And Another Category Goes to my Blacklist

[+Torgut]

So, a couple of illuminated officers decides to tape measure these letters based in nothing but they powerful eyesight and perspetive analysis and concludes that perhaps they are 95 cm, not meeting the "taller than 1 meter" rule. This is a perfect display of wrongly Waymarking doing and I wont think twice or sleep badly today but I don't need to please this people. You don't want this amazing City Name in your precious 100,00 cm tall  category? No worries. From me, you will have no more. There are plenty of categories ran by decent people. 

 

https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/WM17ZR1_Peshawar_Pakistan

 

Oh... but this is so obviously 101 cm, so it's OK:

https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/wm180FB_Hamilton_Ontario_Canada

 

This? Who knows... could as well be 50 cm, but it's OK:

https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/wm17YWQ_Porto_Portugal

 

Unbelievable.... !!!

 

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

 

Initial vote call comment:Aunque las tres sentencias son pobres, Pienso que no tienen un metro de alto, o los hombres sentados miden 3 metros... El ancho igual so 10 pero ni el corazón parece tener un metro.
Although the three sentences are poor, I think they are not one meter tall, or the seated men measure 3 meters... The width is the same as 10 but not even the heart seems to have a meter.

Vote comments:

[nay] No parecen tener 1 m de alto
Don't seems 1 meter high
[nay] Agree
[yea] I’m going to vote yes. It’s true that not ALL the letters are 1m tall, but that’s because they are written in Arabic script, and there are some script letters that I think are 1m tall - this is a very cool addition to the category and I think it meets guidelines



 

Edited May 3, 2023 by Torgut

[+Ariberna]

I wrote you a private to answer your private mail (not very correct you mail, certanly) because i didn't sew this in forum.

I had doubts and I put to vote them. But I would like to aprobe this different letters with other alphabet.

More  officers of this cathegories voted and declined me four WM'm because were "so thing" letters and didn't have problem (and I think that two had more than 10cm)

You should archive the letters of pakistán because the url doesn't work.

Your contributions in the cathegory will be always well receive.

 

 

[+Torgut]

Nothing negative to say about voting. Yesterday I had two other WM's declined. Didn't upset me. Reasons were reasonable. However, a lot to say about the magic art of defining with precision what is 100 cm  based in two photos and a lot to say about the different criteria applied with many other WM's in the category which obviously should had raise the same doubts. As the voters declined the WM, I am declining the category as edible to further fair submissions.

 

This is a spirit I don't subscribe: making things hard while in doubt.

 

Just in line with some other categories I excluded before, like the Hand Operated Water Pumps where a bright officer decided a cable visible in the background should be related to an imaginary electrical pump, despite me guaranteeing that the cable was not related with the water pump at all.

 

You fellows have the right to be complicated,  hard and follow ambiguous criteria. We have the right of stop submitting to the category. And I have the right of factually expose the occurence. 

[+PISA-caching]

14 hours ago, Torgut said:

This? Who knows... could as well be 50 cm, but it's OK:

https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/wm17YWQ_Porto_Portugal

 

The second photo of that WM shows some persons next to the letters. I doubt that they are only 50cm. :-) And I'm not allowed to open Peshawar - Pakistan - City Names in Giant Letters on Waymarking.com

[+BeayPepe]

As the leaders of the category in question, we have told the officers that, when in doubt, they should ask the person sending the waymark for explanations. The owner's confirmation of compliance would be enough for us, but, according to some of the officers, the questions would only lead to lies.
We don't understand why someone would want to lie about these things, but we have already seen some cases...
We don't want to get angry or fight with anyone, as we consider this to be a game and we are supposed to be here to have fun.

About the WM of Pakistan, we liked it very much, so, if you guarantee us that it really is a meter high, send it back to review and we will personally take care of publishing it.

[+Torgut]

Dear PISA-Caching, OK, here are the screenshots. 

 

"The second photo of that WM shows some persons next to the letters. I doubt that they are only 50cm" 

 

Very true. Didn't see that second photo. No doubts in this example.

 

 

Dear BeayPepe

 

I can't tell - like anyone else - if all those letters are over 100 cm. Like everybody else I didn't measure them. They looked big enough to follow the spirit of the category. Perhaps some letters are 105 cm and some others are 80 cm tall. Who knows. They are irregular as it's Arabic script with some styling. 

 

I didn't understand if the first part of your post was about the other example of category I mentioned, the Hand Operated Water Pumps. If it was, it's an old story, it happened perhaps 10 years ago. But I remember explicitly explain to the officer that the cable he spotted with his eagle eye was not related and told him 100% that it was fully hand operated. A shame. 

 

I am not specially angry. I logically don't want to contribute to categories which are run like this, with a technocrat philosophy, discussing a matter of a couple of cm and valuing more the pseudo-conclusions than the common sense and what should be the general spirit of the objects. I  just make a point to bring this cases to public discussion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[+BeayPepe]

Not all letters have to be at least one meter high. According to the category description, the set of letters must be at least one meter tall. So, if only one letter is one meter tall, it would be valid. This was one of the requirements we were forced to put in when this category was proposed in the forum. We do not like this requirement, but we were asked to include it in order to submit the category for peer review.
The first part of what I commented before is about this same category: City Names in Giant Letters.

[+Torgut]

DeayPepe, to me it seems obvious that some of the letters are at least 100 cm. That's just me. 

[+Torgut]

Two additions to my list of dark categories where officers do as they like despite everythis else:

 

1) Official Tourism Attractions will get no more WM from me. Officer deemed a WM not edible on account of being a "lazy" WM. By that, I suppose, he means that he wanted more text. Despite the absence of any reference in the category's rules to a minimum text. Still, there were three paragraphs with about six lines.  The perfect example of despotism and despots deserve no attention.
https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/wm19TT8_Bhairavanath_Temple_Bhaktapur_Nepal

 

2) Botanical gardens. WM submitted, it was returned with a note to include sources. Not requested in the category rules but I found no problem in adding this which I did. It seems someone sent the WM for officers votes and it was APPROVED, therefore it was published. Just for the officer on his own terms and against the will of the college of offices manually overrule the voting and decline it. No more WM's from me to Botanical Gardens until despotism is erased from the category.
https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/wm19VQ4_The_Orchard_Doha_Qatar

 

 

Edited April 26, 2024 by Torgut

[+Ariberna]

I don't think blacklisting things will solve it.
Torgut, in certain categories you already know that the review problem depends on a certain person or persons. 
If I blacklist the WMs that show up some conflicting reviewer then I would only post 2 or 3.
There are categories that always have very minimum criteria, like not being necessary a photo, or even that you put a long description, something that I don't share. But it is also clear that there are certain categories that are perverted by the passage of time by some reviewers who act as they act or I do not know if it is only by a reviewer.
So, the best thing is that if you have a clear complaint, that you make it to whom it should be made, to wayfrog. I have already made them at the time, but this way it won't be just one person.m complaining. The forum is not going to help much, only for doubts.
In official Local Tourism I have had a lot of problems. Sometimes they don't admit events, sometimes they do, depending on who sends them. But mostly with web pages that some
consider that they are not suitable. The problem of the official web pages, I have "talked" "fought" with pmaupin, who is the one who checks my caches in many categories and it is usually solved.
It is that in my area we have many official and tourist websites: city council (Ourense or similars) province (Ourense also but the Diputación and similars) autonomous community (Xunta de Galicia in Galicia), country (spain info) areas (tourism Rías Baixas, Ribeira Sacra...).

It is a category that I like so much.

[+Torgut]

"I don't think blacklisting things will solve it" --- It solves to me. I get crap in one category, I don't touch that crap again, easy. 

"f I blacklist the WMs that show up some conflicting reviewer then I would only post 2 or 3." ---- This is a bit exaggerated. 

"if you have a clear complaint, that you make it to whom it should be made" ---- I am too old to believe in complaints.

[+Ariberna]

"I am too old to believe in complaints."   :-))  LOL

[Lightnin Bug]

I am with Torgut, solving to me by blacklisting "Orthodox Churches" due to the following declining email that I received:

 

"You never read the instructions. YOu do not seem to want to plaay the game correctly."

 

Of course, I could not respond, as it was sent anonymously.

 

This was my first attempt to post a waymark here, and from what I can tell I followed the instructions properly.  Here is the waymark in question:

 

https://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/wm19ZP8_St_Paul_Antiochan_Orthodox_Church_Emmaus_PA_USA

 

Peace,,

 

LB

 

[chrissyml]

LB (you know me as Brandy from a different hobby), I had a very similar experience when I tried to post my very first one. I didn’t blacklist the category but it turned me off from interacting much. This is probably the third time I have ever posted in these forums, and I’ve been doing this for more than 10 years now. When stuff gets declined there’s often an accompanying mean-spirited response. My strategy is just to delete the waymark if it’s not a quick easy fix and try to go overkill when I do post something. More photos and description than is required, etc. And to mostly not interact, just be happy trying to fill up my grid. Hobbies should be fun and relaxing, so at the hint of adding confrontation and mean-spiritedness I just play by myself.

 

And now I will go back to lurking! I just wanted to respond because you and I have met in real life as well as another hunting hobby and I love the stuff you create over there!

[Lightnin Bug]

Hey Brandy,

 

Did not know we shared this pastime as well - I will need to check out your waymarks, as I am certain they are wonderful.   :-)

I suspect it was just some bOoMeR rage directed my way and usually when I encounter mean-spiritedness I take the same approach and move on.  I suspect I know which reviewer it is, so I will probably also avoid areas where he is a reviewer or overdo my submissions.

 

Cheers,

 

LB

 

[chrissyml]

I remember the name of the person who was rude to me the first time... I responded with "are you always so harsh toward people who are trying to participate in your hobby for the first time?" They backtracked and said for some reason they thought I was experienced at this and being lazy. Whatever. I don't forgive people easily, so that's that.

 

The other instance that comes to mind was a couple years ago. I tried to post a historic marker in New Jersey and the person declined it, insisting that it was in Ohio and implying that I was an idiot. (Did not use the word idiot, but the tone was pretty condescending.) I reread my entry. Nowhere did it say Ohio. The coordinates were right. It's in New Jersey. I know it was; I was jus there and took the photo. I wrote back and said, "I'm not sure why you think it's in Ohio. Is something in there indicating that it's not in New Jersey?" They insisted that it was in Ohio and would not reconsider, so I just deleted it. Not worth arguing about. I already had the icon for that category so it wasn't worth more energy. Unfortunately, I don't remember that reviewer's name.

 

People feel very comfortable being harsh and digging in their heels behind a keyboard. It is what it is. 

 

I'm not sure my waymarks are wonderful, but I appreciate your vote of confidence! I don't know how I found this hobby, since I don't geocache, but I was intrigued by the grid and felt the need to fill it. I love a good checking-things-off hobby, like this, the National Park stamps, letterboxing, trying to visit every state, etc. For the first several years of this, I would just make sure whenever I was visiting anywhere far-flung I would find stuff that was specific to that area and get those icons. During the pandemic, one of my at-home projects was to revisit old vacation photos to organize, scan, etc. It occurred to me that I probably had photos that would satisfy more categories, and I was right. I actually almost doubled the amount of icons in my grid (both found and posted)! So then it was a mission. I copied the big list of categories into a Google doc and deleted out all the ones I had, leaving me with a checklist. My short-term goal is to find everything that isn't location-specific to post or log a visit, and when we go on a trip I go back to the list and figure out what's in the area that satisfies a new category for me, like the state-specific historic markers, etc. My husband was very patient on our honeymoon when I would ask him to pull over so I could photograph something, or on a trip to Denmark when I made sure that after lunch we walked to a nearby building to photograph a bolt sticking out from under a window so I could log a Danish benchmark. I may have made a detour on the way to my sister's house so I could catch the Weinermobile.

 

But yeah, I mostly see this as me interacting with a website. I skim the forums sometimes but the negative interactions I've had have reinforced my choice to participate by myself whenever possible. Which means I'm going to have a hard time with that space station category, among a couple others! I know there are nice people here too. It's nice to see you here.  

[+elyob]

It is so sad that those negative experiences in this game happen to many of us.

[+Alfouine]

You should copy/paste your message to Wayfrog

This waymarker is well known for uncontrolled or agressive messages

[chrissyml]

I didn’t mention anyone’s names. How do you know who I mean?

[+Alfouine]

I just know the name about who Lightnin bug is speaking

And not so many reviewers are agressive

[Lightnin Bug]

I can give you a hint - said "ReViEweR" is also in the Outdoor Basketball Courts (the individual argued several times that my coordinates did not align with whatever map 'he' was using, so that category is blacklisted as well.).  It is not Lubricus, so do the math on the Venn Diagram and that is my suspicion about somebody who does not sign his inflammatory statements.

How does one engage the Wayfrog about abusive "ReViEweRs"?

 

Best regards,

 

LightninBug

 

Quote

 

 

[+Alfouine]

8 hours ago, Lightnin Bug said:

How does one engage the Wayfrog about abusive "ReViEweRs"?

 

 

PM

[Lightnin Bug]

Thank you - I doubt it will get resolution, but it did make me feel better.

 

Peace out,

 

LB