Razak

True, you could, heck I can do that with Geocaching... people do=P it doesn't mean it is easy none the less... Some would be easier than others (Buildings, landmarks, etc)... but some still may need searching once you get out of the car (penny smashers, berry spots, earthcaches, etc). I don't think that differentiates Waymarking so much from Geocaching that a lot of the sites are more And yes getting photos developed from a disposable camera is valid... however, I'm still not a fan of forcing people to get additional equipment just to prove to someone else that they visited... it doesn't matter if they visited or not. Who cares? Many of these waymarks don't even get visited, people should be frickin thrilled if someone logs a waymark instead of trying to drive them off. Heck takin a picture doesn't even always work... I can take a picture of me standing in front of a McDonald's with my GPS... that doesn't mean I went into it does it? How does that prove a visit?

I suppose this begs the question... would you rather scare away people who are just coming to Waymarking? Or those wanting to make categories? McDonald's (and what it means for the site) is already driving away people from Waymarking as the original poster already said. I'm not sure if ditching it would really be driving away that many people here.... I don't mind the majority deciding what is good for the site... it isn't a 51% majority... we are talking 2/3 to 3/4 majority which means the category would need to be pretty bad to get that many down votes. (And its not like Groundspeak would just switch ballet votes like they do in Ohio & Florida) And like I said it would have plenty of opportunity for the onwers to not only stop their category from getting taken off, but also resubmitting if they can later drum up support... it's mostly a way to get unwanted categories out of the way... otherwise this site will just continue to add and add and add and add and add and we will be swiming through hundreds of thousands of useless categories (Which btw too many categories will also drive away potential waymarkers, which is something that needs to be avoided, especially if these categories we are driving them away for are categories most people wouldn't touch with a 20 foot pole.) I don't mind the freedom we have, it is still there, in fact I would wager category removal would be few and far between... like I said most people probably don't even bother putting a down arrow on a category unless they really really hate it... so we are really only talking about a few categories that everyone already complains about. And as much as I'd like an ignore feature as well.. that wouldn't even solve the problem of driving away people who don't want this site to be nothing more than a number whore's corporate wet dream.

Well I don't know the story behind what happened, but I'd say it's probably best people don't see em still.... what happens once doesn't happen always and could have just happened because of rules involved in the category involved... may not occur in other categories.

Who as in "which category were these waymarks from?" or who as in "what individual declined my waymark?" I think there is something to not telling people what individual declined a particular waymark to prevent some sort of "retribution" one might try to make in retaliation... however I do think they should provide a reason why it didn't get through if that is why you look for this... only reason I can think of why you would need to know who is that you want to know why and they definitely should provide that.

I'm not sure if opposite is the right word... to me this seems like "along the same lines but not quite." I don't think a lot of the categories could be found on Google Maps, though I could be incorrect I guess I don't know what all you can find on google maps=P For instance Penny Smashers, Rails to Trails, Berry Picking, Graffiti, Movie locations, any of the Waymarking games, etc... these are perfectly valid categories in my eyes and are not easily found on google maps. (You could probably find some stuff like trails, but would you know they used to be rails?) What you are looking for here isn't hidden per say, but many of them are unknown, and at the very least should be interesting. It still has some of the flavour of geocaching... (essentially the virtual caches and earthcaches of geocaching moved over and expanded upon... so are those things considered the opposite of geocaching? Think the point is the same).

I have said for months that I agree that some McDonald's are worth marking, but no where near all of them are. I am sure someone creative could come up with a category, without McDonald's in the name in which some of the cooler McDonald's could be listed. (I can think of "Fast Food Aquariums" off the top of my head). But i don't like the blanket category, most McDonald's aren't worth visiting for food, let alone for fun. My suggestion explained this. It wouldn't be based on how many people visit it, how many people up it, or even down it, or how many waymarks are in it. It would be based purely on the percentage of ups and downs (you could even give a new category immunity for like 3 months while people visit it, and perhaps even add that a category nees at least 15 or so votes in order to get put on probation). If a category gets put on probation after all this, the owner/officers can then go to the category discussion area and maybe promote their category in hopes of getting people to vote up on them. Perhaps they could have a "Probation" category for people interested in making sure the bad go, and the good stay. (For me I would be more inclined to vote up arrow on a category I had no interest in but thought it was a good idea if I knew it was in trouble.) Is my suggestion perfect? no but the idea of having some way for the community to decide if a category should be removed I think is a valid one. I for one jumped on the "bandwagon" the minute I found out someone actually made McDonald's a category. And if you read my post, I pointed out two others that probably should go.. Wal-mart and the Pikachu sightings (though I actually think this is a pretty cool idea, I think it should probably go because it is unloggable, I haven't actually voted up or down on this one only because I am on the fence on whether unloggable waymarks should be around)

I agree fully... as someone who doesn't own a digital camera, nor can I afford to buy a new one (unless someone here makes a donation to "Support the college waymarker foundation" that I will start in my behalf). Basically what you would be doing by requiring photo for waymarks & logs is taking me off the site. (Which I suppose maybe some of you don't like me so that may work!) Though I could just sit here and create endless categories but never make a single waymark or log one because no one will let me *cry* I totally get the need for proof so that everyone here can be a numbers whore just like in geocaching.com.. but could we please not require additional equipment... I already had to pay $100+ for a GPS unit to play geocaching/Waymarking... why should I have to double it just for Waymarking? If you did make a requirement for photo, I think photo alone should do and not include picture of yourself (which takes away anonymity which would also take away me wanting to actually play Waymarking because I don't want to post a picture of myself online unless I have to and I don't think I should have to here... not to mention that I also would waymark alone (haven't had time to) so getting myself would be interesting... although I could take nice headshots, not sure how much of the waymark object would be in there!) and as previously mentioned the gps in the picture just looks dumb and makes it a wasted picture. I would prefer we found another way to prove that people visit a waymark if we are that gun-ho into being number whores. My best idea is to create a password for a waymark sort of like what is done with virtual caches. Maybe have a waymarker create a word from a nearby plaque, or store across the street that the logger would have to put in in order to get log credit. This would create an issue with remembering stuff, but if Groundspeak went and made some ways to save favorites on PDAs or such like you can in geocaching then this could be easily looked up. (btw I don't think programming this type of functionality would really be that difficult either). This may not be a complete solution, but I think would be of great help to those who don't require a picture but still want to have proof.

I personally try to avoid picture requirements on any category I start for the sole reason that I don't have a digital camera and thusly I can't log or anything these ones which require a picture. (If any of you who require pictures on categories that shouldn't require it, please send me $150 for a digital camera since you seem to have the idea that everyone has the spare cash to spend on these things... I'm a college student, I sometimes would like to have money in order to eat) I have taken it personally that people have put up McDonald's and Wal-Mart in this site and thusly visit the new categories section on almost a daily basis so that I can vote down any chain restaurant, store, etc category. I haven't figured out a reason for why these categories should exist here except maybe someone wants a category but can't think of an idea. I like the ideas to have a feature to automatically email you upon new peer review category. I like the idea of featured waymarks/categories. And I like the idea of totally ignoring certain waymark categories that you have no interest in to clear out the bloat of a search result. I think one of the bigger problems this site may not quite face yet, but will face if people continue adding categories is bloat. This site has the potential to have far too much. Which means a few things... either there needs to be more restrictions to get a category in the site, there needs to be higher standards by the community on what we vote in, and vote everything else nay in peer review (only vote yea on things that YOU find interesting not things you think someone else may find interesting, the problem with how it is currently worded is that there are 6.5 billion people on the planet and someone will likely be interested in ANYTHING, if we vote yea on what we would be interested in and nay on what we wouldn't, or abstain from maybe local historical marks that won't affect us, then we will get more accurate categories of what the community wants), or there needs to be some better filtering logic. The arrow up thing is nice, but what about popularity, or new, or ignore, etc in conjunction with other filters (comboing arrow ups with ignores and new category so that you won't see unpopular when looking for new). One other issue with the arrow system of filteration that I've noticed with myself is that I will only vote on a category I like or really really really despise (such as McDonald's and Wal-Mart). I won't go through every category and vote down on it if I don't like it, or even hate it. I don't have that kind of time (especially since there are multiple pages that I seem to have to mark it on... why not just have it on the initial page like bookmarking a waymark?). Can we have an option to perhaps arrow down everything as a default and then the things that get arrowed up would actually mean those are the liked categories, not just the ones that aren't especially heinous? The way it is now will give no sense of how well liked a category actually is for the most part, just how annoying it is to arrow down everything.... I also agree with the sense of doing things... one of the reasons I don't like the McDonald's category is that I have no interest in going to every McDonald's I pass on the road. And yes I can ignore them, but to me part of what this should be is a fun game where I want to look at all the cool things that are out there in the world. What is cool about McDonald's... that you can essentially ditch your kid there for an hour? And why does this mean that we should want to visit this place? I personally have a video arcades, moreso because they are dieing than anything else and I would like to know where they are because they are increasingly more difficult to find. This is as corporate as I'll get... my other categories (such as the one I'm currently trying to get through Building Buildings) are more games, something to do, something cool. I don't get that sense on a lot of waymarks... I can't even visit pikachu sightings....he won't be there more than once likely if it really is just a sighting. The rules for geocaching may have come over time, and maybe these are growing pains. But at a certain point it seemed that geocaching.com actually integrated these rules to a certain extent. Why is it that the feeling I get from the Waymarking.com staff is that "we won't establish rules" ever? I understand if we ar ein growing pains, but I don't even get the feeling that if the community decided on rules that Waymarking would back up the community. since this is a somewhat related note... I personally would like to see a way to get rid of horrible categories... perhaps if a category has a certain percentage of down votes for a couple of weeks (say 66-75% down for 2 weeks) the category will go on probation. If after another 2 weeks the category can't change the percentage then it is removed from the site. (the owner could try to muster up the category again after maybe a month downtime and if he can get it past peer review, then it starts over... to do this maybe the owner would still have the category name so no one else could use it, it just wouldn't show on the site, some sort of temporary holding area). This would solve two problems at once. It would help reduce bloat, and it would help get rid of some unwanted categories (this is a bigger problem for categories such as McDonald's which never had to go through the peer review process). Currently there isn't a way to remove a category if the community wants. Maybe there should be... even if a category gets through peer review, the community is dynamic... people in it will change as time goes by... and because of that... ideas of what category is acceptable will change... this site should be able to reflect that.

Ghost Towns is already a category I believe

That would be really sweet if some people had photos of the previous building and/or the demolition of the previous building too... though that would be one of those fill in things that loggers would have to add on their own because this certainly wouldn't work for the majority of buildings out there. Only need one more officer to get this category into peer review. Thanks Ray for joinin up=)

I am opening up enrollment to the Group Page. So if you want to join head on over. If you don't want to be an officer in the group, make a note of it on the enrollment page and I won't promote you.

Looking for 2 officers to help maintain the Video Arcades category. You can view the category Here. The category is already made and is in no need of peer review. Just need a couple of officers before June 1 to keep it alive. The category currently has no approval process so there is really little to no work involved to upkeep it. If you are a work-a-holic and actually want to do work, the only work I currently involve is making sure waymarks are really video arcades and that they are submitted in the proper format, but these aren't major deals. I could also be convinced to create an approval process, but I don't find much reason to have one for this category, so if you want it, you would do most of the approving. As a side note, I'm not entirely sure how to connect a group with a category so if anyone has info on that please help me out =P Razak

Ok this is kind of a repeat proposal from before the whole grouping thing... The idea is to track large buildings as they get built. There would be a minimum of 6 to 8 stories for this category just to keep the category less busy, get rid of residentials and strip malls and such. Plus, having a 6+ story building means there would be more time to go visit it while it is still under construction. I don't exactly know what to do with a site once the construction is complete, maybe a sub-category with previous buildings could be created to archive the constructions because I think the pictures of the buildings would be interesting to see. I'm certainly willing to hear what people think on this topic. To create waymark: * Take coordinates * Take a photo of the site (if a picture can be found of a site before construction begins, this would be prefered) * Provide name of the building, and specifics of it. (what will it be used for, when it started, projected completion date, any interesting info you can find on it would be great) Possible Variables: * type of building (commercial, residential, industrial, mixed) * Number of Stories * Start Date * Projected Completion Date * Projected Cost of Construction * Website (if the building has one) Logging the Waymark: * Take a picture while you visit if it is still under construction (not required but certainly recommended) * Try to fill in any info on the Building that the waymark owner may have missed I'm open to Feedback to better round this out. Currently looking for 2 officers to get this category off the ground. I suspect that there would be a decent amount of management given the size requirement and possible archive, so someone willing to do a little work now and then to help keep it up to date would be preferred so I didn't have to do all the work (though I don't mind doin most of it, just would like help if possible).

My post wasn't about "there is nothing interesting"... not quite sure how that got accross... My point is closer to the fact that Waymarking seems like they are doing too many things at once and I'm not sure if it should. I kind of think that it would be similar to say Newsvine.com if they did News and say Fictional stroies at launch... both are somewhat similar things I guess given that they are both forms of writing, but instead they are offering just the news.... I guess I'm just wishing to seperate the hunt stuff from the directory stuff into two seperate sites. I don't mind a directory, maybe it is a good idea, I don't want that mussin up the rest of the site. I personally don't mind that there is only a single waymark in my area. I realize the site isn't officially live quite yet. It's no where near that. I don't want to particularly go out and create waymarks right now in my Waymarking/geocaching career either. I suppose you could ask "well how many geocaches have I created" The answer there would be none as well, yet I don't give a crap either way. I apologize if it is winter here so any of the interesting spots are cold and that leaves me with McDonalds which, many of which may likely get me suspended from the boards. What if I enjoy finding what other people place, and because of that don't appreciate the directory that this site has now become, and wish for the original promise of virtual caches, earth caches and locationless caches to return? I am personally starting to get upset about not being able to have any new virtual caches on geocaching.com because I've visited a few and I liked them and now those are pretty much going extinct because there isn't a real way to do that on Waymarking.com and even if you could, who cares? I'd get a log on a directory site... zippity doo da. Come on guys! Let's go find all the businesses in the yellow pages! Yippee!

Just a few minutes after my last post defending Waymarking.com to the earthcachers I'm gonna start a similar topic. I don't necessarily agree with the earthcaches, I don't think their particular reasons for returning to geocaching are all that great. I think eventually when everything is moved over and everything is working Waymarking... well the problems the earthcachers are experiencing would fall into place.... My real issue has become that Waymarking.com is not the place for earthcaches, virtual caches, locationless caches, and maybe benchmarks. More and more Waymarking is seeming to be a directory first, a hunt not even down the road really... the old caches were never intended to be a "here's where there's a mcdonald's! See if you can find it!" but a "Here is an interesting place that we just can't get a cache at can you find it?" or a "here's a cool type of area, can you find something similar?" Now Waymarking.com resembles a "Here's a place." There's no finding involved, in many categories there is no challenge involved, or even thinking. This site is totally contrary to what these caches were originally supposed to be. I was excited by the prospect of a new site that better organized the locationless caches... I do think that earthcaches, while they have a very educational element, are kind of a type of locationless cache as well, and while I don't think virtual caches quite fit, I understand the logic of the move. But now that this site is looking less like the new place for locationless caching and more of a "yellow pages with GPS coords" I gotta ask, could we get a locationless caching site like promised please? This is NOT it!

Maybe, but if they do leave it just because people are using it as a stat buffer, then they dadgum well better break down stats somehow to show it. If someone has 5000 waymarks found, I wanna know if it is because they sit and go to chains across their state because that is unimpressive, and even worse it makes me think less of these people... I think this will especially become an issue if they decide to combine Waymarking with geocaching stats... I think there will be a lot of geocachers who resent people who pass them up because someone is going to die at a young age from hamburger poisoning. Either that or perhaps a happy medium would be that if you thumbs down a category, maybe your logs in that category would not count to how many visits a category has received when deciding if it should delete it. Ya know the more I have to argue against the McDonald's categories of this site, the more distasteful I find this site as a whole... A site is only as good as it's worst features, and right now this site is not looking very good to me anymore... too bad too... was actually quite excited about Waymarking....

Well theoretically if benchmarking and earthcaching (and virtual caches and locationless caches) are really that popular, people will move with them. Right now maybe part of the problem is that life goes on over at geocaching.com. Many people looking for these features still get them over at geocaching.com and probably don't realize there are more at Waymarking.com because of it. If they would take down all of these categories from geocaching and move them to Waymarking and have a large announcement (both in forums and on front page of sites, and maybe in pocket queries) then people would move over to Waymarking. I think that is what Groundspeak is hoping for at least. I think they are hoping that some of the geocaching features that are moving are going to be the features that get Waymarking on its feet. But as it stands why would any geocacher move here for those features when they have a few problems with Waymarking? There are moe still at geocaching.... There are more features at geocaching (mapping, poecket queries, stat recording, better search or at least one that works)... and that is assuming that they even know Waymarking is here and know that there are more here... I think this may be the primary reasons that Waymarking isn't as popular... it's not because it has less people going to it, it is because that if you are an earth cacher and a benchmarker and all these are still on geocaching and geocaching still has more and is working better, why move?

I agree that there needs to be a way to weed out categories, but I'm not sure if stagnant will necessarily work. Depending on how they do stats for Waymarking, it may turn out that people will go and create and log waymarks that they don't even like only for the stats. This would create a problem especially for certain categories which have a ton of waymarks and a ton of opportunity to add more never going away even if only 5 or 6 people out of 1,000,000 actually want the category <cough>mcdonald's</cough>. How to weed out the unpopular I don't know. It doesn't seem totally right to say that once a category gets 5,000 thumbs down that it is out... maybe it can be some sort of percentage. Maybe a category gets 6 months where they don't have to worry about it, and then after that if they have 10 times the thumbs down as they have thumbs up, it is on probation and if after another month it can't change this ratio it is removed or archived. They could then have a section for probationary categories for people to give a look over or something to see if they want to give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. This may work.... because really if Mcdonald's has 10,000 thumbs down should it stay because it has 100 thumbs up? I agree that the site shouldn't be about popularity, but at the same time, is there a certain point where a category is far too unpopular?

Well I think it would still be nice for blanket rankings.. then if you find other categories in that category that you like later you could thumbs up that one category and still have the blanket on the rest of the category. An easy filter they could probably add would be a thumbs down filter. Meaning anything you thumbs down will be filtered out. This would essentially make your list... sure it would be more work than just going through and taking your favorites like a bookmark list, but they can do that as well. I think it would promote people actually voting if they did something like this (either show just thumbs up or don't show thumbs down). You are right though, what most people like isn't necessarily indicative of what is good. I think the music industry alone has been able to prove that they can make everyone like stuff that isn't good.

LoL hope you are kidding. The rest of the world is more than happy to navigate using street names and maps.. the new car gps units that actually come in the car are usually connected to onstar and such and that gets the person locations and the person can then listen to "turn left in .5 miles" voices telling them where to go... those are the gps units that will get to the average joe, not sure why the average joe would wanna come here when it is all downloaded directly to their car while they are driving. Now someone who buys a GPS unit for their car seperately might not have as good of a database to draw upon... but these people may already be hooked into geocaching... The other alternative is that someone buys the gps because it is somewhat easier than dealing with mapquest, to which I think they'd stay away from Waymarking anyway.

It isn't A&W in particular that I am offended by, it is the type of category that it is that offends me. There is just so many ways to find this crap, so many sites dedicated to it... I think alot of Maps made for GPS even have this type of info easily acccesable (not sure, don't use maps myself).... I just don't understand why Waymarking has to turn into another one. To me Waymarking can be so much more cool than just another directory and I think Groundspeak is making a horrible mistake if this is what they want to make out of it. For instance, I can go into business/commerce>Restaurants and go to Revolving Restaurants... I mean that is sweet... you can't get that type of listing anywhere else... can you name all the other places I can get a listing of A&W for? Off the top of my head I will give you Google, Yahoo, MSN, Mapquest, A&W.com, and anywho... those are just the places that I can find without actually searching for directories... I bet there are 10 times this many directories on the internet already that would tell me where to find an A&W! An imagine how many more places will tell me where to find a McDonald's considering they are way more widespread. I can give Groundspeak kudos for coming up with a new idea for a site, and many of their features and planned features are very cool. However, is this really the place for another directory? What makes this directory worth going to over say Google? Do you honestly think GPS locations is going to be the only feature that brings in a wider audience ? (If so maybe we should be harping on Google to make GPS coords more prominent) I'm not sure, what is worse about the scenario is that I wonder if Groundspeak will be able to pull in enough people to offset the number of geocachers they are losing by making Waymarking a directory instead of a new type of "hunt." I personally have no need of a directory. I've mentioned in another thread that maybe they should make another site to be a directory and leave Waymarking to those who wish to have a new way to hunt. Maybe this is the real problem with A&W, McDonald's, and Wal-mart... a difference in opinion that this site should be about a new type of a hunt vs an opinion that this site should be yet another mediocre directory in a sea of mediocre directories.

Yeah they don't quite look like that anymore for the most part but they are still out there (Dance Dance Revolution is arcade and looks nothing like the old arcades obviously). As for the skee-ball places that one is difficult... obviously no chucky cheese... but alot of the old school arcades have added some of those type of things on the side in hopes of drawing people in...

A similar to or "people who liked this category also liked..." may also help for finding new categories. It is going to suck if there are 1,000,000,000 categories and you are only looking for a few different types, even with the subcategories, I bet it could be difficult to wade through. On the other hand if you have a Lighthouse category that has Landlocked Lighthouses in the Similar panel that would own. I'd also like to be able to give the thumbs down on entire supercategories so I don't have to go through and thumbs down every single category in it if it is a particularly heinous supercategory. For instance a Chain Restaurants category would be nice to give the thumbs down and theirfore get all the McDonald's and A&Ws out of the way without having to go into each category individually and do it. Personally I could also stand to see the popularity filter set higher than it is. Maybe another 10% standard. I mean premium users can change it anyway but it does make the popularity thing a bit more meaningful... (I think it is currently set at 80%?) Could also do it so that Premium members are started at 80% but non-premium have it set at 60% but can move it 10% either way. Kind of a happy medium. (that might be difficult to program=P) There definitely is a possibility this site gets to be too much. I honestly wish that Groundspeak would have a directory site that would be for commercial crap and leave Waymarking for more interesting, lesser known categories that people might get more of a "hunt" out of.

everyone can access it but there is still a lot of features not in yet and there is a lot that people can't do (Like start new categories)

I think a general Groundspeak search would be used for those who actually WANTED to get it all, and not just one section of caches. This would be for those who are going out for the day and wanna get every cache and waymark along the way. I think if you don't wanna do Waymarking, you'd still go to geocaching.com like always and the waymarks wouldn't be a part of it. As for how do they get people to find it. Well hopefully they have plans... it is still in beta test and often companies won't bother to advertise the beta test too heavily. They usually try to draw in just enough people to test the product and not too many as to overload their resources. I don't think they are quite to the point of launch yet so no worries... hopefully by the time they launch officially they will have more going around so people will become more familiar... I would like to see something similar to the pocket queries for Waymarking as well so that we can get more refined searches. Like previously stated, they are missing a lot still.. hopefully this is something that is added later.