Dr. House
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Posts posted by Dr. House
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Thank you too. Good to have back up options
But the real question is why do we need a backup option when there use to be a perfectly good link that did it all in one click?
I agree. I'd really like to see the return of this link on the profile page.
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Ya know, I think I'm getting a little too personally involved in this topic, so I think I'm gonna politely bow out. I sincerely hope there'll be a text option for those of us that still want one since I think that's the best option for all sides.
Groundspeak folks... I think I got a little haughty there for a bit and offer my apologies.
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Are you really expecting a response?
A good company should, in my opinion. Do I expect one from Groundspeak? No. Clearly they know what we'd like to see without bothering to ask anyway.
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Still no response here either.... awesome!
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Well... business hours are upon The Lilypad, and yet there's still no comment from Groundspeak on the many requests for an option for HTML emails. I think I counted 5 separate threads in various locations within these boards, but it seems that just isn't enough feedback to suggest that there's a good section of the customer base that aren't enamored with this change, and that perhaps another look at this switch is warranted. Thus, not even deserving of the courtesy of a comment of position of the company.
I'm curious... were the Volunteer Reviewers asked for their input on this? Surely to goodness they would've caught the issues for you prior to this launch and would've commented on the lack of a text option, so I'm guessing the answer is no. It begs the question: Other than The Design Team, who on earth thought that HTML emails (with no option for text!) was a good move for the company? When coming up with this update, who exactly gave feedback and said this was an improvement?
If this HTML email directive is for some marketing metric counting, is there a concern that there won't be a valid random sample size because of the amount of people who would switch to text only if given the option? I can't imagine the cost overhead on the company side of bandwidth for having to send out email in the order of 6-8x their previous size. Is the endgame to have people stop receiving notification emails as some sort of cost saving measure?
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Hey look! Yet another forum topic thread requesting that HTML vs. text emails be a user-selectable preference. And I like how it was started by yet another infrequent visitor to the forums. Well, allow me to also give my support to the OP!
Please, for the love of Frog, just make this HTML email thing an option!
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I still have a complaint about "New Traditional Cache" notifications. ... Now, you have to open up every single email, and read down to the 7th line to see who published the cache (in a very tiny font, I might add) but you didn't used to have to.
Here's at least one person who is happy with the change for new cache published notifications. Direction and distance is included in the header now, so it is easy for me to tell at a glance where the new cache is approximately located. I do not want to know which reviewer published the cache - it's always the same few reviewers for caches in a 50 mile radius, possibly more. Perhaps you can move the center of the circle to the south so that you don't pick up some many caches from Canada?
Thanks for the response, I figured almost everyone would think I was a ranting idiot.
I'm the only one who will ever post here, but this has been a long standing problem in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls N.Y. CSA, (Population 1.1 million) and the Regional Municipality of Niagara (Population 450,000) in Ontario. Why on earth would we want to move our home coordinates over this new change? And by the way, they're probably livid over this in Port Huron Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, as well. Probably not, but that sounded good. 
They probably never guessed in 1,000 years that this change would affect anyone. But here's an example of someone who it did, speaking for dozens of people who will never post here. Gimme back my "reviewer name published cache name" emails. Just kidding, not a big deal. But in fact a real problem for some people.
Being on the other side of the ditch from Mr. Yuck, I'd just like to lend my support to his ranting idiocity suggestion that future "improvements" to the notifications system be sortable by country/state. As much as I like popping over for cheaper fuel and proper chicken wings, I'd prefer to have just my home province in notifications unless I choose otherwise.
You know, similar to the choice that should be available with HTML versus classic Text emails to the end user.
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I'm just waiting for the text/html option to appear in our profile settings, then the forum go silent save for a few people who return to say thanks... and this whole pile-on against GS complaining that they never listen to be completely forgotten the next time to they make a significant update
C'mon Groundspeak, make fools out of the haters!
I think it's more likely that this thread will be locked as a result of a new update, but I'm sure hoping for this feature to be added, silently or otherwise. I'll be the dutiful hater and come in here to give thanks should this happen.
As I see it, the difficulty lies in actually getting an answer out of a company who have chosen to take the stance of "Options Shmoptions... Oh snap! That's just crazy talk! We are drawing the arbitrary line here now. We gave in a little bit, but no further because you really don't know what you want as much as our Design Team does. From here on, we'll be riding out the complaints with our fingers planted firmly in our ears pretending not to hear you, thus absolving ourselves of any notion of the thought that we should actually respond any further."
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I'm personally convinced that all of the recent email changes to HTML were designed primarily to facilitate a self-serving promotion by gc.com to include their Facebook "Like" button, their Twitter button, their YouTube button, and their Instagram button, and to sell their 2 apps in all of the email they send. Doesn't do US any good, but I doubt that was the primary concern.BRING BACK TEXT!
Post #125?
Amen. I'd love to hear a valid business reason for why this can't be the case.The job isn't finished until HTML is either gone or optional.Thank you.Post #125, quoted above, theorizes why HTML would be the preferred option for Groundspeak. Since it neither came from a representative of Groundspeak, nor answers why both options could not be provided to the user base at the user's discretion, I'm not satisfied with the answer.
I don't disagree with your theory, but it sure would be nice to have someone from Groundspeak actually pipe up out of their anti-feedback bunker to answer a simple question: "Why can't both options be provided to the end user?"
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It's in the subject of the new ones, but often clipped from the right, depending upon your news reader.
It definitely would be a good plan to include in the body of the email.
I only seem to get bearing and distance for newly published caches, but not for any other notification types. Not sure if this information was provided in the old and better notifications prior to this "improvement" but perhaps that could be something to include going forward.
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I really miss the distance/direction in the notifications. It was at the top and easy to spot and I could decide at a glance if I cared about the notification or not.
Agreed. This should be on notifications of all types.
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The job isn't finished until HTML is either gone or optional.
Thank you.
Amen. I'd love to hear a valid business reason for why this can't be the case.
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Compare, contrast, with the reply I got from the Lilypad:-
Hi there, Thank you for your feedback regarding the updates to the email notification system. We are currently working through some of the small hiccups, but overall we are very excited about the changes we made to modernize the email system. All of our notification emails going forward will be sent in HTML format, which most email providers support (e.g. gmail, outlook, etc). If you have already created email filters for the old game-triggered emails, you will have to update them to the appropriate new text. Thanks again for your feedback. Have a wonderful day! Kindly,
The arrogance is mind-boggling. Sorry, Moun10bike, while I'd love to believe the Frog is listening to us, the actions and words from HQ tell a different story.
I've seen this verbatim email from another source or two today, as well. What I'd like to know is why there won't be a user-selectable option allowing the customer to choose how they'd like to receive the emails? Not that I'm a person that walks around with a tin-foil hat worrying about Big Brother, but what habits are you tracking by forcing HTML emails on your client-base? I imagine there's something in the graphics that pings back to the Lilypad and lets The Design Team know what we're doing with the emails, so I wonder if those details could be divulged for the sake of disclosure?
Secondly, and perhaps this isn't as much of an issue elsewhere in the world, but in Canada our data plans for mobile phone users are rather expensive and often come with very few included MB/GB worth of data in the plan. As such, given that increasing a person's wireless data plan is somewhat restrictive from a monetary standpoint, what consideration was given to people in this scenario where the emails have jumped considerably in size? Yes, I would agree that most current email providers support HTML Formatting, and most people wouldn't have an issue if the sole place they went to for some "Oh Snap!" was their desktop computer, but I'm really not sure this is the case. People I know have 100MB total for their monthly data plan with no recourse other than to turn off/filter all notifications at the email provider level so that they don't incur overage charges since the new size will eat through their data bucket far too quickly. Perhaps that is ultimately Groundspeak's intent: If the masses hate them enough, they'll turn those notifications off and we won't have all that pesky bandwidth to pay for!
I think it's awesome that perhaps some of the changes will be tweaked, though I've yet to see anything concrete on that matter, but judging these forum boards and conversation on other social media site that I frequent, if Groundspeak aren't allowing a user-selectable email format, you simply aren't listening well enough.
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And what's with all the people posting who have low forum counts? It seems to outnumber the regulars for once. Just an observation.
I've noticed this too, and to me, this point is perhaps one of the best of all at demonstrating how the best laid plans can go to waste. It seems pretty telling from a user feedback point of view when folks who couldn't normally be bothered to stroll into these rough seas now suddenly seem to be coming here to voice their displeasure. It's almost like they actually want Groundspeak to know that this change had a negative impact on their geocaching experience. I have no doubt that this change was well-intended, but if these un-regular folks are making their way to this forum to tell TPTB that they hate it, maybe a revert is in order.
And dare I suggest a more thorough polling to see what works best for end users before implementing something this invasive? Maybe this was something that the "User Insights" thread could have demonstrated in advance of the changes with additional traffic directed to those threads via the weekly newsletter or other social media avenues to ensure adequate feedback? I presume that the intention of those threads was to gather input and improve upon your relationship with your customers, so why have they been dormant since May? Was there a possibility of showing a number of possible email layout options and requesting the input of the people who actually use the function as end users on a daily basis as to which option works best for them? I recognize that you can't, and perhaps shouldn't, poll the masses for all changes, but this one seems like it would have been an awesome topic for open discussion; not only could that discussion have taken place here, but you could have had something of a polling station Lab Cache set up at the Block Party and the Munich Giga Event as well, then digested that wealth of feedback and chosen a course of action at that point based on that feedback.
Instead, I feel like there's just a sentiment of "We know what's best for cachers" coming from Seattle, and that's unfortunate. This is the best hobby on Earth (and space!) and it would be refreshing to feel a responsiveness and willingness to do better as it pertains to common concerns from those with the wherewithal to effort that change.
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I can't think of a time when I actually disliked a site update enough to comment on this forum, but I feel compelled to say that I loathe this update. Part of me worries that it comes down to statements like these:
Overall, though, the design team felt that most cachers preferred seeing the cache name called out first and foremost rather than the log owner name.
The team felt that the benefits of releasing without that change outweighed the negatives of waiting another week, A-Team.
My concern is that the design team may be out of touch with what the actual audience wants to see. Was there some sort of test audience on these changes, or did some folks with fancy drawing skills ("The Design Team") decide amongst themselves that this is what they'd like to see? At what point is it determined that emails now must be formatted in HTML without option to the end user? What actual benefit does the background color scheme add to the notifications anyway compared to the old way?
I respect that I have the option to turn them off if I don't like the new format (which is garish, in my opinion) or filter them before they get to my phone, but I rather enjoyed all the notifications that were sent to my email in text format previous to today's update. I was able to go through rather easily and see what was going on with the caches I had on my various notification lists without the extra unnecessary color scheme added to the message. I knew it was from Groundspeak, and didn't need some color scheme to emphasize that knowledge.
Oh snap! A new geocache was just published!After I opened a New Publication email I received, the above quote is the first thing I see and it makes me curious as to what the average age of a cacher is nowadays. Perhaps it's getting younger and I'm just some out of date old coot, but my belief is that the average user is old enough to remember when "Oh snap!" was common lingo, and it seems to me that 2014 is about 30 years after that phrase's peak. I imagine that someone on The Design Team thinks that this is a fun and cute and cuddly phrase that can be turned into a swag button or trackable to sell in the store, but to me it just seems unprofessional. Is the new target demographic 12 year olds? Who on earth says "Oh snap!" anymore? It was annoying back then and hasn't gotten any less annoying now.
Apologies for the rant, but I just felt that I couldn't stay silent on this update: It is awful.
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Just wanted to say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading some the OP's Found It logs. Sorta reminded me of a David Thorne humor, which I completely dig. Perhaps next* to oregone's logs, these were some of the funniest I'd read in some time.
* Not that I'm going to rank them anywhere. Promise.
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No, I have nothing on the watch list. One of my notifications is for Traditional caches - published, enabled, disabled. That's it. I.e. GS is spamming me about enabled listing of the cache I've found 2 years ago. Why??? I don't want this.
Then turn that notification off.
You are invaluable
You know that?I wouldn't go that far.
I do, however, know not to paint myself the victim of something that I control myself. I might even go so far as to place my suggestion in the appropriate "Feature Request" forum thread if I thought it warranted.
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No, I have nothing on the watch list. One of my notifications is for Traditional caches - published, enabled, disabled. That's it. I.e. GS is spamming me about enabled listing of the cache I've found 2 years ago. Why??? I don't want this.
Then turn that notification off.
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... the rubber on the case will start peeling off and it just won't stop!
This seems to be a bit of an recurring theme from those I know who've owned that device. The screen resolution also doesn't seem to be as sharp as the Oregon/Montana models for my tastes, but otherwise it seems to be a solid unit.
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I will be in Niagara (Canadian side) attending the Comic-Con there, and would not like to miss the flash mob for WWFM. is there someone one in that region that can put one on so we can attend????
Sounds like you'll be in the region at that time... why don't you list one!
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Out of respect for Team Goju, I might suggest that sending a polite email might be your best course of action. Beyond that, unless he chooses to come to these forums to answer your questions openly, we'd just be speculating on rumour and conjecture, and that's not really all that nice to do.
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The well known situation the Dr. talks about is also the reason that many (including me) recommend putting the gpx files on an sdcard. His solution doesn't work very well when you are on a 30 mile bike ride and all of sudden there are no caches on the device. Then you:
Turn off
Remove Card
Turn on and let it boot
Turn off
Install card
Turn on.
Works every time and I have had it happen way into the day on every Garmin since my 450 through the 550 and now my Montana.
Nice! That is much better and I think I'm gonna start doing my loading that way, too. Thanks!
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I occasionally get this too. If it's the same thing that happens to me (and other on Colorados and Oregons) I simply change the name of the file created in the GPX file folder of the Garmin unit. Doing so seems to force the machine to reload the file even though nothing's changed in the .GPX file except the name. For me, this filename change works just about every time I see "No Geocaches" in the caching menu, fewer caches on the map screen when I know more caches should be present, or when geocaches might show up in the geocaching menu but their respective descriptions won't load for me to read on the unit.
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You are correct that PQ's don't return the corrected coords. The best way around that is something like GSAK and use the API call to get your caches. Then the corrected coordinates are entered. The DB field is marked that they are corrected and the Garmin Export Macro can be modified so that when you see them on your GPS you know they are corrected.
Just be sure that you don't accidentally load a Pocket Query into GSAK (instead of choosing a geographical area with the API) which covers an area where you may have corrected coords updated on the Geocaching.com website. IIRC, doing so removes the corrected co-ordinates flag within GSAK, and you're back to the original concern of the OP of this thread.
At that point it becomes a bit of a circular issue, and as such should really have a control within each cacher's main page on Geocaching.com. IMO, I think it should be something similar to "Manage Favorites", but certainly that functionality should be available to us without the need of downloading and potentially purchasing other programs to do this work.
I'm the only one who will ever post here, but this has been a long standing problem in the Buffalo/Niagara Falls N.Y. CSA, (Population 1.1 million) and the Regional Municipality of Niagara (Population 450,000) in Ontario. Why on earth would we want to move our home coordinates over this new change? And by the way, they're probably livid over this in Port Huron Michigan, and Sarnia, Ontario, as well. Probably not, but that sounded good. 
Release Notes - September 30, 2014
in Geocaching HQ communications
Posted
This is a workable solution, but:
I have no problem with the folks on the other side of the border from where I live, but I typically don't wish to see the upcoming events from NY, PA or OH, given the international border rigmarole I'd have to go through to get there, yet that's what the above option would return for me. Preferably, when, and if, I do wish to see events in states/provinces other than my own, I would *then* use the Advanced Search features. That seems a more logical process to me.
I suppose I can understand not wanting personal address information listed on the site anymore, but I can't imagine having a field in Account Settings for State/Province info to drive the previous one-click option to find caches is of much (any?) concern to anyone who wants it.