Are people ever happy?

Sometimes I wonder if people are ever happy. This last week I've had a couple of waymarks approved that have complaints about the waymark that have nothing to do with what the category requires. Now I pride myself in trying to give each waymark my best effort. When my photos don't seem to fully describe the place like I want them to I try to add links to Flickr photos or a youtube video of the place to the description to add another perspective. So when someone complains about an evening photo for a place that I can only get to in the evening, it irks me.

I think that people need to remember to hold waymarks to the category standards, and not their own. Someone may have posted a waymark that you would have spent more time and energy on. It's too bad, however you need to get over it and move on.

Waymarking Flickr Fun

As many of you know there's a Waymarking group on Flickr.com that's devoted to featuring waymarkers' photographs of their waymarks. The waymarker, Ambrosia, started the group and I moderate it with her. We are a pretty laid back group and don't really have the typical Flickr group list of rules. There is no photo limit - all we ask is that the photos are from waymarks that the user has posted or visited on Waymarking.com, and that you add the tag "waymarking" to the photo. Currently there's a thread going in the group about ways to add some fun and I wanted to post a few of the ideas we've come up with.

What I'm most excited about is the scavenger hunt idea that we're working on (the group is still working on the idea, so what I'm describing here isn't set in stone.) On the first of each month a thread would be started that announced the theme of the contest and then a list of 5 (maybe 10) categories that the members would need to find and waymark (waymark must be posted within the month of the contest.) Members would then post their best photo from each of the waymarks they posted and the photos would need to also fit the month's theme. At the end of the month the group would then vote on a favorite photo from each of the categories, and the thread would be closed with a list of the winning photographs and also the first person who was able to post a waymark in each category.

Themes might be seasonal (holidays seasons, weather, etc.,) or visual (vertical lines, curves, etc.) or even something else wild and wacky that I come up with. The challenge would then be to find something in the listed waymarking categories that also has a tie-in to the theme. The theme might be something totally unrelated to waymarking, for example - the color red. If one of the categories in the "red" month's contest was Abstract Public Sculpture I could post the above photo of my waymark for the very red "Eagle" sculpture by Alexander Calder in Seattle, Washington (assuming that it was a new waymark for me.)

Another idea for the Flickr group that isn't as fun, but will market Waymarking is "comment promotion." As a way to promote waymarking, we want to come up with a small block of html that people could copy & paste to the end of their comments about waymarking photos that would have a one sentence description of waymarking and links to the Flickr group and to Waymarking.com. How this works is that often one photo might be in the gallery of several different groups. Right now if the photo's description tells what category the location is waymarked in the people in those other groups might not know what that means. This way people who came across the photo in other groups - say the Flickr scavenger hunting groups - they could learn a bit about waymarking.

If you have more ideas for the group or are interested in joining you can use the group link or thread link above. Currently we have 24 members and close to 200 waymarking photos. We'd love to have you join us.