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Thank you to everyone who provided feedback! The board considered the discussion here during our January meeting and decided no additional changes were needed. We voted unanimously to adopt the changes as proposed. The bylaws page on the website will be updated within the next day or two.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Thank you to everyone who gave feedback on this topic. The directors considered all you had to say and discussed the length of terms during our November board meeting. Opinions were similarly mixed to the feedback we received here. While most acknowledged that three-year terms would make things easier from a logistical perspective during transition periods around each election, there was also concern that a longer term might be a deterrent to those who would otherwise be interested in running for board positions. Given the relatively few interested candidates in recent years (last year a bit of an exception), we didn’t want to give nominees another reason to decline a nomination. We ultimately decided to stick with two-year terms by a vote of 5-4.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
In the past few days Iāve had people discover at TB of ours that was lost at Aztalan years ago. The weird thing is that the logs make sense as someone that knows caching, and not just some spam bug.
This sounds like a combination of things. There has been a list of trackable codes floating around Facebook for at least a few months now. I also had a discovery on one of mine that was presumed lost. I reached out the person logging who admitted they got it from a list, and assumed it was made with permission. He apologized and said I was free to delete his log, which I subsequently did.
It also sounds like some geocaching accounts may have been compromised and the perpetrators are up to no good. I’m sort of impressed if HQ is already cleaning up after them.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Yeah, that was meant tongue-in-cheek. I really have had no interest in watching The Tiger King, but Betty convinced me to give it a try last night. We got about 20 minutes into it and turned it off.
A little late, but this is exactly what I would expect if I were to succumb to the (strange?) pressure and watch this thing. No thanks.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Ooo boy, lots of thoughts here. I also feel that this isn’t really a question that can be boiled down to a simple yes or no answer. But if those are my only options, then I would probably go with “Yes.” But the context behind that answer is important.
But since a few bad apples spoil it for everyone
Like others have said āit is a few bad apples that ruin the enjoyment for allā.
I’ve seen this comment in several places now, but I think it overlooks a point that I would argue is as important as the vandalism and trash, if not more so. Governor Evers’ Safer at Home order clearly included outdoor activities in the exceptions for which we are allowed to leave our homes and even travel, but it also stressed continuing to follow social distancing guidelines while enjoying those activities. While I did not visit a state park during this time period, I heard from multiple sources that crowds in some parks like Devil’s Lake were regularly larger than peak summer weekend days. Packed parking lots and crowded trails are the exact opposite of social distancing, so even people being completely respectful with the best of intentions are inadvertently contributing to the problem. If you are a government or health official who believes that social distancing is our best weapon against COVID-19, the sheer number of people visiting seems like the only reason you need to close these parks to the public.
IMO, Issuing a safer at home order and then offering free admission to the parks is contradictory.
I’ve been thinking myself that eliminating the fees may have been a mistake. I am not one that would normally think twice about paying those fees to visit, so I don’t have a great sense of how much additional traffic was actually brought to the parks by the fact that you could visit for free. At the very least, I think it probably did send the wrong message by advertising the idea to visit these places while lots of other people were bound to be there as well.
Once officials decided that keeping crowded parks open was a bad idea, I felt it was odd that they didn’t just close them all. While I trust that there was some level of evaluation by park managers that went into the decision of which parks to close, it seems it would have been for simpler to make a blanket adjustment, and then there would be no confusion over which parks remain open. If I was in the Governor’s shoes, I probably would have closed all state parks.
That said, I’ve felt from the beginning that geocaching fit right into the stated exceptions outlined in the Safer at Home order. I also feel that getting outside is important, so I was happy to see that my county immediately came out after the state park closures were announced and stated they plan to keep their parks open (at least for now). I generally have no concerns going out to find caches with my wife and daughters. Frankly, there’s no way I could keep my girls inside and not go insane (they are five and seven). But that doesn’t mean it’s business as usual when we go out. We are taking precautions. Going after caches that haven’t been found recently. Targeting just one or two for each outing, usually in the woods where we’re less likely to encounter other people. Using hand sanitizer liberally. Not driving more than 30 minutes. Not staying out longer than a few hours. And more. I totally support anyone who wants to stay home, but I do not believe those that choose to go out (to allowed locations) are doing anything wrong.
So…
I was surprised find a reply by the president of this organization stating that he felt all state parks should have been closed from day one. Now, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but is this really the stance that our stateās representing organization wants to take during these times?
…there is a reason I have a disclaimer in my forum signature and most (all?) other board members do, too. The comments of one do not necessarily reflect an official stance of the board. I, at least, am evidence that we do not all agree with Aaron on this. And while the board has certainly discussed this and other topics related to the pandemic, we have so far declined to form any sort of official WGA stance. While the stakes have certainly changed, participating in geocaching has always been done at your own risk. I feel it should (continue to) be up to each individual to decide if they are comfortable geocaching given the current risk factors. I believe it is possible to continue caching safely without endangering other people, but I won’t think ill of anyone regardless of what they decide for themselves provided they’re not being reckless.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
for 03-06-2020 . . . did everyone read the BOD minutes? Not quite sure how I feel about this forum ānot being valuableā. I think its a great way to keep in touch.Yeah, I wasnāt too keen about that comment.
As one of the board members that likely expressed that sentiment during the meeting, I will absolutely defend the thought that “FTP for [insert some random thing here]” is not particularly valuable. That doesn’t mean there aren’t good things about this thread otherwise. But consider this…the regulars here have sort of made the conversation unapproachable to outsiders by burying them in this long-running thread.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Do everyoneās start 05-02-2020?
That’s correct. That first eligible date is Big Blue Switch Day, marking the true start to 20th anniversary celebrations. You can host anytime between May 2 and the end of the year.
Can they be any kind of event you want, or do they have specific requirements?
HQ set specific guidelines for Community Celebration Events. But really the biggest differences are the date restrictions and a requirement that each event be at least two hours. Otherwise it’s pretty much up to the host what to do.
I have one in the Madison area, and I know MTCLMBR got one in March as well.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
I got my notice yesterday that I received one.
Same here!
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
So, does not using the WGA logo on our personal pathtags mean we shouldnāt use the WGA tag back?
Not at all. But I suspect you already knew that. š
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
There’s a new one to add to the list. Someone created Dane County Wisconsin Geocaching Group yesterday. It’s private with just 15 members so far, but that’s not bad for being about a day old.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
There are already a lot of things going on this year that might not be happening if not for the 20th anniversary of geocaching as a whole. This includes the community celebration events, the HQ event in Seattle, extra Mega events like Mingo Madness. My suggestion would be not to try to compete with these other things, but instead try to come up with something uniquely Wisconsin. Perhaps using the community celebration event icon, but that doesn’t seem necessary. I like the idea of a centrally located event to celebrate WGA history, as well as potential 20th anniversary merch. I don’t have much to add beyond what the other candidates have already said.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
As people use social media more and more what do you think should be done to keep the website current and bring members back to it
I’m all for making improvements to the website as I’ve indicated in a few of my other answers. But the mindset that we must bring users back here from social media doesn’t seem quite right in my opinion. I wouldn’t want to abandon the idea that the website is important, but perhaps it’s no longer as important as it once was. If members are spending a lot of their time on social media, I think we need to be engaging them there with the hope that they will come here as well, rather than expecting everyone to make the effort to come back here.
The most popular social media platform is probably Facebook. There was a thread started around this time last year to solicit ideas for the annual in-person BOD meeting. One of the suggestions from Hack1of2 was that the WGA should have a Facebook group rather than just a page. As much as I personally dislike Facebook and especially Facebook groups (their sorting algorithms make them really difficult to follow everything), this seems to me like a great idea to help us engage the membership on Facebook where many of them are likely already spending a fair amount of time.
Based on the minutes from last year’s meeting, it looks like the board did decide to allow visitors to post on the WGA Facebook page. But how many people actually know they can do that? I didn’t until I checked just a moment ago, and I would consider myself a more savvy user. I think an actual group would put us in a better position to foster discussion among geocachers and engage members. I see that several of the admins of the Geocachers In Wisconsin group are current/former BOD members or active general members. Perhaps we can work with them to see about turning that group into something officially labeled as the WGA Community Group?
If we can do better engaging members on social media, I think that also gives us more opportunities to advertise what the website has to offer and still get some people to come here. Which brings us back to improving the website to make it easier for people to find the sort of information they are looking for and generally make the site more of a joy to use. Some quick (and maybe? simple) ideas:
- More frequent postings on the main blog. I recognize this is an easy thing to suggest and much harder to deliver, but the posts don’t have to be complicated. For example, the most recent post as of today is still about finding a fifth candidate for the last open seat on the baord, but silentecho joined the race five days ago and there’s been no additional postings.
- Expose more than just geocaching events on the calendar. Election activities and relevant dates would be a good example.
- See if we can fix the forums so they don’t show 137,000 pages for each topic when most actually have one or two.
- Better expose information about committees (and maybe other topics).
- Consolidate the history pages and bring them current.
- I’m not great with design, but I think we can come up with something that looks a bit more modern without too much trouble.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Maybe you want to adventure into the technology and coding of the website?
Yes, that’s me. I know your list probably wasn’t meant to be an exhaustive multiple choice, but I do think that’s the thing that most interests me. I’m already comfortable with many of the other aspects of being a leader in a social organization, but the website offers me a great opportunity for personal growth. I have always been a pretty technical person, and I make it a point to keep up with technology trends for fun. I have dabbled with websites in the past, but I’ve never had the opportunity to work on something that would be used by more than a handful of people. I am looking forward to the challenge of taking my existing knowledge base and growing it as necessary to improve the WGA website.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
I’ve been pondering this question myself even before you asked. I would like to focus on two things, closely related. The first is just general awareness that the WGA exists. Perhaps this is not the case in other parts of the state, but I don’t feel like the WGA is well-known in Madison. For being a pretty large population center in the state, the opt-in member map on this site shows fewer than 10 members in the Madison area that have actually been active within the last few years. Sure there are cachers that put the WGA banner on their cache pages and a few people attend events when they are geographically close, but no one talks about the WGA with any regularity. If cachers aren’t aware we even exist, or if those that are aware don’t hear about us with any regularity, how can we expect anyone to participate? So I want to start simple and focus on making more people aware that the WGA is a thing, then we can go from there.
While I have been a member for a long time, I wouldn’t say I have been particularly involved in WGA activities over the years. As such, I made it a point to poke around the website to see what I could learn about recent activities, the current board, and what they might be working on. I came away with several observations, but they can basically be boiled down to one theme: I don’t really know what the board has been working on recently, because if that information exists, it is too hard to find.
It’s clear that this site relies heavily on the forums. Forums are extremely useful…for discussions. They are not a good way to convey useful information to the general membership or the public, because important topics can quickly get buried if you don’t know where to look. This is perfectly illustrated by a comment from awhip80 in a thread about topics for last year’s annual BOD meeting.
I appreciate that you have provided an explanation as to where to find a discussion about committees on the forum, but after skimming through 10 of the 118 pages of topics in ANNOUNCEMENTS and not finding what you referred to I gave up. If these committees are set forth in the bylaws, shouldnāt the language regarding them be easily found within the bylaws that are posted under the āINFO CENTERā tab on the web site?
I am not one to shy away from exploring a website or app to figure out all it has to offer, so if I’m struggling to find information, I would expect the casual user to be struggling more. I’ll admit that I haven’t explored every corner of the site, and I certainly know very little about the back end configuration and what goes into maintenance…but I am willing to learn and I think we can do better. One of my priorities if elected would be to improve the website to make basic information more discoverable, as well as improve transparency into what the BOD is up to during the year.
This post is already getting long, so I will save my specific ideas for another time. If anyone wants to hear those details, I’m happy to write some more. š
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
Iād rather answer questions like āWhat is you favorite type of cache?ā than these metaphoric questions.
I’m with you. These feel like typical work meeting icebreaker questions, and I’m not a big fan. I essentially answered your question instead. I hope that’s ok.
My comments are mine alone and may not necessarily reflect an official stance of the WGA Board of Directors.
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