Groundspeak Portal

opinionate:

(opt out available - just to get that out of the way).

 

Let's say I opt out of the points program.  If I'm looking at someone's profile who has NOT opted out, will their points be hidden from me?

What exactly do you mean when you say that waymarks submitted as orphans would be on auto-approve? Please tell me that they still go through the full review process.

Now, for a moment I would like to draw your attention to another facet of the game. Local database building. Honestly, filling the grid is great fun and many people will create a single entry to get the icon. However there are those that have an interest in collecting all of a certain type and make it a personal goal to collect more and more of the locations within one category.

I understand that 100 of anything might not seem like much but I'm quite proud of my 100+ "Ontario Provincial Plaques" Waymarks... and if I put my mind to it I could easily have 100+ "Tim Horton's Restaurants" and probably 100+ "Subway Restaurants"

I'm not saying that icon collecting isn't fun, but so is quantities of a single subject matter.

BQ

the blue quasar:

What exactly do you mean when you say that waymarks submitted as orphans would be on auto-approve? Please tell me that they still go through the full review process.

Now, for a moment I would like to draw your attention to another facet of the game. Local database building. Honestly, filling the grid is great fun and many people will create a single entry to get the icon. However there are those that have an interest in collecting all of a certain type and make it a personal goal to collect more and more of the locations within one category.

I understand that 100 of anything might not seem like much but I'm quite proud of my 100+ "Ontario Provincial Plaques" Waymarks... and if I put my mind to it I could easily have 100+ "Tim Horton's Restaurants" and probably 100+ "Subway Restaurants"

I'm not saying that icon collecting isn't fun, but so is quantities of a single subject matter.

BQ

Good point, Mr. Quasar!  I saw someone's profile with a "Century Club" list  - categories with at least a hundred waymarks.  I thought that was cool, so added a list to mine, I think eight, with another just a few short. (Working that backlog).  I know there are quite a few who enjoy one or several special categories.  I've got 311 in the National Register of Historic Places, but BruceS has almost 1000 more than that! 

So, would you suggest an extra 100 points per 100 in a single category?

Hmmm?  I have to give this some thought.

On the surface, I don't like it, at least as a part of waymarking.

Probably for the same reason I do not like wherigo on geocaching.

Over-complicated change for the sake of change.

The original games are fun because they are simple.  This has too many "If... Then" events for my liking.

Like I said, I'll give it some thought.

opinionate:

There will be "submit a waymark" links in all the usual places, plus a new one on the home page. When you go to submit a waymark the entry page will be slightly changed to have a category selection control at the top. It will be a dropdown like the one you use when creating a new category - select each parent category in turn and drill down until you find the one you want. When you finally select a category at a level that accepts waymarks it will pre-populate the category instructions and variables. If at this point a person can't find a good category, they can leave it blank and the waymark will become an orphan.

Okay, I guess I'm still a little confused.
On this new menu, which sounds good, if the person can't find a suitable category, what happens?  Is there a category called, Orphans to select?  Or do all waymarks start with a blank template unless a category is selected?  Then, without a category entered, it is submitted to become an orphan? 

Where will these poor orphans, or homeless waymarks live?  Will it look like a regular category?  And, then would premium members who want to categorize these would be officers?

Sorry, I'm a little slow on picturing how this would function.

What are people thinking of for an expiration time for orphans?  Maybe 90 days, 120?
Then would they still be in the system as archived waymarks or something?

On deleted visit logs - I've never deleted one, but we have had a couple of obvious "armchair" loggers in the past, and those entries were deleted.  Some police their visits more closely, but I think most react only if there is something really unusual going on.

What about regular archived or deleted waymarks in regard to points?

The grid:   One more consideration.  It is almost impossible for someone outside the U.S. to achieve a bingo.  For those in the U.S. there are some rows blocked by other county-specific categories, but for others it is really out of the question as I think all of the rows have at least one U.S.-specific category.

Since the grid gives a total category count (except for the last incomplete row), it should be possible to award points for each category posted to.

OK, I have given it some thought.

You can scratch my concerns about complexity as long as the point system is automatic and not self reporting.

My concern now is the creation and rewarding of deliberately bad waymarks, which will, in turn, create bad categories.

The scenario that keeps popping to my head is the oft-threatened "Crosswalks" category.  My fear is a cabal of waymarkers will start posting crosswalks as orphans and will then use the volume of orphans as justification for creating the category.

Substitute "crosswalks" for any other bugaboo category you fear will destroy the sanctity of waymarking and tear a hole in the time-space continuum.

mr. 0:

opinionate:

(opt out available - just to get that out of the way).

 

Let's say I opt out of the points program.  If I'm looking at someone's profile who has NOT opted out, will their points be hidden from me?

No, only your own points would disappear.

the blue quasar:

What exactly do you mean when you say that waymarks submitted as orphans would be on auto-approve? Please tell me that they still go through the full review process.

Now, for a moment I would like to draw your attention to another facet of the game. Local database building. Honestly, filling the grid is great fun and many people will create a single entry to get the icon. However there are those that have an interest in collecting all of a certain type and make it a personal goal to collect more and more of the locations within one category.

I understand that 100 of anything might not seem like much but I'm quite proud of my 100+ "Ontario Provincial Plaques" Waymarks... and if I put my mind to it I could easily have 100+ "Tim Horton's Restaurants" and probably 100+ "Subway Restaurants"

I'm not saying that icon collecting isn't fun, but so is quantities of a single subject matter.

BQ

I don't remember saying "auto-approve" but if you mean can you submit an orphan without someone first reviewing it, you can. But that doesn't equal a full-fledged waymark. It won't be indexed outside of the orphan queue that you have to specifically navigate to. 

It sounds like points for milestones in individual categories has merit. Any suggestions for a points formula? First 50 = ?, 100 = ?, 500 = ?, 1000 = ?.

silverquill:

opinionate:

There will be "submit a waymark" links in all the usual places, plus a new one on the home page. When you go to submit a waymark the entry page will be slightly changed to have a category selection control at the top. It will be a dropdown like the one you use when creating a new category - select each parent category in turn and drill down until you find the one you want. When you finally select a category at a level that accepts waymarks it will pre-populate the category instructions and variables. If at this point a person can't find a good category, they can leave it blank and the waymark will become an orphan.

Okay, I guess I'm still a little confused.
On this new menu, which sounds good, if the person can't find a suitable category, what happens?  Is there a category called, Orphans to select?  Or do all waymarks start with a blank template unless a category is selected?  Then, without a category entered, it is submitted to become an orphan? 

When you go to submit a waymark on the home page it will start with no category selected. A user could browse through the dropdowns and then select a link or something that says "no category" if they don't find a good one. If they entered from a category page it will pre-populate the dropdowns with that category, but you can still click the "no category" link and remove it.

silverquill:

Where will these poor orphans, or homeless waymarks live?  Will it look like a regular category?  And, then would premium members who want to categorize these would be officers?

They will live in a special list that looks just like any other list of waymarks, but in this case you'll have to specifically visit the queue. All Premium members would have the ability to submit the waymarks on behalf of the original creator.

silverquill:

What are people thinking of for an expiration time for orphans?  Maybe 90 days, 120?
Then would they still be in the system as archived waymarks or something?

We never delete anything so yes, I'm thinking they would just disappear from view.

silverquill:

What about regular archived or deleted waymarks in regard to points?

Once the waymarks are reviewed and accepted by an officer the points are awarded. We don't take the points away after that for any reason. Unfinished waymarks, for instance, are not awarded points.

silverquill:

The grid:   One more consideration.  It is almost impossible for someone outside the U.S. to achieve a bingo.  For those in the U.S. there are some rows blocked by other county-specific categories, but for others it is really out of the question as I think all of the rows have at least one U.S.-specific category.

True, this is an advantage that North Americans have but I'm not sure it bothers me. One thousand points is not really that many in the grand scheme of things. It's only 40 waymarks.

cldisme:

OK, I have given it some thought.

You can scratch my concerns about complexity as long as the point system is automatic and not self reporting.

My concern now is the creation and rewarding of deliberately bad waymarks, which will, in turn, create bad categories.

The scenario that keeps popping to my head is the oft-threatened "Crosswalks" category.  My fear is a cabal of waymarkers will start posting crosswalks as orphans and will then use the volume of orphans as justification for creating the category.

Substitute "crosswalks" for any other bugaboo category you fear will destroy the sanctity of waymarking and tear a hole in the time-space continuum.

This is a legitimate worry for us to consider. Should there be some kind of mass reporting tool? Maybe there could be some kind of "voting" tool that lets waymarkers browse the orphan queue and select little remarks like "not interesting", "not useful", "bad waymark", "profane" etc. After a certain number of negative "votes" it could disappear from the queue early.

Or we could simplify it completely and treat it like peer review. Yea or Nay on whether it's a cool waymark or not. This way we could nix the idea of a time decay altogether and rely completely on what the community thinks about each waymark. If an orphan waymark's approval rating dips below X% it gets removed (with plenty of time to establish a good average, of course).

Maybe I missed it somewhere, or I'm just not fully understanding....  I get that not everyone has an intimate knowledge of all the categories out there.  There's a lot of them, so it's tough to remember.  However what's to stop someone from being lazy?  For example Joe Waymarker signs up a brand new account, comes in takes a picture of an old church down the street, and submits it with the description of "An old church at 123 Main St.  It was built in 1842."  Then drops it in the orphan queue for everyone else to figure out, rather than trying to figure it out himself, and better understand how Waymarking works.  It's not to say that it will happen, just something I thought of.

As for points, I personally can't get behind them

 

I haven't responded in this thread yet because I haven't the time to respond in depth like I want to.

But here is a stab at a few quick thoughts.

I think the crossposting problem and sharing photos between waymarks is more of a problem than the orphan waymarks problem. Orphan waymarks actually get people involved in category creation in some cases.

I have the same concern about junk waymark submissions as orphans as Mr 0.
I would prefer a decay of the orphan "review cue" to a vote system. I want to spend my time on waymarks that I create more than others but if there were orphans that would fit into a category that is near and dear I may take the time to help it in the process. The RSS. should work as a feed for the cat but another box similar to the newest waymarks box on the home page with the newest orphans would be possibility to consider also.

Points: I can take them or leave them but if we do them I think a location on one of the tabs (waymarks tab) would be good for  the points to be broken out into stats of some sort. I like the stats aspect more. How many waymarks have I reviewed? This interests me more than the points that might be generated by the activity.

Bingo 2 @ 1,000                                           2,000
Visits:  249 @ 10                                           2,490
           Creation visits: 521                                 521

Video capability would be very nice but would need a reporting mechanism built in.

I would love to have this one built into the waymark  itself rather than a link for the reason that TF7 states. Keep the visitor on this site.





   

I have concerns about this: "
15 = Add category variables (at least one, points refunded if removed)" Wouldn't that maybe make people put uneeded variables in their categories. Putting 5 short text boxes for the address instead of an address box or 7 time boxes for each day of the work.

opinionate:

silverquill:

Some questions:

Would there be any review of waymarks submitted as orphans, or would they be on automatic approval?

Automatic.

That is why I questioned what you meant by "Automatic". I'm taking it now to mean Auto-Submit not Auto-Approve.

BQ

Here's another consideration:

Scenario

Creative Categorizer finds an orphan waymark and decides to work on it.  He spends some time doing research.  Maybe it takes a few days or he gets interrupted.  When he is finally ready to do the revisions and send it to the proper category, he finds that Crazy Categorizer has already done that!  All that effort and time down the tubes!

Each orphan waymark could maybe have an "Adopt" button that the potential categorizer could click that would then lock it, ghost it, or make it invisible until it is submitted to a category.  That would expire after, say, ten days if it is NOT submitted, and thus made available again for adoption.  A system similar to this is used on "Find A Grave," where people can pick up a photo request. It then is greyed, but becomes active again if not acted on.

Oh, here is something that is happening, from another thread.  Today I had two waymarks that were first approved by one officer, and then approved by another officer.  (Why, I don't kow).  The second officer's name is the one that appears as the reviewer.  This would have to be sorted out if points are assigned for reviewing waymarks.

Thanks for all of your patient responses to questions and concerns.  You just might be on to something here!

opinionate:

It sounds like points for milestones in individual categories has merit. Any suggestions for a points formula? First 50 = ?, 100 = ?, 500 = ?, 1000 = ?.

Same as the badges.  Yes, I know we said individual categories.

And on the orphan queue:

Will the orphan queue be included in the proximity check?

I think the orphaned waymarks is a great idea, and for those that are skepical, I think it will be seen as a good thing once implemented.

 

Fatcat

I admit I've got mixed feelings about this proposed change.

If there would be one flat queue for all potential waymarks, I don't think there would be anyone browsing through it and helping with all submissions. The original poster should at least pick a broader group (Nature / Structures / Business / etc.), then the "categorizer" who is expert in that field could assign it to the right category and do some research on the variables.

Also maybe filtering the orphaned group by country would be useful: then it would be possible to help the local waymarkers with translations.

Anyway, the best thing I like about waymarking is that you can select your own niche and specialize in historical markers, bridges, architecture styles, or whatever you like. If you come upon a waymark in your favorite category, you probably know the info you have to collect. If you pass an object and think "hey, there is a category for something like this", you take photos and mark the coordinates, then at home you find the category and recognize that you didn't collect some necessary information - then it might make sense to submit an incomplete waymark and let the experts in that category do the research on variables.

Similar thoughts on the point system: a flat number mixing chain restaurants and mountain summits doesn't have any value. Badges for top contributors to the category would be cool.

haggaeus:

I admit I've got mixed feelings about this proposed change.

If there would be one flat queue for all potential waymarks, I don't think there would be anyone browsing through it and helping with all submissions. The original poster should at least pick a broader group (Nature / Structures / Business / etc.), then the "categorizer" who is expert in that field could assign it to the right category and do some research on the variables.

Also maybe filtering the orphaned group by country would be useful: then it would be possible to help the local waymarkers with translations.

Anyway, the best thing I like about waymarking is that you can select your own niche and specialize in historical markers, bridges, architecture styles, or whatever you like. If you come upon a waymark in your favorite category, you probably know the info you have to collect. If you pass an object and think "hey, there is a category for something like this", you take photos and mark the coordinates, then at home you find the category and recognize that you didn't collect some necessary information - then it might make sense to submit an incomplete waymark and let the experts in that category do the research on variables.

Similar thoughts on the point system: a flat number mixing chain restaurants and mountain summits doesn't have any value. Badges for top contributors to the category would be cool.

Excellent thoughts! 

I especially like the idea of orphan waymarks at least needing a Class heading.  And, somehow being able to filter or sort them by County and U.S. state would be so helpful.  Both of these features would encourage people to adopt the poor little orphans, feed and dress them up and find them a good home.

And, your take on waymarking is so true - something for everyone!  So many ways to enjoy it.

bonus points for featured waymarks?

Interesting ideas.

Have you thought about treating this more like flickr, iphoto, gmail does, with the use of tags?   So rather than having all these different categories, you would submit a waymark into the orphan or generic category, with the option of making it private (nobody else can categorize it for you) or public (let the world at it!)

Then apply tags - predefined tags matching the current categories - to submit it to the group for consideration.   Application of a tag would automatically ask for the other variables for that category (optional or not, separate discussion.)

This then allows easy cross listing of waymarks, which I would find extremely useful.

Example:

- I drive by a NY historical marker, see it's also a cobblestone building, a former school house, and a current Masonic Lodge.
- I take a picture of the sign and building, grab the coords, and go home.
- I submit my "orphan" (or generic) waymark, and in this case I mark it private as I don't want anybody else trying to categorize this for me
- I then apply the NY Historical marker tag, which asks me for the marker text, county, nearest town, etc ...
- I then apply the cobblestone building tag, which asks for the year of the building
- I then apply the former school house tag, and it asks me for the year, current use, and history of use
- I then apply the masonic lodge tag, and it asks me for the lodge number

That's much easier than typing up the same waymark 4 times, which in fact I did for this very case.

It would be interesting to be able to then look for waymarks that are tagged with different combinations of tags (I wonder how many NY Historical markers are at churches, or how many churches are cobblestone buildings, ...)


As far as stats, I'd be interesting in some sort of integration with geocaching.com; if anything, a simple stat that would show what normally looks like:
     June 25 ChileHead (1772 found)
to
     June 25 ChileHead (1772 gc, 250 wm, ...)

chapterhouseinc:

bonus points for featured waymarks?

I think they quit making featured waymarks (toungue in cheek)

globetrotters.us:

chapterhouseinc:

bonus points for featured waymarks?

I think they quit making featured waymarks (toungue in cheek)

Featured waymarks are still added occasionally.

BruceS:

globetrotters.us:

chapterhouseinc:

bonus points for featured waymarks?

I think they quit making featured waymarks (toungue in cheek)

Featured waymarks are still added occasionally.

Hint Hint Pick Me Pick Me

OK, my US$/CAN$.02,

I'm a skeptic on the 'orphan' waymark.  I view Waymarking.com as a scavenger hunt with defined categories that you try to list.  On scavenger hunts in college (Greek Week fraternity competitions), we had a list of something like fifty things to get that matched an item on the list, for example, a shirt with a professional football team logo on it.  A shirt with the Cleveland Browns -- er scheme (bad example - what's the logo?)   or New England Patriots logo on it would qualify.  A shirt with the Ohio State Buckeyes would not.  It doesn't matter that the team is that person's favorite college team - it didn't fit a category on the list - too bad.  On waymarking.com, the list is now over 900.  Are there some great potential waymarks out there that still don't fit a category?  Sure!  I have a few.  Am I losing sleep or miffed that I can't list them?  Well, a little, but that's part of the game.  I wish some categories were added, and I just posted a suggestion in the forum.  I have a beautiful stone building that doesn't fit the cobblestone building category.  That's the way it goes.  I hope that a stone building category gets created some day, so that I can list it.

There is potential for waymarks on the site to be really useful resources.  I'd like effort to go to better downloading options and sorting waymarks within categories by variables.  That might get other people interested in waymarking.  Otherwise, categories over a few hundred are cumbersome to go through if you are interested in one specific thing, like an architect in a building category.

The points - I see them like Drew Carey awarding points on "Who's Line is it Anyway?" - they don't mean very much except maybe to the points to me.  I would like some kind of awarding of points to number of 'divisions' (supercategories) and to categories.  I'm less concerned about the bingos - I look more at clusters.  Visits should be some fraction of posting - I was thinking about half myself.  I am also concerned about my responsibility to review and delete visits if people are going to be 'competitive,' but not if the numbers are for myself.

These are some of my reactions off the top of my head.