Unviewable Waymarks

[+MountainWoods]

Some waymarks are not viewable, but throw a server error. You can visit them but not see their main page! (There's a trick to visiting them.)

 

Exeter Siren

 

This one wasn't accessible when I first tried to mark my visit to it, but no longer causes the server error.

 

The problem with some of these Waymarks is, I think, that the coordinates somehow ended up with more than three digits after the decimal point in the minutes. The Exeter Siren has this issue, and I think the other one had that issue but was fixed (if I'm remembering it right).

 

It turns out that that can happen innocently if, while preparing your waymark, you go back to the Entering Information page and change the coordinates more than one or two times, then use the Update --> button. Eventually the server program decides to start changing the coordinates more than you changed them! including both changing what you typed in and adding extra digits at the end (of either or both coordinates).

 

I've had to throw away a waymark and start over when that happened to me. I couldn't get the coordinates back to what they should be.

 

I cannot say this for 100%, but it looks like you can enter MM.MMMM for the decimal minutes and it will be submitted OK, but then it cannot be displayed.

 

Seems like the "bad" waymarks must have been good at one time -- long enough to be Approved! And then someone decided to edit the coordinates (post-Approval), and the editing threw in extra digits and caused them to be broken.

 

I had reported these findings, especially the still-broken Exeter Siren, to Groundspeak, but got the usual email response that essentially says that they aren't supporting Waymarking. (Telling us that they are too busy supporting Geocaching amounts to the same thing as saying that they aren't supporting Waymarking; because they aren't!)

[+DougK]

Some waymarks are not viewable, but throw a server error.

Interesting find. I could find the two waymarks in their category list, but opening them from that list fails as you describe.

Outdoor Warning Sirens

Modern Olympic Venues

Edited April 11, 2014 by DougK

[+MountainWoods]

I had been having a problem with the Olympic one up until a couple of months ago, and then it "broke through" the barrier and started showing up. It's only my guess that the coordinates were edited to fix the "too many digits" problem.

 

On the Exeter Siren, when you find it on the list you can click the little "Log It!" button, and one of the choices is to Edit Waymark. You can use that to view the waymark in edit mode. Sure 'nuff, there are 4 digits after the decimal point on the longitude.

 

I've submitted an edit request on this waymark to remove the final digit and see if that fixes it. But I believe I did that several months ago and the edit was denied or something; never happened.

 

I guess I'm getting too old, 'cause I cannot remember if I used the edit trick to view the Olympic Waymark; but it seems to me that I did, and that's when I realized it also had 4 digits after the decimal on one of the coordiantes (which was later edited out). But I may be wrong.

 

But really we shouldn't be having to edit Waymarks because they are "too accurate" just so they can display on the page without a server error!

[+Waywizard]

I have updated the coordinates on EXETER - Siren, that was not the problem. I have actually blanked out everything and saved it with dummy information and saved it and still got same error. Thus it is something not viewable in the edit screen causing issues. Don't worry I have restored it back to what it was before, except coordinates now only have 3 digits.

[+MountainWoods]

Thanks. I had come up with the idea of >3 digits being an issue because the only other waymark that was unviewable also had 4 digits after the decimal point on one or both coordinates (don't remember now), but someone edited it back to 3 digits and the waymark became viewable. Like you say, it may have been from some totally unrelated reason. Just curious that in both cases there were "too many" digits.

Thanks again.

[+MountainWoods]

Actually, I get the same error on the Exeter siren in both IE10 and Chrome. Must only work in certain browsers.

 

I hadn't tried in in Firefox (so there was nothing cached yet), but I just tried it and it gives the same error in Firefox.

 

Oh well, it is still viewable by trying to Edit it.

Edited April 14, 2014 by MountainWoods

[+Waywizard]

Actually, I get the same error on the Exeter siren in both IE10 and Chrome. Must only work in certain browsers.

 

I hadn't tried in in Firefox (so there was nothing cached yet), but I just tried it and it gives the same error in Firefox.

 

Oh well, it is still viewable by trying to Edit it.

 

Exeter is broken somewhere behind the scenes, not browser dependent problem. I saved it with generic data that would work under normal situations and it still generated same error. I then restored the original except leaving coordinates at 3 digits.

[+Revent]

Actually, I get the same error on the Exeter siren in both IE10 and Chrome. Must only work in certain browsers.

 

I hadn't tried in in Firefox (so there was nothing cached yet), but I just tried it and it gives the same error in Firefox.

 

Oh well, it is still viewable by trying to Edit it.

 

Exeter is broken somewhere behind the scenes, not browser dependent problem. I saved it with generic data that would work under normal situations and it still generated same error. I then restored the original except leaving coordinates at 3 digits.

 

From what I've gathered in the process of providing more precise coordinates for some benchmarks, the database stores the coordinates as a text string rather than a numerical value. Trying to enter a coordinate in DMS format with more than five characters in the 'seconds' field will not work, which leads to the interesting result that locations within 10 arcseconds to the West or North (in my hemisphere) of a 'minute line' can be more precise than those farther away.

 

Meh.

[+fi67]

[...]

From what I've gathered in the process of providing more precise coordinates for some benchmarks, the database stores the coordinates as a text string rather than a numerical value. Trying to enter a coordinate in DMS format with more than five characters in the 'seconds' field will not work, which leads to the interesting result that locations within 10 arcseconds to the West or North (in my hemisphere) of a 'minute line' can be more precise than those farther away.

[...]

The value is numeric, but you can chose from three different coordinate types (DMS, MinDec and DegDec) so the entered value is converted to the default type and trimmed, before it is stored in the database.

 

If it was a text string, location based search could not work, and the web site would not answer with a 500 server error if you have a non-numeric character in these fields (Or two decimal points, happened a lot to me).

[+Revent]

[...]

From what I've gathered in the process of providing more precise coordinates for some benchmarks, the database stores the coordinates as a text string rather than a numerical value. Trying to enter a coordinate in DMS format with more than five characters in the 'seconds' field will not work, which leads to the interesting result that locations within 10 arcseconds to the West or North (in my hemisphere) of a 'minute line' can be more precise than those farther away.

[...]

The value is numeric, but you can chose from three different coordinate types (DMS, MinDec and DegDec) so the entered value is converted to the default type and trimmed, before it is stored in the database.

 

If it was a text string, location based search could not work, and the web site would not answer with a 500 server error if you have a non-numeric character in these fields (Or two decimal points, happened a lot to me).

 

My impression was probably just a result of how the website works, then. For transferring data from the NGS sheet I was using DMS entry to avoid having to do separate calculations.