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Waymarking Site down ?


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3. We don't know what the future of Waymarking will be. We haven't made any decisions and are looking at various options. For now, we are continuing to do what we've done for the past several years, which is to leave the site up and running and do what we can to keep it functioning as is.

 

Bootron

 

Please please please do not terminate the website. I will pitch in my some own money to help fund it to make it continue. I have invested countless hours of my time and has brought me to new places. It's not functioning as it is. I'm having a very difficult time to navigate the site. Getting many different and new error messages. Could it be possible to make others (waymarkers) who seem to know what the code in these messages mean to help fix the problem at the source. Must Groundpeak fix it on their own, or could it be similar to fixing just like Wikipedia?

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Thanks Bootron!

 

It's almost noon CDT here and everything seems to be working!

I (and I'm sure many others) appreciate the addition of the server and, despite all our whining online, appreciate all the lackeys' work to get the wrinkles out.

 

I have released another fix that will hopefully remove all the "ambiguous control" errors.

 

Also, a few more things:

 

1. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, we have added a second server to the Waymarking site and there obviously have been some undesired effects as a result. We have been working to fix these problems as best as we can with the limited resources that we are devoting to the site at this time.

 

2. It is true that Groundspeak has de-prioritized the Waymarking website as compared to our other sites (also obvious, I'm sure). At this point we are committed to keeping it up and functioning, but are not adding new features or spending significant time maintaining the site. In making this decision (which frankly happened years ago) we had a couple options: A] shut down the site altogether, or B] keep the site up and running with limited support. Since there continues to be a group of dedicated Waymarkers that use the site regularly, we have decided that option B is the best one for now.

 

3. We don't know what the future of Waymarking will be. We haven't made any decisions and are looking at various options. For now, we are continuing to do what we've done for the past several years, which is to leave the site up and running and do what we can to keep it functioning as is.

 

Bootron

 

I'm sorry Groundspeak didn't capitalize on the Waymarking database earlier. I'm not going to go check how it really played out, but I was active on Waymarking before I ever heard of Foursquare and their checkins and mayorships (those functions have now moved to their Swarm app). Now there are tons of "what's nearby" apps too. But none of them are crowdsourced like WM and most of them don't have the range of POIs that Waymarking has. By "range" I mean all the different categories. I imagine that many Ingress players have used Waymarking.com to submit good Portal candidates. (I admit I went the other way and found an historical marker to Waymark because of a portal I captured.) And it appears to me that many geocachers are logging at least a few waymarks, based on the visits I'm seeing on my own submissions.

 

Anyway, thanks again!

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I have released another fix that will hopefully remove all the "ambiguous control" errors.

 

Also, a few more things:

 

1. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, we have added a second server to the Waymarking site and there obviously have been some undesired effects as a result. We have been working to fix these problems as best as we can with the limited resources that we are devoting to the site at this time.

 

2. It is true that Groundspeak has de-prioritized the Waymarking website as compared to our other sites (also obvious, I'm sure). At this point we are committed to keeping it up and functioning, but are not adding new features or spending significant time maintaining the site. In making this decision (which frankly happened years ago) we had a couple options: A] shut down the site altogether, or B] keep the site up and running with limited support. Since there continues to be a group of dedicated Waymarkers that use the site regularly, we have decided that option B is the best one for now.

 

3. We don't know what the future of Waymarking will be. We haven't made any decisions and are looking at various options. For now, we are continuing to do what we've done for the past several years, which is to leave the site up and running and do what we can to keep it functioning as is.

 

Bootron

If Groundspeak had a "Waymarking Premium" membership that would pour such money into Waymarking instead of Geocaching, I'd jump for it. Naturally, such a fee would grant one premium features in Waymarking but not in Geocaching, which is fine by me!

 

As it is, I cannot justify paying a premium membership fee for funds that are going into Geocaching, which I do so rarely that I could just drop out of it entirely! I want to help out Waymarking. I do not want to help out Geocaching. How do we go about doing that?

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I have released another fix that will hopefully remove all the "ambiguous control" errors.

 

Also, a few more things:

 

1. As I have mentioned in an earlier post, we have added a second server to the Waymarking site and there obviously have been some undesired effects as a result. We have been working to fix these problems as best as we can with the limited resources that we are devoting to the site at this time.

 

2. It is true that Groundspeak has de-prioritized the Waymarking website as compared to our other sites (also obvious, I'm sure). At this point we are committed to keeping it up and functioning, but are not adding new features or spending significant time maintaining the site. In making this decision (which frankly happened years ago) we had a couple options: A] shut down the site altogether, or B] keep the site up and running with limited support. Since there continues to be a group of dedicated Waymarkers that use the site regularly, we have decided that option B is the best one for now.

 

3. We don't know what the future of Waymarking will be. We haven't made any decisions and are looking at various options. For now, we are continuing to do what we've done for the past several years, which is to leave the site up and running and do what we can to keep it functioning as is.

 

Bootron

If Groundspeak had a "Waymarking Premium" membership that would pour such money into Waymarking instead of Geocaching, I'd jump for it. Naturally, such a fee would grant one premium features in Waymarking but not in Geocaching, which is fine by me!

 

As it is, I cannot justify paying a premium membership fee for funds that are going into Geocaching, which I do so rarely that I could just drop out of it entirely! I want to help out Waymarking. I do not want to help out Geocaching. How do we go about doing that?

 

I feel the same way, as I can not justify paying a premium membership fee for funds that are going into Waymarking. I'm sure that the majority of geocachers that pay a premium membership and never use the Waymarking site feel the same way.

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Site worked long enough to submit three waymarks and MOST of the 4th.. trying to upload last photo and got this message... gee, didn't think my pics were THAT big :)

 

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Out of memory.

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

 

Exception Details: System.OutOfMemoryException: Out of memory.

 

Source Error:

 

 

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

 

Stack Trace:

 

 

[OutOfMemoryException: Out of memory.]

System.Drawing.Image.FromStream(Stream stream, Boolean useEmbeddedColorManagement, Boolean validateImageData) +1139062

Tucson.Common.FileApi.ImageHelpers.ExtractDateTakenFromEXIF(HttpPostedFile& postedFile) +41

WM.UI.ImageUploadPanel.ProcessFile() +724

WM.UI.ImageUploadPanel.btnUpload_Click(Object sender, EventArgs e) +7

System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.OnClick(EventArgs e) +9628722

System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +103

System.Web.UI.WebControls.Button.System.Web.UI.IPostBackEventHandler.RaisePostBackEvent(String eventArgument) +10

System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(IPostBackEventHandler sourceControl, String eventArgument) +13

System.Web.UI.Page.RaisePostBackEvent(NameValueCollection postData) +35

System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +1724

 

Just deployed a fix that should fix this issue.

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With the chatter about site problems dying down, I thought maybe the problems had been fixed and tried submitting a Waymark. However, when I clicked "Save and Continue" on the first step, I was given the following error:

 

Server Error in '/' Application.
The waymark was not found.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

Exception Details: Groundspeak.Web.Exceptions.ItemNotFoundException: The waymark was not found.

Source Error:

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below.

Stack Trace:


[itemNotFoundException: The waymark was not found.]
  Groundspeak.Web.Waymarking.Waymark..ctor(Guid WaymarkGUID) +266
  WM.UI.WaymarkPageBase.SetWaymark() +691
  WM.UI.WaymarkPageBase.Page_Init(Object sender, EventArgs e) +34
  System.EventHandler.Invoke(Object sender, EventArgs e) +0
  System.Web.UI.Control.OnInit(EventArgs e) +92
  System.Web.UI.Page.OnInit(EventArgs e) +12
  System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) +134
  System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +489


Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.34248

I give up. I'm not even going to bother trying to submit again until I hear from Groundspeak that the problem(s) has/have been identified and fixed. I'm sick of entering the same information again and again only to be blocked by a variety of error messages or broken form elements.

 

Released a bug fix this evening that should fix this error.

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Everything is almost 100%. The site is slower to upload photos still and I cant submit any waymarks still. I can enter and save the form, but I can't select a state that they're located in. When I tried to select a different country and go back to the US one, it didn't work. Are others having the same similar issues?

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Everything is almost 100%. The site is slower to upload photos still and I cant submit any waymarks still. I can enter and save the form, but I can't select a state that they're located in. When I tried to select a different country and go back to the US one, it didn't work. Are others having the same similar issues?

 

Yep...I'm having the same problem...this is getting very frustrating.

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Everything is almost 100%. The site is slower to upload photos still and I cant submit any waymarks still. I can enter and save the form, but I can't select a state that they're located in. When I tried to select a different country and go back to the US one, it didn't work. Are others having the same similar issues?

 

Yep...I'm having the same problem...this is getting very frustrating.

 

Okay good. Glad it's not my computer. It worked for about a half hour then the states stopped showing up. Tried to save it on my computer, then go back on my phone. That worked as well, but only for a few minutes. Now I can't even get the drop down menu on my phone.

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Everything is almost 100%. The site is slower to upload photos still and I cant submit any waymarks still. I can enter and save the form, but I can't select a state that they're located in. When I tried to select a different country and go back to the US one, it didn't work. Are others having the same similar issues?

 

Yep...I'm having the same problem...this is getting very frustrating.

 

Okay good. Glad it's not my computer. It worked for about a half hour then the states stopped showing up. Tried to save it on my computer, then go back on my phone. That worked as well, but only for a few minutes. Now I can't even get the drop down menu on my phone.

 

We can see the server is having a few troubles this morning. I'm looking into this right now and will do my best to clear it up asap. We've added some additional logging to help diagnose issues better. I'll post again when we have things cleared up.

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For some odd reason, the error messages were coming back. Then, Waymarking logged me out without telling me. I didn't even know I was logged out. When I logged back in, I got a new error message that said:

 

"The type initializer for 'Groundspeak.Web.SqlData.SqlUserController' threw an exception."

 

What ever that means. This is very frustrating and a waste of my time. I used to be able to submit over 50 waymarks a day and now I am lucky if I submit 5, let alone 1. Groundspeak needs to say something publicly to let us all know what the heck is going on in HQ. Very unprofessional I'd say. Not blaming anyone here, just that this issue could have been resolved with months ago when it first arose. I hope this isn't the end to this website as I have invested a lot of my time and effort into it.

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For some odd reason, the error messages were coming back. Then, Waymarking logged me out without telling me. I didn't even know I was logged out. When I logged back in, I got a new error message that said:

 

"The type initializer for 'Groundspeak.Web.SqlData.SqlUserController' threw an exception."

 

What ever that means. This is very frustrating and a waste of my time. I used to be able to submit over 50 waymarks a day and now I am lucky if I submit 5, let alone 1. Groundspeak needs to say something publicly to let us all know what the heck is going on in HQ. Very unprofessional I'd say. Not blaming anyone here, just that this issue could have been resolved with months ago when it first arose. I hope this isn't the end to this website as I have invested a lot of my time and effort into it.

 

Read through this thread and you'll see that we have commented about what is going on with the site right now on several occasions. We do understand your frustration and are working to get this problem stabilized.

 

Bootron

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For some odd reason, the error messages were coming back. Then, Waymarking logged me out without telling me. I didn't even know I was logged out. When I logged back in, I got a new error message that said:

 

"The type initializer for 'Groundspeak.Web.SqlData.SqlUserController' threw an exception."

 

What ever that means. This is very frustrating and a waste of my time. I used to be able to submit over 50 waymarks a day and now I am lucky if I submit 5, let alone 1. Groundspeak needs to say something publicly to let us all know what the heck is going on in HQ. Very unprofessional I'd say. Not blaming anyone here, just that this issue could have been resolved with months ago when it first arose. I hope this isn't the end to this website as I have invested a lot of my time and effort into it.

 

Read through this thread and you'll see that we have commented about what is going on with the site right now on several occasions. We do understand your frustration and are working to get this problem stabilized.

 

Bootron

 

 

Thank you for clarifying. Hopefully the website will be fully operational again one day.

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Not sure what the state of the current operation is but the state/province drop down appears to continue to have some stability issues.

 

It appears to be working now, but that's not the only issue today. Every time I hit the save button, I get the stupid error message again. Then once I'm done explaining what I was just doing, I hit the back button to go back and save my waymark. When i do this I get another error message. All that work for nothing. Is this just my browser? I switched from AT&T to Cox internet earlier today in my home. I don't know if that would cause so many error messages.

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I waymark much more than I geocache (that is before the recent Waymarking web site melt downs) but I don't think that I have ever spent time on Groundspeak forums outside of the Waymarking corner. Maybe it's time to put away the Waymarking camera.

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I waymark much more than I geocache (that is before the recent Waymarking web site melt downs) but I don't think that I have ever spent time on Groundspeak forums outside of the Waymarking corner. Maybe it's time to put away the Waymarking camera.

 

Keep that camera handy. I have always liked to upload my geocaching photos with my logs. I even take a picture of most logs with my signature on them.

 

Geocaching or Waymarking is not about the numbers for me. I do like all kinds of geocaches, but not all kinds of waymarks.

 

Most of all of my listed waymarks photos are from my geocaching or hiking adventures or taken while on vacation and first listed on my Flicar account, but not all of my photos are public.

 

I also enjoy some of the alternative geocaching sites that allow virtual listings. So if Waymarking gets buggy, I just shift to something else until it is fixed. But again, it's not about the numbers or being a leader or that kind of thing for me. I can get my GPS fix with my camera several different ways. :)

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Site is currently clocking quite a bit when trying to go to the home page. The state/province drop down was not working when I tried a second ago. And getting Error loading page from the browser.

 

It is possible to post waymarks but only with great difficulty.

Edited by RakeInTheCache
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Site is currently clocking quite a bit when trying to go to the home page. The state/province drop down was not working when I tried a second ago. And getting Error loading page from the browser.

 

Been getting a lot of error messages today and the site is EXTREMELY slow. Yesterday, it was iffy. It was loading at a slow, but not too ridiculously slow. Today, it's been very slow and the site has just crashed for the 3rd time today that I know of. I wonder if this will ever be fixed. My photos from summer trips/vacations are back piling so much right now that I don't want to go anywhere and waste more space/time/energy to post waymarks that may never get published.

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Site is currently clocking quite a bit when trying to go to the home page. The state/province drop down was not working when I tried a second ago. And getting Error loading page from the browser.

 

Been getting a lot of error messages today and the site is EXTREMELY slow. Yesterday, it was iffy. It was loading at a slow, but not too ridiculously slow. Today, it's been very slow and the site has just crashed for the 3rd time today that I know of. I wonder if this will ever be fixed. My photos from summer trips/vacations are back piling so much right now that I don't want to go anywhere and waste more space/time/energy to post waymarks that may never get published.

 

So at about 16:30 PM PST we made some significant changes to the Waymarking codebase and also the servers themselves that we think will put the site back into a usable state for the forseeable future. I won't guarantee that it will be the end all be all solution to all our troubles, but we do think we have figured out the root causes of the past week's memory troubles. The code base still has its problems and we aren't pretending to have fixed many of the issues that you have seen over the years, but the core functionality should be generally back in order now.

 

We'll keep a close eye on the site metrics this weekend and will be checking in to the forums to make sure that this is, in fact, the case.

 

Bootron

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One additional thing to note is that we had to slow down the home page load time a bit by doing some of our fixes. This is a known issue at this point, and we will try to tweak the settings in the upcoming days to make it a bit more responsive. It's a trade-off at this point, between using up server and database resources, but we will try to find the right balance. Also, there appears to be a memory leak in the code somewhere (this has always been there, it's not new), and as a result we may have to reset the server from time to time until we can stamp it out for good. If we do reset the site, it should only be down for a minute or two at a time.

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One additional thing to note is that we had to slow down the home page load time a bit by doing some of our fixes. This is a known issue at this point, and we will try to tweak the settings in the upcoming days to make it a bit more responsive. It's a trade-off at this point, between using up server and database resources, but we will try to find the right balance. Also, there appears to be a memory leak in the code somewhere (this has always been there, it's not new), and as a result we may have to reset the server from time to time until we can stamp it out for good. If we do reset the site, it should only be down for a minute or two at a time.

 

I would like to say thank you bootron for your hard work and keeping the community here posted on the progress. :)

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One additional thing to note is that we had to slow down the home page load time a bit by doing some of our fixes. This is a known issue at this point, and we will try to tweak the settings in the upcoming days to make it a bit more responsive. It's a trade-off at this point, between using up server and database resources, but we will try to find the right balance. Also, there appears to be a memory leak in the code somewhere (this has always been there, it's not new), and as a result we may have to reset the server from time to time until we can stamp it out for good. If we do reset the site, it should only be down for a minute or two at a time.

 

Thank you bootron! The website is almost 100% back to normal, more like 90%. I say almost because it is slow, but I haven't gotten any additional error messages. I'd rather the site be a little slow than to have error messages.

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One additional thing to note is that we had to slow down the home page load time a bit by doing some of our fixes. This is a known issue at this point, and we will try to tweak the settings in the upcoming days to make it a bit more responsive. It's a trade-off at this point, between using up server and database resources, but we will try to find the right balance. Also, there appears to be a memory leak in the code somewhere (this has always been there, it's not new), and as a result we may have to reset the server from time to time until we can stamp it out for good. If we do reset the site, it should only be down for a minute or two at a time.

So is there a way to earmark a donation or premium membership subscription so that the funds go only to Waymarking? I want to support Waymarking, but not Geocaching (OK. So I'm different from 99% of Groundspeak's customers. So what!); but the current structure only allows me to support Geocaching and not Waymarking if I go back to premium.

Edited by MountainWoods
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One additional thing to note is that we had to slow down the home page load time a bit by doing some of our fixes. This is a known issue at this point, and we will try to tweak the settings in the upcoming days to make it a bit more responsive. It's a trade-off at this point, between using up server and database resources, but we will try to find the right balance. Also, there appears to be a memory leak in the code somewhere (this has always been there, it's not new), and as a result we may have to reset the server from time to time until we can stamp it out for good. If we do reset the site, it should only be down for a minute or two at a time.

So is there a way to earmark a donation or premium membership subscription so that the funds go only to Waymarking? I want to support Waymarking, but not Geocaching (OK. So I'm different from 99% of Groundspeak's customers. So what!); but the current structure only allows me to support Geocaching and not Waymarking if I go back to premium.

 

I don't believe that Waymarking has enough support to be a stand alone platform and is dependant on geocaching revenue to exist.

 

Myself, I don't get enough perks from Waymarking to justify paying to support it.

 

I do know that other alternative geocaching sites are dependant on donations from users and not fees, so maybe that is not a bad idea to help keep the lights on here. B)

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And... we're back to square one again. Thought we were in the clear after a few days of the site working perfectly. This afternoon 1pm PST I went to the main page and it logged me out without telling me. I logged back in and it took forever to load the next page. I got this response in bold red, "Timeout expired. The timeout period elapsed prior to completion of the operation or the server is not responding." I tried to use geocaching as well and their site is down as well. I guess it was a server wide issue. I got an error message from safari that said there were too many redirects to connect to geocaching.com.

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On Geocaching I get:

 

An Error Has Occurred

Your request has resulted in an error. Please return to this site's home page to continue.

Copyright © 2000-2012 Groundspeak Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

On Waymarking I get:

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

 

Runtime Error

 

Description: An exception occurred while processing your request. Additionally, another exception occurred while executing the custom error page for the first exception. The request has been terminated.

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On Geocaching I get:

 

An Error Has Occurred

Your request has resulted in an error. Please return to this site's home page to continue.

Copyright © 2000-2012 Groundspeak Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

On Waymarking I get:

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

 

Runtime Error

 

Description: An exception occurred while processing your request. Additionally, another exception occurred while executing the custom error page for the first exception. The request has been terminated.

 

The Geocaching database had a minor failure a few minutes ago. Waymarking still shares account data with the Geocaching website and so when Geocaching goes down, often Waymarking will see consequences as well. This has always been the case. It is not related to the issues we have been seeing in the past couple weeks. As far as I can tell there are no major issues happening to the Waymarking site right now and you should be able to use the site as before.

 

Bootron

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On Geocaching I get:

 

An Error Has Occurred

Your request has resulted in an error. Please return to this site's home page to continue.

Copyright © 2000-2012 Groundspeak Inc. All Rights Reserved.

 

On Waymarking I get:

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

 

Runtime Error

 

Description: An exception occurred while processing your request. Additionally, another exception occurred while executing the custom error page for the first exception. The request has been terminated.

 

The Geocaching database had a minor failure a few minutes ago. Waymarking still shares account data with the Geocaching website and so when Geocaching goes down, often Waymarking will see consequences as well. This has always been the case. It is not related to the issues we have been seeing in the past couple weeks. As far as I can tell there are no major issues happening to the Waymarking site right now and you should be able to use the site as before.

 

Bootron

 

Thanks for the info. Hopefully that's the case. It looks like both sites are up and running again as of 1:39 PM PST.

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Am I imagining things or am I not receiving all mail notifications when my waymarks are accepted? Anyone else have an issue with this? It does not seem to be systematic. Maybe I should check a spam filter or something.

 

It's not happening to me. I get email notifications the second it happens. It might be in your spam or elsewhere. Both geocaching and Waymarking were offline today for a few minutes so that might have something to do with your email not recognizing something. Have your waymarks been approving and you haven't been receiving the usual email with them?

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Waymarking.com is working fine, but geocaching maps is not. I get a very similar error message when I use the maps. Could the issues be connected? I saw another form for the map issue on geocaching and others were having issues with it so I know it's not my computer.

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Is anyone else getting the usual error message after trying to save a waymark? I kept going back and forth on my browser trying to save it. I've also noticed that the site has gotten slower and slower today. Is it just me? I really hope so as I don't want to have the site un-operational for two months like we did the last time this happened.

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