silverquill

Possibly a good category, but there are several issues. First, places that offer dog boarding are generally multiple-use facilities, some of which do have categories. Animal Hospitals. At least in the U.S. they frequently offer boarding services. Animal Rescue. These places may not offer general boarding services, but the are kennels, Many dog breeders offer boarding services, but may be limited in some way. Some boarding services we've used have been at a private residence. I think there may be a permanence issue here, as well, although that can be said about almost ALL commercial categories. So, just be prepared for some hurdles with this one.

I quite agree. Just because a category doesn't have a wide geographical distribution doesn't mean that it is not valid. We have many, many such categories. There is certainly enough of a pool of potential waymarks to make this a very viable and fascinating category. In regard to splits - I recently got some insights from a pastor of a congregation that split from the First Plymouth Church, and it turns out that much of what has been surmised and written about the split is actually not totally accurate. The original church eventually did become UU, but that was not the reason for the original split. And, I was on staff at a historic Boston church that avoided such a split, even though the pastor was at one point physically blocked from ascending into the pulpit. So, yes, there are some interesting stories there, for sure. But, I have a friend who is a member of a UU church in Idaho, which has a more modern story to tell, and an interesting building, though not as old. Anyway, it will be good to see this category go forward.

Almost any plaque can find a category to call home at this point. As suggested, the "Signs of History" category is almost a catch-all for those that don't qualify for other categories. Then, if there is something actually at the place where the plaque is, then it probably has a category - historic buildings, statues, etc. That would be the primary category to look for, with the plaque included in a supporting role. Categories confined to a local area all almost certain to be rejected. State Historical Markers are one of the few exceptions to this. And, it varies from state to state since some categories will accept ONLY official state markers while others have been written to accept regional, local, or even private markers. Wish it were more consistent, but the way Waymarking.com was set up allowed for each category to establish its own guidelines. In regard to your other comment - well, we enjoy our bone! There's a lot of meat on it. And, Groundspeak is well aware that an API would be highly beneficial and it is at least high on their own wish list. Thant and pocket queries would give us a huge boost, I think! In the meantime, we've got plenty to work on. So, welcome! I hope you'll take the time to visit some waymarks in your area, explore some of the 1,000+ existing categories and create some waymarks for them. I'm sure you'll find some interesting things to explore through Waymarking.

Well, there is no "My Gallery." There is a single photo gallery for each individual waymark, and that's it. So, when you add a photo to a waymark, one you have created or one created by someone else, it becomes part of the gallery for that individual waymark, and is not a part of any other photo gallery. There is no "photo stream," like there is in Flickr, for instance. I WISH there was a way to access all of the photos I've ever uploaded as part of "My Gallery," but there is not. One of the most frequently requested features, over the longest period of time, is the ability to upload photos ONCE and have them available for use in more than one waymark. I'm not sure why this feature cannot be implemented. Is it too technically challenging, to expensive in terms of development or resources, just not deemed important by Waymarking.com developers, or what? We've never received much feedback on the issue. It's still at the top of my list! Another thing about this system - when visitors add photos to a waymark, they do indeed go into the single photo gallery for the waymark. That is good in many ways, but I also end up with waymarks that look as if I've taken some really crappy pictures for it. Of course, the new photos may be an improvement on mine, so maybe it balances out. One of the reasons I will post a visit to a waymark is because I think I have some good photos to add to the gallery.

In general, my preference is to contact the original waymark author directly. This seems to me to be a matter of common courtesy. There are exceptions, of course. Adding a region to a waymark where previously there was no option for a region may be one. Other minor information items may be better submitted as an edit. But, do remember that these edits go to the category officers for review. When I get these, sometimes I just take it that the one making the edit has the better information. If it is a change in coordinates though, I may have no way to verify which ones are better. The same may go for other suggested changes. If there is any question in my mind, I do not approve the changes. That is why it is better to contact the wayamark creator with the suggested changes/corrections/additions. On the other hand, as I understand it, the editing feature is also an attempt to encourage collaboration. Once it is published, no one really "owns" a waymark. Still, if I have found new information, I think it is better to go directly to the original author first. If there is no response, then, by all means, submit an edit. Be sure to offer enough information about the changes so that the reviewing officer can make an informed decision. Why should your edit be approved?

I've seen a lot of tsunami warning signs, and warning sirens (for which there is a category) - Oregon coast, Hawaii, and even the east coast of Korea - but, I a have never seen an identified evacuation site or area. The closest this comes is a map showing evacuation routes. The only thing one needs to know is: Go away from the ocean to higher ground!

Yes, they are, and even more different now. Waymarking.com still seems to go to Google maps. The most annoying part of that is that the satellite views that come up are very, very old. The building where I have lived for the past three years, is not even shown in the satellite view! Not having more recent views makes it difficult to check the accuracy of waymark coodinates. I don't do that for every waymark that I review, but sometimes I need to. If it is a new building or feature, it won't even be there to check. At least we don't have Map Quest or Open Street maps. Neither of them have anywhere enough street detail, compared to Google, to be useful for locating waymarks - at least where I live.

I have no idea. But, once I discovered how HTML can be used to enhance a waymark, I started using it more often. Just simple things. Most often I use it to insert photos. Then the simple ones like fonts, centering, columns, etc. I finally found out how to use hyperlinks (anchors) so I'm doing that more often, frequently to link to other related waymarks. I also prefer this as the way to cite sources. Anything beyond that is too techie for me. I don't use an HTML editor, so I limit myself to things I can easily type into my description.. The thing I'd like to see more is photos inserted into long descriptions! Really adds a lot to a waymark.

Yes, this is a known bug, and Groundspeak technicians have tried to fix it, but it persists. It affects all of us who are not in the NW quadrant of the globe! It is quite annoying, of course. I can't predict when or if it will ever be fixed. I've tried all different routines to avoid it, but it seems so random that I can't reproduce any pattern, so there is no "work around" that I know of.

Four Corner is the famous one in the US. Let's see Colorado, Utah, New Mexico and Arizona. That's the only one for states. There are many for counties, but they usually have no markers or signs. If expanded to a junction of three, there would be more. And, I'm not sure what you mean by boundaries that meet the ocean. Do you mean the border of the states of Oregon and California along the coast, for example? I'm not sure these two types go together. So, I see lack of prevalence as an issue, and lack of clear identification of the point, in many cases, as an issue.

I think your idea is quite clearly expressed. I think that defining who had a role in the local community or city is extremely difficult. John Kennedy was from Massachusetts, and many towns have streets named for him. How local is local? Would we confine it to the town of Hyannis, or other places that he lived, or expand it to Boston where he had an office, or other places where he often visited? How about a street in Port-au-Prince Haiti named for a president who lived there? Or, Martin Luther King, Jr. who maybe never even visited there, but who is a hero to the country for his indirect role? I'm never did find out how Harry Truman Blvd. got its name. There may also be the opposite problem. If a person is known only locally, it may be difficult to get enough information. Small towns may, for instance, rename a street in honor of a local resident who was killed in a war. I do like history categories, so this does have a certain appeal to it. Yet, I'm really reluctant to say we ought to waymark streets. They are, in general, pretty uninteresting in themselves. I also think that Waymarking something that may stretch for miles, instead of something that is at one location, is problematic. There would have to be some logical reason for selecting one precise geographical point. Waymarking random points on a street seems, well, random. This is certainly worth further discussion, but I think the problems are probably too great. I would prefer other sites that are named for local people such as parks, bridges, buildings, etc. They are all more easily identified with one set of coordinates. Of course, we have categories that cover many of those. Thanks for bringing this to the forum!!! I wish more people would do this!

It may hold the record! And, let's not forget that one can log a visit to each of these waymarks!! That can sure rack up numbers if that's what one wants. I enjoyed seeing the Space Needle last summer after my visit to the Lilypad. Hadn't been down to it since the World Fair - just a little tyke back then.

In general, I disagree with this approach, and many categories do NOT accept waymarks for items contained within a museum. Partly this is because many museums have prohibitions or restrictions on photography. And, photographing museum items is notoriously difficult, esp. if they are behind glass, or where lighting is poor. But, it really doesn't make a whole lot of sense to do this anyway. One could have thousands of waymarks, all with the same coordinates, for one thing. There is a category for nearly every type of museum. For displays that are outside the building and publicly accessible, well, that's a different matter. Each would have its unique coordinates and could probably be photographed more easily. With good photos and a good description, there could be multiple waymarks in a small area. There are other examples, however, of clustered waymarks. A sculpture garden, or even a park, that might have dozens of sculptures will yield individual waymarks for each, probably in different categories. Some towns have mural projects with dozens of murals within a small area. Sometimes thing logically belong to a set and need to be waymarked as one group, others separately. Oh, then, for those in the U.S. there is the NRHP Contributing Building category. Some districts have hundreds, even thousands, of qualifying buildings. One can literally waymark every building on a street for blocks. So, it all depends on what the categories are and what makes sense. Cataloging a museum just doesn't make sense to me, but if it does to someone else AND to a category that would accept them, then go for it, I guess.

This is an important matter to consider. In this particular case, it is true that there are very few UU churches outside the US, but there are perhaps a half dozen countries with a few. And, although there is a separate organization for the Canadian ones, there is no reason these could not also be included. Some examples of this approach that come to mind are Legion Post, where there are separate American and Canadian organizations. Or Automobile clubs - not just the AAA familiar in the U.S., but also similar auto clubs in several other countries which are represented with waymarks. My understanding of the "global" criterion is that a category cannot be -arbitrarily- limited geographically, such as having Mexican Fountains instead of the global Fountains category. There are fountains in nearly every country. That does not mean, however, the ALL categories must have potential waymarks in a wide number of countries, and we have dozens like that. For instance, Route 66 is confined to the US, but it is still a legitimate category. One can go down the list and see that there are dozens of categories where waymarks can be found in only one country, or one region of the world. This is part of the rich tapestry that makes up Waymarking and gives it its international flavor! Then, there are other categories that more logically should be separated out based on geography or country. It is easiest to see this in the historical markers category. The first of these were created long before we had group management and peer review, and the original idea was to have one category for historical markers, but the volunteer he headed the category thought that would be overwhelming, so the first one of these was for one state. Others were added over time, and then ones for specific countries. This has proved to be a wise approach, partly because the numbering systems, and criteria differ from US state to state, and country to country, and partly because lumping them all into one omnibus category would be too unwieldy and impossible to manage, with a resulting chaos. There is also something to be said for logical organization of some categories, even if it means geographic limitations. Here, post offices are a good example. I think it is obvious that a separate post office category for each US state would be crazy, but that one for all US post offices works well. It also seems obvious that to have one huge category for all post offices in all countries in the world would not work well. So, there needs to be a balance, depending on the nature of the category. I think the general principle of making categories as inclusive as possible is a good one. If there is a way to broaden a category to be more global and international, then that's probably the way to go in most cases, but there might still be exceptions. Each one must be judged on its own merits. And, just because the target waymarks for a category do not have worldwide distribution, that does not necessarily mean that it should be disqualified, even though it is an important consideration. So, in the case of UU churches, I think there are enough to make a good category, and many are of historic interest as well. If representation, however small, can be had from other countries, then even better. But, I would not exclude such a category on the basis of limited geographic representation alone. That's my 10 won worth . . .

EXCELLENT considerations! With the shrinking field for new Waymarking categories, I think one needs a really GOOD reason to add another! I think there are certainly many good category ideas out there; they just take more work - research and consideration - than they did before.

I'm not even sure what you have in mind. I think there might be a huge problem with lack of prevalent sites. Maybe you could post some examples. I've been through a lot of farm country, and I've seen some barn art, and old farm implements, but that's about all. And the country where I live now has none of that.

Well, since I have created a number of these specific church categories, I might be expected to support this one, which I do. The Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA) was the result of a merger in 1961 of two older groups - the American Unitarian Association (1825) and the Universalist Church of America (1866). There is a separate organization for Canadian churches. There are about 1,000 churches in the U.S. with a few scattered elsewhere. A bulk of them are in New England, as Boston is the HQ. Some are indeed historic churches (including First Parish of Plymouth, the first church founded by the Pilgrims in 1620, and First Parish Boston, that city's first church - both now UU). But, there are many congregations in newer buildings, so there is a lot that is not cross-over of any kind. There are several other church groups with similar sounding names, so the category needs to be carefully defined, but it is in keeping with the groups we have. So, it is not very international and there will be some crossposting, but I see neither of those factors as barriers. (There is already a lot of potential crossposting with churches - old churches, NRHP, country churches, churchyard cemeteries, stained glass windows, bell towers, town clocks, , steeples, outdoor stations of the cross, possibly some of the art categories, etc. And, not every category has to be evenly distributed around the world, which should be an obvious fact.

Our Groundspeak leaders are well aware of this! PQ's have been at the top of the feature request list since almost the beginning, I think. Smartphone apps came later, but are definitely on the priority list. The big thing is development time and resources to do this with a part of the Groundpeak family of "games" that does not directly generate revenue. I'm not sure why PQ's couldn't be easily implemented, since they already exist on Geocaching.com. But, there's a lot I don't understand, obviously. Just seems that this should have been given a higher priority than some of the other things the developers spent time on for Waymarking.com. It is a feature I probably wouldn't use personally, but I understand that for many it would enormously increase participation. Apps, I think, could be developed by third parties, as I believe they are for Geocaching. I think if one of the developers thought there was enough of a market for it to make it worthwhile, we would have one. Honestly, is our potential user base large enough to make development of iPhone and Android apps profitable? I don't know, but I'd love one since I finally jumped onto the Android bandwagon.

When I create a new category, I initially limit my officers to the minimum of two. This makes it a whole lot easier to streamline the process. I try to get two people I have either worked with or know are dependable from past history, activity and interest. I generally have a pretty good idea of where I want to go with the category idea, so I'll write a rough draft, post the idea to the forums, then give the category link to the two officers and ask them to check it out and give any final suggestions. Only when I'm pretty sure we are all in agreement will I send it for that final officer vote, since that locks the category and it can't be edited until AFTER peer review. I send each of them a reminder note that the vote has been called. There should be no surprises at this point. And, yes, it does require 100% Yea votes, including the group leader. Usually they all vote within a day, and it can then be sent to peer review. All of the voting operations need some work, and this is no exception. If the vote fails, there is not notice given, and that's a definite lack. After peer review I may add a few more officers depending on the need and expected volume.

Welcome! I am a US expat teaching English in Korea (there are a lot of us) and active in geocaching. (Currently visiting family in the US, but will be back in a couple of weeks). Geocaching is still relatively unknown here although we have a group of dedicated geocachers, and expats who come an go. There is a "meet and greet" the last week of each month in Seoul. I'm a bit south of there, so don't get up every month, but it is a good way to meet a few of the Seoul-area group. You might also want to visit the web site maintained by one of the Koreans: geocachingkorea.com I would say that 85-90% of the caches in Korea are micro caches, although I've tried to put out mostly good small box caches. Of course there are concentration of urban caches, but there are also plenty of good hiking caches. The concentration of caches is not high, but many are in great places to visit. DNF's are also more likely here. It is difficult to find muggle-free locations (and some are just poorly placed) and even a well-placed cache may go missing due to the high rate of change and construction going on here. I think the concept of cache maintenance may not have caught one here. And, because of the relatively low number of geocachers, finds are usually many months apart. I've found some that haven't been logged in two years! I'm in the city of Cheonan, about 40-50 km south of Seoul. That's 2 hrs. by bus, or 35 min. on the high-speed KTX train which tops out at 300kph. I'd be happy to meet you. Drop me a note anytime. Larry (silverquill)

We have been in Korea for three years and I still can't find out if there are road maps that are compatible with my Garmin Colorado. Almost every vehicle in this country has a GPS unit on the dash, but Garmin has a very small share of the market. So, I get by with my base map for geocaching and Waymarking. I have Mappy for the car. We spent a week (okay, only a few days) on Panay in Feb. but at the other end, near Padan, Anitque. It was absolutely fabulous! There are no geocaches on Panay, although there are a couple on Boracay. Very few geocaches at all in the Philippines. I've put up some waymarks from the part of Panay where we stayed (Phaidon Resort), a few around Manila and Rizal province where we also stayed. Next time maybe we'll get down to Iloilo and see you! (Please hide some caches! They won't let us vacationers do that). Anyway, you can try contacting Garmin directly or do some web searching for maps. There are some third party map suppliers. But, for general geocaching, probably the base map is good enough. Gets me by here fine, and there as well.

There is a Waymarking "category" for Police Memorials. I did a quick search, though, and didn't find any near the twin cities, but you might take a look and see what's close.

Well, I'm certainly not a "power cacher." What's the point? Ran across someone here in Korea claiming to be power caching and logged 116 in one day. Take my word for it, that is not possible here! These were not "power trails." Some had a 3.0/3.5 rating, so had been disabled. Today I went to and area where he had claimed some of those 117, and found only 2 of 7, with a pretty high degree of certainty that at least some of those DNF's really were missing. But, guess what? There was NO log entry on the physical logs of any of these caches. I've seen other logs missing an entry from these false claims of a find. I don't really know what the policy is, but I've notified our volunteer reviewer.

So, are you teaching them how to use a slide rule, too? Sure, the transition to new technology leaves behind the old, and I do think there is a danger in becoming too dependent on technology. Some of the old skills need to be preserved, taught and passed on. Technology will not always be there. Imagine some trailblazer, though, lamenting the fact that his children no long no how to read the animal tracks, skat, bushes, rocks and trees, but now are overly dependent on the compass they bought at the trading post, and some maps given to them by the new trapper. Anyway, as has been pointed out, the skills you mentioned can be, and are used in geocaching sometimes. It is a fun challenge. And, the technology, in some ways is incidental, yet still part of the fun. Goecaching has been a very enriching experience. Could I have done it with only map and compass, or would I have? Doubtful, very doubtfull.

Don't get on the forums often. My wife and I are in the city of Cheonju, about 20 miles south of Pyeongtek and Osan. We both teach English in the public schools here, and will soon mark our second anniversary of arriving in Korea. We plan to be here several more years. We both cache, attend events when they jive with our schedule, and now trying to increase the cache population. I have about 45 caches placed from the DMZ to Mokpo. Hope to get a few more out on Jejudo in a few weeks. Always glad to meet new geocachers, whether Koreans, expatriates, or visitors.