South Surrey Scavengers

You should be able to waymark most of the IBC markers at the Canadian Benchmark Category.

What is the open enrollment feature? I can't find anything on it.

Site is down today pending the change.

Thanks for the feedback tec_64. It is true that uploading a database would result in some bad data. Some benchmarks would be missing, overgrown, damaged, removed, etc. But then some of the fun is going to those sites and confirming their existence. Or perhaps putting into doubt their existence. A few really keen people like yourself will go to the trouble of finding the benchmarks without having a central database to direct them. But I think a lot more people would be attracted to the sport if they had an easy way to get the information in the beginning so that they can spend their time looking for benchmarks instead of trying to use various different database searches or come across benchmarks by accident. However, one of the points of having this forum is to see what everyone else thinks about this and other related matters. So thanks for your input and I look forward to your waymark submittals.

Living only 3 miles from the Can-USA border allowed me to visit quite a few border monuments which were listed in the NGS database. While they were pretty easy to find since the border is quite clearly marked it was fun nevertheless to travel along the border and find each one. Some were actually difficult to identify since there were so many in such a small area around Peach Arch Park. After that got my interest I tried to find some in Canada but there was no database set up at geocaching.com. However there was a virtual cache nearby that used a particular type of benchmark and I went and found that one too. Then I came across various databases like CSRS that listed benchmarks in Canada. But the format is not very friendly and I gave up searching for them after one failed attempt at one that was nearby. Now if there was preloaded data in the Canadian Benchmark category I'm pretty sure that I would be out looking for them and logging them. But to have to go to the trouble of searching a 3rd party database and then creating the waymark each time I found one is quite involved. Plus there is no easy way to load the benchmarks into a GPSr unless they are one of the few that are already listed at Waymarking.com. It seems to me that benchmark categories lend themselves favourably to having the data preloaded which may not be the case with other Waymarking categories. So if TPTB decide that preloading data is not going to be done at Waymarking.com I would request that an exception be made for benchmarks.

The link below will direct you to the original discussion. Previous discussion regarding Canadian Benchmarks Now we have a place for discussion about categories. What does the benchmarking community think of the Canadian Benchmark category. What are the views on the way it is setup? How can it become more popular? Do people want a database uploaded to Waymarking.com instead of looking for information elsewhere?

There has been some discussion in another thread about the legality of listing coordinates of locations within national parks and other places. I do not see how there can be any law against listing a lat and long of any location on Earth. It may be good marketing however to avoid listing potentially disagreeable locations for a company. Here's a location: 53N 118W It's in a National Park. It's also a Degree Confluence. I don't think anyone complained about the Degree Confluence visit. Okay, what about the location that is 50 metres south of that location? What if I listed that location. It really doesn't matter what location I post coordinates for. Now, marketing wise I can see GC not wanting to post such a location since it exists within a national park. But legally there is nothing stopping them. So whats a virtual cache? Just a location on the Earth's surface that may or may not have somthing interesting to see there. There is no law preventing the listing of those coordinates. What if I listed the coordinates of every spot on the Earths surface on a 1 km grid. Not much different than the Degree Confluence Project except that there would be a lot more locations. I'm not forcing anyone to go to all those locations. In fact I will state up front that you should respect all private property rights and any local access rights that may exist. Visit or don't visit on your own judgement. Oh, and if you happen to visit one of my locations you can post a note on my website that you visited it.

I have to agree with most of what DBC has said. It's rather concerning that an american company is so involved with creating policy within Canadian National Parks. I'm sure if there were foreigners figuring so prominently in policy being creating in US National Parks there would be quite an uproar there. I don't have any disrespect for the reviews at GC as they do an admirable job and I know they volunteer their time. However, they are representing GC whether they like it or not and this is not how to create policy in Canadian National Parks. We need Canadians looking our for the best interest of Canadians. The survey of course was not created by GC but nevertheless it is concerning that it and most other discussions about geocaching center around GC and its guidelines. Any policy discussion regarding Canadian National Parks should not include references to an american company. I think the survey in general was setup pretty well and brought up some of the key points about creating policy in Canadian National Parks. But lets keep it Canadian.

I missed the earlier discussion on this topic. As a category manager for the Canadian Benchmark category it was always my plan to have the database populated. Look at the success of the USGS database at geocaching.com. The original "Benchmark" category. The interest and the fun is locating these benchmarks. Now how do you go about locating them? Well, you don't just wander around the city or the woods and come across them by accident (at least not very often). To find them you consult a database of them which in the case of Canadian Benchmarks you can't find them at geocaching.com or Waymarking.com unless you count the mere handful that have been listed so far. In most cases cachers or waymarkers will consult one of the existing databases that do not reside with GC or WM to find out what benchmarks are close to them. Then they have to create a new waymark and fill out the form etc. I contend that part of the reason that Waymarking has not taken off as well as it could is that it is NOT a database of items that people are interested in but merely a handful of examples of those items. What people want is a searchable database and they want it convenient. They do not want to go to multiple external databases to find out where to look and then spend a lot of time meeting the waymark creation criteria to list it on the site. They just want to go find them. Make it easy for them and mass populate the Canadian Benchmark category (I know you already have the data) and any other cateogry that the category owners want done.

It's too bad that they moved this thread to Waymarking which is exactly the problem in the first place with Earthcaches. When I heard that Earthcaches were going to be moving to Waymarking.com I setup as many Earthcaches as I could in the days leading up to the change over just so that I would have as many as possible at geocaching.com. Why? Because I expected that they would not be as interesting or reach as many people once they moved. My goal was to educate the public regarding the geosciences and geocaching.com provided an exceptional opportunity to do just that. Unfortunately the move to Waymarking.com has pretty much put an end to the rapid growth in interest in Earthcaches both in the number being submitted and the number being visited. Now they get lost in a sea of so many obscure categories in a much smaller user base. We keep hearing that improvements are coming but the negative impact on Earthcaches is already done. Will they be revived? Perhaps if Waymarking.com really becomes big but I rather doubt it because they will still only be one category that will still be lost amongst all the others even if more people are interested in Waymarking.com. I ventured out into setting up the Canadian Benchmark category at Waymarking.com but it may have the same fate as Earthcaches. Benchmarking is quite popular at geocaching.com but when put into Waymarking.com it seems to generate little interest. I want it to succeed but how will that happen?

The Canadian Benchmark category at Waymarking.com has a lot more benchmarks than those listed at the above mentioned website. Click on the link below to see all the ones recorded to date.

I KNOW what a member is and we have 52 of them things. Come on down. Sit a spell with us.

By all means stop on by CoC. The LMGA will hopefully represent cachers in the Lower Mainland and do it in a family friendly way. I was volunteered to help forum moderate and I will do my best keep my small part of the forums a nice place to discuss issues. DBC, you were a big help in setting up the site and you should be thanked for that. It's unfortunate that you had to remove yourself because of past history. You did nothing but help the LMGA get started and that's much appreciated. Hopefully you will remain as a member and continue to contribute. But don't give me any trouble in the Polls Forum or I will have to moderate you.

Do a search on Earthcaches and most of the hot springs will show up. Eventually Waymarking may contain some hot springs and waterfalls in the local area.

I was beaten to the punch, but indeed if Waymarking happens to be your game you will find the category Canadian Benchmarks will be the one that you would log visits to survey monuments.

Unfortunately, at this time the information between Waymarking and Geomatics Canada are not being shared/combined. Of course I'm hoping that at some point in the future this will be the case. I've asked about it, but so far I have not received a response as to if and when this might happen.

Thanks for the redirect, I don't often come in here.

I agree, this should be moved to the other Waymarking forum for category proposals and it should be renamed something like "Time" instead of "Category Proposal". While you're at it rename the other ones that people have titled them "Category Proposal" and put the real title in.

When you write a note about a waymark it then uses its date for the date last visited. But its not even a visit. See this benchmark

I have a disappointing find rate for the Canadian Benchmark category. Not including my finds, there are only 3 other finds out of 43 listings. True they have all been listed only for 1-2 months and the site has only been running for a month but this is still a really low find rate when compared to geocaching. The average geocache gets maybe 10 finds in the first month depending on its location and difficulty of course. But waymarks in my category and it seems most other categories are getting visited at a rate of 0.1 finds per month. That's about 100 times less then geocaching. What can we do sell this new type of game to the masses?

Good point, I've even logged that one.

After a bit of research and not including water based triple points which would add a lot, there about 50 triple points in Asia, 30 in Europe, 50 in Africa, 2 in North America, 13 in South America, and 0 in Australia. Some of these are just approximate and if you include water based locations in lakes and oceans there are many many more. Interesting notes: There is one Quadripoint at the boundary of Zambia, Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe. At least I found a website claiming that fact.

My initial thought was just the Canada-US boundary markers but I'll have to think bigger now that a few good points have been made. Any item has the potential to qualify for multiple waymark categories if not right now certainly in the future. So we should not be overly concerned that a new category might pose a multiple listing possibility once created as is the case for a Canada-US boundary marker already falling in the existing categories of Canadian Benchmarks and Recovered US Benchamrks (in some cases). The real question is what type of category is going to interest a large enough number of waymarkers to be viable. This is where its time to think bigger. The category should really be International Boundary Markers as suggested by BDT. For if we have a Canada-US Boundary Marker category then logically we will eventually end up with every other international boundary being its own category. I don't think we want to go there. So the International Boundary Marker category would have to have at a minimum two variables just to select the two countries that the boundary represents. Plus any other pertinent variables common for survey markers. Now maybe I should propose another new category. Things > Benchmarks > Triple Point Boundaries. Points where 3 countries all meet at the same point. Or maybe expand that to include Provincial or State Triple points. Perhaps there is even a point or two in the world where more than 3 meet. I think I'll go do some research on that right now, now that I think of it.

With the recent addition of Canadian Benchmarks and Recovered US Benchmarks, perhaps the category is already covered twice. Or perhaps it should be its own category as these markers are unique in that they define the boundary of both countries. Information regarding the location of these markers can be found at the International Boundary Commission

Time to bump this one up. I posted some photos and found the same problems. I can't edit the caption with the photo. You can archive the photo now though so I guess I could archive the existing one then upload it again and use the right caption this time.