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ripraff

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I am being attacked for copying and pasting in a waymark where I actually wrote material from my head, after reading information from a local history book. I was threatened with automatic decline. The rules do not say you have to write a personal essay. Just because some English major type wants to write essays, doesn't mean everyone should have to. The personal opinion as to creativity of the reviewer is irrelevant. This is a sport which includes people who enjoy various aspects. I like taking photos, investigating, finding things, thats how I enjoy the activity. Being harassed about the write-ups will drive me away. If I had cut and pasted there would have been quotes.

Edited by ripraff
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I am being attacked for copying and pasting in a waymark where I actually wrote material from my head, after reading information from a local history book. I was threatened with automatic decline. The rules do not say you have to write a personal essay. Just because some English major type wants to write essays, doesn't mean everyone should have to. The personal opinion as to creativity of the reviewer is irrelevant. This is a sport which includes people who enjoy various aspects. I like taking photos, investigating, finding things, thats how I enjoy the activity. Being harassed about the write-ups will drive me away. If I had cut and pasted there would have been quotes.

 

:signalviolin:

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I am being attacked for copying and pasting in a waymark where I actually wrote material from my head, after reading information from a local history book. I was threatened with automatic decline. The rules do not say you have to write a personal essay. Just because some English major type wants to write essays, doesn't mean everyone should have to. The personal opinion as to creativity of the reviewer is irrelevant. This is a sport which includes people who enjoy various aspects. I like taking photos, investigating, finding things, thats how I enjoy the activity. Being harassed about the write-ups will drive me away. If I had cut and pasted there would have been quotes.

 

I'm sorry you had this experience. I do a mix of creative writing and copy-pasting quoted material, and have never had a problem.

 

Please do not let one reviewer or insensitive commentary here drive you away. Take those pics and keep learning and adding to our collective knowledge :)

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I am being attacked for copying and pasting in a waymark where I actually wrote material from my head, after reading information from a local history book. I was threatened with automatic decline. The rules do not say you have to write a personal essay. Just because some English major type wants to write essays, doesn't mean everyone should have to. The personal opinion as to creativity of the reviewer is irrelevant. This is a sport which includes people who enjoy various aspects. I like taking photos, investigating, finding things, thats how I enjoy the activity. Being harassed about the write-ups will drive me away. If I had cut and pasted there would have been quotes.

You are right. You can decide the length of your description, as long as you hold the minimums of the categories (e.g. text of signs, right citation,...). Please send me a link to the Waymark in a private message and I will take a look who is acting like that.

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...I did not give up trying, but it turned me against the category hogs here. :( I'm sure that you have just encountered one of those elitist that think they run the site. <_<

Please stop with your conspiracy theory!

 

It's not a conspiracy theory. You and a few others here have really sucked the fun out of Waymarking for some of us, so knock it off already!

 

I won't even bother posting to some categories. Some of you guys, you namely, have made a pet out of Waymarking and others like myself would like to contribute but our stuff ain't good enough or at least that's what we are told and it hurts Waymarking as a whole.

 

So please, stop calling me out here in the forums! <_<

 

I sucked it up and moved on, and I suggest that you do the same.

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Please send me a link to the Waymark in a private message and I will take a look who is acting like that.

 

Are you now the go to person in charge here? :unsure:

I try to help ripraff. You could do the same if you like.

 

I did help ripraff. I agreed that my feelings have been hurt here by core members.

 

When you say "send me a private message and I will take a look who is acting like that" it makes it appear that you are in charge, and I have seen other posts that seem to suggest that you have authority here. It was a legitimate question.

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Your new waymark, First Christian Church Disciples - Endicott, NY, has been approved.

 

It was not the intention of this category to be a copy and paste to meet the three sentence requirement. This needs to be a personal account of "your visit" and/or description of the location. I will take another look at this waymark and if no revision is made I will decline it. Next time it will be an automatic decline.

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I think I met the three line requirement. I actually had the aid of a local history book so I was glad to find the extra information. I have been told to add personal fluff. I would rather have hard data, dates and the like. I do add interesting information that reflects the church or whatever. Sometimes a quote will show orientation, for example to strict Bible interpretation or development of various sub-groups or inclusion of all. Often quotes show a way of thinking and are much better than a restatement would be. When I research I often try to find as many sources as possible. The problem with small churches is that the often don't have a web presence or even much mention in the history books. I would much rather include extracts, quotes than some bland rewrite. I don't think some personal notes add much to the write-up. This I think is a personal preference.

It is hard to not take a threat personally. It does take the fun out. There are many things we do when searching for way marks. I tell any partners I have in looking that there has to be fun. I try to keep the element of discovery and not get into mechanically grinding out the search. For example I will limit the number of cemeteries I look for in one trip. I take photos of what I find interesting first. I limit the total length of the trip. If it feels like a grind it is not fun.

I enjoy even one word encouragements and do get depressed when the comments are negative. I have no problem adding things I forgot because I didn't reread the category and it has special requirements. Sometimes I lose information when the site goes down, which it seems to be doing a lot lately. I may not notice that some of the information is gone.

Thanks to all who are encouraging.

I am a bit overly sensitive right now because of the election. Frankly it scares me.

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Sometimes I think a category manager can be more abrasive in what they write, maybe more abrasive than they intend to be or maybe just more than normal for them (i.e. having a bad day or something). I submitted three waymarks to a category recently and two of the three were accepted but with a sharp note about a small missing data in the variables, and that future submissions would be declined if not corrected (in fairness that person did fix the two submission to add what I left out). The third submission was left for a few days until another reviewer looked at it. I felt sort of wrist-slapped and formed an opinion about that member and the category - not because of what was said, but how it was said. A couple weeks later I submit one to a different category, and get a encouraging message with the acceptance from the same member. Opinion updated. I will try to remember that and not take anything too personal when written in comments for accepted or declined waymarks.

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I don't mind someone taking charge, especially if he is someone who has done so much to keep Waymarking going.

 

It really would be nice to have someone in charge, Groundspeak has left us to our own devices.

 

I know that I submit or visit very few WM's, most of the stuff here is of no interest to me. But, when I did put forth effort to publish one I cared about it got butchered with edits from one of the category officers just as a bad joke. So I was backed against a wall with no one to turn to. I just had to put up with it. I'm sure others here have been ran off before. :ph34r:

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Sometimes I think a category manager can be more abrasive in what they write, maybe more abrasive than they intend to be or maybe just more than normal for them (i.e. having a bad day or something). I submitted three waymarks to a category recently and two of the three were accepted but with a sharp note about a small missing data in the variables, and that future submissions would be declined if not corrected (in fairness that person did fix the two submission to add what I left out). The third submission was left for a few days until another reviewer looked at it. I felt sort of wrist-slapped and formed an opinion about that member and the category - not because of what was said, but how it was said. A couple weeks later I submit one to a different category, and get a encouraging message with the acceptance from the same member. Opinion updated. I will try to remember that and not take anything too personal when written in comments for accepted or declined waymarks.

 

I think this post covers most of the things that sometimes happens in reviewing Waymarks. My recommendation is not to read more into the comments than intended. The reviewer wants to get your waymark approved once meeting the requirements of the category or they would not have created or volunteered to help review Waymarks in the category. Sometimes the decline notes may be short and be viewed as being terse when in fact they were intended to get to the point of what is needed to fix the waymark and nothing else. If you do not understand what needs to be done to fix your waymark from the decline note contact someone in the group. They should never be taken personal.

 

Also if you have a Waymark declined it is best not to bring it to the forums. It is best to work with the category group to get it approved. First bringing a declined waymark to the forums may bring you sympathy from other forum participants but it probably won't help you get your waymark approved. Second whenever a waymark is brought to the forums only one side of the situation is presented and often there is other information needed to really understand the situation.

 

My final point please keep all political comments out of this forums.

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As a reviewer, I have assumed that my comments (that go in the little box) are supposed to brief and to-the-point (which may often seem terse). How many characters are available to the reviewer in that wee comment box?

 

I think it's 5000.

I think you're right and then some. I couldn't resist testing the comment box in my next review. I hope I didn't break anything because my character count got into the millions.

 

There's no need for me to use too few words in my next rejection letter.

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As a reviewer, I have assumed that my comments (that go in the little box) are supposed to brief and to-the-point (which may often seem terse). How many characters are available to the reviewer in that wee comment box?

 

I think it's 5000.

I think you're right and then some. I couldn't resist testing the comment box in my next review. I hope I didn't break anything because my character count got into the millions.

 

There's no need for me to use too few words in my next rejection letter.

 

I don't have to reject very many submissions, and I have limited myself to just a very few categories that I manage or even take part in the review process here. And let me say that the review system here is a little better than some of the other sites that I have been a volunteer reviewer with. It has never been an easy task to reject a listing, and seems the nasty emails always follow. It's called "Ugly Baby Syndrome".

 

Waymarking should not be this way. Yes, (for example) your photo was awful and it totally sucked. But it was YOUR waymark. Your write-up was a copy/paste without credit to from where you stole it from.

 

My point, this is Waymarking. Likely you only took a picture of something that you found interesting and posted it here knowing that it will never be visited and only you or a few others found it interesting.

 

We can call ourselves reviewers here or whatever, we can say that we want standards kept high, but truth is we are phone booths, restaurants and stale data of the past.

 

I see Waymarking as recording history, and a out dated way of doing it. I can list my "junk" on my flicar account. All we are doing here is sharing photos with the public anyway.

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Thank you for your support. The forum was a great place to write this. The question was not about a particular waymark, but the tone of the note and the threat. It isn't great that other people have gotten the same response, but it does mean that I haven't been singled out, or if I have I am not alone. We agree on the requirements as a group. If one of the officers wants to add requirements, that really isn't fair. If you just go back to the person imposing extra requirements you aren't going to get far. I am not aware of a way to talk to the category group as a whole. I would even suggest that someone who does this be removed from the officers. If someone is nasty, should they continue as an officer even if they have good and bad days. I was told in another thread that getting officers isn't a problem as long as the old officers are there to appoint them. I do appreciate the positive comments that people make. I am just getting started as a reviewer and I opted out of my first reject by putting it to a vote. That worked well because I got confirmation of what I thought the rules really were. It does feel a bit lonely to put thing out there that won't be visited, but they do show up on a Google search, so they are in the the virtual world. Some of the way marks are visited. Besides it is interesting to notice new things and to find out a little more about where you live.

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Thank you for your support. The forum was a great place to write this. The question was not about a particular waymark, but the tone of the note and the threat. It isn't great that other people have gotten the same response, but it does mean that I haven't been singled out, or if I have I am not alone. We agree on the requirements as a group. If one of the officers wants to add requirements, that really isn't fair. If you just go back to the person imposing extra requirements you aren't going to get far. I am not aware of a way to talk to the category group as a whole. I would even suggest that someone who does this be removed from the officers. If someone is nasty, should they continue as an officer even if they have good and bad days. I was told in another thread that getting officers isn't a problem as long as the old officers are there to appoint them. I do appreciate the positive comments that people make. I am just getting started as a reviewer and I opted out of my first reject by putting it to a vote. That worked well because I got confirmation of what I thought the rules really were. It does feel a bit lonely to put thing out there that won't be visited, but they do show up on a Google search, so they are in the the virtual world. Some of the way marks are visited. Besides it is interesting to notice new things and to find out a little more about where you live.

 

No, you have not been singled out. All it takes is one or two people getting together to bully other members here. They attacked one of my best listings with edits just to bully me, even the group leader acted as if there was no way to control their officer when I found out who it was, so that is what we have to put up with or leave. :(

 

I have been contacted by the moderator and asked to tone it down here in the forums, so looks like they (not the powers that be) are making good on the threat to have me banned.

 

I believe it's the little people like you and I that make Waymarking fun and not just a few that think they run the show here.

 

Last post guys, you win. Just remember that you are not helping by running old members off from this site when no new members are joining. :(

 

Edit to add: (not the powers that be)

Edited by Manville Possum
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