Written by Janell Brown, Wayward Waymarking

Before you jump in and create the category it's good to email your officers and get some feedback on what they feel will be important to include in the category's description and requirements. Once you have all agreed on the direction you want to take the category, you're ready to create it.

Go to the main page of your group and near the center of the page you'll see a line that says "Create Category". Click on that line to open the category creation form. The first three lines ask for information that lets Groundspeak know where your category should be placed in the directory, and the remaining sections will describe the category and its requirements. Following is a walk-through of the form, providing you with helpful hints and examples from well-written category pages.

Name
When choosing a name, try to pick something that people will remember. It can be irritating when looking down a list to not see the category where it seems like it would most likely be. I'm guilty of a couple of confusing category names myself. For example, the category that I created for world's fair buildings and structures is entitled "Permanent World Fair and Expo Structures". Now, who would think to look for a category about World Fairs under the letter "P"? A better title might be "World Fair and Expos: Permanent Structures". You get the idea.

Category URL Code
Calm down! No one's making you write any HTML. In fact you don't even have to fill in this space if you don't want to. Groundspeak is just giving you the option of creating the name that will be included in the URL. There can't be any spaces or punctuation. An example: Independent Breakfast Spots might be "breakfastspots" or "indiebreakfast".

Requested Path
This is just asking you which department of the directory you believe your category belongs in. So, say you are creating a category to waymark museums of belly button fuzz (it could happen!) Museums are listed in the "Buildings" department of the directory. Since the building department has sub-sections (Education, Government, Museums, Religious) then you would need to choose the appropriate sub-section from a drop-down list, in this case "museums". Some categories seem like they could belong in more than one place. I mean, I can easily imagine a belly button fuzz museum being listed in the "Oddities" department, can't you? Look at the directory and do your best choosing the path. Groundspeak will change it if they feel there's a better spot in the directory for the category.

Short Description
The short description is what waymarkers first see when they click on the link to your category, so you want to succinctly describe what the category is about. There's no need to go into requirements or details, just write a couple sentences that you think will explain what the category is about in an interesting way. You want to draw people in so they will click on "show additional information" and link to the long description where you can really wow them with the details. For a good example of a short description, read JimmyEv's short description for the "American Guide" category.

Expanded Description
In the expanded description you have room to add more detail to your description of the category. Give some background on history, definitions, etc. and add links to Websites with any pertinent information, especially any databases that might exist about the places that you would like people to waymark. Finish with a short final paragraph stating the goal of the category. For example, the American Guide category's extended description ends with this:

This category's goal is to find and waymark places referenced in the American Guide Series, transcribe the entry from the Guide Series, and tell how the place differs now (if it still exists).

Instructions for Posting a Waymark
This section is where you can really make or break a category. If you get too demanding, very few people will be willing to take the time to post more than one waymark in the category. If the requirements are too loose, you will end up with weak, uninformative waymarks. Here are a few of the requirements that are pretty standard:

Coordinates: Start with the obvious. Waymarking is a location-related game and any submitted waymarks need to include coordinates taken at the site by the person who is posting the waymark.

Photograph: Because waymarking is such a visual hobby, it is standard to ask for one or two photographs of the site being waymarked. For a business or sign category this might be a photograph of a sign. For a historic site or a park you might require a wide shot of the entire site and an additional photograph of an interesting detail. If you are wondering which photos to require, look through other categories in the same waymarking department your category will be listed in to see what they require. Some categories, like a fast food restaurant or business category might not even need a photograph.

Information: By information, I mean the story behind the waymark. You might ask for the waymarker to include the history of the spot, business hours, admission fees, or the amenities of a site. Some of this information will likely be repeated in the variables, but it's still a good practice to ask for it to be included in the posting requirements area. One reason for this is that often the waymarker will look here for requirements, rather than the variable section before they head out to waymark a place. It's frustrating to arrive home, ready to submit your waymark, only to realize there are additional requirements in the variable section. I'll go into greater detail about variables on the "adding variables" page of this guide.

There might be additional, category specific information that you will need to ask for, but keep it as simple as possible. Just because you might be interested in having the make, model and serial number for each of the "thinga-ma-bob" machines you are asking people to waymark, doesn't mean that it's important information needed for the general public to learn about and enjoy the waymark.

Instructions for Visiting a Waymark
Currently, if you want to log that you've visited a waymark, you need to check to see what is required of you. Each category's requirements are set by the category creator, and so while most are very similar, you still need to check before you log. In the past Groundspeak has considered creating standard visit requirements to make it easier to log visits to waymarks, but until that happens you will need to write up the requirements. The most common thing to ask of the visitor is that they provide a photograph of their visit and that they give a short description of the visit. We here at Wayward abhor GPS photo requirements, or the whole mindset that visitors need to prove they were there. There's no need for waymarking police, and if someone's life is so small that they need to cheat and pretend that they've visited places, let them exist in their pretend little world. They are the ones who are missing out on something, not you. All you can do is clearly set the standard for what information a visitor should supply with their log. Following is the standard visitor requirement that many active waymarkers are using when they create categories:

To log a Visit, please make every effort to supply an original image of the Waymark. If you do not have the option to provide an image, please provide a detailed description of your visit so we can form a 'mental image'.

Tags
Tags are simply words that people might use when searching for a category they are trying to find in the directory. When the search engine is asked to look for one of the tag words that you've included, your category will be added to a list of categories created from the search. So a category like "Neon Lights" might have the words, neon, light, and sign as its tag words. You are only required to create two tags, but the more category-specific tags you include, the more likely it is that people will be able to find your category when they are searching for it. By the way, you don't want to use plural words as tags. The search engine will pick up both singular and plural versions of the word as long as you include the singular version (example: Use sign instead of signs.)

Once you've filled all of this in click "submit" and your category will be created. You're not done yet, though. A good category should have variables. I'll explain how to create variables and which variables you'll want to create in the next section.

Next: Adding Variables
Back to: Category Creation Guide main page

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