Help Please. I Can Not Completely Figure Out The Site?

[+Cheminer Will 5]

I am finding it difficult to use my knowledge of the Geocaching.com web site to figure out Waymarking.

I could probably ask 20 questions about things I can not figure out, but these two may help me progress a bit further.

 

1. I have managed to find a few waymarks close to where I live, using the location filter. I am not sure however, because of the small number returned, that I am searching ALL categories. Is way after finding one waymark to "find all waymarks" within a certain distance of the first?

 

2. How do I do a keyword search of all Waymarks? For example if I want to browse all "swimming pool" waymarks, how do I find them all?

 

Thanks!

 

On edit, I had another thought about searching. Maybe the reason I find almost nothing on my searches is that there are very few waymarks yet? Maybe my feeling that I am doing it incorrectly is not correct. It does seem odd, however. If for example you search for "Yellow Jeep", only 2 waymarks are returned and these have nothing to do with yellow jeeps! It does not seem this could possibly be correct?

Edited March 27, 2006 by Cheminer Will

[+The Blue Quasar 18]

There is a very good chance that the number of Waymarks in your area is not very many. The Waymarking game has not really taken off yet, for various reasons.

 

I suggest that you create multiple "origins" for yourself, and then when you are on the main directory screen, apply your various origins to determine nearby Waymarks.

 

To search for "swimming pools" just enter "Swimming" on this page Waymarking Directory

 

This will give you the list of Categories that are avaiable.

 

If you add a "Location Filter" you will see ones close to you, if available.

 

Hope that helps

 

The Blue Quasar

[+cache_test_dummies 2]

On edit, I had another thought about searching. Maybe the reason I find almost nothing on my searches is that there are very few waymarks yet?

This does seem to be the case. There are not many waymarks in southern Oregon yet. In fact, if I do a search using Altamont Oregon as the center, I only see 17 Waymarks with 100 miles.

 

But here's the thing:

 

For the time being, the web site seems to have more of an emphasis on placing Waymarks than finding them. Jeremy has also mentioned this. This all makes sense, given that the Waymark database needs to get some legs under it before the site can really get going, and the way for that to happen is to get lots of Waymarks posted.

 

So what you might want to do is to explore opportunities to creating new Waymarks, rather than trying to find existing Waymarks, in your area. This might also help to get others in your area interested, which will lead to the placement of more Waymarks, and so on.

 

With regard to your questions about how to search:

 

1. I have managed to find a few waymarks close to where I live, using the location filter. I am not sure however, because of the small number returned, that I am searching ALL categories. Is way after finding one waymark to "find all waymarks" within a certain distance of the first?

I generally use the "Search All Waymarks" option rather than the location filter when I do searches. The location filter applies more to categories than Waymarks - it filters for all categories which have Waymarks within the specified location, but then when you push down into the located categories, you'll find that it lists ALL the Waymarks in that category, not just those near your location. This can be pretty confusing.

 

2. How do I do a keyword search of all Waymarks? For example if I want to browse all "swimming pool" waymarks, how do I find them all?

At the moment, the searching capability seems to work on a general match of any of the words listed. So searching for "yellow jeeps", even in quotes, will return a list of all categories which use the word "yellow" or "jeep".

 

Hopefully the keyword search capability will be improved someday to allow different types of keyword searches.

 

If you are trying to find any available Waymarks, make sure your Popularity Filter is set to 100%.

 

One last thought - you may want to play around with the "Advanced Search" capability. I've used the advanced search from time to time with some success.

 

Edit: fixed lots of typos, added the note about Popularity Filter

Edited March 27, 2006 by cache_test_dummies