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Biggest Problems at the Moment


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Hi there,

 

perhaps we can collect the most important bugs here in one thread.

 

1) The newest categories do not appear if you search for them. (I don't know why and when it started).

 

-> It's important because new Waymarkes will search for the categories. If they don't appear they think they are not existent. Sure, you look at the newest categories or you can look up in the category grid, but do new players know all these things? Don't think so.

 

2) We get no mails if a group vote was declined or approved.

 

-> This is really important, beacuse at the moment the Waymarkers don't know that a voted Waymark was declined. Only if you check you own Waymarks you will see that it is declined. If you are no member of the group (Open enrollment is OFF) you can't look up the vote results. So the Waymarker will send a mail to an officer with the please that he should send him the results.

 

3) Some of the "Past Activity" sites doesn't work.

 

-> Very important. For good work officers need this function for every category.

 

4) Category Icons

 

-> The category icons are one of the core pieces of Waymarking. The main part of the Waymarkers love them.

 

I know that Groundspeak is aware of some of these problems, but I think it's good to summarize them. If I have forgotten something, please feel free to work on that list.

 

The list should not be for some special wishes, it should highlight the main problems.

 

-lumbricus

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The lack of group vote decline results emails are really becoming a difficulty for us -- we have had 3 WMs declined this way, have sent POLITE emails to officers, and not received any response back. Very frustrating not knowing if there is a fix the COs want, or if the WM is just a goner.

 

We always check the category descriptions to ensure we met the criteria. If we missed an attribute, that is an easy fix and resubmit, even without communication.

 

Other declines are harder to figure out, which is when we email the category officers,

 

Usually what happens is after a week with no response, we just delete the declined WM and keep on moving forward. Maybe the declined WM could have been fixed, but without communication, who can read minds and figure out why??

 

Groundspeak -- we need those declines -- they are MOST HELPFUL to us.

 

Here is our officer email:

 

"Hi (officer name) -- we see that our proposed waymark (code) in (category) has been declined, but like so many other waymarkers lately, we did not get a decline message. This had been reported to Groundspeak, but is not resolved yet :(

 

Will you please let us know why our WM was declined so that we can either fix it or learn from this? Thank you. We like the category and thank you for the review.

 

LPCox"

Edited by Benchmark Blasterz
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We got a decline message today -- HOORAY!! Maybe that function is working again now :)

Was this a regular decline message or was it one from a group vote? I think the regular ones have been working but not the ones from group votes.

 

We think it was a regular decline -- We have not gotten a decline by group vote for a long time

 

We have a couple of WMs that are still in the group vote process x 10 days -- is that the bug or do votes go that long?

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We got a decline message today -- HOORAY!! Maybe that function is working again now :)

Was this a regular decline message or was it one from a group vote? I think the regular ones have been working but not the ones from group votes.

 

We think it was a regular decline -- We have not gotten a decline by group vote for a long time

 

We have a couple of WMs that are still in the group vote process x 10 days -- is that the bug or do votes go that long?

For a waymark to be released from group vote an officer of the group has to visit the group page and that will automatically release any waymarks stuck in "vote limbo"

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Newest problem:

I used to get my Waymarking confirmations, notices, etc. mail from noreply@Waymarking.com.

In mid-March, the sender changed to noreply@Groundspeak.com

Now, the sender for my Waymarking mail is noreply@Geocaching.com.

 

This breaks my incoming mail processing rules every time and now it's more difficult to sort incoming daily mail (GC/WM) into folders. :mad:

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Just to repeat it again through appropriate Topics (both bugs mentioned by Tante.Hossi)

 

- Most Viewed Waymarks Error - http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=304008

- Coordinates errors... ...E to W and decimal degrees one - http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=304009

 

I hope GS will do something with that, together with haageus mentioned "blurry" problem - http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=295626&st=0&p=5039343

 

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I was recently promoted in a category to officer level 1, but noticed that I cannot get to the Past Activity tab. It goes to a 500-server error message page. It has happened with both IE and Firefox. Is this a known problem? I can provide more details if needed.

 

David

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Two things I think would make sense:

 

1. Some officials should confirm that they will actually read this list and work on the bugs. Otherwise a lot of time is wasted for nothing. The S/E -> N/W bug is really annoying (for 3/4 of this planet) and for me personally one of the most important ones and at the same time probably one of the easiest to fix, but still it hasn't been fixed for a long time. :-(

 

2. I think the original posting with numbered bugs is great and the other bugs should be added to that list also, so that contributers to the list don't have to read the entire thread all over to see whether "their" bug has already been reported or not. Besides, when one or the other bug is solved, it's easier to say "#13 is fixed" than "the 'Key word searches on Waymarks not working correctly'-bug is fixed".

 

PS: Today I was searching for "Gingerbread" waymarks and found hundreds of Victorian Houses. Many of them didn't have the word "gingerbread" in their listing, but it's in the expanded description of the category "Victorian Houses". Is that a bug or intentional? And if it's a bug, is that the same as 'Key word searches on Waymarks not working correctly'?

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PS: Today I was searching for "Gingerbread" waymarks and found hundreds of Victorian Houses. Many of them didn't have the word "gingerbread" in their listing, but it's in the expanded description of the category "Victorian Houses". Is that a bug or intentional? And if it's a bug, is that the same as 'Key word searches on Waymarks not working correctly'?

 

I think the waymark search only searches the title.

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PS: Today I was searching for "Gingerbread" waymarks and found hundreds of Victorian Houses. Many of them didn't have the word "gingerbread" in their listing, but it's in the expanded description of the category "Victorian Houses". Is that a bug or intentional? And if it's a bug, is that the same as 'Key word searches on Waymarks not working correctly'?

 

I think the waymark search only searches the title.

 

Keyword searches are not working for waymarks for newer waymarks with the same time frame as it is not working for newer categories. It appears that for those that it is working on the waymarks inherit the keywords for the category also.

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PS: Today I was searching for "Gingerbread" waymarks and found hundreds of Victorian Houses. Many of them didn't have the word "gingerbread" in their listing, but it's in the expanded description of the category "Victorian Houses". Is that a bug or intentional? And if it's a bug, is that the same as 'Key word searches on Waymarks not working correctly'?

 

I think the waymark search only searches the title.

 

Keyword searches are not working for waymarks for newer waymarks with the same time frame as it is not working for newer categories. It appears that for those that it is working on the waymarks inherit the keywords for the category also though most of the Victorian house listings did have gingerbread listed somewhere in their descriptions, some did not.

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I had in my mind that there was a waymark for red mail boxes & so I did a search yesterday but only got Victorian Mail boxes in the UK. I thought there was one in Batemans Bay (turns out it was a red telephone box) so did a search of Batemans Bay but that didn't produce any records. So I did a search of Braidwood which is to the west & ticked 100Ks but again no records despite the fact I have many waymarks there. Then searched Moruya to the south but no records. Then went north to Ulladulla, 100Ks, got 6 records as far as Nowra which is further north than Batemans Bay is south.

 

Then added a ' between the n & the s & up came the records so this site insists on proper English grammar. There is no ' in Batemans Bay.

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I had in my mind that there was a waymark for red mail boxes & so I did a search yesterday but only got Victorian Mail boxes in the UK. I thought there was one in Batemans Bay (turns out it was a red telephone box) so did a search of Batemans Bay but that didn't produce any records. So I did a search of Braidwood which is to the west & ticked 100Ks but again no records despite the fact I have many waymarks there. Then searched Moruya to the south but no records. Then went north to Ulladulla, 100Ks, got 6 records as far as Nowra which is further north than Batemans Bay is south.

 

Then added a ' between the n & the s & up came the records so this site insists on proper English grammar. There is no ' in .

 

I just did a search on Batemans Bay, Australia and it worked fine (no apostrophe was used), Batemans Bay, NSW also worked fine. (I did similar searches on Braidwood and they worked also) I believe the geocoding of address/cities is using Google api. The geographic search works fine it is only the keyword searches that are not. If you are getting less than expected check ignored categories to see if you have ignored more than you thought.

 

BTW the Victorian Mailbox category is not restricted to the UK. They can be anywhere in world, there are two that have been waymarked in Australia, one in The Rocks area of Sydney and another in Mount Gambier, South Australia.

Edited by BruceS
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Just did the same searches as yesterday & worked perfectly so gremlins were about perhaps. Good to know about the mail boxes particularly as the Geocaching Australia site has these as Locationless caches so can add the relevant co-ords to GSAK. Synergies! Thanks.

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I have tried rotating it as a copy on the hard drive, and no matter what I do, it uploads sideways

I have had to resort to stripping the orientation metadata from photos that I have taken portrait rather than landscape. I use a program to do this, a Exif editor or cleaner will do this.

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I have tried rotating it as a copy on the hard drive, and no matter what I do, it uploads sideways

I have had to resort to stripping the orientation metadata from photos that I have taken portrait rather than landscape. I use a program to do this, a Exif editor or cleaner will do this.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's only a problem when I am using my Windows 8 machine, and not a problem on the older laptop.

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I have tried rotating it as a copy on the hard drive, and no matter what I do, it uploads sideways

I have had to resort to stripping the orientation metadata from photos that I have taken portrait rather than landscape. I use a program to do this, a Exif editor or cleaner will do this.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's only a problem when I am using my Windows 8 machine, and not a problem on the older laptop.

That could be or it could be that the new browser is showing it. I know if I look at photos online with an older version of Firefox they will look fine but a newer version of Firefox or Chrome will have them sideways because the browsers now read the orientation of the photos and try to adjust for it.

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I had the waymark with two photos that I uploaded in Windows 8 (they both appeared correctly oriented when I was uplaoding), then I uploaded the same two pictures from my Windows 7 machine (I manually rotated on hard drive). In the waymark gallery, the first two showed sideways, and the second two showed correctly. It was the same browser window, so I can't blame the browser.

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I had the waymark with two photos that I uploaded in Windows 8 (they both appeared correctly oriented when I was uplaoding), then I uploaded the same two pictures from my Windows 7 machine (I manually rotated on hard drive). In the waymark gallery, the first two showed sideways, and the second two showed correctly. It was the same browser window, so I can't blame the browser.

 

Some operating systems read the EXIF orientation field in the image. JPEG & TIFF images have this field. This is why Windows 8 might show images with correct rotation. XP does not auto rotate. Camera puts orientation tag in image, or you can do it manually with EXIF editor, as mentioned above.

 

Some sites read EXIF orientation field in the image. e.g. Groundspeak sites, Panoramio, , flickr, ...

Some sites do not read EXIF orientation field in the image. e.g. Britishlistedbuildings.co.uk, facebook, ...

 

Irfanviewer freeware will lossless rotate images when site does not read EXIF orientation field in the image. Many programs have a setting to read EXIF orientation field in the image. e.g. Irfanviewer, Zoner photo studio. Choose whether to enable this feature.

NB after rotation, might need to remove EXIF orientation field in the image when site does read EXIF orientation field in the image.

 

Do not confuse EXIF orientation field in the image with lossless rotation of image.

 

Browsers probably do not read the EXIF orientation field in the image as the page is sent from a server which will do image processing. You can open an image on your hard drive with your browser.

Confused. I am.

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Okay, not a bug, but I'm done doing what I want in the forums, and there is no link to get back to Waymarking.com -- just a tab to go to Geocaching.com. Yes, I know that we're back on the Geocaching forum site, but it is annoying not to have an easy way to get back to our home site. Gripe, complain, guess I'm just tired. <_<

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And two more old and well known bugs came just to my mind:

 

Changing 'E to W Bug' at the coordinates while saving a new waymark. Maybe also 'S to N' - I don't know.

And loosing the coordinates to 0/0 while saving a new waymark.

 

This is so annoying :blink:

But I figured out, how to prevent loose of coords to 0/0. Before going to next page it is useful to switch coordinates format from Decimal Degrees to Degrees and Minutes (or vice versa there and back). I have never lost them if I did this switch. Just E to W is changing unexpectedly.

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Okay, not a bug, but I'm done doing what I want in the forums, and there is no link to get back to Waymarking.com -- just a tab to go to Geocaching.com. Yes, I know that we're back on the Geocaching forum site, but it is annoying not to have an easy way to get back to our home site. Gripe, complain, guess I'm just tired. <_<

 

Absolutely, I've been annoyed by the same thing. If I haven't added anything in the forums, I can just go: back arrow, back arrow, back arrow, however many times that takes to get back to Waymarking.com. But if I've left a comment (like this) I've found that the quickest way back is to click Waymarking.com icon on my bookmark bar at the top of the screen and log back into the site. If there is a shorter way back, I haven't found it.

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Okay, not a bug, but I'm done doing what I want in the forums, and there is no link to get back to Waymarking.com -- just a tab to go to Geocaching.com. Yes, I know that we're back on the Geocaching forum site, but it is annoying not to have an easy way to get back to our home site. Gripe, complain, guess I'm just tired. <_<

 

Absolutely, I've been annoyed by the same thing. If I haven't added anything in the forums, I can just go: back arrow, back arrow, back arrow, however many times that takes to get back to Waymarking.com. But if I've left a comment (like this) I've found that the quickest way back is to click Waymarking.com icon on my bookmark bar at the top of the screen and log back into the site. If there is a shorter way back, I haven't found it.

I guess I don't get annoyed with this one because I usually have at least one tab of my browser on the forums and a couple of others on the Waymarking site and never link between them. :smile:

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This one will not be so visible for those who don't travel a lot: West in the default for coordinates. So if you create one East of Greenwhich, once you move to the Images Uploading tab, West will replace East and you have to go back to correct it. Once you go back and correct it the right value will stay. This happens in about 80% of the times and if you forget to check in the map it will submit the waymark with wrong coordinates no matter if you inserted the right ones.

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it seems as if the biggest problem is that problems are not getting fixed. new problems are arising.

 

I haven't 'played' in quite a while, but it seems as if nothing has changed. we have been forgotten.

 

really? the home page still lists the 500,000th waymark 'Posted on 9/9/2013 11:50:00 AM by bootron'. that was a year and a half ago. no news at all since then? of course I wasn't expecting lots of new upgrades. it also appears that many of the game's main players also no longer play.

 

Presently there are 603366 waymarks worldwide, listed in 1083 user-created categories

 

it appears as if the site was set up to run itself. TPTB keep the boxes plugged in and powercycle them when theres an issue.

 

is there no desire to invest more into this side of 'geocaching'?

 

maybe I will just go back to geocaching. I can save all my photos for later, when the site is better tuned to what the user needs.

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I have tried rotating it as a copy on the hard drive, and no matter what I do, it uploads sideways

I have had to resort to stripping the orientation metadata from photos that I have taken portrait rather than landscape. I use a program to do this, a Exif editor or cleaner will do this.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think it's only a problem when I am using my Windows 8 machine, and not a problem on the older laptop.

That could be or it could be that the new browser is showing it. I know if I look at photos online with an older version of Firefox they will look fine but a newer version of Firefox or Chrome will have them sideways because the browsers now read the orientation of the photos and try to adjust for it.

 

I'm using a Windows 7 machine and the newest version of Firefox and I have no problem with the photo orientation issue. May be a Windows 8 issue.

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it seems as if the biggest problem is that problems are not getting fixed. new problems are arising.

 

I haven't 'played' in quite a while, but it seems as if nothing has changed. we have been forgotten.

 

really? the home page still lists the 500,000th waymark 'Posted on 9/9/2013 11:50:00 AM by bootron'. that was a year and a half ago. no news at all since then? of course I wasn't expecting lots of new upgrades. it also appears that many of the game's main players also no longer play.

 

Presently there are 603366 waymarks worldwide, listed in 1083 user-created categories

 

it appears as if the site was set up to run itself. TPTB keep the boxes plugged in and powercycle them when theres an issue.

 

is there no desire to invest more into this side of 'geocaching'?

 

maybe I will just go back to geocaching. I can save all my photos for later, when the site is better tuned to what the user needs.

 

Hey, I'm scared to death they are just going to dump Waymarking totally. I got so tired of geocaching (caches missing, caches just under a lamp post skirt, caches in dangerous locations) and just love the opportunities for Waymarking. I do pay the $30 in hopes Groundspeak will keep Waymarking going.

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...it also appears that many of the game's main players also no longer play...

That's true, I miss some Waymarkers the last years and more. At the moment the core is pretty small, I'd guess about 50 very active Waymarkers who waymark daily or weekly and about 100 - 200 who play our game continuously. So I understand Groundspeak that the focus is more on Geocaching, I have about 100 active Geocachers in my homezone and not world-wide. On the other hand Waymarking is such a great activity, so much to learn and to share with the whole world. Predicament.

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I don't think GS will drop WM mainly due to the high Pagerank, which is amazingly strong. As to more/less players now, I am not sure. I noticed a clear increase in the number of logs in my own wm's. That was encouraging. I am not submitting at the moment but I know it's a temporary condition, just having a break and also I am now working more than before so I don't have as much time. But soon I will resume my activity. I keep taking pictures and actively looking for Wm places when I am moving. Just now I came from Iceland and came packed.

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it seems as if the biggest problem is that problems are not getting fixed. new problems are arising.

 

I haven't 'played' in quite a while, but it seems as if nothing has changed. we have been forgotten.

 

really? the home page still lists the 500,000th waymark 'Posted on 9/9/2013 11:50:00 AM by bootron'. that was a year and a half ago. no news at all since then? of course I wasn't expecting lots of new upgrades. it also appears that many of the game's main players also no longer play.

 

Presently there are 603366 waymarks worldwide, listed in 1083 user-created categories

 

it appears as if the site was set up to run itself. TPTB keep the boxes plugged in and powercycle them when theres an issue.

 

is there no desire to invest more into this side of 'geocaching'?

 

maybe I will just go back to geocaching. I can save all my photos for later, when the site is better tuned to what the user needs.

 

Hey, I'm scared to death they are just going to dump Waymarking totally. I got so tired of geocaching (caches missing, caches just under a lamp post skirt, caches in dangerous locations) and just love the opportunities for Waymarking. I do pay the $30 in hopes Groundspeak will keep Waymarking going.

I've had mixed feelings on this, but finally put my foot down. It may sound like I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face by NOT renewing my PM. I really do not get into geocaching much, but ALL of my PM fee was going to support it. Why support something that I do not really do but a couple times a year? I just cannot see it. For those who do both, it makes sense to keep up the PM; but not the rest of us (even if we are the minority). I cannot afford to subsidize someone else's hobby!

 

If Groundspeak would show the slightest attitude toward even fixing the existing WM issues (not even going so far as to beg for improvements), I would consider renewing my PM to show them my vote of thanks for doing so. But it just is not happening. The disgusting email that you get back about why nothing can be done for Waymarking because of the soggy paper game does not help matters at all.

 

No PM until I've seen good faith attempt at fixing the many, many broken Waymarking issues. Although I lose a couple of simple features, such as ignoring categories (not that big a deal anyway!), I can get by with using the core broken functionality. PM doesn't change that.

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it seems as if the biggest problem is that problems are not getting fixed. new problems are arising.

 

I haven't 'played' in quite a while, but it seems as if nothing has changed. we have been forgotten.

 

really? the home page still lists the 500,000th waymark 'Posted on 9/9/2013 11:50:00 AM by bootron'. that was a year and a half ago. no news at all since then? of course I wasn't expecting lots of new upgrades. it also appears that many of the game's main players also no longer play.

 

Presently there are 603366 waymarks worldwide, listed in 1083 user-created categories

 

it appears as if the site was set up to run itself. TPTB keep the boxes plugged in and powercycle them when theres an issue.

 

is there no desire to invest more into this side of 'geocaching'?

 

maybe I will just go back to geocaching. I can save all my photos for later, when the site is better tuned to what the user needs.

 

Hey, I'm scared to death they are just going to dump Waymarking totally. I got so tired of geocaching (caches missing, caches just under a lamp post skirt, caches in dangerous locations) and just love the opportunities for Waymarking. I do pay the $30 in hopes Groundspeak will keep Waymarking going.

I've had mixed feelings on this, but finally put my foot down. It may sound like I'm cutting off my nose to spite my face by NOT renewing my PM. I really do not get into geocaching much, but ALL of my PM fee was going to support it. Why support something that I do not really do but a couple times a year? I just cannot see it. For those who do both, it makes sense to keep up the PM; but not the rest of us (even if we are the minority). I cannot afford to subsidize someone else's hobby!

 

If Groundspeak would show the slightest attitude toward even fixing the existing WM issues (not even going so far as to beg for improvements), I would consider renewing my PM to show them my vote of thanks for doing so. But it just is not happening. The disgusting email that you get back about why nothing can be done for Waymarking because of the soggy paper game does not help matters at all.

 

No PM until I've seen good faith attempt at fixing the many, many broken Waymarking issues. Although I lose a couple of simple features, such as ignoring categories (not that big a deal anyway!), I can get by with using the core broken functionality. PM doesn't change that.

Let's remember that it is the geocachers and the soggy paper game with their PM's that supports Waymarking. Waymarking does not have enough interest to support itself. :ph34r:

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