ChileHead

I seriously anybody from HQ would speculate on such an open ended question. What organization? Does it meet the strategic direction HQ wants to go? Is there money involved? What's the positive impact to the game, what's the positive impact to the partner? Speculating on what ifs isn't useful.

This might not be a problem, as although it displays as italic, the underlying text in the log is still {*FTF*}, and I would guess that the API pulls down the underlying text and so Project-GC et all will still see it as an FTF tag and record it as such. That is what I would assume. If you use the API to download then you'll get the raw markdown text, which is {*FTF*}. Everything should work fine. If you use something that screen scrapes, then all bets are off as the formatted would have been applied.

There is a standard for saying you are FTF? I don't think I've seen that syntax. Most people, on my caches, just say FTF.

Cool ... I had thought about doing something similar to that, mostly for play. I don't care enough to keep the notifications long term, I only want to read them, then delete (without all the extra scrolling and white space.) I have a change to my original script that will "fix" the problem if you get more than 100 emails in a day. It's not really a fix though - it just moves the original back into the inbox once you exceed the limit, so you don't lose anything. I'll post that later. I'd rather have a switch on geocaching.com for my notifications though.

If they were ever to come back, I'd rather see them brought back in categories like earthcaches. History virtuals, biological virtuals, art virtuals, etc ... Each would have strict rules for what is acceptable like an earthcache. Otherwise we'd see tons of completely lame virtuals on every corner saying "Tell me the color of the street sign". The Waymarking model would work well for this, with dedicated reviewers for each category where waymarks get voted up/down, sent back if missing information. This fixes, sort of, the "wow" factor from the 2002-2003 era.

You can add caches to an ignore list, but you can't ignore a single cacher. However, I believe that is a premium member feature.

Unfortunately for you it does look like there are a lot of premium member caches in your area. In my area it's much, much lower, and the ratio varies quite a bit. Remember that these listings are owned by the geocachers. They make their caches premium for many reasons. The most common reason I've seen is that they believe (true or not) that doing so will make cache maintenance easier. They will have less visits for sure, but they will also have visits from more committed geocachers. Don't take that the wrong way - you can be a committed geocacher without being a premium member, but it's much less likely that a premium member would pay the fee without being committed to the game. With the advent of smart phones, the barrier to entry is much smaller than it used to be. In years past if you wanted to find a cache, you had to invest in a hand held GPS that most people didn't have. That was a $200 or more investment just for geocaching. Now that so many people have a smart phone, all you need to do is download an app to get started. I have made some of my caches premium as I've seen caches not replaced properly by newbie cachers who downloaded the app, found a couple caches, and left the game. I'd rather not keep replacing caches, so I make some of my easier ones premium. I keep the harder ones open to all, as that will weed out the cacher just starting.

Understood ... my "solution" is nothing more than a hack for those of us comfortable with making such changes. I don't expect a whole lot of non-tech weenies to use it. Just something I wanted to share since it works for me. Unfortunately your solution is not working too... It worked from start, but after couple of hours I've received this message: "Service was initiated in one day more times than allowed". Is somebody from GS reading this topic? It would be great, if there will be at least some official response... I found out today there is a 100 email per day limit using the google apps script, so if you receive a lot of messages that's probably why it stopped working and you got that message. I'm going to change the script to handle that, but it won't be able to reformat after 100 emails.

I didn't know that. I guess I haven't received that many emails yet in a day. Wonder if there is an alternative to edit in place (I couldn't find one before.) Thanks for pointing that out, I must have missed it. I couldn't edit the original post, so I deleted it. Here's the updated script for anybody interested (if the 100 per day limit isn't an issue): function process() { var labelName="ToBeStripped"; var label = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName(labelName); var threads = label.getThreads(); for (var i=0; i<threads.length; i++) { var msgs = threads[i].getMessages(); for (var m=0; m<msgs.length; m++) { var msg = msgs[m]; if (! msg.isInTrash()) { var body = msg.getBody(); var subject = msg.getSubject(); var textBody = ""; var lines = body.split("\n"); for (var l=0; l<lines.length; l++) { var line = lines[l]; if (line.indexOf("Logged by") != -1 || line.indexOf("has a new log") != -1 || line.indexOf("Log Type") != -1 || line.indexOf("Date:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Location:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Name:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Distance:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Created by:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Type:") != -1) textBody = textBody + line; else if (line.indexOf("Log</a>:</strong>") != -1) textBody = textBody + lines[l+1]; else if (line.indexOf("Remove this from my watchlist") != -1) textBody = textBody + "<br>" + line; } // textBody and htmlBody are the same for now, but both stripped down versions of the original GmailApp.sendEmail('YOUR_EMAIL_HERE', subject, textBody, { htmlBody: textBody }); GmailApp.moveMessageToTrash(msg); } } } };

Sure, the number of caches impacted will be greater than the number of logs impacted. But over time these will slide down to the bottom of a cache page and almost nobody will ever actually see it. Let's be real - for the most part (there are exceptions) most caches pages don't have any logs read other than the last half dozen or so. These will always be "good" unless somebody insists on typing in html/bbcode that doesn't render. When I look at a cache to do, I'll look at the location, the description, and probably the last 4-5 logs. I'm not going to go back in history and read anything else unless it's one of the rare exception caches. While it would be nice for everything to either be reformatted, or have a flag to support old logs, the cost/benefit probably just isn't there.

Understood ... my "solution" is nothing more than a hack for those of us comfortable with making such changes. I don't expect a whole lot of non-tech weenies to use it. Just something I wanted to share since it works for me.

Yes, all messages/mails have the ToBeStripped tag but the script doesn't work. I run it, but nothing happens. Every minute is set also. OK, the email filter is working fine setting the tag. If you go back into the script edit mode, select "View -> Execution transcript" ... does it show anything? It should show you when it ran, and any errors (maybe) that may have occurred. Doh! I think I know why you can't run it. You are German, correct? Then I assume your email notifications come translated. So if you look at the script, I'm looking for English strings, and it would not likely match. Let me see if I can make this more generic, though I'm not sure I can. Alternatively you can change the English strings in the script to be the German ones you get. There may be some other multinat preference that messes with the script as well. Edit: Nevermind ... I changed my preferences to German and the notes still come as English. I would have thought that would be translated.

Yes, all messages/mails have the ToBeStripped tag but the script doesn't work. I run it, but nothing happens. Every minute is set also. OK, the email filter is working fine setting the tag. If you go back into the script edit mode, select "View -> Execution transcript" ... does it show anything? It should show you when it ran, and any errors (maybe) that may have occurred.

BTW this works with new cache notifications as well if you set up an additional filter to apply the label. But I wouldn't recommend if you are a FTF hound as it delays you by 1 precious minute.

"You" don't run it, it runs automatically. If you have it set up like mine, then it runs every minute, so the max is 86400 times per day.

You're kidding, right? It seems clear to me that extent of the "research" was someone in charge said, "We need to 'brand' the e-mail we send," and the UX guy ("Team"? Kidding again?) said, "Yessir." Less clear to me is whether this last change was someone in charge saying "Time to rebrand" or the UX guy getting bored and tweaking it in his spare time. Obviously you don't work in the industry. I do. I've been writing user interfaces for nearly 30 years, and I know how the process works at most companies. I don't know the details at geocaching.com, but I do know they have a UX team who is responsible for things like this. By no means am I defending the result, as it's clear I don't like it. But they are the ones that have the results of usability studies and where the industry is going.

Are you only seeing the original and it doesn't have the ToBeStripped tag on it? If so, then likely the gmail filter didn't find the messages and apply the tag. If gmail doesn't apply the tag, then the script won't run. Are you only seeing the original and it has the ToBeStripped tag but nothing else happened? (check "all" mail, not just "inbox" in case the filter ran and archived the note.) Then the script probably didn't run. Make sure you applied the "run every minute" rule after you had saved the script. Are you not seeing the original at all? If not, check your trash. If it's in the trash then the script ran but probably didn't forward it on. Check the end of the script to make sure you put in your email. If you have to check the script, go to http://www.google.com/script, click on "File -> Open" and find your script. Odd thing is that sometimes if I click the script it doesn't know what to do, but if I right click the script and say "open with google apps script" it works.

I think that's unfair and untrue. Unless you happen to work at Groundspeak, you really have no idea what sort of usability testing, focus groups, and input they get from real geocachers. I am very sure that the UX team does get input from real geocachers. Just because we don't have visibility into it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I know how these usability studies run (generically, not specifically to geocaching.com), and I know they target various types of users. I'd love to see comments from a lackey confirming this, but I'll bet anybody a beer that these sorts of changes aren't just tossed in randomly. People that participate in the geocaching forums are almost always the longer term, hard core, and obsessed cachers. They are power users, and will not appreciate changes made to make it easier for new users. I didn't like the original HTML changes 2 years ago, and I don't like the ones made last week. But I accept that I'm not the only user they are targeting. Most comments here are from people caching since 2006 and earlier. I've been caching since 2003, and reviewing since 2006 - I'm in the minority and while I'd love the world to revolve around my process (please!), it doesn't. All that said, I would obviously like to see something different, otherwise I wouldn't have hacked up a script to make this work for me.

Then don't. This has been working for me for about 2 years though (whenever the HTML was first added.) So yes, it will break at some point in the future, but this is the best I have to offer.

I'm going to assume that a custom color preferences for email will never happen, for good reason. Any company wants control of their brand. Brand includes logos, fonts, colors, sizes, etc ... If preferences were allowed to send out arbitrary garish combinations of colors and fonts, that harms the corporate brand. It can be printed or screen snapped or forwarded. Anything coming out in any sort of media format from a company should conform to the brand. Besides brand issues, there is also a potential issue of performance. If every email sent had to go through the user's preferences and create a custom email, I can see that being problematic. However, a text/html option might not be a problem. A company has control over the text format, assuming that they want their brand represented in text (cnn does, apple does, depending on the content being sent.) The system would have to still go through the user's preference for email, but only 1 of 2 formats needs to be generated.

I have a solution that will work for some people. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=336887

I haven't seen any comments from HQ on the change. I've been writing (software engineer) user interfaces for 28 years, working extensively with user experience (UX) engineers the entire time ... I even married one. Many times I'll see what our UX team is asking, and I think it's stupid. It doesn't meet my needs, I think it's less efficient or looks stupid. Or more selfishly, it's hard to implement and maintain. It's non standard. But you know what? Most of the time the UX team is right. They spend countless hours running usability studies with many types of users. They figure out what is the best option for the most people. The devices my company makes have users that are occasional walk up users, to dedicated 40 hour a week users. Some of our devices cost well over $1 million USD, so we take usability seriously. But we are a $19 billion company, and usually have the funds to spend on studies. The UX team has a difficult job figuring out what works for a variety of user types. Nothing is going to be perfect. If you make a system real easy for a casual user, the power users complain because the work flow suffers. If you optimize for the work flow, then a casual walk up user is going to be confused. I'm assuming in this case that the UX team has run tests, have gotten input from focus groups. I don't like the result, but I'm probably in the 1%. As are most people in the forums here - the 1% that have been geocaching for a while, understand the ins and outs, get a ton of geocaching.com email, and are basically power users. For the rest of the 99%, they have few caches and get few logs. For those logs they get, the UX team and senior management have decided (my speculation) that this change is a positive one. All that said, I'd still like an option for html/text for us power users.

That's what I would like, but I don't have input. Most corporate emails such as newsletters, weekly sales, receipts, etc ... are heavily marked up and branded. That makes sense in most cases. Notifications of replies and new topic on most online forums are text, or mostly text. Cnn.com breaking news is also text, at least that's what I get - I can't remember if I set up preferences for it. Personally I consider a log notification on one of my caches to be in this category - it's a notification of change, and for full context I can click the link. I'd rather not have all the formatting and branding in this sort of email. In the weekly geocaching.com email and newsletters and such, that makes perfect sense to have a nicely formatted note with graphics, color, branding, etc ... That's whey I first wrote this little google apps script. I know there are (were) a few people using it when I made it available. It's not a perfect solution as it does require a gmail account, though by having notifications sent to gmail you can forward them onto your real email if you aren't a gmail user. But that's more of a pain, which is why I didn't detail the logic for that.

A number of people would like a way of reformatting geocaching log email to get rid of some of the white space to make it easier to read on mobile. If you use gmail for your email, I have a solution. This ends up using about 1/3 the vertical space. This all runs on google's servers, so the reformatting will work if you read your mail via web, desktop, or mobile. Even if you don't use gmail, you can use this solution with an extra couple steps involving forwarding, but I won't get into that because of the number of variables. The entire set up should take about 5-10 minutes. This effectively gives you a text or html option for your [LOG] emails. Note: this is an unofficial solution of course. It works for me, but I take no responsibility for any deleted mail. I initially created the script 2 years ago or so and have used it off and on. Setting up gmail: Creating the script: The script (copy/paste this as directed above): function process() { var labelName="ToBeStripped"; var label = GmailApp.getUserLabelByName(labelName); var threads = label.getThreads(); for (var i=0; i<threads.length; i++) { var msgs = threads[i].getMessages(); for (var m=0; m<msgs.length; m++) { var msg = msgs[m]; if (! msg.isInTrash()) { var body = msg.getBody(); var subject = msg.getSubject(); var textBody = ""; var lines = body.split("\n"); for (var l=0; l<lines.length; l++) { var line = lines[l]; if (line.indexOf("Logged by") != -1 || line.indexOf("has a new log") != -1 || line.indexOf("Log Type") != -1 || line.indexOf("Date:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Location:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Name:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Distance:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Created by:") != -1 || line.indexOf("Type:") != -1) textBody = textBody + line; else if (line.indexOf("Log</a>:</strong>") != -1) textBody = textBody + lines[l+1]; } // textBody and htmlBody are the same for now, but both stripped down versions of the original GmailApp.sendEmail('YOUR_EMAIL_ADDRESS_HERE', subject, textBody, { htmlBody: textBody }); GmailApp.moveMessageToTrash(msg); } } } }; What is all this doing: Results: Before: After:

There are various tools available online to do this, such as: html->markdown http://domchristie.github.io/to-markdown/ bbcode->markdown http://jondum.github.io/BBCode-To-Markdown-Converter/ Might be nice for geocaching.com to host something this on a tools page.