silverquill

There are a lot of areas with limited access of some sort. Time of day, time of year, access fee, memberships, by appointment only, etc. For many categories these restrictions should pose no problems, depending on specific category requirements. If something is posted "no trespassing" or is otherwise blocked to ALL public access, then that is another thing. If one can't get to it to get personally acquired coordinates and take close-up photos, then the waymark can't be created in the first place. This should hold true unless the category specifically states that waymarks from a distant viewing point are acceptable. There may be other sensitive areas. I recently was a guest on a U.S. military base. Some really cool places to waymark were there, but I would not do it because of security issues, and because only authorized people and guests are allowed on base. My personal opinion is that visiting a waymark is not the ultimate goal of creating a waymark anyway. Documenting the site with photos and description - giving the location a voice - is also important. So general access is not the overriding consideration, as long as YOU can get there to create the waymark.

An intriguing concept. While is possible to shoehorn some of these into the existing categories (The LOVE sculptures have been going in "Exact Replicas," for instance), I think there may be enough of these to sustain a category. I suppose the challenge, as it usually is, lies in writing a good definition. How much "artistic" merit do they have to have to be accepted? How can they be differentiated from mere signs? 3-D only? And, they would have to be reasonably permanent. I certainly think this is an idea worth pursuing.

Yes, this topic has been discussed before. There was one person at Groundspeak who created these icons and did them in groups as new categories were added. That was a more efficient way for her to work. That's why there is a wait for new category icons. Apparently a new person took over this responsibility and has a slightly different artistic approach for creating these graphics. The colors are softer, the images themselves are smaller leaving more white space. The older images are brighter and often cover the entire grid square. I guess I prefer the old style, but this is really not a very important issue for me. The whole grid thing just popped up one day as a Groundspeak initiated enhancement. At least I don't remember hearing any prior discussion. There are still some oddities about the way it works which can be frustrating for those who take the grid seriously. It is a very minor part of Waymarking for me, so I don't pay much attention to it. Still kind of cool though.

An issue has arisen in the peer review comments that has NOT appeared here in the forum discussion. I wish people would take advantage of this forum to raise issues BEFORE a category goes to peer review. The issue concerns the lawfulness of these sites in some locations. Apparently there are some cities or agencies banning the practice of placing these "love locks." In some places they are regarded as a form of vandalism or as security risks. There are many other places where these sites are officially sanctioned or even created by a city or other controlling agency. So, the practice is regarded differently from place to place. I do NOT think that this negates the legitimacy of this category at all. One of the very first categories created by Groundspeak when Waymarking.com was launched was the Graffiti category. As we all know, graffiti is often regarded as vandalism and can even be regarded as a criminal activity. Should we discuss the category for Shoe Trees? I think this category should take this factor into consideration, however. A reasonable approach might to be to exclude waymarks coming from any location where these items are officially banned. A check box in the variable section could be used for the waymarker to indicate that he has verified that the site is legitimate. This would allow some of these really great sites to be wayamrked while protecting places where they are not allowed.

Ah! Well, this Christian denomination is not well-known in North America. It's roots are in Europe, especially Germany, and has grown in large numbers in recent years into Africa and parts of Asia, especially India. I would say that an organization with 11 million members in over 50 countries of the world is both prevalent and global in terms of Waymarking category criteria. This is certainly more than many, many of our current, thriving categories. Since there is no category that specifically includes these, it is not redundant. (There's always the possibility of overlap with other categories depending on age of the building and other features such as clocks, bell towers, stained glass windows, etc., but that is not true redundancy). That leaves the fourth criterion of "Interesting/Informative." Of course this can be a very personal and subjective view. To suggest that churches are as boring as supermarkets reflects a very personal view. I think that it is obvious from the number of existing categories for places of worship that they are of high interest to many people. Religion is part of every culture, so these sites have an inherent interest. If someone finds them boring, then that's okay, but that is not a good reason to deny a category that others may find interesting and valuable. I think we all have our list of boring categories. So, I would support a category for this group of religious sites. It should be confined to the New Apostolic Church world wide. Care must be taken because the term "Apostolic" is being applied to many churches or incorporated into their name in a rather loose fashion. Most of these are independent and have nothing to do with this historic church organization. I am NOT in favor of a "catch-all" category for church buildings. I've discussed this approach with its inherent weaknesses and problems before. And, it doesn't make any more sense in this case than anywhere else. Each category must stand on its own merits and have a clear focus.

For writers birth places can be submitted to the Dead Poets Society. This is open to all writers, not just poets.

Short and sweet. I'd like again to comment on the "lack of prevalence" argument. This whole concept of prevalence is very ambiguous. How many potential sites must there be in order for them to be prevalent enough for a Waymarking category? 10? 1000? 205? I think the obvious answer is, "It depends." The other criteria need to be taken into account. A category of high interest but low prevalence can still be a good category. Even high global distribution can make a category of low prevalence a good one. On the other end of the spectrum, how much prevalence is too much? The NRHP Contributing Buildings category has what - over 100,000 potential waymaarks, or more? I think it is still a good category, although an argument could perhaps have been made for dividing it up by state, as are historical markers which have far fewer potential waymarks. "Global" is another one of our criteria that depends on other factors. In how many countries must a category have potential waymrks in order to qualify as "global?" Obviously we have a large percentage of our categories that are limited to one country, and many more limited to one continent or geographic region. The other problem in evaluating "prevalence," or "global," is that most of us have limited knowledge. Does any one really know how many "love lock" sites there are, or how many countries have them? I'd never seen one until I visited Seoul N'Tower, and even then I had no idea what I was looking at. Just because something is not common in my area or something I haven't encountered in my travels doesn't mean they aren't prevalent somewhere else. In short, I think Waymarking.com can cast a wide net, and that small fish and big fish are both important. And, if I don't care a whit about love locks or Martello Towers or shoe trees, so what? How restrictive do we need to be? Obviously we have these criteria for a good reason, and I am not suggesting that we ignore them, but I do question the restrictive way we apply them sometimes.

I'm being flooded with these too! My guess is that some persons has decided that this is his/her contribution to Waymarking and is randomly, or perhaps systematically, going through waymarks to edit them. There are several problems with the way this is set up, and with the way that this person is going about this. 1). As you mentioned, there is no way to identify who is making the edit suggestions. This is a defect in the way Groundspeak set this up. There is no reason for this procedure to be anonymous. 2). The Edit suggestion goes to the category officers. The officer has two options - accept or decline. Since there is no way to know who is making the suggestion, we cannot ask for clarification. There is also a place for the reviewing officer to comment. 3). As far as I know, no notification is sent to the originator of the waymark that an edit suggestion has been made, or that a change has been made to his/her waymark. I think this is wrong. So, the comment from the reviewing officer goes back to whomever made the edit suggestion. This is the way I THINK this all works. There is no official documentation of this in the Waymarking.com site that I know of. There are other gaps in documentation of the workings of the site, too. The main challenge that we have in reviewing edit suggestions is verifying them. We are basically being asked to say that the person asking for the changes knows more than the person who originally wrote the waymark. In some cases it may be obvious, but in others we really have no way of knowing. The burden of proof lies with the one making the edit suggestion. If I'm not sure, then I decline. Many of the current flood of edit suggestions say simply "spelling fix." Some of these are simple typos, NOT spelling errors. In a short description, this may be obvious, but in longer passages, almost impossible to find. I haven't got the time to read several long paragraphs to verify the spelling change. Maybe the original was correct. So, here is the reply I just sent with a string of declines: "With several long paragraphs, I can't find the "spelling fix." Since the edit system is set up like this, I don't know who is submitting the suggested changes, and unless you can specify exactly what you are attempting to correct, I cannot accept these. ~Larry (silverquill)" Some suggested changes in other areas were just incorrect because the person did not take the time to understand the requirements of the category. (Such as trying to add USA to a waymark in the National Register of Historic Places). So, we have a system that isn't very easy to use, and some person, or persons, using it incorrectly.

Nice pictures, it would be fun to waymark them. Yes, there was discussion of this a while back, but it was never developed. This link shows the variety and the global distribution of these sites. The one listed for Korea is incorrectly listed as North Tower, Seoul. This is actual at Seoul N'Tower, but the "N" is for "nam" which means "south" as it is located on Namsam (South Mountain). But, I have seen these other places in Korean, including on small islands. I would load the category down with too many variables. It least make the variable fields optional. This kind of information is best incorporated into the detailed description, and often the specific details are simply not available. But, it is a great category idea that I think is worthy of development. And, I don't want to hear "not prevalent." We don't need 10,000 waymarks to make an interesting category.

I have several reservations about this idea. First, it is tied to a specific American TV show, and certainly reflects that U.S. Network's bias. Is U.S. TV network news authoritative in any way? The very selection of what to include reflects their own bias. Some may see this as heroic journalism and others may feel that the reports are unfair and unjustified. I'm not stating an opinion about this program, just pointing out that it is controversial. I think Waymarking should steer clear of controversial areas. Second, most of these are what I would call "soft sites." That is they have no intrinsic value in themselves, but only an attributed value simply because the news editor have have decided to tag them as being related to "fleecing" in some way. Is there something really specific to pinpoint with geographic coordinates? Is this something others would want to visit? Third, it is a pointedly U.S. oriented topic of little interest to anyone else. It is a matter of the internal politics of one country. This is much different from categories which you mention that are confined to one country. One might live outside the U.S. and still be interested in Grange Halls or Mississippi Historical Markers just as someone in the U.S. might be interested in Dartmoor Granite or Gothic Buildings. They all have an intrinsic value. But, does the rest of the world give a rip about the "Fleecing of America?" I hope not. Sure, there are always examples of existing categories that may be subject to these same criticisms, but the existence of bad examples is never justification for another one. There's a difference between precedence that should be followed and existing follies that should not be emulated. I'm not dismissing the idea out of hand, but suggesting that these are things to consider when weighing the viability of this as a Waymarking category.

Having an additional premium membership is not a viable idea. Like Geocaching.com, the basic features are FREE and the same premium membership adds additional features to both platforms. Adding another layer just for Waymarking.com would not be a good enhancement. Premium membership should give PQ's on both platforms. That sounds logical to me, anyway. And, PQ's and an API would greatly increase participation. That should be incentive enough. Having a "Donate" button on the site might not be a bad idea with contributions going to a R & D fund. There would be no pressure for anyone to donate, but the option would be there. I doubt that Groundspeak would see this as compatible with their basic philosophy, though. The real answer is to find ways to make Waymarking.com profitable instead of having it be a drain on resources. That's where we need to be brainstorming ideas.

Is there some reason these can't be posted to the Figurative Sculpture category?

Wow, this category totally slipped by me. I've traveled extensively in Korea and have never seen one of these here. I think they of very limited in existence. I see that all but two posted so far are in the UK. Anyway, in regard to the search for the category. No search term yielded a result for Canal Tunnels. When I clicked on the "Newest Categories" search link, however, it showed up without a problem. Definitely a bug in the system, though.

Most respondents have indicate their lack of favour for "ugly buildings" based on concerns of subjectivity. I am not getting terribly excited about the proposal as such, but I do think there is some room to "cut some slack", in other words, can't the original suggestion be taken and a more viable suggestion be put forward? At the end of the day, Waymarking has to be something to enjoy, something that is maybe "fun". It is about marking the coords, usually via GPS, of the location of interesting things around the globe. "Ugly Buildings", as such, are perhaps an excellent subject for Waymarking." Sure, Waymarking should be enjoyable and maybe even fun, but rambling subjective categories are often not fun - not fun for reviewers and not fun for those trying to figure out what might get approved and what might be declined and both feeling bad when there is a disagreement. I think that "ugly" as a general description is beyond any helpful definition, just as "beautiful" is beyond quantification, unless one wants to appeal to the Fibonacci sequence and the golden mean as a mathematical definition of beauty, and therefore lack of adherence to this defaulting to the term "ugly." I think "unusual" is likewise a term beyond redemption. The only hope is to define it in some objective terms such as, "A, B and C are usual, but the lack of A, B, C and the presence of X, Y or Z constitute something that is unusual." So, to define "ugly buildings" in any meaningful way, one would have to come up with a list of objective architectural features that would have to be absent or present in order for the ugly building to qualify. I just don't think it can be done. Anyone is welcome to try, though. Unfortunately, we have some subjective categories that were created early on and continue to be problematic. BruceS mentioned "Odd Buildings." To fill a gap, I'm now an officer, and I can tell you that it is a headache! The originator of the category offered a few criteria, but it still really falls to us to make a judgment call. And, the problem with that is that if a marginally odd building is approved, then the envelope keeps getting bigger and bigger until "odd" has lost its meaning. If an overly strict policy is adopted, then people get mad or sad and the category withers away. Finding that middle ground is difficult. Some categories try to define subjective term such as "unique" or "artistic" with varying degrees of success. I have done this myself. And, some categories, like "Unique Mailboxes" got a complete makeover. So, I'm in favor of fun categories and cutting people slack, but sometimes an idea just isn't going to fly, and I think we need to be realistic about that and realize that not everything can be a Waymarking category and not everything can or should be waymarked.

It makes no sense to write a category that is defined by what is included in other categories. The stated policy of Groundspeak has been that each category should stand on its own merits without reference to existing categories. This is not strictly followed, since we do have categories that exclude some times of waymarks because of existing categories (e.g. Ice Cream Parlor excludes Dairy Queen, for instance. But, when there are more than a dozen categories for veteran and war memorials, an attempt to have a category that is for "anything not included in this long list of existing categories" is just a shotgun. A category should have a clear focus of logically related sites. Creating a basket for sites missed by other categories lacks any focus or cohesiveness. If there is a specific war or type of memorial that you think is worthy of a category, then focus on that and develop it, but don't just say "anything except" which is the way this category has been defined. There are some logical ways to develop a category that would include some of these types of memorials, and I would much rather see a couple of those categories developed rather than this catch-all patchwork category.

See this waymark recently posted and updated by ronjean in the News Articles category: Waldo Canyon Fire The trail has been closed indefinitely.

This is unfortunate, but is really due to a technical glitch in the system that has yet to be corrected. Each waymark, as you know, is reviewed by on "officer" in the category group. Sometimes that person feels that the entire group of officers should review the waymark and make a collective decision. When the waymark is sent to the group for a vote, the vote may take a very short time if all officers vote quickly, but the voting period ends in three days. At that time the waymark should be released as either accepted or declined. The bug in the system sometimes prevents this from happening, though, and it just sits there in limbo, as fi67 says. The category management group (officers) have no way of knowing that this has happened. So, unfortunately, we have to send a note to the group leader or other active officer requesting that they manually release the waymark from the voting process. As mentioned, that means just visiting the group page which automatically releases it. (This is the only work-around that the Groundspeak technical team has been able or willing to implement. I don't know if we will ever see a true fix to this very annoying bug). So, please don't let this bug discourage you from Waymarking. It shouldn't happen to often, and is fairly easily dealt with.

I have several reservations about this category idea: 1). Interest and prevalence. This is just a question since I have not visited Europe. Are these really interesting? Or will you end up with a bunch of mundane sites? I find U.S. post offices, for instance, quite diverse. Korean post offices are all the same. 2). Since each country has its own postal system and way of identifying post offices, can a single category cover them all? That has been one of the considerations for the historical markers - every country (and every state in the U.S.) has a very different system for classifying these and so it is more logical to have them limited. The same has been true for post offices which is why we have categories for individual countries. I'm not sure that a huge, sprawling category covering dozens of countries is the way to go. 3). Do you need a country list or is "European" a clear enough definition? Our geography teachers in the U.S. always insisted that the Ural mountains were the eastern boundary of Europe, for instance. Just questions.

Ugly. 1). As many have pointed out this is almost impossible to define in any meaningful way so that we would know what qualifies. While some degree of subjectivity is often present in categories, this is totally subjective. This is so much the case that one person might actually think a particular building is beautiful while another person regards the same building as ugly. There just is no universally accepted definition. Even if a definition were created, it would still have to be stated in largely subjective terms. 2). Prevalence. Let's face it, the world is full of ugly buildings, however one might define it. One could conceivably waymark entire streets or neighborhoods or area where there are ugly buildings. These would be difficult to describe in any meaningful way, too. So, this category idea is a just a passing thought. Let it pass on into oblivion.

We do have a number of these type of waymarks in the "Superlatives" category, and they are certainly welcome here - most southerly, etc. But, it is really a very broad category so they seem a little buried, so there might be some interest in a category just for these geographical extremes. I would limit it to directions and elevation, maybe excluding "highest" since there is a specific category for those. I think that in many case these points would be hard to identify and verify unless there is a marker of some sort. In some cases there could be some confusion. For instance, what is the most southerly, or westerly point in Colorado?

Here are some small series for waymarks: Oppenheimer's iconic "Device for Rooting Out Evil" The original has been moved at lease once. Vancouver Calgary Palma de Mallorca Or, the ever popular LOVE sculpture by Robert Indiana Indianapolis Philadelphia New Orleans Taipei, Taiwan Quezon City, Philippines I'm sure there are many others. What would constitute a complete collection is a good question. But, isn't this what the Exact Replica category is about, or do you have something else in mind?

I do agree with the "Yes and no" evaluation. An example - Korean Historic Sites. It exit only because I am here (and way, way behind in posting them). Japan could have a similar category, but it would take at least one active waymarker there to do it. Post Offices? Well, potentially categories for other countries. (Not in Korea because they are so utterly boring). The large, global, highly interesting categories, are scarcer thee days, but with an eye to see possibilities and some creativity, they are still there. Maybe we should have new thread for a list of category ideas. for fi67 - I'm not suggesting actually changing anything except the way in which we interpret and apply the criteria. I merely suggest that consideration of categories of less prevalent sites be balanced with other considerations of value. It just seems to me, from comments in peer review, that too often a category is dismissed too easily with the comment, "not prevalent," is if that is the over riding consideration. Even that criterion is subjective since "prevalent" is not quantified in any way. So, while I'm on this, I might mention that the "Global" criterion is also frequently misapplied. If categories that are available only in one country, or one world region were eliminated, we'd lose half, or more, of our 1,000+ categories! The main purpose of that criterion is to prevent arbitrarily geographically limited categories that should be global. "European Fountains" would not be acceptable, for instance. Other categories are reasonably limited, such as historical markers and post offices. And then we have some illogical ones such as the two categories "U.S. National Parks" and "National Parks of the World." Why should the U.S. be the only country to have a separate category? Well, that is probably enough for this thread. I'd like to keep the focus on the idea of prevalence.

One of the four official criteria for a waymaring category is prevalence which asks and answers the question, "How many potential waymarks exist throughout the world? Too few and the category may be of little or no interest to anyone. Too many and you may end up with a category full of mundane, everyday locations." A quick survey of the existing categories will reveal that there is a very wide range of prevalence from tens of thousands (some over a hundred thousand) to a few hundred, or maybe even less. So, I am beginning to wonder if this criterion has much validity at all. My particular concern, however, are categories that may seem to have a low prevalence. As we search out for new category ideas, this seems to be a more common problem since most of the categories of high prevalence have already been created. So, it seems to me that prevalence, as a criterion, needs to be mitigated by the other three criteria, particularly the "Interesting or Informative" criterion. I think that one of the legitimate purposes of Waymarking.com is to seek out and document locations that may be less common, but have high interest. These may sometimes be regarded as niche or special interest categories, but I believe that there is a place for them within the Waymarking family. These categories would make Waymarking.com and even more valuable resource and elevated its image. Of course I'm not talking about random, obscure categories, or ones that are just whimsical, but ones that have an intrinsic value - artistic, historical, cultural sites that we can document for the world. No, I do not have any specific categories in mind, so I'm not beating the drum for anything in particular. I just see the "not prevalent" argument thrown out so often now that I think we fail to consider the other merits of a category. I throw "not prevalent" around, too, so this just represents my rethinking of this part of Waymarking. I'd love to hear what other people are thinking about this.

A few questions: Are these permanent locations? The one pictured seems to be moveable. Could these be waymarked in the Figurative Sculptures category? Has anyone seen one of these outside of the U.S.?

The two designations I see the most often are the All America City award (about a dozen cities awarded in 2012) and Tree City USA. These are both quite different from each other and from Best Kept Villages in concept. Probably each of them would make good categories in their own right. Although I'm generally in favor of expanding categories to include all countries, I think these are all to dissimilar to group together. It is another instance where I think county-specific categories are the best approach.