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Few Visits to Waymarks?


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This is probably true. I don't know what the actual statistics are.

 

Waymarking is significantly different from Geocaching, even from the virtual and locationless caches, in that visiting them is not necessarily the goal. While many people do enjoy visiting them, others are pretty casual about logging visits. Waymarking is still driven primarily by the creation of the waymarks as a way of documenting interesting (and some not-so-interesting) sites around the world. The adventure is in the discovery of new places to waymark, taking the photos, maybe doing some research, and then writing a good description. We've built up a tremendous information base through Waymarking. Just see how often they show up on web searches related to them!

 

With over 1,000 categories, many find particular areas of special interest, concentrating on certain categories or types of categories. Others like the challenge of filling in the "grid" by creating and/or visiting waymarks in as many categories as possible.

 

So, I would not let the small percentage of logged visits discourage you from either creating your own waymarks or visiting ones that interest you.

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I have looked at waymarks a number of times & wondered why so few in the areas I was interested in were visited. It looks to me that only about 10% have ever been visited.

Am I missing something?

In addition to what SilverQuill said, I will say that most "visits" to any given waymark are not physical, but virtual. Waymarks come up in people Google searches when they are researching. If you click on waymarks, up at the top, you will see which of your waymarks have been viewed recently and when. Plus, that is only marking people who are logged into GC.com who viewed your waymark, multiply that for non-members. I always thought that if there were an option for a non-member to put a comment on the Waymark, like beautiful pictures, I enjoyed lo0oking at this, or this was useful to me when I was researching my genealogy, etc., it would be an encouragement to the people who are posting waymarks.

 

I also feel that the waymark provided more and more value the closer it comes to being a complete inventory of any given category. Imagine, one click and you could see all the Civil War memorials in the US? Or pictures of everything on the National Register of Historic place, and a map showing where they were?

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Thanks for the replies, guess I wasn't thinking, as we occasionally read caches & logs that we never expect to find to share in the experience, photos & ideas of others.

But that raises the question, if visits aren’t the point then why are they often hard to log?

I am sure I'm missing something here also, but I am very interested in learning more about Waymarking, & the community’s ideas on the game.

Thanks in advance for any insights

Best & Good Hunting, m.

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Not sure what you mean by hard to log. I've logged over 750 of them and none was hard. I've never had a visit rejected, but then that's because (1) I actually did visit the waymark, and (2) I always had proof. For the latter, over 99% of my waymark visits have photos that I took at the waymark.

Not all waymarks require photos. But you can't argue with an original photo!

And, whether I provided a photo or not, I usually say a lot more than just "visited". The waymarker wants to know something about your experience with visiting the waymark. Doesn't have to be a book. But "Visited." isn't very descriptive.

Guess you'll need to explain more about what you mean.

 

BTW, I am in empathy on the low visits. When I first turned to Waymarking (after about 9 months of geocaching, which I continue to do), I was appalled at the hundreds of really cool waymarks in my area that had NO other visits, except the waymark poster in some cases. Only a few of them have even one more visitor than the poster or myself.

 

It is human nature that we like to talk more than listen. We like to show off to others where we've been (post a waymark), but we don't enjoy as much listening to where they've been (visiting someone's waymark). I'm as bad as the next guy. But once a handful of waymarks got me physically to a slew of many good places that I had never visited before, I was hooked.

Even my wife, who isn't really a primary geocacher or waymarker, likes to go on Waymarking visits, because we've both discovered things that we otherwise would never have known about. I am definitely willing to go where other folks have been & felt it was worthwhile for them to waymark something there.

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MWs Tks for the encouraging reply.

In the 20 or so I have looked at most have required 3 or 4 steps to "visit" some difficult to remember in the field. IE a photo from a different angle then others posted (Which could be a real problem if anyone was regularly logging visits or new photos :D ) Maybe I just hit a bad streak.

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In the 20 or so I have looked at most have required 3 or 4 steps to "visit" some difficult to remember in the field.

 

I'm estimating that 99% of Waymarking categories require only two things to visit a waymark: write a few words/sentences about your visit, and upload a photo. Easy peasy. Nothing to it.

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When I look at the visits to my own waymarks, I guess the 10% ratio is correct. But many of my urban waymarks - places a tourist would visit anyway - have more logs, some dozens. There are many ways to play the game, some visit all they can get, others post a lot of waymarks and do not visit any at all.

 

Visit requirements are part of the category, but most are similar. Upload a picture and write one or two complete setences about your visit will do in most cases. There are exceptions and some owners are nitpick, but these basics usually work. If you happen to choose a category with special requirements as one of your favorites, you will remember them in no time.

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I have looked at waymarks a number of times & wondered why so few in the areas I was interested in were visited. It looks to me that only about 10% have ever been visited.

Am I missing something?

I was similarly puzzled, and the way it was explained to me was that the main point of Waymarking is marking a location and getting the waymark approved for the given category. Actually visiting waymarks appears to be much less important. And this makes a lot of sense when you consider that most waymarks are pointless drivel such as fast food joints. Who'd bother to log that they visited something like that?

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I have looked at waymarks a number of times & wondered why so few in the areas I was interested in were visited. It looks to me that only about 10% have ever been visited.

Am I missing something?

I was similarly puzzled, and the way it was explained to me was that the main point of Waymarking is marking a location and getting the waymark approved for the given category. Actually visiting waymarks appears to be much less important. And this makes a lot of sense when you consider that most waymarks are pointless drivel such as fast food joints. Who'd bother to log that they visited something like that?

This is what you call a Geocacher-Who-Hates-Waymarking Spy posting to the Waymarking forums. Just look at his statistics: thousands of geocaches found, and zero waymarks either posted or visited. So you know what his advice is worth to us waymarkers!

 

Yes, there are some ridiculous categories. Some of them I will never bother with. But notice that there are categories so that you can decide what you want to visit and what you want to ignore.

 

Aside from that, there would seem to be no point at all, to me, to make waymarks if they are just folks listing all the cool things they like and no one listening (visiting) at all. In most cases (again, ignoring the categories that I do not like) I figure that if someone thought it worthwhile posting the waymark, it must be worthwhile visiting.

 

The spy chose the weakest category to talk about. Many folks in Waymarking do think that those fast food categories are bordering on the superfluous. But that does not mean that all categories are that way. As we say in America: don't throw the baby out with the bathwater!

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I have looked at waymarks a number of times & wondered why so few in the areas I was interested in were visited. It looks to me that only about 10% have ever been visited.

Am I missing something?

I was similarly puzzled, and the way it was explained to me was that the main point of Waymarking is marking a location and getting the waymark approved for the given category. Actually visiting waymarks appears to be much less important. And this makes a lot of sense when you consider that most waymarks are pointless drivel such as fast food joints. Who'd bother to log that they visited something like that?

Considering that less than 5% of all Waymarks are fast food places and far more geocaches are pointless micros I wonder how you judge?

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Wow! Tks again for all the input. We find it most enlightening. Logged my 1st very straightforward WM on the way to work last night & will log a few more when I find time to upload photos & write logs. Expect to explore this subject more over the summer & log many visits.

I will post more thoughts after the season.

If anyone has other ideas on the subject we remain most interested.

 

Often when asked what caching is we have said “It is like a deck of cards, the potential for many types of fun. Mostly outdoors & mostly GPS & location based”

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Ok. Good idea.

 

Just be careful of what you read. I read the geocaching forums, and there are some folks there (like the above spy) who really have no use for Waymarking because you don't sign a piece of paper. That biases their opinions against this game. They fail to see that both activities get folks out and about and visiting areas they might not have. As BruceS pointed out (and I thought of this after I entered my post, but didn't bother to edit it), the fast food categories are a tiny fraction of all of the categories. Basing an opinion of an activity because you don't like one tiny fraction of it is foolish.

 

Let's say, for sake of argument, that you (or I) also look at a certain other subclass of categories as "Why would I want to go there??" kinds of things. Then step back and look at the overall category list again, and you'll still see a ton of categories that are worth visiting to you.

 

As a practical example, I'll use one of mine. This is subjective, of course. When I first started Waymarking, I thought I'd find all waymarks around me (geocaching thinking...). I've had a fantastic time doing so. Loved every minute of it. But those darn benchmarks or surveymarkers or azimuths were, to me: (1) too hard to find -- often buried beneath the ground or in inaccessible areas, and (2) didn't give me the satisfaction that was worth the effort to find them. (It's the one category that made me wish that Waymarking had a DNF log type!!)

 

So I've added them to my category ignore list. Guess what, there are still gobs, and gobs, and gobs of other waymarks out there that are worth seeing to me. Yes, it's subjective. Your set of likes/dislikes is going to be different from mine. If you find that the vast majority of waymark categories are not to your liking, then (1) the game just isn't for you, and (2) you might want to look up the local shrink; or your doctor to see if you still have a pulse...

 

BTW, to be fair about it, the anti-Waymarking geocachers have a name for this activity which I've forgotten. (No really. It's some epithet that they sling. Just can't remember.) So as a come-back, we waymarkers jokingly refer to "that other game" as The Soggy Paper Game. (And yes, I do both activities.)

Edited by MountainWoods
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Ok. Good idea.

 

Just be careful of what you read. I read the geocaching forums, and there are some folks there (like the above spy) who really have no use for Waymarking because you don't sign a piece of paper. That biases their opinions against this game. They fail to see that both activities get folks out and about and visiting areas they might not have. As BruceS pointed out (and I thought of this after I entered my post, but didn't bother to edit it), the fast food categories are a tiny fraction of all of the categories. Basing an opinion of an activity because you don't like one tiny fraction of it is foolish.

 

Let's say, for sake of argument, that you (or I) also look at a certain other subclass of categories as "Why would I want to go there??" kinds of things. Then step back and look at the overall category list again, and you'll still see a ton of categories that are worth visiting to you.

 

As a practical example, I'll use one of mine. This is subjective, of course. When I first started Waymarking, I thought I'd find all waymarks around me (geocaching thinking...). I've had a fantastic time doing so. Loved every minute of it. But those darn benchmarks or surveymarkers or azimuths were, to me: (1) too hard to find -- often buried beneath the ground or in inaccessible areas, and (2) didn't give me the satisfaction that was worth the effort to find them. (It's the one category that made me wish that Waymarking had a DNF log type!!)

 

So I've added them to my category ignore list. Guess what, there are still gobs, and gobs, and gobs of other waymarks out there that are worth seeing to me. Yes, it's subjective. Your set of likes/dislikes is going to be different from mine. If you find that the vast majority of waymark categories are not to your liking, then (1) the game just isn't for you, and (2) you might want to look up the local shrink; or your doctor to see if you still have a pulse...

 

BTW, to be fair about it, the anti-Waymarking geocachers have a name for this activity which I've forgotten. (No really. It's some epithet that they sling. Just can't remember.) So as a come-back, we waymarkers jokingly refer to "that other game" as The Soggy Paper Game. (And yes, I do both activities.)

 

I continue to make my visits to waymarks to increase my knowledge of a certain area I'm on vacation, continue to learn about art, architecture, and history of an area, and to FINALLY try to finish that Missouri Monster and History Scavenger hunts. Who knew that two 100 waymark / 250mi radius scavenger hunts would be this challenging!

 

I'm also starting to find that the Courthouses in the Midwest are tremendously facinating, especially the ones built in the late 1800 and the early 1900's. Bruce has done a great job documenting a lot of these and I'm always on the lookout for these on my travels.

 

That said, I think a lot of newer geocachers who never were around for the locationless or virtual caches will never get the point of Waymarking. They just see the commercial waymarks as an excuse not to try it. My opinion is that Waymarking takes work, especially to write up a good waymark. It's much easier to go out and find a bunch of micro caches, type TFTC!, be done, and run up the numbers. Just my opinion, and yes, I am still playing both games along with several other activities.

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The way I play the game (which - by the way - is the BEST way, and everyone else is WRONG :P ) is that for the categories that I'm really interested in: if I find one, I take pictures an co-ords. When I get home I waymark it. If someone else has beaten me to it, I log a visit. For categories I'm less interested in, I may or may not bother with the visit. I do use WM.com to scope out an area before visiting, but I don't think I've ever taken the coords from WM.com and then set out expressly to visit a WM.

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Considering that less than 5% of all Waymarks are fast food places and far more geocaches are pointless micros I wonder how you judge?

 

As I have said before, I feel like "The commercial categories are the LPCs of Waymarking." Some people like to visit/post them to run up their numbers or to get the icons, and some people will just ignore them for more "productive" visits/posts.

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I'm sorry if other points of view make waymarkers feel defensive, and I have no idea whether they're experiences are typical or mine are. But to provide my area as one data point, the waymarks around me aren't very interesting as locations. Yeah, I admit I was being facetious in mentioning fast food joints, but most of the waymarks around me are in similar categories such as -- let's see -- libraries, city halls, steakhouses, Donated Engraved Bricks and Pavers, Independent Bookstores, Electric Car Charging Stations, and such stuff. I don't have any problem with those categories, but, like fast food places, they aren't places that one is likely to log a visit. And this is supported by the fact that very few of them have ever been visited.

 

I'm not sure how you can go from me observing this fact to me being a spy secretly intent on destroying Waymarking. The OP appears to have a very similar set of waymarks in his area, and I was explaining to him, as it was explained to me, why that happens.

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When I started Waymarking, in my home area there were mostly payphones and McDonald's. But also a small number of interesting ones. Some I probably would never have learned about another way. These are great waymarks: Places, a tourist might want to visit, if they were documented somewhere but aren't.

 

Not all waymarks can be great, but some are out there and they are worth visiting.

 

If you judge anything by its bottom level, nothing is left that would be worth it. Not Waymarking, not Geocaching, neither restaurants, movies, book, music - you name it; according to the definition of average, always 50% are below.

 

On the other hand, if the existing waymarks in your home area are really that bad, then the better. This would mean all the great places that exist for sure, are still waiting to be explored and researched. So no time to lose, grab your camera and GPSr and go out to make it better.

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Exactly.

 

First, no one said that the spy was trying to destroy Waymarking. There's no way that a waymark-disliker could destroy it, unless they happen to be one of TPTB.

 

Second, I don't understand the purpose of spouting. I personally do not like team sports. But I would never get on a forum about some team sport and flail away at how ridiculous it is. What would be the point? Obviously some people, a lot of people, do like team sports. I might as well keep out of their forums and let them discuss the aspects of the games without my poor powers, and total lack of necessity, to detract.

 

Go post some worthwhile waymarks, or stay out of the game and its forums. You aren't doing anyone any good generalizing that the whole game stinks just because you don't have any good waymarks around you and you don't want to do anything about it.

 

It's like the troll who posted in the geocaching forums that they hadn't found any of the first N (was it 5?) of the geocaches that they looked for, and that, therefore, we should all dry up. What a display of immaturity and taking one's dollies and going home!!! ("I'm not having any fun at this, so you all shouldn't have any fun at it. >pout< >pout<")

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I'm sorry if other points of view make waymarkers feel defensive, and I have no idea whether they're experiences are typical or mine are. But to provide my area as one data point, the waymarks around me aren't very interesting as locations. Yeah, I admit I was being facetious in mentioning fast food joints, but most of the waymarks around me are in similar categories such as -- let's see -- libraries, city halls, steakhouses, Donated Engraved Bricks and Pavers, Independent Bookstores, Electric Car Charging Stations, and such stuff. I don't have any problem with those categories, but, like fast food places, they aren't places that one is likely to log a visit. And this is supported by the fact that very few of them have ever been visited.

 

I'm not sure how you can go from me observing this fact to me being a spy secretly intent on destroying Waymarking. The OP appears to have a very similar set of waymarks in his area, and I was explaining to him, as it was explained to me, why that happens.

 

If I lived in your area I would probably have the same opinion of Waymarking, your area is not typical of most areas. You happen to be in an area with a very prolific waymarker that seems to enjoy posting the type of waymarks of the type you listed. Thus you see a much higher number these of than are seen in most other areas.

 

In my state of Missouri about about 30% are history, 18% are buildings (mostly historic), 13% memorials and less than 5% are commercial of any type.

 

This is not to say my Missouri waymarks are visited a lot, my most consistently visited waymarks are those I have in Montreal. I do see several hundred visits a month now.

Edited by BruceS
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Yeah, I admit I was being facetious in mentioning fast food joints, but most of the waymarks around me are in similar categories such as -- let's see -- libraries, city halls, steakhouses, Donated Engraved Bricks and Pavers, Independent Bookstores, Electric Car Charging Stations, and such stuff.

Personally, I don't have any of those type of places anywhere near (according to my searches). Mostly interesting categories.

But then again, I put categories that I'm not interested in on my ignore list and they disappear. I've no idea why you don't. You must enjoy getting disappointed!

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One comment about visit requirements history.

 

In the beginning of Waymarking, some of the categories were written from virtual geocache perspective, or were even virtual geocaches bulk converted to waymark categories. So, the visit requirements might have been written from the perspective that someone my try to armchair waymark like they used to armchair geocache the virtuals.

 

As things evolved, it didn't turn out to be a really valid concern and newer categories had less restrictive logging requirements. Bottom line, different people (waymark creators) enforce logging requirements than generated the logging requirements (category creators). There aren't many reasons a waymark creator would delete a visit log. There was someone clicking about and posting "visited" once that got a portion of his visits deleted, but thats about it in my memory.

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One other comment on the subject of the less appealing categories. When I am Waymarking near my home, I waymark anything that can be waymarked, whether I like the category or not, because the waymarks end up showing a slice of the world. The combination of the uninteresting waymarks and uninteresting categories (to me) becomes interesting. Over the years, the neighborhood has evolved, and businesses have come and gone, and the layers of history become interesting.

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Personally, I don't have any of those type of places anywhere near (according to my searches). Mostly interesting categories.

But then again, I put categories that I'm not interested in on my ignore list and they disappear. I've no idea why you don't. You must enjoy getting disappointed!

I don't ignore categories for two reasons. First, since there are so many categories, and so many of them are in this class, I fear I'd spend more time doing going through and ignoring the uninteresting one than I would ever spend looking at the results, particularly when I consider that there are new ones being created every day. The second reason is that I'm afraid once I eliminated everything else, the nearest waymark would be in North Dakota, and that would just be too depressing. The last time I had this conversation, someone suggesting a particularly good category that had none of these problems, so I looked it up and found that there were only 4 waymarks within 100 miles of me in that category.

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Personally, I don't have any of those type of places anywhere near (according to my searches). Mostly interesting categories.

But then again, I put categories that I'm not interested in on my ignore list and they disappear. I've no idea why you don't. You must enjoy getting disappointed!

I don't ignore categories for two reasons. First, since there are so many categories, and so many of them are in this class, I fear I'd spend more time doing going through and ignoring the uninteresting one than I would ever spend looking at the results, particularly when I consider that there are new ones being created every day. The second reason is that I'm afraid once I eliminated everything else, the nearest waymark would be in North Dakota, and that would just be too depressing. The last time I had this conversation, someone suggesting a particularly good category that had none of these problems, so I looked it up and found that there were only 4 waymarks within 100 miles of me in that category.

You only have to Ignore them once, and then it's done for ever. I think it only took me less than an hour to eliminate the ones that didn't suit. You might only be interested in three or four categories.

 

If there are "only 4 waymarks within 100 miles of me in that category" then that's fantastic! What a great opportunity to go out Waymarking! Unfortunately I'm not so lucky and many of the interesting local waymarks have already been logged. I still have plenty to fill in, however, and there are some more Scavenger Hunts to complete.

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The biggest misunderstanding and one of the main reasons for a fundamental opposition against Waymarking amongst geocachers is in my opinion the relation between posted/visited vs. hidden/found.

 

This analogy looks so strikingly obvious that is never questioned. And this was planned in the beginning, coming from the virtuals. But the meanings changed over time for good reasons. For a geocacher it looks like everybody hides stuff and nobody cares about finding. Yes, this looks more than weird, that's almost insane. I can understand that.

 

The point is, a poster does not hide anything nor create it, it has always been there. The post is not a "hidden", it's an FTF. But an FTF does not change a cache, all who come later have still the same challenge. In Waymarking visits are always easier than posts; go there, take a picture; no research, no write-up, finding all the variables can be tough sometimes.

 

If you stand at a crossroad, one way you'll find one well-known LPC, on the other you have the chance to get a lot of FTFs of various difficulty levels. Which road would any geocacher choose? Right, waymarkers do the same thing.

 

Visits are great, I'll take all that come along my way. But they cannot stop me from exploring the unbeaten tracks and finding all those great locations around. I must confess, sometimes I go out with the goal to visit one of the few left unvisited waymarks in my area. Last time I came back with one new visit and 38 new posts.

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The biggest misunderstanding and one of the main reasons for a fundamental opposition against Waymarking amongst geocachers is in my opinion the relation between posted/visited vs. hidden/found.

 

This analogy looks so strikingly obvious that is never questioned. And this was planned in the beginning, coming from the virtuals. But the meanings changed over time for good reasons. For a geocacher it looks like everybody hides stuff and nobody cares about finding. Yes, this looks more than weird, that's almost insane. I can understand that.

 

The point is, a poster does not hide anything nor create it, it has always been there. The post is not a "hidden", it's an FTF. But an FTF does not change a cache, all who come later have still the same challenge. In Waymarking visits are always easier than posts; go there, take a picture; no research, no write-up, finding all the variables can be tough sometimes.

 

If you stand at a crossroad, one way you'll find one well-known LPC, on the other you have the chance to get a lot of FTFs of various difficulty levels. Which road would any geocacher choose? Right, waymarkers do the same thing.

 

Visits are great, I'll take all that come along my way. But they cannot stop me from exploring the unbeaten tracks and finding all those great locations around. I must confess, sometimes I go out with the goal to visit one of the few left unvisited waymarks in my area. Last time I came back with one new visit and 38 new posts.

 

Let me expand on your post. On April 21st, I left home in Olathe, Ks. to work on these two Scavenger Hunts (100 waymarks / 250mi radius) I have been questing over the last couple of years. I drove through Arrow Rock, Glasgow, Fayette, Boonville, and Columbia, Mo. I ended up taking 250 pictures - most were visits, and mostly filling up BruceS inbox with his excellent National Register Contributing Builings, however, I was able, and am still writing up waymarks for categories either missed by the original waymarker of the object, or new waymarks of categories I am interested in - Missouri Historical Markers, Barber Poles, National Register Buildings, etc.. My intention when I left home was to do visits, but new waymarks, much like another substance, happen.

 

I also, on this trip, got to speak to the owner of the Sappington house. The house was originally owned by a Dr. John Sappington who was the inventor of quinine for malaria. It was built before the Civil War and really only stands because the good Doctor had such a good reputation with both Union and Confederate Sympathizers. One of the Scavenger hunt items, a historical marker, was in the front yard, but I was able to get SO much more information and knowledge because of Waymarking - the great history lesson from the owner and the new barn quilt waymark! LOL!

 

Waymarking is the journey. You get out of it what you put into it. I try to learn something on each one of these waymarks I post, and appreciate the dedication and hard work of my fellow waymarkers when I mark a visit.

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Thank you to all who have replied.

I found this thread most interesting & informative.

I have also greatly enjoyed my recent WM visits & reading about a most interesting game. I expect to continue Waymarking on a weekly basis.

I think that some aspects may be as daunting to other newcomers as they were to me in 09, when I visited 4 WMs but was only able to log visits to one due to the multiple "visit" requirements. I plan to try and post a better comment on my thoughts on a slightly off thread similar subject in the Getting Started section, which I hope will help other newcomers.

On this topic, I find for myself that Waymarking has a higher percentage of Good to Very Good posts/(hides) then caching, but Caching has a higher percentage of Great Caches/(Visits) & Weak Caches/(Visits). For us we have enjoyed about 95% of caches & 99% of WMs visited. :)

Thanks again to all, & good roads to you, m

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I've been posting some new waymarks recently, after a bit of a hiatus. I contribute regularly to a travel website, and I also occasionally contribute to Wikipedia (WP). It occurs to me that Waymarking fills a niche that Wikipedia doesn't: you CAN publish original research, which is not allowed on WP. For a waymark, you still need to provide a location and a photo (99% of the time), so that makes it easy to verify the most basic facts about a waymark. Waymarking is more user-friendly than WP, because you don't have to demonstrate that a waymark is "significant" (which sometimes happens on WP), you just need to have it accepted into a category, and new categories are being created all the time.

 

Visits are nice, too, but my city has only a handful of waymarkers, so I soon realized that there is no point in holding your breath hoping for a visit to be logged.

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As we all play the game differently, my version of Waymarking is using it as a tour guide. When I travel to a location, I look up waymarks in the area to see what there is to do. Normally, the locals are great at Waymarking locations of interest that many people miss during their travels.

 

This process also makes it easier to find neat locations when traveling because you don't have to cipher through the mass of garbage that shows up when you try to do similar searches on major search engines.

 

I originally was not a fan of the fast food categories, but one day in Australia, it came in handy when we needed to find a fast restaurant before we had to get back with our tour group. I looked up the local waymarks on my phone and found a place right down the street. It was not an easy place to see in any other way because signs were not prominent in that town.

 

I rarely log a visit or create waymarks anymore due to my busy schedule, but Waymarking.com is still my first choice of reference to find things to do when I travel.

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Thanks for this thread. There are not nearly as many Waymarkers as Geocachers in my area - when I started hardly anything had been waymarked in my city. And I like doing both, so I'm always puzzled when some geocachers complain, when finding a virtual, that they don't exist anymore. I always want to message them and say, "But they do! Haven't you looked at Waymarking?! You have a membership there, too!" I guess I'm weird; when I first get on a website, I've got to click every link at the bottom to see where it goes.

 

I'm just not as competitive as my local group who call themselves "Piranhas," - after starting 4 years ago, I have yet to break 200 caches and I've yet to hide one - and Waymarking just seems quite a bit more relaxed. This thread explains a bit for me as to why geocachers and waymarkers may have different goals.

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Thanks for this thread. There are not nearly as many Waymarkers as Geocachers in my area - when I started hardly anything had been waymarked in my city. And I like doing both, so I'm always puzzled when some geocachers complain, when finding a virtual, that they don't exist anymore. I always want to message them and say, "But they do! Haven't you looked at Waymarking?! You have a membership there, too!" I guess I'm weird; when I first get on a website, I've got to click every link at the bottom to see where it goes.

 

I'm just not as competitive as my local group who call themselves "Piranhas," - after starting 4 years ago, I have yet to break 200 caches and I've yet to hide one - and Waymarking just seems quite a bit more relaxed. This thread explains a bit for me as to why geocachers and waymarkers may have different goals.

 

...and welcome to the forum.

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Do you add additional "Visit" requirements to your Waymark up and above what is required by the Category creator?

~ had one Waymark submitted once with a 2 or 3 word long description with about 10 lines of "Visit" requirements added. They never supplied a single photo themselves but asked for a couple different views from the visitor.

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Jake,

Looking back I think this may be addressed to me. No, I don't. Off hand I would prefer there were fewer visit requirements in all WMs & that the requirements be more uniform.

I find most waymarks inhance my visit to an area. IE. if the only Wms in Clarks Summit PA were (are) fast food joints, I would stop @ one & enjoy the area, but have to write a comnent if I only had coffee :blink:

As some Fast Food joints reqire you post what you "ate"

While the real waymarks are a few major historical, & engineering things near the joints.

Edited by mars888
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As a new guy here I guess I'll post my thoughts on this topic based on what I've noticed.

 

1) I suspect that many GCers don't even know that the Waymarking site exists. It's not as if there's a flashing banner saying Hey! want to see some cool things in your area? Find them on Waymarking! Personally I would never have found the Waymarking site if I weren't interested in learning how to find benchmarks.

 

2) The Waymarking site isn't as "user friendly", especially if you aren't a premium member. Here's an example: To go to a cache near my home I simply pull up the (fullsized) map and move it around to my area, find a cache and click on it, then download it straight to my gpsr. If I want to find a waymark site to visit I have to use the (little) map, then pick a category, sort by closest, then click on one that I want to go to. As I'm not a premium member I can't download any info to my device. I have to enter the info by hand. For me that's the big one, even as a basic member it's a one button operation to download basic cache info to device, here a basic member isn't a redheaded stepchild, he's an ugly third cousin.

 

3) I'm pretty okay with taking a pic as proof of visit. The requirement that you put down what you ate at a fast food place is pretty amusing, if I go to wendys can I just put the number 5 in the field? (I do like the son of baconator)

 

The upside is that I did put in my first waymark today, even though I went 0/4 on benchmarks I was able to log a small monument right in the middle of town that no one else had noticed. The downside is that one of the benchmarks I was looking for was supposed to be 6 inches from that monument <_<

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The benchmark thing has come up before. I eventually added the category to my Ignore list, and I don't ignore much in Waymarking!

 

Things may vary greatly by region, of course; so the following may not apply where you look. In my area of the Ozarks the problem is that so many benchmarks are literally buried under ground. You can find the witness post, but it doesn't tell you where the benchmark is. Hopefully the description(s) of locating the benchmark by past agencies may help, but you still may have to dig down a few inches to find it.

 

I've seen a bunch of benchmarks where, say, the 1933 description says that the benchmark is yea distance from the center of a crossroad and yea distance from a house; then, say, the 1961 description says that there is no house or remains here, and that that benchmark cannot be located from other hints in the 1933 description.

 

Then there are those where the, say, 1972 description says that the 1947 description is all wet, and that they DID find the benchmark, but it is yea distance from thus-and-so and yea distance from the middle of the road. But when you get there you find that the thus-and-so landmark is long gone; and that probably the 1972 description (AND the 1947 description) were both wet!

 

Yep, a bunch of latest descriptions say NOT FOUND, just like you'd expect from that other hobby! I wasted a bunch of time on some of them only to go back and find that the latest description by a surveying agency said Benchmark Not Found or Benchmark Not Located.

 

I hope it is different in your area. If it turns out like I described, you may want to put them on the back burner (as opposed to getting turned off of the hobby).

 

As to the other problems you stated: Yep. We're all aware of them. I started geocaching in January 2012, but it wasn't until about October that I noticed Waymarking, and was surprised to find out that my password worked at the site (it's Groundspeak-wide). At the very least, our Waymark statistics should be right beside our Geocaching statistics. Even for those of us who are not in it for the numbers, showing all 4 statics in one place would help to generate more interest in Waymarking.

Edited by MountainWoods
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Oh I'm not discouraged at all. If anything I'm more motivated, although I'm still trying to figure out which oak tree was 10 inches in diameter in 1935 :o .

With GS's info on benchmarks so out of date I haven't even really bothered with it much, preferring to pull up the original datasheets and go from there. I'm not a numbers guy so the random geocache doesn't interest me. I'll skip the low hanging fruit and go for the difficult to get to ones. The same reason I won't put up but so many waymarks. Waymarking a subway or a hardware store is just low hanging fruit to me, I'll go for the sweeter juicier ones that take some effort thanks.

 

That does seem to speak to the original topic though. From a tadpoles pov it seems like the Waymarking site suffers from a case of benign neglect on the part of the GS. Don't advertise it, don't seamlessly integrate it, don't make it intuitive, and as far as I can tell by all means don't let people go from one to the other without having to log in again.

Edited by hippy_jeeper
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