DougK
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Posts posted by DougK
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My summer vacation took me to Sweden's tenth largest city, Norrköping. The city has a population of 87,247 inhabitants in 2010, out of a municipal total of 130,050 and 0 waymarks within 25 miles!
Here's a link to what I've created so far. It should gather new ones as they're approved.
Norrköping, Sweden
It's also given me a new appreciation for the E-W longitude problem, suffered by European waymarker. I had to re-edit most waymarks, multiple times to keep fixing the coordinates, close to twice as many edits as normal. It was easy to spot when it happened in my case, because the Google map would be showing all blue ocean in the Atlantic below Iceland.
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What is it that makes a "featured waymark"?
Is it:
• An amazing place in itself?
• Great photos, even of ordinary places?
• The presentation and information on the web page?
• Arbitrary selections by Groundspeak?
• Some other factors?
• Some combination of the above?
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But I was about to visit that place anyway, and I'm thinking if I HADN'T notified the officers of the mistake in coords, I could have posted those exact two waymarks (with correct coords) and I'm assuming mine would have been the ones allowed to remain since they were the first ones submitted with correct coords.
I'd feel too guilty to actually go through with it, but I have mulled the possibility.
OK, so I've mulled over this possibility too and based on previous opinions expressed in these forums, that's what should happen. I decided to verify your assumption. Here's another example of an off base waymark, approved Jun 23, 2013:
Cemetry - IORM - Jacksonville OR
One of the first things I always do when I start looking at a waymark is go to the satellite view. I clicked "+" a few times in the miniature Google map and switched to satellite view. Strange! this looks like a residential area rather than a cemetery.
So I sent the following note to the approver, on Jun 25, 2013:
DougK says,
Re: WMHCF6 - Cemetry (sic) - IORM - Jacksonville OR
Hmmm… Why doesn't it looks like a "Cemetry" in Google Maps at these coordinates, but instead, a residential area? Because Jacksonville, Oregon is on the other side of Medford! Really bad Coordinates. Happens a lot with this person. Yours to mull over or re-evaluate.
Doug
A week went by and the waymark was unchanged.
So I sent the following note to the poster, on July 2, 2013:
DougK says,
Re: WMHCF6 - Cemetry (sic) - IORM - Jacksonville OR
Here's another waymark with coordinates off by over 6 miles. No one will be able to find this cemetery from these coordinates. The coordinates are in Medford, OR and Jacksonville is on the other side of I-5. Also Cemetery is spelled incorrectly in the title. Can you fix these?
Doug
Still nothing changed. Well, as things turned out, a week later I happened to have planned a driving trip from Washington state down the coast of Oregon and back to California. The lack of action on this waymark, and its value to my grid, made me drive two hours out of the way to go visit the cemetery and waymark it in the correct location. On July 11, 2013, I posted:
Red Men Section of Cemetery - Jacksonville, OR
Now, perhaps my mistake was including a private message to the reviewers, stating that this new waymark should invalidate the old waymark, since the coordinates were 6.8 miles off. Next thing I see, the waymark is in group vote! Hmmm…
Perhaps I should have been more subtle and submitted it without the private message, since the invalid one wouldn't have triggered the proximity detection alert, and see if it just got approved. Then after approval, suggest again that the first one be re-evaluated. Still waiting to see what happens.
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I don't want to be too negative here, but I think category officer need to do a better job of checking that a waymark is at the specified coordinates. This can be done with either maps or street view, to make sure the object is at least near the bubble on the map.
Here's an example of a waymark approved yesterday:
WMHJ4D - VFW Post 9650
Starting with the coordinates, I zoom in and see the roof of this building and notice the nice round swimming pool in the back yard. Hmmm…
I click the Google Maps link at the bottom of the waymark and then enter Street View. I spin around "virtually" and don't see anything that looks like the supplied pictures. Hmmm…
I notice that an address of the VFW post was included, so I open a new Google Maps window and paste in the address and search. Now I'm at a different location on the map than the posted coordinates took me. Another Hmmm…
I go into Street View, do the spin around again and now the pictures match the location of this address.
With a little further calculation, I determine that the coordinates are off by 4.6 miles! If this were a geocache, how would you ever find it?
and 
Would anyone like to see more examples like this?
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On the other hand, too fast can also be quite disappointing. I do not really appreciate an approval within 10 seconds for a waymark I may have spent several hours with research, compiling, translations, choosing the right pictures and so on.
I know the feeling!
Me too. I don't review in a lot of categories, but I do spend some time with each one that I review, at least a few minutes. Certainly some categories are easier to review than others. Category officers are (should be) responsible for the quality of waymarks accepted and not just how many they can approve.
I think some category officers have have now gotten to be responsible for too many categories. Certainly, SilverQuill admitted this a few years ago, asked for help, and offloaded some categories to new officers. I'm all for timely approvals, but not to the extent of blind acceptance. I glance at a lot of waymarks every day. Maybe, it's because of my background of quality control, but I find errors every day! I try not to make mistakes, but I do have submissions with errors and I actually appreciate being told of corrections needed.
I stumbled onto one the other day, searching for waymarks in Washington state. One appeared in the list that said Elk, Montana. So I sent the creator a note saying the pop-up menu had the wrong state selected. Well, the creator corrected the waymark, but wrote back to say the state selected was correct, but the title had the wrong state (I hadn't looked at the map). We had a laugh over that.
At a minimum, here's some guidelines for what I believe a reviewer needs to check:
• This is a GPS-based hobby, so MINIMALLY the coordinates must be accurate. The coordinates should zero in on the waymark. Zoom in with Google Satellite view or even go to Street View and see if you can see the object. I know maps and street view can be stale, but at least check. Clearly if the waymark says it's new or less that 5 years old, maybe it won't appear in either, but you can also see in street view whether the background of pictures is close at all. If there's an address of a location given, type it into Google maps and see if it comes to the same map location. (If there's any concern here, it should be declined for correction or explanation)
• The location pop-ups for country and state/province, should match the title. (If not, this should be declined for correction)
• If there are URL links in variables that don't work, that's not good. If there are links in the text of the long description that don't work, that's not good either. Since variables are usually required, they should be working at the time of review. This might be cause for a decline. Other links in the long description should also be working at submission time. I've had reviewers catch a non-working link of mine and approve it anyway with a note asking to fix the URL. If you know me I will fix it, because I want it to work too. (Reviewers choice here on whether to decline or accept with a request to correct)
• Other items, dependent on each category, should be checked for reasonableness.
After these items the general content should be reviewed.
• Is the title well-formed and meet accepted conventions?
• Read the long description. And I mean read completely. If it was copied from somewhere, were sources (URLs) included? I don't decline for spelling or grammar errors, though I do edit and correct the obvious, immediately after I accept it. It's more work to call them out and have the submitter fix them.
IMO, If you're a reviewer who's getting so many waymarks to approve each day that you can't spend time to check each submission reasonably well, then you're reviewing too many categories or the category needs more reviewers to help with the load. There needs to be a balance between timeliness and quality.
When I'm sitting at my computer and six approvals come in within two minutes of each other, I know they have not been reviewed in depth. When I spend 30 minutes or more working on a single submission, I would hope that the first person to see it puts in some effort to check my work. It's a matter of pride for me when I submit and it should be a matter of pride when a reviewer chooses to accept a submission into the category.
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I usually work from the bottom of my list up. I think just personal preference.
I believe the list is presented in date order submitted. On the chance that there are two waymarks awaiting approval for the same place, you would be approving the second waymark, when it should be declined as a duplicate of the one higher in the list.
This has happened to me, because no officer was reviewing on a timely basis. Eventually an officer just clicked through the list approving everything, while apparently ignoring the possible duplicate warning. Shortly thereafter I noticed my submission, along with a second waymark and had to notify the officer of their carelessness.
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That in itself poses a couple of questions. Why do we have to repeat ourselves? Wouldn't just the town/city be sufficient in the title? You have to select the state & country anyway.
For those of us who use an RSS Reader to watch news feeds of all waymarks, waymarks for categories we're interested in, and from particular waymarkers, what we see is a list showing just one line with title of the waymark. It's nice to get as much information from this one line to see if we want to explore more in depth and open the web page for the waymark. If the title is just "Clear Lake", I have no idea where it is, not which country, not which state.
If the title just says the city is Greenville, there is a Greenville in 49 of the 50 US States! If the city is just shown as Franklin, that narrows it down to 30 states. If the city name is Springfield, there are 29 states with one. I'd prefer not to have to open the waymark to see which state it's in. There're are many duplicated city names through the USA, and some probably overlap with foreign city names.
It makes for a uniform presentation of all waymarks when there's some consistency and standard applied to all waymarks filed.
IMO, Firehouses are a mess. They changed the rules after the category started (2010), so early waymarks, have the city and state, while newer ones don't. They Have 11 waymarks titled "Fire Station" and too many to count titled "Fire Station" & some number. For me, that's not very informative.
The name of the place in the title may be obvious to the local waymarker doing the posting, but not so to the worldwide readership. I appreciate the city and state in the title line.
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I found an online Travel Channel teaser for the Golden Gate Bridge story.
The two photos from the waymark appear at 1:46 and 1:53.
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A new series just started on the Travel Channel called Monumental Mysteries.
In episode 3 (to be reshown Sunday morning 7AM) there's a story about the failure of a safety net used during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge to catch falling workers. Anyway, at about 0:38 minutes in, a bronze plaque is shown that was erected on the bridge to the workers who were killed during bridge construction. The interesting part is that the show creators discovered the plaque pictures from a waymark of mine:
WMBC3T
They contacted me to ask if they could get the use of the full resolution photos that I took. I had to sign some release documents for their protection. They did some Ken Burns effects on a couple of them near the end of the story.
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Newest problem:
I used to get my Waymarking confirmations, notices, etc. mail from noreply@Waymarking.com.
In mid-March, the sender changed to noreply@Groundspeak.com
Now, the sender for my Waymarking mail is noreply@Geocaching.com.
This breaks my incoming mail processing rules every time and now it's more difficult to sort incoming daily mail (GC/WM) into folders.
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<snip>
If you have over 3,000 visits, let me know.
brwhiz 4721
onfire4jesus 3315
And Benchmark Blaster -- 4300+.
More not mentioned…
petendot 7588
Volcanoguy 6382
Chasing Blue Sky 6284
Queens Blessing 6279
The_Simpsons 6062
Brentorboxer 4722
Marine Biologist 4582
Mooroid 3684
debbado 3532
luzzi1971 3348
Lord Abercrombie 3683
run26.2 3217
ucdvicky 3177
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Is it interesting that there are 100 people with over 1,000 approvals, just as the list of those with over 1,000 posted reaches 100 people too?
Coincidence or related?
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one of my other hobbies is "Genealogy". I'm missing a category for all the 'Archives' out there.
...
What do you think,
Wikipedia says: An archive is an accumulation of historical records, or the physical place they are located.
Genealogists seem to be very creative people in where they seek to find information. They'll seek out family information from census records, record offices at cemeteries, town property records, church records, and more. Would these sources be included in genealogy archives?
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I believe you are the 100th person (as math teacher would say "…on the planet") to reach 1,000 waymarks posted!
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I'm using Macintosh and iPad. The list sorts incorrectly by waymarker on both, but in the same wrong way on both. On the Mac, the list sort strangely in the Safari, FireFox, Opera and Chrome web browsers.
Oddly, I just discovered that using the Camino browser, the list does sort correctly on Macintosh. What does that tell you?
DougK: Could you please test this beta version of my list?
The waymarker name column isn't URL link now. I added a new column 'Profile' instead of this. This version works on my Android device, so I hope it will works on Mac and iPad too
.The list now sorts correctly on all mentioned browsers on my Mac and on the iPad. Good job!
Another thing to watch out for is waymarkers who change their name. If you can get the current waymarker name from the GUID, rather than hard-coded from your table, you'll pick these changes up. For example, JAC0B recently became JacobBarlow. The old name shows in your table, but the new name shows when you go to his profile.
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Thank you DougK - you are right.
I tested only on my PC box with IE and Firefox and there is no problem (waymarker column is sorted OK).
But now, I see list on my Android device and I am able reproduced this strange ordering waymarker column.
I will try to fix it.
I'm using Macintosh and iPad. The list sorts incorrectly by waymarker on both, but in the same wrong way on both. On the Mac, the list sort strangely in the Safari, FireFox, Opera and Chrome web browsers.
Oddly, I just discovered that using the Camino browser, the list does sort correctly on Macintosh. What does that tell you?
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How about sort by the Waymarker name as well?
Sorry, I don't understand...
all columns in list are sortable (apart from index).Sort by the Waymarker doesn't work for you?
Clicking on the column header causes some kind or re-ordering, but it doesn't appear to be alphabetical on the name shown.
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My list contains now about 100 waymarkers.
For each waymarker I have to download his statbar and three pages from his profile.
OK, download is batch file, but I will not run such batch every day.
It could be once every 14 days (maybe
) .This is totally cool! I like the dynamic presentation. How about sort by the Waymarker name as well?
In my short experience, updating every other week is a reasonable interval, as the stats slowly grow stale. The daily changes are few, weekly changes can be noticeable.
I appreciate what you've done! Thanks for your effort on this endeavor.
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So what do you think?
My first thought is what are you Waymarking here? The start point? The end point? Any point along the path? (which I think is way too many possibilities)
Next, are any of these points interesting to visit when the race is not in progress? These questions raise some doubt in my mind.
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A year ago, I posted this waymark
of a mural. The mural has since been painted over and replaced with a new image. Should I edit the existing waymark with new info and new pictures, basically leaving the old info intact, but explaining that it has been refurbished and changed recently (i.e. leaving a 'historic' record of what was there) or should I just relegate it to being a legacy or 86 it altogether and submit an entirely new waymark?I appreciate any advice, since I am in a quandary on how to approach this.
Here's the approach I've developed from thoughts here in the forum. I'll try to illustrate with some examples from my postings. It shouldn't matter whether there is more that one waymarker involved. It might depend on how the waymark changed or moved. It makes good sense to collect similar visit photos under unique waymarks that could be linked/related to each other. I like the usage of LEGACY or CLOSED in the title, as opposed to deleting (archiving) the history.
I encountered the same thing recently with a similar category - painted utility boxes. A box was repainted with a different design. I felt the old painted design should remain as a historical interest note (in case anyone still had unposted visit pictures!
) and so I created a new waymark with the same coordinates to collect pictures of the new box. Since I could edit both waymarks, they are hyperlinked together for reference and the old one has updated notes. See older painting and newer painting. An interesting note is that the Google Street view still shows the original box painting.How about some other cases of a waymark changing?
If a business relocates to a new location, then again I think two waymarks are the best way to track this historically, even if different waymarkers are involved. An example of this is a bicycle shop that moved from there to here.
A similar change also happened recently when Apple closed one of its original stores and relocated a few blocks away in a new building in Palo Alto. When I submitted a waymark for the new store, the category managers there were faced with a situation happening for the first time in that category and I don't think they recognized how to deal with this case. There was already an existing waymark for the first store, when I waymarked the new location, so my submission had a link to the former store location in my new waymark. The approver took my submission as an "update" to the original waymark, pasted my text and coordinates into the someone else's waymark and deleted all the photos to "start anew", thereby loosing all history of that location and visits to the original waymark. It also created a self-referential link of the waymark to itself, based on my text which has a link back to it!
Eventually, through discussion with the category managers, they accepted my waymark, but they had to archive the first one, because it had been so altered. The link back from the current waymark to the archived one still shows the obliteration of the original waymark. I decided to post one last visit picture to the former store with an appropriate picture. (Did this count as a visit for me?) I even asked to get the original waymark restored from a Groundspeak backup, but nothing happened.
I think another the more obvious case for two waymarks is when a business location closes and another business opens in the same building. Often the two businesses will be in two different Waymarking categories with (virtually) the same coordinates. My movie rental store has already closed and marked as LEGACY. I'm waiting to see if something new and waymarkable moves in here. Even if a new business in the same category opened at this location, it should still be a new waymark.
Now, what if a building is picked up and moved to a distant (a few block, at least) location? If it had already been waymarked at the original location, then those photos and visits serve as a nice collection of the building at that location. In addition to Relocated Structures, a new waymark for the building at its new coordinates should be created for visit pictures to the building at that location. You can't take any pictures of the building at the old location anymore!
In summary, think in terms of a waymark's photo gallery, keeping location-related pictures grouped together in unique waymarks and linking waymarks to each other where useful and possible.
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When I first started Waymarking I performed a few experiments to determine the accuracy of the gps on my iphone, and did a little research to see what others had to say on the same subject. Long story short, I found that an iphone app is accurate to 10m-20m, usually closer to 10m than the 20m.
I often take pictures of signs with my iPhone, because I'm usually right above or very close to the sign. I use this geotagged photo for comparison with my GPSr acquired data and to complement pictures taken with my point-n-shoot camera, which doesn't do geotagging.
I've written AppleScripts to acquire the geotagged data from the photo, which is stored in decimal degrees, and convert that form into the degrees & minutes form used in Waymarking/Geocaching. These conversionsalwaysgive me a value with only two significant decimal digits. That means I get a value like N37 dd.dd0, W121 dd.dd0, where the third decimal digit is always a zero. In my experience, I think that third digit amounts to about 6 feet of accuracy for every .001, so without that third digit, I feel like the accuracy range is about 60 feet. That's similar to your finding. I don't think 60 feet is very good, particularly for a geocache or small waymarks. In comparison, my GPSr reads out a full 3 significant decimal digits of accuracy.
While we're on this topic of accuracy, let me make a recommendation of using the Waypoint Averaging function of your GPSr, if it has it. This is a standard feature on my Garmin Oregon and I think other units support this concept as well. I've moved the function button to the first screen. I collect almost all of my coordinates using waypoint averaging. It may take a minute or two to complete, but the accuracy is extremely high and worth it. When I arrive at my waymark, I set my GPSr down near the object and start the waypoint averaging feature, while I'm taking my photos. After a couple of minutes of photos, the GPSr has captured coordinates that the unit believes to be 100% accurate. I then use the Waypoint Manager of the GPSr to edit and name that waypoint.
During waypoint averaging, the GPSr takes coordinate measurements over a period of time, until it has honed in all satellite signals, and averaged the results until the coordinates are believed 100% accurate. You can stop the process early and the averaging may not have as high a guarantee. The only time I use Mark Waypoint is when I can see the satellite accuracy is already within 10-15 feet, or the place I'm Waymarking is more like a park, playground or basketball court where 10-15 feet probably close enough. Sculptures, headstones, clocks, signs and other small objects get waypoint averaged, to get the most accurate coordinates possible.
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If anyone has experience using a Garmin Oregon for Waymarking, I'd love to hear from you. I recently got one to replace a Colorado that stopped working, and I'm having problems downloading the comments and date into GSAK.
I've used a Garmin Colorado and Oregon. I'm using the Garmin BaseCamp software to extract waypoint data from the GPSr. Connect your GPSr via USB cable and click the "Receive" button to bring all the GPSr data into the BaseCamp database.This program manages your database of waypoints and presents them geographically on a map, to help you find them by locality. You can scroll the map around, zooming in and out to focus on an area of waypoints. BaseCamp allows you to make lists and smart lists, which are collections of your waypoints, similar to iTunes playlists and smart playlists. Finally, copy and paste of the coordinate data into your waymarks eliminates transcribing errors. I give it a thumbs up for a free application.
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What's the rush? When there are FTF races for newly-published waymarks, I might be more motivated.
Let me try to explain my philosophy about Waymarking and see if you think there's anything you might be willing to adopt. For most of us, there are three communities in Waymarking - waymark visitors, waymark posters and category creators/managers/officers. Technically, another community might be the Groundspeak people who oversee WMing and mingle with us as moderators, lackeys and such, but most of us do not operate in that realm.
One way to recognize which communities you participate in, is by looking at your overall totals, waymarks visited, waymarks posted and waymarks approved (though the last one is hard to obtain). They could be balanced among all three or weighted towards one or two communities.
• Some people focus on just one community. There are people who only log WM visits (and have 0 posts). We even see category officers with no posts or visits!
A fair number of WMer's enjoy the finding, research, creation and posting of waymarks. These people are the high profile people here, who spend a lot of time and effort on this website. Without these active people, there wouldn't be any waymarks to approve or to visit. These people are the backbone of Waymarking. They probably write the most in these forums angling for the causes of their community. They don't create waymarks thinking everybody's going to come visit the WM (as in a geocache find). If others do log visits, then great, it is a place worth Waymarking. I believe one reason they do it for the small notoriety of being first-to-post a WM for a neat place.
This is why the WM poster community wants active and timely support from the category managers. Not every geographic area is competitive or overrun with waymark posters, but I'm sure every waymarker who does postings, gets a feeling of delight when a special place is approved and knowing it was you who got the first-to-post.
There is no formal first-to-visit a waymark distinction. Anyway, would it be the first visit logged or the earliest date of a visit log? I don't think it really matters. There will probably never be a race to visit a waymark, like a FTF geocache. It's not the same at all.
I believe there's a first-to-publish thrill that waymark creators are seeking. So category managers who let waymarks languish for weeks and months are not giving good and timely feedback to the WM posters. It's very unsatisfying waiting a long time for an approval.
I've pleaded this case with you before, listing 3 other important reasons in this thread http://portal.Groundspeak.com/forums/permalink/37642/37641/ShowThread.aspx#37641, so I won't repeat those points again here, assuming that you've already read them.
• A few people are really active in all three communities at once. These folks need to balance their time. You can't spend all your time posting WMs and logging visits, and delaying categories with submissions awaiting approval.
• Some people work in a couple of communities. Anyone who first posts waymarks, starts to wonder how the category management and approval process takes place. Many people who create waymarks, naturally get involved with the approval process to understand how it works. My suspicion is that categories with active posters as officers, probably have better response times than categories with less active waymarkers (posters, visitors or geocachers).
I don't know how many waymark visit logs are created each day, but we can see hundreds of new waymarks being created and approved each day. It just makes sense that category managers need to be as active as the people submitting them and process the queue of submissions on a timely basis. It's their duty in the process.
Oh, I just thought of another offshoot community - those whose only read these forums and don't do anyway Waymarking.
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I saw this article on Foxnews.com and thought I'd share with the Waymarking community for those folks who might want to waymark these locations if they haven't been waymarked already:
This one's done: Angel Island US Immigration Station
and 
all columns in 
) and so I created a new waymark with the same coordinates to collect pictures of the new box. Since I could edit both waymarks, they are hyperlinked together for reference and the old one has updated notes. See
$250,000 lawsuit against Groundspeak?
in General Waymarking Topics
Posted
I modified one of his waymarks when I accepted it and removed the tilde in the title replacing it with a dash as our category description exemplifies. The next day it was changed back to a tilde. I changed it a second time and again he changed it back.
If you read his profile, he pretty much admits to having a bad case of OCD. He has his own way of doing things and doesn't care much what the existing Waymarking community thinks of his style. He's out to change Waymarking to be done his way.
Perhaps, he hopes to eliminate opposing thought by getting others "thrown out". Then it'll just be his way!
He sent me a long tirade once and I suggested that he bring his ideas to the forums to see what others thought of them. He obviously never did that. I pointed him to specific threads in the forum that disagreed with his "style" of Waymarking. He's never posted here and may never have read anything here.
He's a freight train speeding down the track and you better not get in his way apparently. I'm waiting for a train wreck.