Groundspeak Portal

I am an experienced geocacher trying Waymarking for the first time. Should I log a "visit" on a Waymark I placed? I know finding your own geocache is frowned upon, but I've seen a few waymarks in my area that were visited by the people who placed them. Is this kosher?

Yes it is acceptable.  Some do it, some don't but it is acceptable.

For me it looks strange (the same situation if I will log "found" in my own caches) - but it is probably common behaviour in waymarking :).

One category I posted a waymark for was a church. I waymarked the church when I attended a wedding, so I included a bit about my personal experience at the church. The waymark was declined because I was posting a waymark from a visited perspective.

In that case I posted a waymark for the factual aspects of the church, and posted a visit for my personal feelings.

Other categories want you to include your personal feelings about the waymark in your original waymark.

Some categories have a message in their long description not to log a visit until the category is approved.

Personally, I only log a visit to my own if I have to to get all the information in that I want to show, or, I have visited later and am able to add better pictures or more information. Thats out of personal lazyness, though. When I have limited time to do waymarking, I have to decide which waymark I would rather post, and where I want to allocate my time.

I fully support the idea of logging your own waymarks as Jeremy (the CEO of Groundspeak) said that is what he intended.

With a geocache, it is kinda hard to claim that you were able to "find" the item that you hide yourself. "I wonder where that cache is? Oh here it is!".. geesh LOL. Rather like unwrapping a Christmas present you gave to yourself and being surprised by what you got.

But with a waymark, you are documenting a location. You are there, you have to "visit" it in order to gather the needed info. But the description of the listing should be generic and informative. When you "visit" it to log it, then you should write about your own personal experience. I don't, I just say "Owner Visit" because no one else brought me there. On other people's, I tend to write a lot more.

BQ

...hmmm, still it sounds strange - I suppose that if I am creating waymark, I visited personally the object (place) which is a subject of the waymark. If I discovered something special or I want to share with another people some practical info (access etc.) I will incorporate it into waymark listing. So, from my personal point of view, the visiting of own waymarks is vasting of "bytes" :). This is not only my opininion, but (after discussion...), also opinioon of the majority of Czech waymarkers.

PS: it is not flame :) If somebody is visiting own waymarks, it's really only his problem (I am not criticize it...)

I personally choose to not visit my own waymarks, but it honestly doesn't bother me at all to see others visiting theirs. They must have visited it in order to create it, so I'm OK with that.

I do not visit my own waymarks when I initially post them.  I will mark a visit, however,  if I returned... for a visit!

I visited all of mine when I first started and I have no problem with those who do visit their own. Early on there were many less search features and the only way to sort out your waymarks from others was to have visited them. So there was a practical reason at one time as well.

The quote from Jeremy early on was really my first encounter with the idea and I will admit it seemed strange to me at first looking at it with geocaching eyes of course now it only seems logical.

Personally, for me it became a burden to post a visit after spending time waymarking the location so I decided to stop just to save myself some time. I do post visits to my own now if I return at a later date.

Realize, too, that there is somewhat less of an ownership concept here since the addition of uncategorized waymarks.  If you choose you may post a partial waymark for someone else to complete and post.  You can also submit edits to any waymark.  To a degree, a waymark is more community-owned than a geocache is.

I'm glad you're giving this a look, simpjkee.

simpjkee:

I am an experienced geocacher trying Waymarking for the first time. Should I log a "visit" on a Waymark I placed? I know finding your own geocache is frowned upon, but I've seen a few waymarks in my area that were visited by the people who placed them. Is this kosher?

Yes, you should.

But it's not required. I log visits to all of mine as posting the waymark means you obviously visited. I believe the waymark listing should be encyclopedic (unless the category req's something different) and any personal information or interpretations/experiences should be listed in a Visit log.

I fully support the idea of logging your own waymarks as Jeremy (the CEO of Groundspeak) said that is what he intended.

The quote from Jeremy early on was really my first encounter with the idea and I will admit it seemed strange to me at first looking at it with geocaching eyes of course now it only seems logical.

So what was Jeremy's quote?

dinoprophet:

Realize, too, that there is somewhat less of an ownership concept here since the addition of uncategorized waymarks.  If you choose you may post a partial waymark for someone else to complete and post.  You can also submit edits to any waymark.  To a degree, a waymark is more community-owned than a geocache is.

I'm glad you're giving this a look, simpjkee.

Yeah, when I saw that you can edit someone else's waymark or more specifically that anyone could edit mine I was kinda surprised. It may take me a while to get over that. So if someone tries to edit my waymark, will I get an e-mail alerting me. I don't want something with my name on it being screwed up by someone else.

simpjkee:

So what was Jeremy's quote?

Here is a link to a post of mine that leads to the thread Jeremy made the comment in. There are other links to other threads on the subject that give a great perspective as well. The additional links there are the reason I include my post rather than just the specific one you are asking about.

As others have already mentioned, logging visits on your own waymarks is a personal decision - perfectly acceptable to do so, or not.

I log visits on my own waymarks whenever feel like doing so. Somethings the experience of finding the waymark and capturing the information required to submit it is quite different for me than the feeling I get out of the location itself, and in those cases I'm apt to log a visit.

simpjkee:

Yeah, when I saw that you can edit someone else's waymark or more specifically that anyone could edit mine I was kinda surprised. It may take me a while to get over that. So if someone tries to edit my waymark, will I get an e-mail alerting me. I don't want something with my name on it being screwed up by someone else.

The idea took some time for many of us too.

So far the ability to suggest changes to a waymark created by someone else doesn't seem to have caused any real issues though. It's actually a controlled process - people can't just edit your waymark - they make suggestions, and the suggestions go back to the category officers for review. Most of the suggested changes I have seen are for pretty obvious mistakes.

cache_test_dummies:

simpjkee:

Yeah, when I saw that you can edit someone else's waymark or more specifically that anyone could edit mine I was kinda surprised. It may take me a while to get over that. So if someone tries to edit my waymark, will I get an e-mail alerting me. I don't want something with my name on it being screwed up by someone else.

The idea took some time for many of us too.

So far the ability to suggest changes to a waymark created by someone else doesn't seem to have caused any real issues though. It's actually a controlled process - people can't just edit your waymark - they make suggestions, and the suggestions go back to the category officers for review. Most of the suggested changes I have seen are for pretty obvious mistakes.

Thanks, I only knew it was added.  I didn't know how it worked.  Is it detailed somewhere?

dinoprophet:

cache_test_dummies:

simpjkee:

Yeah, when I saw that you can edit someone else's waymark or more specifically that anyone could edit mine I was kinda surprised. It may take me a while to get over that. So if someone tries to edit my waymark, will I get an e-mail alerting me. I don't want something with my name on it being screwed up by someone else.

The idea took some time for many of us too.

So far the ability to suggest changes to a waymark created by someone else doesn't seem to have caused any real issues though. It's actually a controlled process - people can't just edit your waymark - they make suggestions, and the suggestions go back to the category officers for review. Most of the suggested changes I have seen are for pretty obvious mistakes.

Thanks, I only knew it was added.  I didn't know how it worked.  Is it detailed somewhere?

I still have not done this, at least I should say that I have not dabbled in the uncategorized waymarks... and it would surprise many to learn that my reason is that I am not interested in organizing other people's things. I will fix errors but that's as far as I'm comfortable with.

On a somewhat related topic to the idea of visiting your own waymarks.... there are many geocachers that will log that they attended the same event that they hosted. I will be logging my upcoming event on May 1st, 2010. Because at that time I will have "attended" it.

BQ

dinoprophet:

cache_test_dummies:

simpjkee:

Yeah, when I saw that you can edit someone else's waymark or more specifically that anyone could edit mine I was kinda surprised. It may take me a while to get over that. So if someone tries to edit my waymark, will I get an e-mail alerting me. I don't want something with my name on it being screwed up by someone else.

The idea took some time for many of us too.

So far the ability to suggest changes to a waymark created by someone else doesn't seem to have caused any real issues though. It's actually a controlled process - people can't just edit your waymark - they make suggestions, and the suggestions go back to the category officers for review. Most of the suggested changes I have seen are for pretty obvious mistakes.

Thanks, I only knew it was added.  I didn't know how it worked.  Is it detailed somewhere?

How timely.  I just received my first Edit Approval email.

have you seen the post cards i added to the UCMs? this isnt really organizing others things, but locating the other half of the puzzle.

i said to someone recently that it will eventually become a WM niche: the UCM hounds that go out and complete the things left unfinished.

edit: ah, but you do not hide the event, as they arent supposed to be found.....
you see i put a uhaul in there--no image on the site at time of posting. that might be something of interest to you, right?

I will visit my own waymarks when I am wanting to show off the site to non-waymarker. In particular, I visit my own waymarks, when I have something to add that shouldn't be in the waymark.

The thing that bugs me is categories that do not want a visit before the waymark is approved. Definitely limits what I will visit, because I am usually in the moment for it when I am creating the waymark.

the logis behind this is that at one time the visit to an unapproved mark appeared in your stats....

i think this has been fixed....

but then there is the possibility that you dont get approved .

maybe 'log this' should only appear after it has been approved....(clock on 'newest uncategorized waymarks' on the right. now click 'log this' on the search results.....; note, the 'log a visit' option does not appear when viewing a UCM)