My Opinion

[+The Leprechauns]

So does this mean that now, in addition to all the good virtuals.. er.. I mean waymarks, we can expect to see the previously rejected virtuals... er.. I mean waymarks... in categories such as "Sneakers in the woods", "Tennis balls", and "Rotting animal carcasses"? This may sound smart-a** but I am serious. Would those categories be allowed if someone wanted to create them?

See the thread where the process for accepting new categories is being discussed. In a nutshell, proposals will be refined through community input, then put up for a vote, with some sort of veto override power for Groundspeak. Hopefully, a "sneaker in the woods" category would be soundly defeated in the voting process. If not, it would likely be rated down so that one could ignore it through effective use of the popularity filter. Edited August 19, 2005 by The Leprechauns

[+4agers]

OK, I've purposely stepped back from this a few days to think about it. I like it and am excited to see what this turns into. I see it being both useful and fun.

 

Useful?

So I head out to the city of Cleveland and and can download a list of waypoints that point out where all the artistic guitars are placed around the city. Import them into my GPS and I'm rocking. Or... since I have also downloaded all the free wireless hotspots I can find a spot and surf my heart out. I doubt I would log a find on a particular item in this case.

 

Fun?

I've also downloaded all the beautiful views and interesting spots located in my nearest national forest. I can hike my little heart out, see some awesome spots and really enjoy my day. These I see me logging as I would a cache.

 

I've always said that I wasn't in this for the numbers... and I'm not. I do have to admit that I would like to get those Fun Finds credited to my geocaching stats.

[+Hydnckr]

I suppose this is where you would use your filtering options. If you don't like rotting animal caracasses or McD's or tennis balls suspended from bicycles upside in a town that starts with a W, then you don't look at that stuff. I also think this is where the rating system will come in handy. PERHAPS a category owner will someday have the power (or at least the power to suggest to TPTB) that a certain waymark be removed from the site once it registers a certain number of 1 star ratings. This would be the way that the waymark community could govern itself. I started that sentence by thinking about the gentlemens club in the pub/inns section an ended up by including a possible restaurant that might have poor food or horrible service that generates the 1 star from the waypointer. OR, start a category about restaurants in your area that people shouldn't visit because of one reason or another.

 

Also, this is a BETA thing, I think that's been made clear, it's less than a week old. If I had to start training for a new job, I'd be intimidated, scared, frustrated and whatever else because as FindingFraggleRock stated earlier, Change is Difficult. I want this site to be cool, be fun and be useful but so far I'm disappointed in a couple things but I'm hanging in for the long run.

 

Ultimately this thing will be awesome, not in 2 weeks, maybe not even in a year, but it will happen. Everyone will figure out how to use it in their own way. It's not Geocaching.

 

Now if I may make a left turn in my comments.........

As far as a solution for virtual caches. I have found some cool ones and some very crappy ones, I'm sure everyone has. (And I totally understand that this creates more work) But suppose a virt was temporarily approved, had a rating system applied to the cache page and received a probationary period. If this virt sustained an average of a 3 rating in that period of time it would become a fully approved virtual cache and would be allowed to remain. Cachers that visited it wouldn't be afraid to express their opinion cause they already received a smiley that can't be taken away but overall it would improve the caches in that area. Heck, do that for all the new caches, and for the existing virts. I didn't say it wasn't a time consuming solution but it's a possible solution.

 

Hope my rambling makes some sense.

Thanks

[+beckerbuns]

If there's a box, it's a geocache. If there's no box, such as a locationless, virtual, webcam, or earthcache, its a waymark.

Does this mean my webcam cache is destined to move over to the new site?

[+halffast]

The more I read in the forums the more I dont understand.I have waited for a long time for the Lc's to come back.As many others have.It is going to take time to figure Waymarking out just as it was to figure geo-caching out.Once I figured G.C. out it was and still is great.I cant understand how everyone does not like the Waymarking idea if they havnt given it a chance.I myself will try it for a while to see if it is something I want to spend my free time doing.If it is then I will try to help inprove the sight .If it isnt I will only geo-cache.

My opinion only..............................................

[+Barthonis]

My question on another thread has not been answered, so maybe it will be on this one...................................

 

Why do the locationless caches (and I assume by the postings here and elsewhere that virtuals will soon be as well) HAVE to be removed from GC.com? Can they not exist both here and also on WM.com? Why do they need to be mutually exclusive of each others sites? If WM.com is going to be an independent site, then the cache owner should be able to decide if they want to list their virt/locationless cache there as well, or just leave it on GC.com. And if approving virtuals is such a hassle for the volunteer reviewers, then perhaps Jeremy should just place a moritorium on those as well. There, a constructive solution that will keep those of us that enjoy hunting virts and locationlesses happy, and the WM.com fans happy as well. From where I sit, it seems like a simple, yet effective solution to most of the angst out here.

 

I'd appreciate your feedback to my feedback. Where is my thinking flawed on this, and if not, perhaps it is the simple solution that deserves a chance. Often times, the simple solution is the one that works.

 

Jeff

"Barthonis"

[+cache_test_dummies]

Why don't you want them moved? What do you think will be lost?

[+Hard Oiler]

Having now had an opportunity to create a category (moving a locationless from gc.com to wm.com) as well as entering some waymarks I have to say I like what I see so far and look forward to the future enhancements.

 

To me the difference between gc.com and wm.com is simple - geocaching is about finding things that other geocachers have hidden. Waymarking is about finding anything else that can be defined by a set of coordinates. So hidden boxes belong on gc.com while virtuals, locationless, webcams, couch potato caches, benchmarks and other non-geocaches belong on wm.com.

 

Two things stand out for me so far. The fact that I have much more control over what was formerly a locationless in that I can set the category rules and, if I choose, approve every waymark added. Previously I could set the rules but the only way to control the additions was to delete logs after the fact which seems to me to have more negative implications than the new way of doing it. Secondly I can now log a locationless that has previously been found. Having several times had the frustrating experience of finding a real neat locationless only to get home to find the one I just found had already been logged at least now I can record the visit as a log even if I'm not the first to find it.

 

Now I can play the game(s) any way I want. I can just geocache and find boxes. I can make my list of new things to find and waymark them just like I played the locationless game or I can make go visit waymarks that others have found and play the virtual game by logging them.

 

Now all I need to do is decide which games I want to play and organize around them. Makes a lot of sense to me.

[The Royles]

It seems that the big problem for lots of people is how to separate the ordinary but useful waymarks (gas stations, McDs), from the places we would go out of our way to visit.

 

Maybe that what is needed is a "commercial" category, that can then be ignored if you want to, so that when looking for "interesting" places to visit, we can filter out the majority of the ordinary.

 

 

PS The comments above are not meant to be offensive to people who like to visit every McDs or Starbucks, each to his/her own I say.

[Jeremy]

It seems that the big problem for lots of people is how to separate the ordinary but useful waymarks (gas stations, McDs), from the places we would go out of our way to visit.

Don't search in the restaurant category?

[+tozainamboku]

It seems like people can't see the forest through the trees. They see a McDonald's category and can't see how that fits with their vision of locationless caching or virtuals.

 

I view Waymarking a little differently. There are many games/hobbies using a GPSr to mark/visit different locations to find things or take pictures or just experience the location. In addition to geocaching, we have geodashing, degree confluence project, and benchmarking, just to name a few. I see Waymarking categories as new GPSr games. The category manager makes the rules for the game. The waymark recorders create the targets used in the game (creating targets can be part of the game), and the visitors attempt to collect the targets (what constitute collecting a target is determined by the category rules and additional requirements of the waymark). Category managers can create games that are competitive by having strict rules for collecting targets and awarding points or they can have games where the numbers mean about as mucn as they do in geocaching . bootron has created a game called McDonald's restaurants. It has rules for creating targets and for collecting those targets. If you don't want to play his game you can look for another game to play. As premium members, you can suggest new games and if they are approved (the method for approving new categories is still being debated) you can be the manager of that new game.

 

Now all I need to do is decide which games I want to play and organize around them. Makes a lot of sense to me.

[+Barthonis]

Why don't you want them moved? What do you think will be lost?

 

My questions is why do they HAVE to be moved? Why can they not exist still on GC.com for us "geocachers" who do not want to waymark? You lose nothing by leaving them here at GC.com. If a cache owner wants to archive his gc.com cache thats fine....but why force him to? Just to try to make people visit the new website once it is out of beta? If a cache owner wants to leave his cache here, but also post it as a waymark category or waypoint then thats fine too. You still lose nothing and geocachers don't lose alot of really neat virts and locationlesses.

 

My questions remains, why do they HAVE to be moved there?

 

Jeff

[+LaPaglia]

Why don't you want them moved? What do you think will be lost?

 

My questions is why do they HAVE to be moved? Why can they not exist still on GC.com for us "geocachers" who do not want to waymark? You lose nothing by leaving them here at GC.com. If a cache owner wants to archive his gc.com cache thats fine....but why force him to? Just to try to make people visit the new website once it is out of beta? If a cache owner wants to leave his cache here, but also post it as a waymark category or waypoint then thats fine too. You still lose nothing and geocachers don't lose alot of really neat virts and locationlesses.

 

My questions remains, why do they HAVE to be moved there?

 

Jeff

You have your answer in the thread you started with the same question.

[+globalgirl]

Virtuals aren't really caches, are they? I mean in the real sense of "a container in the woods."

Errr... woa there J. Personally I don't care a whit one way or t'other about virtuals, but... If, as you seem to say above, the only "real" cache is "a container in the woods", then I dare say - what exactly are all the gazillion urban and suburban hides 'round the world to be dubbed - and more precisely - why do they continue to be listed on geoCACHING.com?

 

While it may seem but a semanitc quibble, might I suggest that tossing out such flippant linguistic quips quite likely only serves to further fuel the endless stream of confusion concerning the new Waymarking (vs. geocaching.com) site?

 

[unless of course you really DO believe that only an ammo box hidden amid the forest depths qualifies as a "geocache". If so, then - well I guess the gc.com approvers have an awful lot of archiving to do.]

[Jeremy]

This isn't the gospel according to St. Jeremy, globalgirl.

[+Lil Devil]

Dang. I guess that Jeremy bobblehead toy has to come down off my monitor now

[+The Blue Quasar]

I'm gonna guess that the reason that the Locationless, and probably in the future all of the Virtuals, Earthcaches and Web Cams (the latter two have already begun the migration I might add) is because the game of Geocaching is returning to its roots.

 

From what I've been told, and I've been doing this since late 2001, is that Geocaching has always been about the hidden container.

 

The locationless and virtuals were added to make variety and increase participation. Anyone, and I mean that in the broadest sense, could find a Virtual Cache with very little effort, even without a GPS for the most part. Locationless too are fairly easy MOST of the time.

 

But now it has come to the time to divide these two aspects, as they are quite different.

 

Physical containers with logbooks are called Geocaches

Points of Interest are Waymarks.

 

Waymarks being divided into catagories makes a lot of sense, so people can find or list what interests them.

 

But taking a picture of a statue, or visiting the ruins of an iron mill are not Geocaches.

 

Cache is a hidden supply of stuff that people left for future use

 

Taking a photo, or reporting some factoid is hardly "caching" by definition

 

That is not saying that Waymarking won't be enjoyable, that seems obvious that will be since so many people wanted Locationless and Virtuals brought back.. and now they are are... slowly.

 

I just feel badly that there are SO MANY Catagory proposals... who could wade through all that?

 

Just my thought, I wish that Jeremy would be the one to decide new Catagories, since the amount and subjective quality is out of control right now, IMHO.

 

Organization is key.... and if it is allowed to run rampant, it will overwhelm everyone.

 

The Blue Quasar

[+The Navigatorz]

Ok, I read all the information about Waymarking, how it works, the FAQs, etc. And I've read all of the posts in this forum, and here is my opinion:

 

"My brain hurts and I'm going to bed. Good Night all!

[+Marky]

On the other hand… I really don’t see how this fits in with geocaching.com. I would hate to have all the virtuals only become available as waymarks. Unique and interesting places should be able to be logged as finds.

Find logs, visit logs, we're only talking about a subtle change in terminology here. I still have the opportunity to visit the spot I am being directed to and I have the opportunity to write about it in a visit log. I really don't see what is being lost here, except the convenience of having it all on the same site.

 

Once things get worked out, I'm betting that the offline tools, such as GSAK will be able to merge gc and wm files together (at least, that's my vision of the future). This assumes that premium members will have some type of pocket query capability on the Waymarking site.

 

--Marky

[+renruts]

I hate to say it but the Waymarking site is growing on me. I can see how it can be a benefit, useful, a pain, and is definatley going to evolve due to the abilities given the waymark / category owner(s).

 

I definately think the rating ideas are great ideas, and would suggest deriving the code to further implement it into the marks category to include a single or double tiered warning system to the mark owner so they can try to resolve or archive the mark. This would better facilitate the community being able to police the db, but could also see it possibly being used errantly, thus allowing time for the owner to re-evaluate / act.

 

I would also ask that we be able to sort marks in a category by our filter for the zip / coords, and clickable field columns to arrange in date orders. I know I can click the search button to the right, but this is creature comfort. If I can get them already listed from closest that is awesome, or can refine by clicking column headers. I realize this would entail format changing as dates would have to be moved to columns, but would be beneficial in sorting the data.

 

One last request would be to increase the ttl of the pages. I like to use my browser's back button, and it sux to have to hit F5 so much. Oh and I like the php forums on a mainly asp.net based site Nice way to mix technology, and not 're-invent the wheel' with the forum.

 

CT

[+Konnarock Kid & Marge]

Hey folks,

If you have not read enough by now, then read some more and you will find that certain powers-that-be are not really interested in your criticism of the new Waymarking system. You certainly cannot flame but you might get flamed.

One forum poster was told that if the new Waymarking system did not get a fair trial it would be a "travesty".

I have known a lot of travesties (terrorism, the Sudan, and maybe the OJ trial) but not liking Waymarking is not one of them.

[+Ambrosia]

Now that I am finally beginning to understand the terminology and the workings of and the potential for Waymarking, I am starting to get a bit excited.

 

I have to say, now that all the ramifications are starting to become clear to me, that this new site is nothing short of brilliant.

 

I'm even starting to rethink my stance on Virtuals, and I have been a rabid supporter of them. That's scary for me to admit, and since this feeling is new, I have to make sure that you understand that I said starting.

 

I also very much want to move my locationless over, and eventually archive it. I was pushed over the edge by this comment:

 

Two things stand out for me so far. The fact that I have much more control over what was formerly a locationless in that I can set the category rules and, if I choose, approve every waymark added. Previously I could set the rules but the only way to control the additions was to delete logs after the fact which seems to me to have more negative implications than the new way of doing it. Secondly I can now log a locationless that has previously been found. Having several times had the frustrating experience of finding a real neat locationless only to get home to find the one I just found had already been logged at least now I can record the visit as a log even if I'm not the first to find it.