ChileHead
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Posts posted by ChileHead
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No. No to all of this. This would make the game more about cliques and less about adventure and getting outdoors. I like you're brainstorming but not the idea. I had written a thread about "advanced geocaching" which I thought was a good idea where people would work their way up to advanced status of caching and THEN could have access to more challenging caches. This way, newer people wouldn't get upset when they see that cache on their map knowing its to hard for them but they complain about it anyways. Instead it wouldn't show up at all on the map unless they applied to get into the advanced status which they would then agree to the challenges associated with high terrain caches. many people disagreed with this idea saying that no matter what you do you can't fix the problems that have been around in geocaching for years.
Give people a chance to rate a cache based on if they liked it or not and you give them a power that is undiserved and confusing. What if the cache is fine but because others don't like the hider suddenly the cache has a poor rating. Don't bring that social part into rating caches that will only bring headaches. I think having a stable rating system with more clarity from Groundspeak would be more helpful like out of 10 instead of 5.
That's actually a very good idea to have an advanced cacher status, I didn't think of that. This idea could also go on my new thread as well.
At least one of the letterboxing sites has the ability to hide boxes from members unless they have found at least 50 or 100 or 500 boxes. Of course you could lie and log boxes you didn't find, but in general the letterboxing folk seem to not care about the numbers and are much more into the stamp and art and creative write ups.
I'm not sure how well such a system would work here, or how a cacher would gain advanced status if something other than found/hide count was used.
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When the favorite system was added, I wondered by a 1-5 rating system wasn't done instead. After using it for a very short period of time, it became obvious that a favorite system was infinitely better than the 1-5 star rating.
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- It's all positive: You can't punish somebody because you don't like them or the location. If a cache is really not taken care of, then the NM/NA is the appropriate way of handling this.
- Limiting this to premium members means it's much less likely that caches will be artificially raised up by sock puppets.
- Limiting this to 10% of your finds means you are going to think before giving out a favorite point ... you're likely not going to give your buddy a favorite for his parking lot micro. Well you might, but it's up to you ... but nobody else will.
- A 5 star rating system tends to rate nothing 5 star, and nothing 1 star. Things end up averaging down, and you'll get an inaccurate listing of "what are the best caches in an area"
- The favorite system really does seem to work. In general, most caches with a high number of favorites really are something special. Either in location, with the hide itself, or something historical. I'll admit I don't understand why virtuals and earthcaches are always highly rated, as they usually aren't for me, but I've learned that.
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nice to see the directory! Now just need more geotours near me.
Workin' on that.
Hey I keep sending people your way, waiting for one to "take hold"
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Great! I've been thinking that should be in the app for years, nice to see the directory! Now just need more geotours near me.
Minor display issue ... when selecting a tour it briefly displays:
There are 0 geocaches in this GeoTour
I know it's updating and fetching data from the server, but it would be better to display something else
I've done one, it might be nice to have an indication in the listing that I've found 1 or more of the caches in the tour directory.
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We do that all the time. Every Sunday we have a group go out caching, sometimes 4 sometimes 10. Rather than have everybody sign in and take up space (and time) we usually sign in as "Durfs5" (5 people that day) as we sometimes refer to ourselves as the "Durfs" group because we meet at that restaurant for breakfast. I'll usually say in my log "Signed in as Durfs5".
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BTW, nice to see some additional functionality added to the friends feature! I don't think I'd be using it much, but we'll see.
I could see people wanting to create a "friend group". So if I went caching for the day with cachers X, Y and Z and found 50 caches, I might want to define my own group to auto expand into X Y and Z so I don't have to keep tagging them, assuming that's something I'd want to do. Basically, it would act as a temporary macro. Go to my friends list, click the ones I want, click "create group", enter a name, then use @sundayfriends to auto expand into X Y and Z.
Possibly this would be very annoying to X Y and Z though to get all those emails!
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You can currently tag somebody in an unpublished cache which seems a bit strange. Perhaps tagging should be off until it's published? You can't actually see the log or the cache details from what I can see, so it really doesn't hurt other than generating an email the tagee can't follow.
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I assume it is this one:
The cache owner archived it yesterday so it will no longer show after being archived.
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Is there a way to only see my DNFs on the map? If I want to go through and avenge all my DNFs, I don't see a way of showing only these, without showing all the other caches of that time I haven't searched for.
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But as early as '09, we remember mention that Waymarking was now the site for new entries.
Now that most are used to a "find" smiley, adding to the count total every time they found a YOSM/Brass Cap there, do you think a count that doesn't add towards your finds would fly?
May be just me, but I wouldn't think so.
I liked the concept of Waymarking, but it obviously never took off. Too many people complained about the commercial waymarks such as McDonalds and Walmarts, even though they represent a minority of the waymarks on the site. These categories probably should have never been listed.
But the big reason (in my opinion) Waymarking didn't take off is that each waymark visit doesn't give you a +1 in your find count, or anything real noticeable in your stats. If the benchmark categories of Waymarking gave you a +1 find, I believe many people would create & visit them, even though the site itself is less than ideal.
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Conceptually speaking, the moving virtual can be considered a locationless, the only difference being a coordinate coordinate limitation (since it's not a "Locationless Listing") so you can only log one item at a time. The "Moving virtual" is a "Locationless" just bound to the currently listed coordinates instead of being freely loggable from any coordinates.
Depends on the locationless. Not all locationless could be logged from any location.
Almost any coordinates: scavenger hunt cache, yellow jeep, palindromes
Specific coordinates: Flagpoles, Eagle scout projects, stone walls, flatiron buildings, rails to trails sign
Seems to me the YOSM was very much like the second group of locationless.
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"I'm hearing..." and "It's my understanding..." My two least favorite information sources.
No one at HQ has ever talked about webcams causing the same problems as moving caches. There's no sense in trying to create a story where one doesn't exist.
No one ever said webcams were causing the same problems as moving caches.
Doesn't matter, still a story that does not exist.
May not exist at this time but,,, give em some time. People complain, GS gets tired of and doesn't want to deal with it, and they're on the chopping block. I hope no one here is naive enough to think it can't happen.
"People are saying ..." No, no they are not. The only time webcams are problematic are when webcams are down for an extended period of time, or the owner is allowing selfies. In those cases, the specific webcam may be archived. But there is no indication anywhere that this would ever happen to all webcams.
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Caches like Brass Cap and YOSM are locationless caches, but were listed as the wrong cache type when published. They only existed for this long because of that error, and should have been archived at the end of 2005 with the rest of the old locationless caches. Those locationless caches can still be listed and visited on Waymarking.com. See U.K. and Ireland Trigpoints and Canadian Benchmarks.
I fear this doesn't bode well for webcam caches.
What is the connection you're perceiving between webcams and moving caches?
It's my understanding that they generate a lot of problems for the same people that perceived the moving caches to be a problem. May as well toss what's left of virtuals on the fire, too.
Yep, might as well throw all remaining locationless caches such as virtuals, webcams and ECs to the Waymarking trash bin if you're justified in doing it to the brass cap cache and YOSM. In fact, some existing virtuals ARE brass caps / survey markers.
Locationless is completely different than containerless.
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I'd be interested in Waymarking if it was app-based/app-friendly and set up more like geocaching with live maps and the like. No game like that is ever truly friendly if it's only browser based.
I use chliheads Waymarking app in the field all the time for taking coordinates and making drafts. Just like geocaching, I use my phone as my primary tool.
All due respect...it's inferior.
I have an Android app for Waymarking that I never released. But it's really just a wrapper around my mobile site (https://geotrailsw.com/wm/) and they are both fragile as they scrape (with permission) the site to work.
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Bryan, thank you.
Thank you elyob, and thanks to the rest of you waymarkers for being involved. As I've said, I am still a huge fan of Waymarking and I have a deep appreciation for everyone who continues contributing to this project! Have a great weekend everyone!
Thanks for the posts, Bryan. I've wanted to spend some time to improve my half baked Waymarking site (https://geotrailsw.com/wm/) for a while now, but hesitated to invest anything into it, or mobile apps, since the future was cloudy.
Some day I'd like to improve it more, if I ever have time. But glad to see the confirmation there is at least some interest.
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The loss of vital tools like bookmarks and pq's just made things worse. Those are the primary reason we have returned to being PM.
Huh? Bookmarks (https://www.geocaching.com/account/lists) and pocket queries (https://www.geocaching.com/pocket/default.aspx) are still there, and are listed on the dashboard.
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I agree, but the difference is for cachers starting now with the phone app. Well it is more like 90% here rather than 98%, but that's a detail. In general, they won't have a GPS or know how to manually program their phone. So to them, it will seem like a very restricted service with the official app and without premium.
When I joined, the model worked perfectly for me (with GPS usage). I happily found caches for around 6 months. Around then I decided I wanted premium features, so I became premium. It didn't restrict you too much, so I got interested, and then later was happy to go premium.
It seems different for a new cacher today who is using the app, and only the app. They don't get that "I can find most everything, just not as conveniently" experience you and I had. So they are more likely to quit before ever becoming "hooked" enough to want to purchase premium.
The "barrier to entry" when I started 14 years ago was pretty high. You had to find out about geocaching, spend at least $300 on a GPS, read and learn (imagine that!) about geocaching ... a big investment of time and money meant you probably have committed yourself to the game. You learned how to program the GPS by hand, and that's what I did for quite a number of caches. I can't recall when PQs came in, or even if they were around when I started.
Nothing stops a newbie with a phone from downloading a free GPS app and entering everything in by hand like the "olden days". Many of the changes in the past decade have been around convenience and optimization ... the core part of the game hasn't changed since 2000.
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When I started, I could find 98% of the caches without having to pay anything. Open the website, program coords into my GPS or download the loc file.
Today, I can find 98% of the caches without having to pay anything. Open the website, program coords into my GPS (or phone) or download the loc file.
New features have been added over time to make that easier, such as pocket queries for premium members, or more complete access for phone users. But the basics are the same - you can find almost every cache other than premium member caches which are a minority (even then you can still find them with help.)
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They are all gone. Been about 10 years I think.
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How do you create a new List using the new Dashboard?
Hmmm, interesting. I can't find it on the new dashboard or the new lists page. I have to open lists, then open the "old" version of the lists to get to the link to create a new one.
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On souvenirs, it doesn't look like this changed much, so perhaps this is more of a request for a future update than a comment on the current dashboard:
When profiles have lots of souvenirs it gets a bit messy to scroll through pages and pages of images. I would like to see categories of souvenirs defined that you can expand/collapse. Categories would be things like location souvenirs, date souvenirs, HQ promotions, maybe a few more.
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I almost never look for caches in yards. It's not what geocaching is about, for me.
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I'm sure this is beyond the scope of what you are planning anytime soon, but would it be possible to hide sections that I don't care about? Or allow users to rearrange (drag n drop) sections to meet their personal preferences? There's not a whole lot I'd hide now other than maybe trackables (and Brad), but I can see in the future if there are new widgets I'm not interested in I might want to hide them, or at least drag them to the bottom of the page so the things I care about are elevated. Just wish list thinking for the future.
That was something that I suggested a few years ago. Remember iGoogle? It allowed the user to completely customize the content. Basically everything on the page was in a "section" that could be added, deleted, moved, or re-sized as the user desired. There's somewhat of a replacement called "iGoogle Portal" (http://www.igoogleportal.com/) that demonstrates the functionality. Maybe it's not for everyone but I spent a few years working on an open source Portal product that mostly did the same thing so maybe I'm biased.
Actually iGoogle is exactly what I was thinking of. I thought if I mentioned that, nobody would know what I was talking about!
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I'm sure this is beyond the scope of what you are planning anytime soon, but would it be possible to hide sections that I don't care about? Or allow users to rearrange (drag n drop) sections to meet their personal preferences? There's not a whole lot I'd hide now other than maybe trackables (and Brad), but I can see in the future if there are new widgets I'm not interested in I might want to hide them, or at least drag them to the bottom of the page so the things I care about are elevated. Just wish list thinking for the future.
Release Notes (Website only, Logged-In Homepage) - July 5, 2017
in Geocaching HQ communications
Posted
I don't normally look at the home page, so not sure if this is new or not. The "most favorited" seems to show the favorites around Seattle only. I assume this should use my home location or current location? I know Seattle's special, but ...