Geocaching Australia

I've created a <a href="http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Swaps">new page</a> on the wiki for swap items (feel free to edit it), but thought it would be a good discussion to have again.
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What do you consider to be good or bad swap items?
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I've started the wiki off with:
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Good swap items that don't necessarily cost a lot of money include:
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* Themed swaps - themed on either the cache, cacher or location (eg: international visitors to Australia may appreciate Austlian keyrings or stuffed koalas - these would be good swaps for caches frequented by internation visitors);<br>
* Home made swaps;<br>
* Unique items (that may not be readily purchased in retail stores).
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Bad swaps
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Potentially bad swap items include:
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* Material that isn't appropriate for all age groups;<br>
* Dangerous or potentially dangerous items (eg: matches & stanley knives);<br>
* Food (all food is inappropriate for all caches);<br>

Good work.
All this Wiki stuff is great, BUT how do we find stuff in the Wiki?
Is the swaps page linked from the main page or somewhere sensible so people can find it?
I know you can search the Wiki, but you've got to know what you want to search for first which most people don't, they just browse and follow hyperlinks.
Whats' the procedure for updating the main Wiki page? Do we want to link *everything* from there?
This probably belong in the Website section I guess!

EcoDave

EcoTeam wrote:All this Wiki stuff is great, BUT how do we find stuff in the Wiki?
Is the swaps page linked from the main page or somewhere sensible so people can find it?

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Yes, linked to from the <a href="http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Find ... e">Finding a cache</a> page.
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But thats a very good point... where possible we should avoid creating orphaned pages on the wiki. The search engine is pretty good though... it does a full text search over all of the articles, so words like 'swap' or 'trade' will find this page.

The Garner Family wrote:

EcoTeam wrote:All this Wiki stuff is great, BUT how do we find stuff in the Wiki?
Is the swaps page linked from the main page or somewhere sensible so people can find it?

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Yes, linked to from the <a href="http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Find ... e">Finding a cache</a> page.
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But thats a very good point... where possible we should avoid creating orphaned pages on the wiki. The search engine is pretty good though... it does a full text search over all of the articles, so words like 'swap' or 'trade' will find this page.

Perhaps some sort of "Master Index" ("Site Map" or "Wiki Map"?) page would be good?

I just discovered the "What Link here" button for each page, you can see how "orphaned" a page is! Very cool.

EcoDave

One of the biggest problems of all the wiki's is finding "stuff". There is nothing to stop someone creating a page with no link to it (an orphan page).

This is where the use of "categories" can be useful.

Before the wiki gets too many pages, some sort of menu system really needs to be implemented. Decide on some categories and have a "menu?" page for each category.

One category could be "FAQ" for example and there would be a page which would provide a link to all subsections/pages under that category.

* Food (all food is inappropriate for all caches);<br>[/quote
Sorry but this is Australia and Tim Tams and Freddos are quite OK.

Which chocolate frog?

You Know.....The ones that you bite the heads off, then the legs, then stuff the rest in the gob.

Is Spam ok?

Oh Absolutely but make it light, I am on a diet.

SNIFTER wrote:* Food (all food is inappropriate for all caches);<br>[/quote
Sorry but this is Australia and Tim Tams and Freddos are quite OK.

Disagree - chocolate (anything sugary, really) in confined spaces in an Australian summer does not do much for the inside of a cache container. Nothing worse than having to shake a million ants out of a cache just to find the log book.

Sorry if I upset people but I always thought that we have at least 2 seasons and up to 4 seasons here in Australia. I am not an idiot that would leave timtams out in the middle of summer.

SNIFTER wrote:Sorry if I upset people but I always thought that we have at least 2 seasons and up to 4 seasons here in Australia. I am not an idiot that would leave timtams out in the middle of summer.

...and anyway if she did (and she wouldn't) Ideology would get there first and eat them all, right George?

eerrk!

Maybe so, but that doesn't guarantee others won't be so thoughtful. Plus it doesn't always take the height of summer to melt chocolate (at least it didn't in Adelaide when we were there).

Personally I don't think any food items are appropriate swaps, and I usually swap out food items I have found in caches - last time I looked, however, we were all entitled to our own opinions.