fi67:I think it's time to calm down. Silverquill is completely right with his feelings but this is not likely to happen again in the near future.
Oh, I'm perfectly calm. It is not about my feelings. It is about a reasoned response to the issues raised here. I'm not trying to be alarmist or make a crisis here. But, I do think that there is something crucial at stake here.
I actually have no idea if this is an isolated issue or not. As I said, I did not hear directly from customer support, but received this only because the complainer forwarded it to me.
Is this common? I don't know. I can say that this is the first time in 40,000+ waymark reviews that I have heard of this. Will it happen again? Who knows? The door is open, and a precedent has been set, however, for future unpleasant situations.
All I am saying is that this raises these two issues of unwritten Groundspeak policy that are being used to make decisions about the review process. All I am suggesting is that these policies be clearly written so that we all know what we are operating under.
- What is Groundspeak's policy in regard to oversight or reviewing and overruling a volunteer reviewer's decisions for any specific waymark.
- What are the responsibilities for volunteer reviewers and what are the guidelines under which we may operate in making our decisions?
The policy right now seems to be:
- The decision of a volunteer reviewer may be overruled by someone from community support.
- Reviewers are bound by the specific written requirements for a category and may not exercise judgment in accepting or declining a waymark for things that are not specifically mentioned in the category's description or posting instructions.
I do not have any first hand knowledge about the process, guidelines, policies of Geocaching volunteer reviewers for geocache listings, but waymarks are not geocaches, so it seems to me that no real comparisons can be made. There is one set of requirements for ALL gecocaches everywhere, and Waymarking.com has 1000+ categories each with its own requirements and standards.