Saturday, October 20, 2007

Let's see the visit logs!

Much talk has gone back and forth in the forums about how to entice people to visit existing waymarks, but people haven't really been talking about how the visit logs are used. Isn't that what they are for? Leaving information for people who might want to visit in the future? And yet how often do you come across an interesting waymark and actually read the visit logs? I almost never do, and yet it's not because I'm not interested in them. I just never think about them because they're hidden there at the bottom of the page and I have to click the link to read each log. It's tedious and it doesn't need to be.

I've always wondered why it is that the waymark logs aren't handled similarly to geocaching logs. It would be so great if the last 3 or 4 logs showed at the bottom with a link you could click to see them all. If logging waymarks is to become an integral part of the hobby of waymarking, they need to have a little more emphasis on the page. If it's likely that no one other than the original waymark poster will see the log, then I'm not going to spend as much energy as if it's going to be sitting there at the bottom of the page for all to see. Also, if the databases for the categories are going to be used as a referral system for things like restaurants and hotels, as some have suggested, then what a visitor thought about a spot is as important as the waymark itself.

It would be a simple change, one that might change the community's perspective on how worthwhile a waymark visit is. If a visit log is just to give the original waymark poster a pat on the back, I can't see that logging visits will ever catch on, gps photo or not.

2 comments:

0ccam said...

That's a good point.

Regarding visit logs, though. It doesn't help that one of my fellow waymarkers will be right next to some things I've waymarked, waymarking some more of the same things that I missed, so close they're 0 distance from mine...and he doesn't log a visit to my waymark....

*sigh*

Hikenutty said...

I'm pretty spoiled when it comes to visits. I have waymarks at a lot of popular locations that get a lot of tourists though - Mt. Rainier, Space Needle and the Seattle Center, Mt. Rushmore, Devils Tower, Chicago Landmarks - and people tend to log visits there.

Also, there are a lot of geocachers in Washington state and they occasionally visit my waymarks when they are trying out waymarking. Plus, it helps to be waymarking in an urban area.