Volvo Man

Actually, I am glad you said this too, and I hope that Groundspeak hears my opinion here, just as yours. They *sell* the iPhone/iPod Touch application. If you don't want it, don't buy it. Very simple. It is going to have to support itself with sales. If it doesn't sell, I would bet it would go away. I really, really, really wish they would offer a PQ with 1,000 results and *sell* that service. Those of you who *really* want this can put your money where your mouth is. I totally agree with TotemLake that if you give 1,000 away, then some people will want 2,000. Sell it, let people decide what level they want to be at, and then we will see how many people will pay $60 a year for PQ's with 1,000 results. Groundspeak makes more money. You are happy, I'm happy (which I am with 500 in a result) and Groundspeak makes more money, which makes them happy. So, would you pay more for this service? You're durn tooting I would, sign me up right now, have GS mail me and we'll sort out the Paypal stuff tonight

How curious that my main account automatically got set to accept requests when the feature was added, but new accounts have to allow it. Thanks for the help though, there is one small use for this, it gives me a couple of easy clicks to get to the my finds list for my main account from the others, makes building an ignore list easier. I didn't expect there would be any updates in this release, but it can't hurt to ask. Anyone know if there's any update on the Phoenix release?

My main source of income since turning pro has been finding One Red Paperclip, I've gonethrough a few trades since then though, anyone wanna buy a slightly used Space Shuttle?, or can trade for a B2 Stealth.

I went to set up a couple of new accounts and link them together as friends, but it seems they will not accept requests from one another, I get a message in place of the check box that says the account is no accepting friends requests at this time. If I send a request from my main account, it goes through fine to both new accounts, but I cannot link the two new ones together. Is this a deliberate restriction? If so how long before it lifts? Are there any function releases due for the friends system before Phoenix?

I do hope this feature is in the works, it would be of major use to me. The other thing, can you imagine trying to plan a days caching with someone who's got 15,000+ finds, especially if you'd got that high yourself, its entirely possible that running a full weeks PQs then filtering out their results later would result in you being left with a driveby micro that was placed yesterday and that underwater cache you've been wishing you could learn to swim to get to. It would also be fun to arrange a competition with another cacher where you designate an area of caches, eliminate your finds, then compete with each other to see who can find the most, but the twist is that only the first to log it gets to claim it, so each others finds would be knocked off the PQ results each day until just a couple are left.

OK, mtn-man, I've been to the thread, why didn't someone point that out 3 pages ago? like the two other mods that have been here? thats what we are asking for and someone seems to think its "In the Pipeline" and a couple of our cons from here seem to support it there ( ) I shall now join that thread. Cheers, its been fun

Yeah, thanks for the reminder. That was a topic a couple of weeks ago. Feel free to go find it and post your support there. I actually support that too. If you don't mind, how about getting back on topic. Edited to add: Here is your topic. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=205776 This is the post that changed the direction of this discussion: That was on page 1 of this thread, post #31, we've been discussing how that basic idea could be enhanced for the last 3 pages, after having agreed that for a few reasons, perhaps its better to leave the 500 limit alone and that sharing data is immoral, despite the fact that it happens. However the solution now on the table seems to fit the needs of almost everyone that has asked for some changes. In similar previous threads, I cannot find any that have formed into such defined and clear parameters that effectively meet the needs of the OP.

well well well, A couple of quick searches of the forum history shows a very interesting thing. Indeed, this topic comes up regularly in one guise or another (roll over PQs, offline databases, 1000 cache limits, state PQs and of course the Platinum Membership) what is most interesting though is something that has not been brought up is who is posting to these threads. In each thread, most of the Pros are a different set to those on any other thread, but the cons are mostly the same small group. But it gets more interesting still, some of this small group of cons post in favour of the very features they slate on other threads, around half the cons on this very thread have posted pro comments elswhere for the same things they say they are against here. one was even giving tips on how best to use GSAK to optimize your PQs to get the most out of it. Now then, I support everyone's right to change their opinion from time to time (I used to think Mullets were a good idea ) but if they can change their mind, then so can TPTB, so I will continue. To respond to the earlier poster who called us Control freaks for wanting the data, to me, the control freaks are those who feel an overwhelming need to get everyone to conform to their way of caching and do everything their way. None of the cons here or any other thread have told the Cons they should do it their way, merely asked to be allowed to do do it the way they want to. I have tried caching in most of the ways suggested, preplanned routes, only going after certain types etc etc etc, the one I prefer is the unpredictable magical mystery tour, to paraphrase Forest Gump "ya nevuh know where ya gonna end up", I don't think you can get further from being a control freak than that.

looks the same on my end as it has the past week, the pages have changed from a while ago, not sure how long though, been away a little while

My appologies, apparently, now you can't change your name, you used to be able to from your profile settings. How odd, wonder when that happened? Edit - deejay44 answered my query before I posted, and proved my both right and wrong at the same time, that was an interesting experience. I've been both in the past, but never at the same time.

Yes, you can do this, I used to be somebnody else until I found out Spaces were valid characters and seperated me from the other volvoman

Reality check. This topic rarely garners much support. You have been told it has been posted a few times before. There hasn't been much support in the past either. That's a fact. The reality check? Google ads. There were some issues at first where everyone saw them. People POURED into the forums complaining about it. Groundspeak listened. Quickly. Premium Members don't see them now. There is no flood of people asking for this. Most folks can live well within the parameters given because no one has ever found 500 caches in one day, ever, period. I don't think anyone will ever find 2,500 caches in a day, ever, period. There are indeed polls here, though informal. There was a poll on Google Ads, and the paying community voted them down. The paying community gives the "I want more than 500 returns in a PQ" informal poll a yawn. Very few care. We're not asking for more than 500 results in a PQ, it's evolved from there, we want the ability to filter out caches someone else has found from our PQs, that way we can sign up another couple of PMs to cover a larger area, as Suggested by another Mod.

Glad to hear this seems resolved, if anyone is looking back, I have a theory that the ones that delivered reliably were all sent to another address than the account mail address, and those that were intermittent were ones linked to the default address. As all mine turned up ok if a little later than usual, and they are all set to go to my second mail bucket, I'm guessing the guy who said one account's worth turned up only got the ones with a specified alternative mail address., just a theory. Oddly enough, I seem to have received 6 unique PQs today and I'm not missing any of my previous ones, how odd. PS, I already took into account the time zone difference.

Using that assumption, we should only be allowed 1 PQ per day. In fact we are allowed 5 which is 2500 caches, not 500. The "off line" database is not a question. It is a FACT. Everyone who uses GSAK is maintaining some sort of offline database. The only debatable point is the size of that off line database. hey there don't give them any ideas

I refer you to my previous posts, which have addressed all of these points, except one, I don't think I need to go over it all again. The one point I have not previously addressed is regarding TPTB's support or lack thereof of offline databases. Of course they don't "Support" them, you are quite right in that. Support of offline database software is handled by the people that write them, GS are not Windows or Mac application developers, they leave that to people who are. What they do however is to endorse such applications, which you will find from their inclusion on the Geocaching Software Resources section on the main site. Their own iPhone application even stores a group of caches in an offline database, as does your GPSr. Many things are not "supported" by TPTB, but they are not forbidden, and some of us would like to be less picky about the caches we hunt and be able to move around different areas with more "Freedom" to move about on the day. I can (as can you in WA) drive past 1,000 caches in less than 15 minutes on my way to the nearest Starbucks when I fancy a coffee halfway through the morning. I'd like to then resume my search from there, not return to my start point again, its not always just about the hunt, for the majority, its about the places you go on the hunt too, otherwise, I can find hundreds of tupperware boxes in my local Walmart. I don't think I've ever done a days caching in less than a 15 mile radius (2 PQs here) and the norm is about 100 radius and almost always random. (about 25-30 PQs here) the longest was 350 miles as a dedicated days caching (now in that area about 50 PQs) Oh, there I go, I've gone over it again.

Actually, "They" Can do it on the forums, they just don't let "us" do it, as for the validity of the results, it could be argued that the objections so posted here are merely that of a "miniscule" minority and do not truly reflect the feelings of the membership at large (most online forums are well known for vocal opposition). Given this, you can't both use the argument that the majority are against, and that a forum survey would not be a valid reflection of the overall sentiment.

Totem lake & Baloo I didn't say who would convince who, I said it would be interesting to see who left such a meeting with their opinion changed, even if only slightly, the statement is what it is, don't try to read anything implied either way, as bias is likely to tilt your interpretation one way or another. I do not tend to make hidden implications, I say what I say, and it would be an interesting meeting is all I said. I do not remember any line in the TOU that says I can't ask for an enhanced level of service in return for payment. I am aware that I agreed not to share data, and that's cool, because I don't share data, and don't want to either, otherwise I would not be asking to have the ability to remove my finds at source from my queries. I also understand that the TOU are written in such a way as not to prevent me signing up for multiple premium memberships, or asking for any kind of enhancement on the forums. Funnily enough quite a few feature requests have been granted from suggestions on the forum, so I really do not see what the relevance of the TOU is, none of what the original request has evolved into would require any kind of change to the TOU in any way. I am aware of the title of this thread, but the direction has changed, and I am assuming that the fact the OP has backed this evolution publicly, is the reason the mods have not weighed in to state that we have wandered off topic. Your regular queries being late is likely due to being repeated more than once a week, as all my PQs run no more than once a week, and I have never had to wait more than 2 hours past the reset time for them to arrive even on a Friday or Saturday. The weekend PQ backlog also demonstrates that the load placed by last minute queries and heavy site access is what slows things down, I don't see anyone complaining about their Tuesday PQ being late. TPTB have always refered to the PQ system as being on a seperate machine to the main site and database, and I very much doubt that it has equal priority in access to either the main Db or Bandwidth as the main site or any other access methods do. The whole point of having a batch query system from their point of view, is to be able to shift some bandwidth usage away from the peak periods. If every active cacher was online Friday night planning their week from the site, It would slow to unusable even if you turned off the PQ server, those who use the PQ service shift the majority of their bandwidth usage into the nice quiet period in the early hours of the morning PST, when UK cachers are out caching or working and Americans are tucked up in bed or on the forums. they also do not download all the images in the cache pages, which are the real bandwidth munchers. An average page from the site is about 300-500KB in size, the largest PQ I've ever gotten was about 900KB (zip) it's not the PQs eating the bandwidth on a Friday night, its the users who don't use them and trawl through the site looking for caches. if site usability is an issue for you, then you should advocate that GC ban such enhancements as background images and cache page photos, it would have a far greater effect than opposing a group who are asking for something that has no effect on bandwidth at all (my previous posts explain this). (I do not oppose such features however) If everyone, or even just a majority, decided to use the Live 3g apps, even if they all could, the load on the site's bandwidth would be massive on any weekend day, to the point of becoming unusable perhaps. I have also noticed that the worst time to access the site is Saturday and Sunday night in the US when its peak logging time for the largest group of cachers, in order to minimize the inconvenience for myself and indirectly to minimize my footprint effect on other users, I use the great feature of my offline Db that bypasses the bandwidth intensive cache page completely and goes straight to the simple post log page, as is probably the case for most cachers who primarily use an offline Db of a similar feature set. As for the WAP site, i thought the whole point of it was to have only the most basic functionality in order to keep it fast and affordable. As regards Syndicates, simple math shows that the smallest syndicate in the Uk would have at least 15 members and as they are unlikly to donte all of their PQs every day, this is more likely to be around 30, if just 5 existed in the UK, that's 150 cachers. In the US, CA for instance would need 50-60 members to work, again just 5 syndicates puts that up to 300 members, apply that across the board and you have a large number of people involved. as for getting such together, caching meets are more and more frequent and come under fire for a lot of questionable logging activity on other threads, if they are not above dodgy find logs, why should they be above dodgy syndicate agreements. And seriously, who can 100% honestly say they have never in their life downloaded or used a copied MP3 or piece of software, or even used shareware past its 30 day limit without paying the fee. (this only counts if you actually have the ability to download stuff which I assume all here actually do) Regardless, this thread has moved past discussing "illegal" activity and on to a feature request that is perfectly legitimate. "If you don't ask, you don't get!"

No, I'm not, and neither is anyone else from either camp that has posted here, unless of course Jeremy gets involved with Sock Puppets, which I doubt in this case. However, I'd be happy to make my way up to WA in a couple of weeks to discuss this with him over an eggnog latte at the original Starbucks in Pike Place. It'd be interesting to see who convinces who. Yah. Like you're the only person with legendary persuasive powers that will have ever tried. He's been pretty adamant about his opinion off line as well. But you're always welcome to try. I never said I'd convince him, I'd be interested to see if he can convince me though.

Here Here, or is that Hear hear? I think the first is most applicable to cachers

No, I'm not, and neither is anyone else from either camp that has posted here, unless of course Jeremy gets involved with Sock Puppets, which I doubt in this case. However, I'd be happy to make my way up to WA in a couple of weeks to discuss this with him over an eggnog latte at the original Starbucks in Pike Place. It'd be interesting to see who convinces who.

Just for the record, I was merely replying to someone who had posited the suggestion one of bought GS, and I assumed wondered what I would do if I did. I normally restrain myself from such a post unless someone decides to open the door as I agree, they are tired and old, besides, if I had that kind of capital/time, I'd probably compete anyway, more of an exciting way to do business from my point of view.

And how exactly is this going to be any different if I sign up 4 times and have 20 queries, which I can do today with the blessing of GS, than if they let me have a single 20 query membership for the same price? its the same number of queries and caches either way. Those that want what they want, recognised this 2 pages ago and came up with the suggestion of joining the 4 PMs into one, accepting 500 as a limit on PQ size. In fact, thew Platinum idea would actually reduce the number of results output for a given area and therfore the number of PQs processed by eliminating those finds, compared to the 4x premium accounts, consequently resulting in an improvement in site speed. I encourage all those in favour of the platinum membership or even the gold to sign up for extra PMs as per Markwells original solution. Then our suggestion changes slightly to as follows: We've all got multiple Premium memberships, but we are hammering your site by having to access each find once for every account (whether to Log or ignore the cache) if we could set our PQs to ignore the main account's finds, we'd reduce the load on the site and the live database significantly, thereby improving site performance overall. Some of can't be bothered to load up the site in this way, but are running more PQs than they need to offset the finds they filter out offline. I think that would be a whole different proposal altogether. It would also be quite possible so GS to check and see who's paying extra subscriptions, its a simple 5 minute find duplicates query of the payments database. I for one will be signing up a new Premium account within the next few days when I have the time to set up the new query set, I think the most optimal use would be to keep the oldest caches queried on my main account as I'm more likely to have found them then I only have to ignore newer ones in my second account. My US PQs will go the same way as I have way more UK finds.

Well, the results are In, and I am very surprised at the outcome, on going back through the thread, I find that the number of posters who have expressed a firm opinion one way or another are as follows: Pros - 11 Cons - 13 Now I have been lenient with regard to what I considered Con, in order to offset any accusation of personal bias, and I didn't count Keystone as he is very careful not to state his personal opinion in a forum he mods, while Markwell has been counted as a con despite the fact that he's the one who suggested multiple PMs in the first place. there are also several who have posted work arounds or made comments without showing their own opinion either way on the discussion. Now if this was a democracy, we'd lose, but its not, this is a business we are dealing with, If the Auto Industry only made a vehicle if it met the needs of 51% of the population, we'd all be walking everywhere. lets just apply that split across the total of all premium members, and allow for 30% of them to have no opinion either way, that would give us 30% in favour, 40% against, given some of the pros have said they would not necessarily take up such an option, so lets reduce that to 20% who would take it up, that's massively over the take up of any top tier business model I've ever seen.(just count the first class seats on an airplane compared to coach) and therefore extremely viable from a commercial point of view, not to mention that most of those top tiers would not make full use of all those queries. I am however surprised to learn that the planned changes currently in works will involve significant investment in hardware to store that data, without any additional revenue generated to pay for it. I'm sure that they are probably only spending the extra money from an increase in PM signups, plus the fact that the hardware our PMs pay for lasts longer than a year, so allowing for regular additions. The drop in price of Tb level drives is probably a factor too, just $700 will buy you a simple and powerful 4Tb server these days (if you're paying more and in the UK, mail me and I'll do you a deal ). which represents over 1000 copies of the whole database if trimmed down to 5 logs.

It's also interesting to me when people post that those who disagree with an idea or wouldn't use it should not post in the thread. If the discussion is supposed to be representative of what the community thinks/feels/wants, then most assuredly opposing opinions SHOULD be posted so that ALL views on the subject can be aired. If only those who AGREE with the idea are allowed to express their views, that has the effect of skewing the results. Doesn't make sense to me. A debate/discussion should explore ALL sides ... I would think so, anyway. What has been said is that its not constructive to post sarcasm or opinions on what we do or do not need, only we know that. What at least 2 of us have asked for is very specifically, what effect would this have on them, only one poster has actually managed to do that so far. And yes, I know I put up a sarcastic post, but I could not turn away from such an oportunity as was presented to me, and also I posted it in the hope that opponents would perhaps see that I have significant self control in this respect, having waited so long to post anything remotely sarcastic, and perhaps themselves try to better my level of self control themselves. and, No, that statement was not based in sarcasm, but in genuine explanation of my hopes.

Yeah, I am spending way too much time in this forum, unfortunately this is because I have been signed off sick for a couple of weeks due to a foot injury, on the up side, I should be fully healed by the time I fly to California next week. The time I've had in the last week has given me the oportunity to build a good offline database and query set in preparation for that trip, something that usually gets done on the fly on some motel's wifi, and takes a whole load of my holiday to mess with. Doing this has reminded me of some of the limitations of the PQ sysstem and how ity could be improved so easily. When I first started using GSAK, it exposed one major weakness in the PQ generator that has not changed since the system was introduced, although now due to the number of cachers out there finding stuff, addressing this particular weakness would not be as useful as just throwing a bit more money out to get more data subscriptions. That weakness is the limitations of querying on the basis of updated listings. when i started using GSAK, I tried first building a full UK database, took 3 or 4 Queries, simple enough. Next I created a single query to extract all the updated caches, this kept it all up to date as back then there were less than 500 updates a week. Unfortunately soon after I realised that the major limitation was that caches that were permanently archived did not show up anywhere on the queries, so GSAK didn't know they were no longer available. Now at first glance you'd say just archive anything that has not been updated recently but then some pretty cool caches go by un noticed just because no one has been there recently. also unfortunately when running the updated in the last 7 days query, it doesnt give them in update order, so running a daily update doesn't help the capacity of this method either. There was a Kludgy workaround for this for UK cachers only, there was a site that produced a .gpx that was a simple list of all active caches in the UK. This was generated by the site daily by scraping the GC.com site of every UK cache page and compining a up to date database (this was done with the sanction of GC.com as the scraper code was tuned to minimise site loading spread across the day) Sadly this resource has been gone for over a year, along with my beloved league tables and UK stats. But that file enabled me to query the updated caches only and then confirm the ones that hadn't been found for a while. Requests to change the PQs back then to help reduce server load fell on deaf ears too, so I started running the whole database weekly, in itself a kludgy work around to the limitations of the PQ system. I've started asking for more functionality now because using Kludgy workarounds to fix Kludgy workarounds is just something I see headed in a very dark direction, eventually that kludgy work around that gets proposed will cease to work properly and then another kludgy work around will be needed to make it work again. Ideally, I'd like to be able to download the full dataset that I want some way or another even if it takes me 3 weeks of PQs to get it, then just download a file daily of the updates to that data set (All UK) to apply in GSAK. It's quite possible to do If those update PQs were for instance set up to give a single 2500 query (instead of 5 x500) of all updates in the last 48 hours in reverse chronological order, plus a small notification with a list of all Archived caches in the last 72 hours in gpx format, the offline database would be up to date and fresh without using all my PQs or getting anymore data than I already subscribe to. In fact, the query would regularly produce less than 2500 results, and I really only need it to overlap the last time the query was run ie 24 hours give or take a little. Now, I appreciate that my request originally was a major change to the functionality of the PQ system, and I accepted at the time the suggestion of a former mod to use the date range method to catch all the UK in less than a week's queries, even though I felt it to be a Kludgy work around to a more elegant solution that would streamline the process and keep the Db load low. Now of course the Kludgy work around is broken and yet again, I find myself asking for a fix. But this time I don't want another Kludgy work-around. A platinum membership isn't going to last forever as a solution to my needs, maybe another 2 years or so, but the additional capital raised could well cover the cost of upgrades more in the direction of my original requests. Linkable premium accounts could potentially be a permanent fix at least as far as I am prepared to buy additional subscriptions. Also the ability to generate an ignore list from my finds list would have the same result. One other possible solution would be to be able generate ignore lists from a submitted text file that is esentially a list of cache codes, I could write a GSAK macro to generate this and submit it automatically on a daily basis, in about half an hour. If I could also submit my daily PQ requests as Text file definitions, This too I could write a macro to optimize my daily requests and submit them automatically. but again, I am asking for some major changes to the way PQs work, despite the fact that such features would benefit every user of an offline database of any kind. In effect, it's no different to using Outlook to download my Gmail account, sure I can read my mail online at Gmail or veven by email, but they accept that there are situations where its better for me to have it as an offline database, and so they enabled the ability for my offline reader to download a starting copy of the entire set, then just get the updates whenever its able to get online. I suspect this argument would be a very different one if Broadband wasn't so prevalent, I expect a lot more people would support the major changes I suggested several years ago if they had to use dial up to access the myriad of features and pages on the site. Lets not forget that for some users around the world, Dialup is still the only way they can access the site. As for the high finds cachers, some of them are probably part of syndicates that share data (controversial? yes, True? it certainly has been in the past, I see no reason why its not still ongoing) I know of the existence even of a syndicate that shares the cost of rather expensive mapping software. Inevitably, the more caches you find, and events you attend, the more other cachers you get to know and therefore the more opportunity you have to get involved in stepping outside the boundaries. I think this thread has really made some progress in evolvong a workable solution, that has received some very positive support and at the end of the day, not only is that the very purpose of the Website forum, but it's far more likely to be listened to by TPTB. Even if the liklihood of implementation is just 1%, its got to be a lot better than the .01% that it probably was to begin with. Hopefully, the next round of requests will move that to 2% or more, and so on and so on. Don't forget that the method I currently use for my data is that which was endorsed by a part of TPTB at the time I started doing it. (it actually was on a forum at a site which is sadly gone, and was suggested by a Reviewer/Mod who has sadly left that position now.)