[Adding Under A Topic]

I have thought before... <that IS scary!> that if one could choose first, People, Place or Thing, then move on to (alphabetized) a general list of "subjects" and then into specifics (just like listing something on eBay) with a "misc" catagory in each one. Then there could also be a person (or several, many even) that could oversee that Misc catagory and file those things that DO have a home...

 

...

 

I am absolutely positive that the brains behind all of this are quite capable of making this kind of thing very usable. So all of you please don't think I am trying to flog a dead horse.

I agree wholeheartedly with your suggestion that categories should have a Misc subcategory. In several posts on other topics I have suggested that the category schema is incomplete without an Other subcategory to complete the coverage of a category. But since I have heard nothing for or against my suggestion maybe taxonomy is too esoteric for waymarkers to comprehend.

 

Perchance with your example, it will be clearer to others what needs to be done.

[Initial Impressions]

Many of the categories which are in place today have a long way to go before enough subcategories will be added to them to accommodate the wide range of waymarks which they are intended to eventually hold. This is because the site is young. For example, it seems clear to me that the site admins understand that there are many more subtypes of trees and plants than just the currently available "Millenium Trees" and "Native American Trail Trees", but all the subcategories haven't been set up yet. Until the subcategories are added, some desirable Waymarks may have to wait for their chance to come later.

This is the reason I suggested in another post that all categories with subcategories should have an Other subcategory. That way anything that fits into the category but not one of the subcategories can be logged in. Once enough similar waymarks have been entered into the Other subcategory the Admin or owner can create a new subcategory for the similar waymarks and move them over.

 

That way all categories have completeness. And ChapterhouseInc and the rest of us do not have to wait for months or years for an appropriate subcategory to be created to log our seemigly unique waymarks.

[Initial Impressions]

ChapterhouseInc,

 

If I rememberr a comment of Jeremy in some thread, any category that does not have subcategories can have waymarks added to it. Thus, you should be able to create your unique tree as a waymark into the tree/plants category. If not, then the owner of that category screwed up. What use is a category if it cannot contain either waymarks or subcategories?

[Initial Impressions]

Besides a good indexing scheme, there also needs to be a comprehensive category scheme.

 

One problem with categories that I notice is categories with one or two subcategories that only cover a small part of the category. There is no Other subcategory for any waymarks that somebody wants to create in a category that do not fit one of the existig subcategories.

 

But what if you think your waymark is unique, that there are no others like it. It doesn't make sense to go through the category creation process if there is only going to be one entry in the category.

 

Thus an Other subcategory needs to be created to hold all the one-of-a-kind waymarks in the category. When the category owner sees a lot of waymarks in his Other subcategory, he can create subcategories for those that have some commonallity and move them to the new subcategories.

 

This will require that category owners be allowed to create subcategories within his category in a streamlined manner, unlike the present slow process of creating categories.

 

I can see one problem with my proposal that somebody may be able to solve. Namely, how to assign ownership of such newly created subcategories. What if none of the waymark owners whose waymarks get moved out of the Other subcategory to a new subcategory do not want to assume ownership of the new subcategory?

[Initial Impressions]

How else will they know that you are there and are not "cheating"?

I wasn't aware that this was a competitive sport where one got prizes for racking up waymarks. Thus, I wan't aware that one need worry about cheating.

 

Whether you visit a waymark physically, or through the internet, does not matter to me. Whether you created a waymark by physically going there, or found the location through the internet, does not matter to me. Your numbers are your numbers, my numbers are my numbers.

 

Enjoy Waymarking and let others worry about meaningless things such as counts.

[Reverse Placement Method For Waymarking]

Black Dog Tracker,

 

Thanks for the tree. I printed it out and it is just over five (5) pages long.

 

A permuted index of the category names and short descriptions also would be very useful. One thing the person who proposed the permuted index didn't mention is that non-key words can be filtered out of the index.

 

I would like to see both the category tree and the permuted index added to the Waymarking site and updated on a regular basis. Of course, the present staff has many other irons in the fire so I don't expect to see these soon.

[Reverse Placement Method For Waymarking]

I agree with The Blue Quasar. A tree structure of the Directory that could be expanded or collapsed as desired would help.

 

The category search doesn't help if there is an existing category that matches what you are looking for but goes by a different name than what you would call the category.

 

Also, the three major categories of people, places, and things sounds distintive, but I can think of many categories that could be listed under at least two of the major categories. One example is historical markers. They are things, they are located at places and tell something about the places, and they are often about people that were at the places. So the placement of historical markers into one of the major categories is very arbitrary.

[Initial Impressions]

I'm an experienced geocacher that started looking at Waymarking a couple of weeks ago. I've logged three waymark finds so far. I created my first two new waymarks today.

 

The biggest gripe I have with Waymarking is that so many of the category owners are insisting on photos to create and/or log waymarks. Why this big obsession to see me next to a waymark?

[Historic Things Proposal]

I like the proposal for subcategories of historical things by major political subdivisions (states in the USA and Mexico, provinces in Canada). But I also would like to see subcategories by type of historical thing (signs, monuments, park, etc.). However, this would require cross-listing of waymarks when they fit into two different types of subcategories. Has anybody thought about how to handle this?