Lab Caches vs. Waymarking

[+tozainamboku]

When the Waymarking site went beta, in 2005, I was excited about the new opportunities Groundspeak had created. Not only was this the long awaited solution for locationless caches and possibly a new way to deal with virtual caches, but the developers had created a new website and a new database from scratch - one which supposedly was designed to be more scalable and not have the performance issues the geocaching database was suffering from at the time. Moreover, the design of this database allowed for premium members to create new "categories" with their own guidelines for what was listed and for what would count as a find. The concept of category variables allowed categories to include customizable data so that things like container size, difficult/terrain ratings, and attributes could be replaced by fields that made sense for the category. Jeremy, OpinioNate, and others encouraged people to come up with creative ideas for categories. There was even a section called Waymarking Games that was meant for creating new GPS base games and not just use Waymarking to list McDonald's Restaurants or Pennsylvania Historic Markers.

 

For awhile there was even talk that categories would be created in the new database for various physical cache types and that the geocaching database would be migrated to this new platform so you would be able to get Pocket Queries and statistics that included both geocaching and Waymarking.

 

But then something happened. TPTB stopped pushing a vision of Waymarking as a new platform for hosting all sorts of new GPS games. They stopped working on enhancements to the site. The Waymarking Games section got subsumed in something called "Multifarious".

 

Part of the problem may have been Waymarking's success in attracting a community who saw it as a way to make lists. Nobody came up with ideas for new games or if they were proposed, the "list-makers" panned them and they didn't get approved.

 

Groundspeak lackeys said that they decided to concentrate on geocaching.com because that was their bread and butter. IMO, mostly it was pulling all the developers off Waymarking to create smartphone apps.

 

Now I read that Lab Caches are new platform to experiment with new geocaching ideas. In the FAQ for the I <3 Geocaching lab caches, I read there are plans to migrate the geocaching database to this new platform and integrate PQs and statistics. Yeah. I've seen that before. I'll believe it when it happens

 

I also see ideas promoted for lab caches that specifically refer to caches that existed in the past but which have overtime become the target of guidelines that forbid them. If lab caches are being developed as the new platform for geocaching 2.0, what is the reason for the early experiments to flaunt guidelines that have been developed over time? Have the new developers being given free reign the repeat mistakes of the past, or is there something substantially different so that caches which caused problems for reviewers or land managers in the past are suddenly OK again? Perhaps the experiment is really to find out if geocachers can be trusted to create caches without review?

[4wheelin_fool]

No need to get your knickers in a twist, lab caches may not fit the definition of "a cache" for most Puritans, but a slow release and careful implementation may work.

[+TheWeatherWarrior]

Lab Caches are simply experiments, not a new type itself. Where they spawn a new type is yet to be seen.

 

Best to just let Groundspeak do their thing and then judge.

 

BTW, in my opinion, the Waymarking end is Terrible. I feel like I'm jumping back in time to 1999 when I visit that site. Just a really annoying, poor graphics way that Foursquare surpassed in the second month of service.

[+tozainamboku]

No need to get your knickers in a twist, lab caches may not fit the definition of "a cache" for most Puritans, but a slow release and careful implementation may work.

I almost didn't want to post the last paragraph. My knickers are not in a twist over the uses of the lab caches so far. I know that people have worked around temporary caches and private caches a number of ways. These already exist in some form. Some people even find creative way to log them so they can count as finds. So that doesn't bother me.

 

I think your comment of "slow release and careful implementation" has some merit. There has been mention in the forum before that Groundspeak uses agile software development, particularly the Scrum method. The idea here is instead of taking a long time developing a new system or adding lots of features to an existing one, you develop in many short sprints, and that you have potentially releasable code at the end of each sprint. It could very well be that Groundspeak is working on a long term project to replace the current Geocaching.com database with something new. Rather than popping it on us all at once, they could be developing small increments. Since this product won't have the features needed to support all of geocaching.com until it is finished, it could be that they have created a separate geocaching labs site where they can release their incremental sprints and allow geocaching.com users to test these features and give feedback. So far they don't have much and the lab caches seem to be more of a marketing ploy. It may be that as time goes on we will see more capability in the lab caches and a better understanding of the ultimate goals. Right now there are many unanswered questions and many similarities with past "mistakes".

[+Manville Possum]

I'm a Waymarker and the Lab caches that I had a chance to log during a Mega event are much like my historic Virtual listings that require a code phrase to be logged that I have listed on other geocaching sites. I find the Lab caches interesting, hopefully they are something many of us that enjoy Virtual geocaching will be able to work with if they work out for Groundspeak. As of now Lab caches have no reviewers, maybe they would work with a peer review group like Waymarking?