fi67

In my experience, it depends. And it depends on things outside of your control. So I generally don't trust my smartphone EXIFs, but usually their good enough. It is always important to check with other sources. GPS devices use satellites. The more they can read, the better. Sometimes the situation is not optimal, but you still stay within a certain range. Smartphones also use other technologies like cell phone towers and wi-fi. This is not bad, but they don't tell you what they used and things can happen. I once had an EXIF 600 km off, it was in our local harbour and I guess a transport company relocated parts of their wi-fi infrastructure and the database the phone used was not yet updated. I heard similar stories about wi-fis used in convention centers across several continents.

Cross-posting has always been an integral part of Waymarking and no problem for most of us. But there is a very small minority that does not like it and try to discourage it whenever they can. Sometimes this is backed by (their own) category description, sometimes they cross the border without noticing it. I did not check the details. Is it worth a fight? Usually cross-posting is fine.

Under-prevalence might be an issue now, massive over-prevalence might become an issue in a couple of years. Or development will turn into a completely different direction and make it a short hype. We already have a couple of categories that made this mistake. An example of the first kind is Solar Power, Internet Cafes one of the latter. We really should wait a couple of years before making a decision.

One Georgia always has W coordinates, the other one E (except where the Hemisphere Bug interferes).

AFAIK the bug mentioned by Max and 99 has been resolved. But there are (and have always been) other, legitimate reasons for this message. The most probable is that the waymark was denied by another officer and the waymarker decided to try another category and submitted it there. Then you try to review a waymark that is waiting in a queue you do not have access to. Thus, the message is correct.

Religious buildings multifarious is the right choice. I am an officer of the Roman Catholic Church category; we do not accept Old Catholic churches. And I live in one of the very few areas where Old Catholic churches are not uncommon (which are the Netherlands, North-western Switzerland and Poland). I have posted dozens of Old Catholic churches to the Multifarious category.

I have created several waymarks at or near schools - Murals, sculptures, things like that. All done when nobody was there, on weekends or during holidays. At least around here, this is not really a problem. But it is in the responsibility of the individual waymarker to behave with the necessary sensibility and and responsibility. However, creating a distinct category for active schools, changes a lot. Explicitly asking for pictures of schools as such could raise problems in many countries.

Bear and Ragged is right. A category for active schools is not a good idea.

Homesteads? The description starts with "Our Founding Fathers ...", but it is probably not exactly the category you would like to find.

When you create a waymark without a category it automatically ends up in the public UCWM list. When you later decide to categorize that waymark, it is transformed back to a normal personal unfinished waymark. You can submit it or delete it as you like. But this only works for your own UCWMs. When you categorize a UCWM from someone else, a clone of it is created with a reference to the origin, but the original UCWM stays untouched. You can create an infinite number of those clones, but nobody except the OP (and most probably some Groundspeak lackeys) can remove or change it.

You can remove your own UCMs by categorizing them. This transforms them back to standard personal unfinished waymarks.

Merry Christmas to you all!

Just mailboxes? No way. Historic ones, let's say pre-1900? That could be interesting. Of course, I would prefer to have the existing category expanded to a global scope, but I have the impression that the officers of UK specific categories are not very responsive in that respect.

Which one?

That true and it was a mistake already then. We did not anticipate the risk of flooding until it was too late. That others already hit their heads is not a good reason to run against the wall, especially when you have seen what happened before.

The waymark does not appear anymore in public searches, but if you know the WM code you can still access it when you open a page with this URL. You can still search and see your own archived waymarks. They still count in your statistic, also the visits to those waymarks are still counted. This state is permanent, it is not deleted at all. I don't know what happens if you try to unarchive an archived waymark (there is a button for it). Probably it is re-evaluated by an officer of that group, but that is only a guess.

Totally wrong question! You don't need the puzzle box at all. It is a stupendous violation of the spirit of this game to require to own or buy anything to be able to post or visit a waymark. The idea of allowing post or visits just because you own something related to the location is just the same silly idea. Once again: allow posts ONLY after a personal visit to the physical location of the original, allow visits ONLY after a personal visit to the physical location of the original. Don't care about the box. However, you can require proof of the existence of the puzzle box, that may be a link to a website (of the company, a third party shop, a collector's club or whatever you may think of) or - but only if you do not find any site but own the box yourself - a picture of it, why not. BTW: a picture of a puzzle box with a GPS receiver??? Who still has them anyway - I mean in a different device than the one you take the pictures with it? Take a mirror? And why do you want to see the coordinates of the home of an owner of a puzzle box that could be anywhere in the world? And why should anyone want to see anybody else their home coordinates.

That is not the problem. It would look the same with correct HTML. The problem are too long words; and for the browser anything without spaces are words. It does not know how to break this long list of countries in capital letters, so it makes the paragraph as wide as necessary to keep it on one line and that is too wide for small screens.

I personally do not like this idea. It is just another category for those many well known places and famous landmarks that already have a lot of categories. It does not add anything substantial to the location. It's true, the Philatelic and the Numismatic categories are somewhat similar, but the have at least an authoritative approval by a country and this means something regarding the importance of this place. On the other hand, anybody can create and sell models of existing buildings (well, intellectual property rights might come in the way, but that's not the point). I will not support the idea but if the majority can be convinced I have no problem with it. But there is one thing I will fight against: The idea of having to own a model set for posting or visiting is just absolutely horrible. And the idea of allowing visits for owning the set without actually visiting the place is even worse. Whatever you do with this category, don't go that way!

Why?

Yep, some orcs are really bad singers, but you better don't tell them. OTOH, a nicely tuned vacuum cleaner has its merits.

After quite some research I found 29 different maps for Switzerland. One for each canton plus three different domains under federal control or responsibility. They all have a slightly different look and feel, but the ones I have checked yet do NOT provide any detail information in a way that they could fulfill the specific URL requirement proposed by Keith. There is free access to the map with the exact coordinates and shapes of the sites. Additional provided information are classifications of type (depot/landfill, production site, accident, shooting range ...) and severity (no action needed, supervision needed, decontamination needed, research needed ...). In general, there are no detail pages and no additional information, not even IDs or so. So it's easy to find all the sites, but then it gets difficult. However, there are some selected detail pages about a handful of the largest current or recent decontamination projects, like Bonfol JU (a 12 year project for 420 million US-$ ) or Kölliken AG (15 years, costs around 770 million $) (SCNR: Next to the infamous huge toxic landfill site, the village of Kölliken is also known as the childhood home of International music star DJ Bobo. Some people say there must be a connection between the contamination and his music. )

That's all true, but it has nothing to do with those barefoot paths. Barefoot paths are not about walking barefoot, that would be too simple (and weird or boring or both). They are about many different sensations for your feet. Dozens of different surfaces, that do exist in nature as well, but usually not so close together. Every few meters or so they change the surface. Sand, large pebbles, wood, small stones, clay, wood chips and so on. This also means they are not so easy to maintain.

It has always been like this and I am not sure about the reasons for it, but I think the original idea was to protect the officers from harsh reactions. And there were some waymarkers in the past who took it very personal. On the other hand, I have always signed my denials and never had any especially unpleasant experiences.

Nice redesign of the site! Also the country lists are great.