rescue557 Posted February 12, 2006 Share Posted February 12, 2006 Why not have a category for A&W locations. They're known for their All-American food, and they're quite hard to find. I think it would be as American as McDonald's or apple pie. What do you think? Please post your ideas. Link to comment
+Jake39 Posted February 12, 2006 Share Posted February 12, 2006 (edited) Why only Mc Ducks or Wal*arts? There is..... Home Depot ...Lowes...Ace Hardware.... .................Safeway...Walgreens....Costco--Gap---- Where will it stop??? Stuck at 196 Categories for a week now..... Something is going to happen soon, I am sure, as no more proposals are being accepted Edited February 12, 2006 by Jake39 Link to comment
rescue557 Posted February 12, 2006 Author Share Posted February 12, 2006 Where will it stop??? I know what you're saying. But A&W locations are a dying breed, the end of a fast food / drive-in era that has long been forgotten and replaced with places like Sonic, McDonald's, and Burger King. Link to comment
+Razak Posted February 12, 2006 Share Posted February 12, 2006 As I said in the diner category, while I like A&W restaurants, I can't support any chain even if it is a dieing breed that is worth saving. If you really need to find an A&W go to their website, they have a store locator on their website. if you want to save the franchise... find interesting ones that fit into other categories and make categories that might house more. (maybe you could start a root beer brewery category which I think would be kind of funny... A&W does brew their rootbeer at the restaurant supposedly). Link to comment
+StagsRoar Posted February 15, 2006 Share Posted February 15, 2006 I'll 2nd Razak on this one. Link to comment
+chstress53 Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 I really think rescue557 makes a valid point. I personnally like the Mcdonalds Category, and would love to see A& W's. I envision this Waymarking site to eventually accomodate not only those of us who came from GEocaching but to a new breed of GPS owners who use those fancy car models and these categories would fit nicely and be a draw for an entire group of people. IF you do not like them do not hunt them. But they should be created for those of us who like them. Link to comment
+Team GeoDuo Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 I totally agree with chstress53 and recue557. Waymarking is about finding stuff that each one of us has interest in. The only way this site is going to be successful is to appeal to a interest of many. There should be categories that vary from local interests to ones that have international appeal. Plus the more people involved the more fun this will be and it will keep prices lower. The ideal situation would be the abiltiy to filter out the waymark categories that you have no interest in and the ability to easily change those settings on the fly. Wouldn't it be great, after a long day of geocaching/Waymarking in an area you are not familiar with, to be able to find a fast food place or a nice playground etc? Jeremy said something about a wiki type setup. Wouldn't be great be see some reviews? Believe it or not, not all fast food joints in the same chain are created equal. I can also see down the road a time when demographics could be base on data from Waymarking.com. Healthiest, Unhealthiest areas etc., it'll be great. One person's trash in another person's treasure. Link to comment
rescue557 Posted February 16, 2006 Author Share Posted February 16, 2006 I really think rescue557 makes a valid point. I personnally like the Mcdonalds Category, and would love to see A& W's. I envision this Waymarking site to eventually accomodate not only those of us who came from GEocaching but to a new breed of GPS owners who use those fancy car models and these categories would fit nicely and be a draw for an entire group of people. IF you do not like them do not hunt them. But they should be created for those of us who like them. Couldn't have said it better myself. Thanks! Link to comment
+Razak Posted February 16, 2006 Share Posted February 16, 2006 I totally agree with chstress53 and recue557. Wouldn't it be great, after a long day of geocaching/Waymarking in an area you are not familiar with, to be able to find a fast food place or a nice playground etc? Jeremy said something about a wiki type setup. Wouldn't be great be see some reviews? Believe it or not, not all fast food joints in the same chain are created equal. Gawd there are so many websites already that show where restaurants and what not are in an area you are unfamiliar with. I would suggest to you google maps or mapquest, both of which are widely known by those who use the internet. I would argue your chain theory... while it is true some chains are worse than others, it is usually not a big difference... for instance... at best a McDonald's will be crappy... at worst... well I can't say that in these forums, but at best it is still crappy. Same can be said for Wal-mart... and heck if I go to 1 Gap I've gone to about 5000 Gaps. Chains are meant to give people familiarity regardless of where they go, that is the whole point... there are very few chains which actually differ one store to the next... Planet Hollywood (which is bankrupt) is one of the few, but even they serve the same food for the most part. Yes I realize that there are differences, I've seen a lot of very cool looking McDonald's (Classic, Cow, Ginormous, etc) and maybe a "unique" mcdonald's could be a category, and some have had better service than others (for the life of me the local McDonald's near me can't get my order right, they charge it right just don't put it in the bag right). But I mean good lord it is McDonald's, if they have bad service that is to be expected, even if you think you are getting good service, it probably isn't as good as you think (I used to work at McDonald's, I know what they do to your food). Unless Waymarking.com is getting revenue from the advertising lets not go there. Even small chains tend to be the same across the board. To me I suppose the bigger issue will become what happens with stats if and when they address the stats being part of the bigger picture. McDonald's in particular is too freaking out there... people will make about 20 mcdonald's waymarks in about 30 minutes if they live in a big enough town (hell we got em across the street from each other in a few areas). I'm even tempted to go log the various McDonald's just for the stats even though I'm hoping that if I ignore the category it'll go away. As for cost, I don't totally buy into McDonald's locations bringing in enough people to cover the costs of the database nightmare of having 5 million McDonald's locations in their database. It does cost money to save the waymarks, the logs, the stats, the bandwidth, etc of this crap and I'm not sure if they will get their money back in the long run for the handful of people that actually LIKE this. I mean seriously, who out there is in this much need of finding a McyD's? I can't not find one! They are freaking everywhere! A&W is a little more unique, but why not just have a drive-in restaurants category or rootbeer category. I mean is it too much to ask that people be more creative with their categories than just A&W? If Waymarking is just another directory or ratings system, I'm not sure if I'm interested... I thought it was kind of a new version of locationless caching, virtual caching, etc that is more in depth. If it isn't they really need to get this stuff back on Geocaching.com because while I am defending Waymarking in another thread... it would suck royally if THIS is what Waymarking is about. You better hope that they are somehow able to draw in people other than the geocaching crowd because there aren't that many geocachers who like the lightpole micro cache and that is all these categories are. If they can't get new people in, then they are just blowing the money of geocachers.... Link to comment
rescue557 Posted February 17, 2006 Author Share Posted February 17, 2006 A&W is a little more unique, but why not just have a drive-in restaurants category or rootbeer category. I mean is it too much to ask that people be more creative with their categories than just A&W? Not sure if I agree with this statement, here's why. If you are going to add this category to the database, you should make Drive-In's a category, and make A&W a subcategory. And I see your point about bandwidth, and servers, and database expenses. But come on. There are so many McDonald's waymarks out there, would a few A&W locations really make that big of a difference? Link to comment
+Razak Posted February 19, 2006 Share Posted February 19, 2006 Not sure if I agree with this statement, here's why. If you are going to add this category to the database, you should make Drive-In's a category, and make A&W a subcategory. And I see your point about bandwidth, and servers, and database expenses. But come on. There are so many McDonald's waymarks out there, would a few A&W locations really make that big of a difference? 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. Link to comment
rescue557 Posted February 19, 2006 Author Share Posted February 19, 2006 Do you honestly think GPS locations is going to be the only feature that brings in a wider audience ? Yes, it's the way of the future! Link to comment
+Razak Posted February 20, 2006 Share Posted February 20, 2006 Yes, it's the way of the future! 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. Link to comment
rescue557 Posted February 21, 2006 Author Share Posted February 21, 2006 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. No, actually I'm totally serious. I use this website and download lots of coordinates to my GPS' database card just so that when I'm on a road trip, I can stop along the way and say, "hey", there's a waymark, or let's go here... Okay, so maybe I'm a "power user"! I see your point now. Thanks. Link to comment
Recommended Posts