+Wandering Palms Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Ok, Say you're visiting Charleston, S.C. and you want to do a search for all waypoints in the area. Do you have to run a search for each zip code area (some cities can have a very large number of them). Do you have to pick a different catagory for each search or is there a way to do a blanket search of the area. Totally confused. Link to comment
+cache_test_dummies Posted October 25, 2005 Share Posted October 25, 2005 Do you have to run a search for each zip code area (some cities can have a very large number of them). Do you have to pick a different catagory for each search or is there a way to do a blanket search of the area. Right now, you can't do a search from the Directory Home - you have to first choose from People, Places or Things (this has been the subject of some discussion, and I'm not sure if there are plans to change this). Once you have selected one of these major categories, you can do a search by Postal Code, or by origin (an 'origin' is a personal collection of coordinates, like "home", or "my vacation home"), or by one of the Advanced Search options (State, Coordinate, Keyword, etc.). By the way, they are called "waymarks" not "waypoints". Link to comment
+Wandering Palms Posted October 25, 2005 Author Share Posted October 25, 2005 I told you I was confused Thanks Link to comment
+ba_joker Posted November 14, 2005 Share Posted November 14, 2005 I think this is the BIGGEST downside to the Waymarking site. I know that's how I'd prefer to search the site and think most others are that way as well. I'm curious how a search across all categories from a certain origin was left out of Waymarking. Is there a plan to add this later (maybe even just for premium members)??? I'm a premium member and wouldn't have any problem keeping my premium membership as long as these types of searches were possible. But, having to dig down into categories and performing several searches just isn't very practical. If I'm planning a trip somewhere, I'd like to have single search to find waymarks that I'd be interested in visiting. Otherwise, I'm not very likely to visit Waymarking to learn about places to visit during my stay. Link to comment
+Kordite Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 Absolutely. Waymarking is about finding interesting places you might not have knowd about. You could be standing right next to one and not even know it's there without doing a search on a zip code and then going down through page after page of categories and hope you see something. For example. Here I am in downtown Pittsburgh. First off, from the Homepage i click on "use the location filter" in the center of the screen and it brings up a pop-up window that has a place to enter "filter by postal code" but doesn't actually allow me to enter a number. So, I try the box on the right side of the screen. It returns: Things (Art, Historic Things, Structures) and People (Scouting, Tour Guide). So, I click on Historic Things and it brings up a sub-category Pennsylvania Historic Markers. When I click on that it gives me 5 pages of 200 historic market waypoints throughout the state of Pennsylvania. They are not filtered to the zip code I entered. They give me things in Gettysburg and Chambersburg and so on. So, I browse through the 5 pages of waypoints and find 11 out of 200 that are in Pittsburgh. I recognize those only because as a Pittsburgh resident I already know they are there and happen to all been posted by the same cacher. A few show Pittsburgh in the description. but without that, there would be no way for me to know that they were here in Pittsburgh. At the regular Geocaching site, a single click gets me to maps that show me all the caches in a given area. Waymarking has no such thing and is, to my mind, fairly useless. Link to comment
+Olar Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 What we all seem to forget is Waymarking is in an early Beta stage and what we see currently is only scratching the surface of the final product's capabilities. At least that's my perception based on all the discussions and various comments from Groundspeak folks. I keep telling myself to be patient and that one day soon I'll have a zillion waymarks to choose from and all via PQ's. Cheers, Olar Link to comment
bootron Posted November 18, 2005 Share Posted November 18, 2005 I think this is the BIGGEST downside to the Waymarking site. I know that's how I'd prefer to search the site and think most others are that way as well. I'm curious how a search across all categories from a certain origin was left out of Waymarking. Is there a plan to add this later (maybe even just for premium members)??? I'm a premium member and wouldn't have any problem keeping my premium membership as long as these types of searches were possible. But, having to dig down into categories and performing several searches just isn't very practical. If I'm planning a trip somewhere, I'd like to have single search to find waymarks that I'd be interested in visiting. Otherwise, I'm not very likely to visit Waymarking to learn about places to visit during my stay. BTW, directory root searches are available now... Link to comment
+Kordite Posted November 19, 2005 Share Posted November 19, 2005 Oh, I remember that it's Beta. But we need to voice opinions so that the features we think it really needs are addressed when things go fully live. Being able to search geographically is, I think, one of the most important and useful features. Link to comment
+tls11823 Posted November 22, 2005 Share Posted November 22, 2005 BTW, directory root searches are available now... OK - that removes one of my major gripes. Thanks for listening to us. I'll be more interested when I can get Waymarking information into GSAK or something similar via PQs. I know - it's still early, and that is on the drawing board. As somebody who has worked with computers since the punch-card days, I know that these things take time. Link to comment
+RakeInTheCache Posted December 5, 2005 Share Posted December 5, 2005 On this topic, why is it that when I do a search by origin, I'm limited to a 62 mile (100 km) radius? I don't pick up anything within this distance from my home origin and I would like to find the nearest waymark to my home (don't particularly care about the category at this early stage). Link to comment
+cache_test_dummies Posted December 5, 2005 Share Posted December 5, 2005 On this topic, why is it that when I do a search by origin, I'm limited to a 62 mile (100 km) radius? I don't pick up anything within this distance from my home origin and I would like to find the nearest waymark to my home (don't particularly care about the category at this early stage). Keep in mind that the site is still in Beta. When the database more fully populated with categories and waymarks, a 62 mile radius shouldn't be a problem. For now, the only way to really broaden out your search in terms of distance is to narrow down your search by choosing a category. Link to comment
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