
Posted · Edited by WalruZ
The lack of certain categories. There is no Waymarking category for...
guard rail.
light-pole cover.
large power transformer case.
trash-strewn vacant lot.
end of dead-end road.
cyclone fence next to busy road.
patch of dirty bushes/palmetto/cactus.
bottom-side of playground equipment.
back-side of private homeowner fence.
homeless encampment.
I've probably forgotten a few...
(eta what mike said, although I've never had to seach a dumpster for a cache)