Groundspeak Portal

When the category Field of Dreams was voted down in peer review these are some of the comments stated in the voting. I have divided them into similar groups and added a reply. I hope that I have made the changes to the category that will result in approval this time. I understand that not everybody will have an interest, there are at this time 868 Waymarking categories. I have renamed the category “Play Ball”, so please read my reply before you vote either yea or nay. However, if you believe that somebody would be interested in this category PLEASE VOTE YES.

Thank you for your time and interest.
Woolsox

1st peer review Voting results
Yes = 29, No = 22, Abstain = 7
Deny 1
Comments:
Not interesting or informative
Deny 9
Comments:
Does not stand out.
Deny 12
Comments:
Selective interest
Deny 15
Comments:
What's the point of this category. Not hard info to find anyway.
Deny 19
Comments:
not interesting
Deny 2
Comments:
Talk about too many to be useful. You're going to see every baseball diamond in the US waymarked. NO THANK YOU!

Reply:
We Waymark, every fast food restaurant (5895), Public playground (1067), City and town hall (957), Church (2369), and State and National Historical site (14410) in the world.
Other than the menu and nutritional information, what do we get from the fast food restaurant Waymarks?
There a great number of categories have limited appeal and can only be marked in specific countries example:
Any foreign countries War Memorials
Country specific Trig Points or Benchmarks
Country specific Historic Sites
Any US state Historical Markers
Any US Supermarkets
Any numbered or named Historical US Highway
American Guide Series
Michigan Centennial Farms
Antarctic Points of Interest
Lewis and Clark Trail
Any countries Post Office
U.S. National Natural Landmarks
U.S. National Register of Historic Places

Deny 3
Comments:
We already have a category for school sports fields, this is a duplicate.
Deny 7
Comments:
There is already a category for Illuminated School Sports Fields. It accepts baseball, softball, soccer. This seems to be a duplicate category, but I do love the name!
Deny 17
Comments:
There are already similar categories out there and this one isn't distinct enough for it's own category.
Deny 18
Comments:
this is already covered in another catagory, highschool sports stadiums I think?


Reply:
Waymark Keyword Search Results "highschool sports stadiums"
There are no categories that fit the criteria you selected.
“Keyword Search Results “school sports fields”

Illuminated School Sports Fields by: Friday Night Lights
“We are looking for those places where high school or secondary schools play football or soccer primarily under the lights. This can be school, community, or city fields".
I asked the Manager of this group and was informed that baseball diamonds are not accepted.

Deny 4
Comments:
The two photos are not needed. Many scoreboards are boring.
Reply:
True, most are boring, but some I have seen some that are quite elaborate and these schools take great pride in them.

Deny 5
Comments:
I think it's inappropriate to require that the coords be taken at the approximate center of the backstop as these ball fields are located on school grounds.
Deny 8
Comments:
Just not in favor of any category that specifically targets schools below the post-secondary level for security reasons. Suspicious characters with electronic gadgets and cameras should be seen snooping around these schools.
Deny 10
Comments:
NOT waymarking high schools! Bad idea.
Deny 11
Comments:
Colleges okay, but not high schools or below where children are primarily involved. These schools have enough security issues without inflicting strangers waymarking their sports fields.
Deny 14
Comments:
I am unequivocally opposed to waymarking anything that identifies the location of a school below college level. Perhaps I'm being overprotective, but I would not be able to live with myself if I found out that a predator was able to locate a school because it was waymarked. Yes, it's simple enough to do that elsewhere (even on a school website), but I don't want to help.
Deny 16
Comments:
I just don't like the idea of folks hanging around schools, and prefer to use the geocaching guidelines for waymarks. No caches (or waymarks) near schools, please. I realize not all Fields of Dreams are at schools, but still vote Nay.

Reply:
I did this search on Google for “mi schools” and these are results of that search:
Results 1 - 10 of about 62,700,000 for mi schools (0.18 seconds)

Here I found the addresses, phone numbers and an activity schedule to every school in my county and state. Most gave directions to their schools and ball fields. I do not believe that a person who is going to look in Waymarking.com the locate schools for unethical reasons, when they can Google search and obtain much more information.
There are a great many places that have less security that most schools grounds for someone to do any type of harm to school kids. Unfortunately most of the danger in own schools does not come from strangers, but from those within the schools themselves.
I will add a note that Waymarks and visits may only be obtained during non-classroom hours.

Deny 13
Comments:
Focus on the more generic "baseball diamonds" instead. – BQ
Deny 20
Comments:
How can you call this worldwide or do you count rounders same as baseball?

Reply
I would say no, there are similar games, but still not the same in my opinion.

Deny 21
Comments:
The category itself is viable, but the title is too vague. I'd suggest staying away from colloquial names and use something more generic. "Scholastic Baseball Diamonds", for example.
A more universal name may be better.
Deny 6
Comments:
cause Baseball is only played in usa, so hardly global is it!

Reply:
The International Baseball Federation (IBAF) is the worldwide governing body for the sport of baseball and has 112 member nations.
The International Softball Federation is the international governing body for the sport of softball. Softball is played, at some level, in 113 countries around the world.

Deny 22
Comments:
None

Reply:
Please if you are going to vote against a new category, actually write a comment

Besides the title change what changes have you made to the category to justify a yes vote from  those that voted no last time.  Outline those changes.

 Just saying you disagree with their vote and their comments isn't going to convince many that they should vote differently.  As I read the list of deny comments above it just gives more reasons to vote no than I thought of before as the concerns listed still have not been addressed within your category.

I originally voted yea, with a suggestion that similar sports such as Pesäpallo (similar to baseball and very popular in Finland) be included.  But now I see that it's keeping strictly to Baseball and Softball, I think it's actively restricting its global appeal.   So I've changed to nay.

I know "global" is a knotty problem, but I (personally) have no problem at all with categories of things that just happen to be restricted to one area.  If they're worth waymarking it doesn't matter (to me) that they don't occur all over the world.  But I think that considering - and rejecting - similar diamond-ball-games such as Pesäpallo takes active steps to un-globalise it.   A fine line, I know.  But there you go. 

If you are having trouble with baseball's global appeal you need to look no further than the World Baseball Classic. In 2006 and 2009 before the Major League Baseball season kicked off this international competition (WBC) was held to see which country had the best team. The team from Japan ended up winning both. So take a look at some of the countries that participated, maybe they have some baseball diamonds that would be worth making waymarks.

Team Sieni:

I originally voted yea, with a suggestion that similar sports such as Pesäpallo (similar to baseball and very popular in Finland) be included.  But now I see that it's keeping strictly to Baseball and Softball, I think it's actively restricting its global appeal.   So I've changed to nay.

I know "global" is a knotty problem, but I (personally) have no problem at all with categories of things that just happen to be restricted to one area.  If they're worth waymarking it doesn't matter (to me) that they don't occur all over the world.  But I think that considering - and rejecting - similar diamond-ball-games such as Pesäpallo takes active steps to un-globalise it.   A fine line, I know.  But there you go. 

You've a good point, isn't cricket also similar?

team farkle 7:

You've a good point, isn't cricket also similar?

 

I think cricket's sufficiently different, as it doesn't have a diamond shaped play area, doesn't have bases and many other differences ... in fact the similarities are just a palyer with a frighteningly hard little ball propels it at another player (wearing protection) with bat and there's another player (also wearing protection) behind to catch it if the one with the bat misses.  But the similarities end there.

But Pesäpallo is very similar to baseball,  in fact at a brief glance they look pretty much the same, but the detailed rules are different.  I don't know anything about some of the other games such as Brannboll that I saw on the wiki site.

And I don't have any problem at all with baseball's global appeal, it's just that if you're in certain areas of the world you will be much more likely to see a very similar, but not quite the same, sight.  I just think that having the cat open to these kinds of things makes it a better global cat.

As I say, it's a fine line.  I think it would be a better cat for including Pesäpallo etc. On reflection, maybe I shouldn't have changed it to a nay, as it was within the guidelines as it stood.  But the votes over now.

By the way, I'm an avid cricket fan but spent a couple of years living in NY as a Mets fan - in the Dwight Gooden/Darryl Strawberry era.  I've lost touch with Major League Baseball since moving back, which is a shame as I used to really enjoy it.

The catergory has passed the peer review process. Thank you for comments and for those who voted your interest for or against.

Woolsox