Waywizard
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Posts posted by Waywizard
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There are more than 17 categories with problems, and not all of those 17 belong to them, but it is a small minority anyway. 10 days is too much for a category with daily submissions, twice a year in enough for a category with two submissions per year.
These stats are all we have, but they say not much. An officer who logs in, sometimes does not not review pending waymarks, and an officer of a small category maybe does not log in for months, but is going to react on a submission email within hours. We don't know.
It is probably coincidental but a couple weeks ago I had a query run to get a list of all categories that had Waymark waiting over 3 weeks, there were 17 on the list. Most had 1 or 2 waymarks waiting, the high was 21 all submitted by same person who was an officer in the category. I cleared the backlog at that time. Some of these categories were managed by officers who are in general quite active but had stepped away for a while due to vacations or other events in their lives.
I definitely agree on your second statement, there are officers who log in and don't review at that time. Remember officers in categories are waymarkers too, thus maybe they are posting visits or submitting waymarks themselves. There are categories which get very few waymarks in a year thus if they monitor their emails they may not have to log into the site.
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But there are still some icons missing:
Pergolas, Fraternal Order of Eagles, Battery Powered Personal Transport Rentals.
Please take an eye on those icons!! We need them!!
These all have been uploaded. It is caused by the sync issue of the two servers. Any time you see the broken link symbol instead of the old icon it means the icon has been uploaded by the syncing has not take place correctly. I will contact GS development in morning and ask that the sync job be run.
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The email issue should now be fixed.
So how do we confirm it's fixed?
I have sent an email from my admin account to my regular account and it was successful. I had done that before I posted that it was fixed. I received a message from the manager of development who I work with let me know it was fixed at which time I conducted the test.
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The email issue should now be fixed.
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Thanks to BK-Hunters to putting me onto this 'Thread'. 'DownUnder' we have currently an issue with the Australian Trig Points category. I know that one of the Officers is theoretically a Team, but the main driving force of the Spindoctors, Darren Osborne of quite some notoriety in Australia, died about 2 years ago, and the Waymarking side hasn't been accessed since. Understandably.
However, Gunn Parker (the Group Leader, not the one that started it mind you) has been inactive since 2010.
I am happy to nominate a few active Waymarkers and trig hunters to be placed in the Reviewing roles.
Yours sincerely
Grahame Cookie
gwcooke@y7mail.com
Please send me some names to me using my Geocaching.com profile (as currently the Waymarking email system is down) and I will see what we can do to resolve this issue.
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I have communicated with the developers on this one. It appears that google has changed how it expects the url to be for these graphics. Thanks Tante.Hossi for pointing out what needs to be fixed.
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Groundspeak is aware of the problem. The initial fix that was tried was not successful. It has been escalated however it probably will not be fixed until early next week.
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IMHO, when a leader of a category hasn't logged onto the site in YEARS, I consider it abandoned. And add one or two inactive officers to the mix and you have a legitimate problem. When changes/edits to the category need to be made, it's usually the leader and only the leader who can make them (as in the Covered Wagons category). It doesn't make sense to keep an inactive waymarker in a leadership role when there are plenty of other active folks willing to take over leadership duties. Why put a Band-Aid on the problem when it only will continue to fester indefinitely?
There many categories run by groups where the leader has been inactive for years that are far from abandoned and though this may not be the ideal the group experiences no issues running the category this way.
Groundspeak put procedures designed into the site for the removal of officers and leaders in a group. Yes, they are difficult to achieve by design but have been used many times to remove inactive officers and leaders. Thus it would not be proper to step in and bypass these procedures except in the most exceptional of cases. Many times by promoting a new officer these procedures have been used to remove inactive officers or the new officer works with the existing officers to get things fixed either by making changes needed or relinquishing leadership to the newly promoted officer. These changes have been made behind the scenes without fanfare or announcing in the forums their intent to overthrow the inactive leadership.
If you look at the ten most active categories you will find that very few are still led by the original leader of the group and I believe only one of these was the original leader replaced by using exceptional procedures. That one was due to the death of the leader and all other officers were sock puppet accounts owned by the original leader. All other leadership changes were done following normal established procedures.
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Waywizard, I would like to know if a leader or officer that is NOT a Premium Member continue to be a leader or officer?
The guideline: Category Creation and Group Management
As a Premium Member you have the ability to create and lead an unlimited number of Groups, each managing a Waymarking category in the directory. Have a great idea for a category? Upgrade today and make it happen!
It does not address: What happens when a leader/officer premium membership lapses.
I don't think this situation was thought of when the site was designed and developed. I need to ask for guidance on this from higher ups at the lily pad.
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That's an interesting reply - when, in GS's judgement, is the "full program" necessary, and when is it NOT? I'm sure others have many more category management stories, since I am just starting as an officer in 1 category. What are the indicators driving the decision to intervene at differing levels?
In general it depends on the activity level of the group and the category.
Have members of the group been reviewing waymarks but not as frequently as desired then usually the addition of an officer or two will often remedy the problem.
Has the category totally been abandoned? Then replacement of leader would be needed.
Other times that GS has intervened has been at the death of leader thus not requiring the group to demote individual by vote. Also have intervened when death of the leader when other members of group were inactive family or socks accounts of the deceased leader.
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Waywizard, I appreciate you approving my submissions but there still exists the problem of the Covered Wagons category being stagnant. I proposed becoming an officer with category-editing capabilities so I can make the membership open and promote officers.
Patience. Sometimes it takes a while for wizard magic to take place. In other words it in the works.
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There is a category that I'd like to become an officer in and have waited on a submission for approval for three weeks now.
I have approved this one as it was long but it was just one day over 2 weeks, 9/17 was submission date.
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All the icons have been uploaded.
WW -- The fishing ports icon looks good, but the FOE and Space Invaders icons are broken. Can you please check them? Thanks
I will contact developers to run job that syncs them between servers. The next time you access them they might be the opposite, they were loaded at different times and randomly ended up on different servers. The syncing is supposed to be automatic but not happening.
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All the icons have been uploaded.
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Sorry, but with all due respect I think this represents Groundspeak in denial and is not a fair representation of the situation. I think I mentioned in the thread that I did try to contact the leader without reply. This is sadly the norm rather than the exception. Waiting a month to have a waymark reviewed is simply unacceptable. Would you be motivated to put your waymark to a vote knowing no leader responded to your emails?
It is far from Groundspeak denial but rather showing both sides of the history of this category. The leader and others in the category have reviewed most of the waymarks in the category the last year. How long the waymarks other than yours waited before getting reviewed I don't know but if they were longer than a month then why did you let them go that long? The leader or others did the approvals
Why wouldn't I be motivated to put my own waymark up for vote? Putting it up for vote forces action on it and 3 days later it is approved.
I would also add that just because they are active doesn't mean they are reviewing waymarks in this category.
Looking at the approval history in this category it looks like this statement applies to equally to yourself for most months in last couple years.
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There are no new officers however 3 out of the 4 officers have been active in the last two weeks. The 4th really has a justifiable reason for not being active lately. There are ZERO waymarks waiting for review. RitC is not last one standing, in fact looking at the waymarks reviewed in the last year he is one of the most inactive officers in the category. The leader is far from inactive having review well over half of the waymarks in the category in last year. If RitC was concerned that his own waymark was waiting too long, he could have contacted the leader or just put his own waymark up for vote. (this sends a email to all officers to vote and the waymark would be approved 3 days later)
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Ok no problem to change color and format, and it's space invader category.
The changes are more significant so wanted to post here before I upload to category.
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... it's space invader category.
oops sorry about the misnomer. My wizard brain couldn't think of the right category name, though I would get it to the right one in the end.
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Make sure you activate the category from the group page once you are done making any final changes to the category description. The category will not be visible until that is done even though it has been approved.
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The icon for the android category is being adjusted. The color of the above one is "brighter" than the normal palette of the icons and also will be changed to gif format. I expect the adjusted icon will be uploaded in next few days.
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The icon should be working now. The servers sync up after a day or so.
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I have uploaded the new icon.
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Discussed issue with developer and the problem has been found. The new icons were not syncing between the servers. He has synced them now so the problem should be resolved.
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This seems to be a temporary self correcting problem as the icons are back again, though I did see the broken links earlier today. If it breaks again hopefully it will be during the work week during Seattle working hours so I can have development staff look at it when it is actually broken. Hard to trace the problem if the problem does not exist at the time.
Introducing Wayfrog
in General Waymarking Topics
Posted
I want to take this opportunity to introduce a new Waymarking admin, Wayfrog. Wayfrog is stepping into the Waymarking admin role after several years of Waymarking experience both as a group leader and officer and Waymark submitter. He will be taking over the lead from me as Waymarking admin and all question that were previously set to me can be set to him.
After more than eight years as a Waymarking admin it became time for me to step aside as Waymarking admin due to personal reasons. Due to these reasons I did not feel I was able to serve the needs of the Waymarking community as well I was wanted to or as well as the community deserves. I know I am leaving the community in good hands with Wayfrog. I will be retaining my admin rights to assist Wayfrog as he may need but I do not expect he will need my assistance much.