MountainWoods

I've always like LJS, except the ones that don't follow corporate guidelines and end up undercooking the fish. (Yuck!) Like the one in Carthage, Missouri. But most of them are okay. Back in the day, I liked Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips even better. Seemed less greasy. Like Captain D's. Our nearby "big" town of Cassville recently had the LJS/Taco Bell remodeled and it ended up just being a Taco Bell. They had removed everything LJS. Ominous warning, I guess. Now if they'd put in a Captain D's there, I wouldn't mind so much. In fact I'd like it.

Also, if you're running it on Windows 10 it's much more likely to die than on Windows XP or 7 (don't know 8). Windows 10 stinks. On ice! In fact, it's probably because it was trying to play a sound that caused Windows 10 to close it. Next time: Linux!!!!!

Got several notifications of candidates to review, which was about the number of candidates in my Review Queue (minus one or two that had already been reviewed).

BTW, I do not have an issue with the proposed category including fire towers that would also be allowed in the existing FT category. My opinion (and it's just mine) is that the WM community has gone a bit overboard in insisting on mutual exclusion in every potential category. However, there is the consideration of getting the new category (no matter how wonderful it is) past the increasingly obstinate WM community. To use an analogy, it's kind of like a prosecutor wondering if they should take a murderer to trial on skimpy evidence; knowing that if the jury thinks that there is reasonable doubt, then the prosecutor has failed miserably - double jeopardy, you know! They can never try the murderer again. If you submit the category for peer review a second time with the inclusion of all lookout towers (including acceptable Fire Towers), and it fails, then a third attempt (excluding the FTs) might be looked at by those who don't carefully read the description (about 80% of folks) as just a third attempt to put through a category that has already been rejected twice. Is that unfair? You bet it is! But it's an uphill battle trying to get folks to look deeper than just the surface in any case. On the other hand, if you eliminate the acceptable FTs on the second peer review and it passes, then you have a category that is not all that you really wanted it to be. I've already said I'm for the overlap. But the above is just some thoughts for you to scratch your head with....

1) Typical size of photo in MB per POSTED and per VISITED (if they differ, or just say "same") (guesstimate) 450 Mb. I use Irfanview to shrink the short side of the photo to 600 dots. I used to do that mainly because of very slow upload speeds. (Download was 1.5 Mbits/sec, but upload was only slightly faster than old dial-up!). Since I batch process, I still do this even though upload speeds are very fast. Exception: I don't shrink photos that need high resolution to read wording - signs, maps, etc. 2) Typical number of photos per waymark you POST (guesstimate) 3.5 (3 to 4) 3) Typical number of waymarks you create with a same set of photos (explained below in a bit more detail) (guesstimate) Differs too widely to make any kind of estimate. 4) Typical number of photos per waymark you VISIT 2 5) Approximate number of waymarks you have POSTED and VISITED Posted 1677; Visited 2695

I'm for this category, with the only exclusion being those that are already allowed in the existing category - the publicly accessible ones. No reason for overlap with that. [You can think of this new potential category as the typical "catch all" (such as Signs of History) to make up for too strict requirements for similar existing categories(s).] I know of two such fire towers that has the aforementioned fencing all around the base, both within a short drive of me. There would have been a third less than a half mile from me! except that the land owner was too nervous of folks climbing it (fence or not) and suing them; so it was removed in 1992.

I once waymarked a really old water tower in a nearby town here, and a few weeks later it had disappeared! I knew there was a newer water tower outside of town, but I had no idea that the old one was slated for destruction. In retrospect, it was a good idea that I had waymarked it. Some of the only photos of the old tower are in the waymark. Your disappeared business "lives on" in Waymarking.

I concur with DougK's analysis. On my handheld GPS (not really made for road use, but it can follow routable maps), I downloaded an OpenStreetMap US map so I would have something routable on my handheld GPS. Fine. It seems to work okay. However, it turns into a comedy routine when you're out in the country driving along. Hmmm. A point of interest for an Arby's restaurant in the middle of a slough! And look, a gas station in a thick stand of pines. The problem with public contributor based things is: the public! You are going to have folks that are meticulous about their data contributions, some maybe even OCD folks (which is fine), but you're also going to get folks of the ilk "Whatever!" that can't be bothered to check the coordinates that they took, nor the coordinates that they entered when contributing. Fine. God made them that way. But IMO they shouldn't be data contributors!! If you want another example of the problem of public contributor, non-moderated data, think FindAGrave. A lot of it is pretty good. But a lot of it seems to be from the "Whatever!!" crowd. (E.g. I can't tell you how many times that FAG has led me to a potential centenarian grave when it turns out the deceased lived from, say, 1884 to 1944, not 1994!! Ugh.)

I checked back about 10 minutes after I posted and I was finally able to get into Waymarking.com. Since everything else was working fine, all I can guess is that the site was temporarily not responding for whatever reason.

I can get to anywhere else on the web, so it's not my (new) internet provider. (Note that I'm posting in the forums. Duh!) But when I try to go to Waymarking.com all I get is waiting for response from Waymarking.com. Anyone else having trouble getting in?

Make sure your browser is not blocking either cookies or pop-ups for the Waymarking.com domain.

I have it on my calendar as a recurring event - it's that important. (Even though I have so many hobbies that I don't get around to doing Waymarking -- especially in the summer heat -- as much as I would like.)

Just noticed this topic. It rightly belongs in the Waymarking Features and Functions forum, since we're talking issues about the site and not Getting Started with Waymarking.

So I guess that International Waymarking Day was a bust this year. Oh well. Nothing to get more disgruntled about than we already were.

I don't think they were. There were 2 of them, and the only thing in common was that the decline was done by a Groundspeak admin. Hope it was just a 2 time fluke or something.

This just started happening to me, and only in a few cases. But it might be something to look into. When I get my emails for Waymark reviews, I always look for re-submissions first, so that I can look at (1) whether the Waymark has been reviewed between when the email was sent and when I am looking at it (often the case); and if not (2) I look at the managing group's Past Activity to see why this Waymark was declined. There are several reasons for this: I don't want to review and approve a Waymark that another officer has detected something wrong, and which was re-submitted without fixing the problem (happens more than you think). I want to make sure that I am consistent with the other officers in what we look for in the category submissions. Lately when I do this I am seeing a decline from "Groundspeak admin" and when I try to view the comments for the above reasons, I get an error message to the effect: You must be a member of this group to view the comments. Duh, not only am I a member of the group, I'm an officer in it!! That's why I'm trying to inspect the decline comments for the above-named reasons. Why would a decline by a Groundspeak admin disallow other group officers from viewing the reasons for the decline? How are we to determine if the problem was fixed, and make sure that we are consistent with the thinking of this Groundspeak admin on this declined Waymark?

When it regularly takes 10 days and more to get reviews, in my opinion the group that manages Firehouses needs an injection of active members as officers. There's essentially only 1 active officer, and not all that active, as attested by the > 10 day waits in all cases.

Natural Cave Entrances Managers [who manage the Cave Entrances (Natural) category] I'll let you figure out why this is a good group for the Gruntled.

This year it was last Saturday, the eighth. Did you remember the occasion? I haven't been out Waymarking much for the last few months because of the heat and other things in the way. But I couldn't resist getting at least one Waymark posting and visit or two in on International Waymarking Day. It was a drizzly day and we had plans for most of the day, including meeting our oldest daughter at the George Washington Carver National Monument for their Prairie Days (in the rain this year). But there's always something around that needs to be Waymarked, so I found a nice Public Access Lands area not far from the NM to Waymark. As to visits, there are several existing Waymarks (including some of my own) at the GWC NM. What all did you do to celebrate the IWD?

Yep. I'd change the default. That way when visitors go looking for it, the default image shows what they should find, not what they would have found some years ago. I've done this with several waymarks.

I tried to use the app on my 25 day long Alaska trip, but again, it would not stay logged in. I would click the Nearest Waymarks link and it would tell me to log in, so I would. Then I'd click on the Nearest Waymarks again, and it would tell me to login again. I tried this at different locations on the trip, and with 2 different browsers, and could never get it to work. Somehow the app is either (1) not handing off the login information correctly to the underlying web page, or (2) "forgetting" that you have already logged into the underlying web page. Note: Using the Waymarking web page directly (kinda tricky on a Motorola Mini Droid) worked fine. So there was nothing wrong with my login or logging in. Only the app has the problem, on both Chrome and Ad-Block Browser (essentially Firefox). In fact, it is still doing this today when I'm at home and connected to WiFi. I cannot even mark a visit to anything because it tells me I'm not logged in. This really needs to be fixed to make this proxy app useful. Edit: I've even stayed logged into Waymarking on one tab of the browser, then used the app link and the same browser, so that the app is on one link and the regular Waymarking page is on the other tab. No go. It is not the browser's fault, not Waymarking's fault; it is clearly the app. "forgetting" that you logged in.

If you make sure your photos are being geotagged, you can use GeoSetter to see where they were taken. Needed: Any smart phone with a camera, or an expensive camera-with-built-in-GPS. Most of us already have the former. GeoSetter is free. At my age, geotagging has become a necessity! ("Where in the world did I take that??") In fact, even in my younger days I would end up with old pre-digital photo prints and wonder "where in the world did I take that?" -- but paper doesn't talk to me.

If you use a Garmin GPSr, use BaseCamp to record all of your waymarks or those of others that you are interested in. It's easy to use and allows you to group waypoints (such as waymarks, geocaches, etc.) in multiple ways.

Ha! We're watching through Twilight Zone on Netflix during our "relaxy time" after doing a bunch of farm work. Doing a lot of reviewing, but haven't gotten out to visit or post new waymarks in over a month. For one thing, it's been tooooo hot. Plan to do some soon, though. Edit: I don't know about yuns, but I was around to watch TZ when the episodes were first aired, though as a young dude.

I agree with fi67. I only see the map about 45% of the time, which is really annoying as a reviewer. But I'm on 1.5 Mbits per second currently. We'll see what happens when the 256 Mbits/sec. fiber optic line comes in. (Soon. They keep saying.)