Restricted Virtual Caches

[+El Diablo]

 

3) Most waymarkers seem more about creating waymarks than visiting them.

 

 

Someone has to create them. I've just started and so far I have 1 logged visit and I've posted 3 waymarks. It reminds me of when I started caching 7 years ago. There were very few caches hidden in the area so a couple of us placed them for each other to find. It grew from there. Hopefully Waymarking will do the same.

 

El Diablo

[+Morning Dew]

Waymarking has me so torn. I love the concept but I haven't been able to grab a hold of it yet.

 

The search and the log in geocaching is such a key element for me. However, I'm new to geocaching and I think I just need a lot more time and I might begin picking up Waymarking.

 

The one thing that does kind of irk me is that some of things are just so common.

 

An example, I search Waymarking.com a few days ago on a "closest" search. I noticed that someone posted a travel agency in the town I work in (because it has a neon sign). I just thought "well, yeah I've been there, kind of, I drive by it a lot" Then I did a search of my photgraphs (I take a lot of pictures) and I even had a picture of the building (and sign) in the background of one of my pictures I had taken awhile ago.

 

Meh.

 

With geocaching you never get this. The fascinating thing to me and my family, is that we can go just about anywhere in the U.S. and there are geocaches everywhere. Yet they are totally unseen to a HUGE portion of the population.

 

I believe this points to why a lot of waymarkers seem more about creating than finding. I mean really who wants to find a KFC or a Travel agency. Yes, it's cool to create a "game" to find every KFC you can but let's face it, for the most part, the bulk of people will never get in to that and those waymarks will essentially never have more than a hand full of discoveries.

 

However, on the flip side, when a cache is posted, it is found within hours or less. And almost ALL the regular cachers in the area will find it within the next month. Even LPCs. But waymark a monument downtown and you're more likely to have the FTD be a person from out of town who was visiting and it took 6 weeks for the first discovery.

 

I'm rambling....off to look at Waymarking.com yet again.

Edited June 7, 2008 by Morning Dew

[+BruceS]

Waymarking has me so torn. I love the concept but I haven't been able to grab a hold of it yet.

 

The search and the log in geocaching is such a key element for me. However, I'm new to geocaching and I think I just need a lot more time and might begin picking up Waymarking.

 

The one thing that does kind of irk me is that some of things are just so common.

 

An example, I search Waymarking.com a few days ago on a "closest" search. I noticed that someone posted a travel agency in the town I work in (because it has a neon sign). I just "well, yeah I've been there, kind of, I drive by it a lot" Then I did a search of my photgraphs (I take a lot of pictures) and I even had a picture of the building (and sign) in the background of one of my pictures I had taken awhile ago.

 

Meh.

 

With geocaching you never get this. The fascinating thing to me and my family, is that we can go just about anywhere in the U.S. and there are geocaches everywhere. Yet they are totally unseen to a HUGE portion of the population.

 

I'm rambling....off to look at Waymarking.com yet again.

 

My advice with Waymarking is to look at categories that interest you. If neon signs don't interest you then don't look in that category. (There is an active group of people who happen to like neon signs) There are several categories I have little or no interest, and then others which I contribute to when ever I can. Waymarking does require a different mindset than geocaching, and also different approach to enjoy it. (Sometimes the nearest search is not the best approach)

 

As far as going anywhere and finding geocaches, I would say I can go anywhere and find something interesting to waymark.

Edited June 7, 2008 by BruceS

[+BruceS]

I'll take a closer look at the Waymarking Games category; that looks closer to the spirit of virtuals. Yet...how is "News Article Locations" a game? Also, "Philatelic Photographs" doesn't have any specific logging requirements. It would make sense to me to challenge the visitor (not just the waymark creator) to duplicate the shot on the stamp.

 

Categories end up in the game classification when they don't really fit in one of the 14 classifications. The two you questioned these are more typical of the categories in the games category. The visit requirements are determined by the group managing the category. The trend is more toward standard visit requirements between categories with few exceptions to keep things simpler.

 

Most of the reasons why waymarks are not a true replacement for virtuals are not inherent. Here are a few. 1) Waymarking.com does not have as many features as geocaching.com (hopefully that will be rectified soon)

 

Waymarking does not have some of the features of geocaching such as pocket queries however it also has some features which geocaching does not have including multiple saved locations (much like home location). Each update to the Waymarking site brings more features, often meeting a need for waymarkers which may be different than what is needed for geocaching.

 

2) Fewer people waymark than geocache, meaning more gaps in coverage for waymarks than geocaches (hopefully this will shift when Waymarking.com improves) and

 

Those of us that have been around awhile can remember when the 10,000 geocache was placed, Waymarking has over 110,000 now. As there is not a vacation rule for Waymarks, many of us fill gaps as we travel and have waymarks in several states.

 

3) Most waymarkers seem more about creating waymarks than visiting them.

 

If we concentrated on finding there would be more gaps than you mentioned in the 2 above. Visiting waymarks has increased lately. (I have had probably had 75 visits logged today and more still coming in)

[Dinoprophet]

It just seems that there is a small, vocal group that would like to see them returned. TPTB choose not to. Apparently you have some like of them as you have a link in your signature for your favorite virtual caches. It just seems that the OP's argument makes sense. Instead of working hard against the people who don't know what geocaching is to get them allowed in places they're not, it would make more sense to work with the people who DO know what geocaching is and have them change their policies. But we see no progress in this.

If the group that wants them is small, that means the majority don't want them or don't care, so why would gc.com change it?

 

Best argument aganist the OP idea is this: once you allow that, a growing number of land managers might turn to the virtual cache as an alternate to physical caches because "it is allowed". The number of areas open to virtuals would start shrinking.

 

That argument was made before - however, it has never been done, so we don't know what "might" or "might not" happen. Making predictions like these are counterproductive to the game.

Oh but it DID happen. I personally know of 2 areas that banned physicals because they saw the available option of virtuals. One changed thier mind when virtuals went away. So I know.

Yep, what StarBrand said. One here in GA changed their mind once they were informed that virtuals went away. We place caches there now with no problems.

Add Michigan State Parks to the list.

[+tozainamboku]

I'll take a closer look at the Waymarking Games category; that looks closer to the spirit of virtuals. Yet...how is "News Article Locations" a game? Also, "Philatelic Photographs" doesn't have any specific logging requirements. It would make sense to me to challenge the visitor (not just the waymark creator) to duplicate the shot on the stamp.

 

Categories end up in the game classification when they don't really fit in one of the 14 classifications. The two you questioned these are more typical of the categories in the games category. The visit requirements are determined by the group managing the category. The trend is more toward standard visit requirements between categories with few exceptions to keep things simpler.

Which ought not to be the case in the games category. When Waymarking first came out I was excited because I saw the flexibility of the category idea. In my mind I really thought of each category as being a separate game with category managers being able to specify both the rules (guidelines) for submitting new waymarks in the category and the rules (guidelines) for visiting a waymark in that category. And there was certainly the idea that you could ask questions to verify visits like virtuals and earthcaches. However, the majority of the early Waymarking community wanted their to be some amount of consistency. Did you need a picture? Did you need to show the GPS in your picture? Could you post a location you didn't actually go to? Most were motivated by the idea that it should be easy to create new waymarks so that you'd get a lot of waymarks listed. My personal preference was to go the other direction and encourage creativity in defining categories and allowing the groups that manage the categories maximum flexibility in defining how the category would be run. I sort of stopped being involved with the Waymarking forums when I saw I was loosing the battle. For a while I felt that now there was no longer a place for virtuals on Geocaching but the aspects of virtuals that I liked were not being developed on Waymarking either. I've since seen that the majority of the "normal" Waymarking categories have benefited by the changes that try to make creating waymarks easier. Then number of waymarks has grown at a tremendous rate. When Waymarking finally provides some kind of Pocket Query to download waymarks in your favorite categories, I suspect the number of visits will shoot up.

 

The Waymarking games department was originally established to support some of the locationless caches that didn't fit into any of the other categories. These were some of the most popular of the old locationless caches. They involved visiting confluence points or where the coordinates were a palindrome. The very popular Where is a Name? locationless where you determined coordinates base on your geocaching handle and then had another geocacher in that location visit the site and take a picture was migrated to a Waymarking game. Several photography locationless caches where you find a location in a old photograph or where the owner or the last finder would suggest a target for a new picture also became Waymarking games. Because these were originally locationless, the idea of visiting the location is not as important as finding the location in the first place. That is part of the reason that these categories may not have good instructions for visiting. The Best Kept Secrets category was an attempt to provide a definition of "Wow" to allow waymarks to be placed without having to state the category it is in and to preserve the "hunt" of virtual caches by requiring a confirmation question that you would find the answer to at the site. Our definition of "wow" is that this is a location that most people don't know about even the locals. I suspect that others may have different definition of "Wow" and I really had hoped to see more categories like this be defined.

[+BruceS]

I'll take a closer look at the Waymarking Games category; that looks closer to the spirit of virtuals. Yet...how is "News Article Locations" a game? Also, "Philatelic Photographs" doesn't have any specific logging requirements. It would make sense to me to challenge the visitor (not just the waymark creator) to duplicate the shot on the stamp.

 

Categories end up in the game classification when they don't really fit in one of the 14 classifications. The two you questioned these are more typical of the categories in the games category. The visit requirements are determined by the group managing the category. The trend is more toward standard visit requirements between categories with few exceptions to keep things simpler.

Which ought not to be the case in the games category.

 

I should have noted that the exceptions I mentioned for visit instructions are usually in the games area, and there are no restrictions for other groups having different logging instructions, just that the trend is to keeping things simple. I think we agree on the categories which are in games area are those that which don't really fit in the the other departments. The Photo Challenge category should to to peer review soon if I get the description finished.

Edited June 7, 2008 by BruceS

[+elrojo14]

I didn't realize virtual caches had been grandfathered. I planned two of them in Sequoia National Park this weekend and instead of being able to start two new caches, I get nothing.

 

I would suggest they be brought back for the National Parks. I am a die hard Geocacher. I want to Geocache everywhere I go. I wanted to take pictures of these two awesome spots I went to this weekend and post them on my Geocaching logs and now I can't.

 

Waymarking might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it isn't Geocaching and so I really don't care about it. Logging finds, getting smilies, and doing the hunt is what interests me. If we can't place caches in the National Parks, why not make a National Parks cache type so I can show people where I have been.

 

Bummer. Well I guess I will go log all of my finds and forget about it.

[+TotemLake]

I didn't realize virtual caches had been grandfathered. I planned two of them in Sequoia National Park this weekend and instead of being able to start two new caches, I get nothing.

 

I would suggest they be brought back for the National Parks. I am a die hard Geocacher. I want to Geocache everywhere I go. I wanted to take pictures of these two awesome spots I went to this weekend and post them on my Geocaching logs and now I can't.

 

Waymarking might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it isn't Geocaching and so I really don't care about it. Logging finds, getting smilies, and doing the hunt is what interests me. If we can't place caches in the National Parks, why not make a National Parks cache type so I can show people where I have been.

 

Bummer. Well I guess I will go log all of my finds and forget about it.

There''s nothing stopping you from turning it into a multi-cache, or a puzzle cache, or even a mystery cache. Don't limit yourself to just one style and then walk away from it with a whimper.

[+mtn-man]

In addition, the NPS is changing its perception of caching and there is no longer a total ban.

 

http://www.nps.gov/policy/GPSguidance.pdf

 

If you live close enough to maintain the cache, you might try working with them to get a cache listed with their permission. Saying there is an all out ban is not totally correct.

[+KoosKoos]

I didn't realize virtual caches had been grandfathered. I planned two of them in Sequoia National Park this weekend and instead of being able to start two new caches, I get nothing.

 

I would suggest they be brought back for the National Parks. I am a die hard Geocacher. I want to Geocache everywhere I go. I wanted to take pictures of these two awesome spots I went to this weekend and post them on my Geocaching logs and now I can't.

 

Waymarking might be the greatest thing since sliced bread, but it isn't Geocaching and so I really don't care about it. Logging finds, getting smilies, and doing the hunt is what interests me. If we can't place caches in the National Parks, why not make a National Parks cache type so I can show people where I have been.

 

Bummer. Well I guess I will go log all of my finds and forget about it.

 

Many would argue that finding a "place" instead of a container isn't geocaching either...that's why Waymarking was created. To show people where you've been.