hh1

GCB vzw (Belgium)

Remember : any system where you rely on counts (positive, negative, specific notes...) is flawed. Simply because the number depends on the number of visitors. A cache (or a hider) near a large city or a populated area will get more hits. Similar, a cache (or a hider) which (who) is operational for a long time will have more hits too. Please don't go for cheap solutions which look attractive and simple when they fail otherwise.

Here are some facts from the geocaching.com website : 1. Guidelines 2. On any cache page just before the log section 3. When writing a log, a case and this text appears under the text window It would be better imo if G&G would include a more elaborate text in their guidelines with a few more positive and negative examples where logs might be deleted or not. From this I conclude that G&G did not mean "delete logs that contain spoilers". Even if a hider would write in the text that all logs with spoilers would be deleted and would claim the "not within the stated requirements" sentence, this would not be workable for the simple reason that what is a spoiler cannot be defined. Different people could have very different views of what a spoiler might be, so the hider and anyone logging. And I don't see how a hider could give a clearer definition of spoiler on his page unless the hider would write himself "you can't write that the cache is in a pinewood and you can't write it is near a ditch" which would be a spoiler in itself. Edit : They should provide an option "I don't want to see the logs on the cachepage" similar to the printouts. I have seen and heard a lot during my geocaching time and imo the log delete button is the most abused button on the geocaching site there is. It often is used in an emotional irrational way, often unrelated to cache maintenance but as a personal vengeance. At times, log delete may be just the beginning of a story. At times someone's caches disappear or are sabotaged, I don't believe these sad things just happen in a vacuum. There may have been precedents. I am not sure why G&G (geocaching & Groundspeak) included the delete button. My guess, there may be a legal reason. They cannot check any log for extreme content or images, perhaps that's just why. So, in general I would be very very careful with "logs delete". From my personal experience sample in my area : those players I know who started deleting logs at some scale all have quit the game. Somehow deleting logs seems to have a selfdestroying effect. On the other hand, I suspect people having quit the game disgusted as they were about quarrels about logs. So I think "log delete" is almost never a good thing for nobody, not for the players, nor for G&G's business. It is better to leave a lousy or unfriendly or spoiler-log. There is another side : the author by his/her log shows himself to any reader. I think geocaching.com should do something about this, one idea would be to show an eBay-like score like this hider deleted X% logs and this cacher had Y% logs deleted with details available. If the X% and Y% account for the same person, we might conclude it was a personal quarrel. If the hiders X% or the cachers Y% are high and distributed, we might have other conclusions.

There has been some talk about this here

There is much redundancy in the information displayed on the cachepage (or better said partial redundancy or overlap) Example : Historically we got the cachetype MULTICACHE which usually meant that it might require somewhat more time (the definition is one or more intermediary waypoints) Then we got the ADDITIONAL WAYPOINTS which tell exactly the same. And we have the attributes such as TAKES LESS (MORE) THAN A HOUR SIGNIFICANT HIKE and many more And we even got the stars for terrain ...

If you don't agree with a reviewers decision, write to appeals@geocaching.com as is stated in the guidelines.

I.m.o. if the program runs on a server and the only thing you have to do is feeding it with your input, then it will be OK to list the cache.

Les reviewers doivent parfois juger une cache d'une bonne connaissance ou voir d'un ami. La pratique montre que quand la personne reste anonyme, il y a moins de prejuges, les notes et les messages sont recus et compris de facon plus neutre.

I am not sure this was mentioned in this or other threads (splitting in dateranges was) but I would suggest to add selections in PQ's according to tiles (select between two latitudes and two longitudes). This seems far easier to me than selecting a circular range around a point which leads to overlapping areas and many trial PQ's before the wanted result is obtained. Looks a more efficient way for people who want to cover an area completely with PQ's. At first glance it also looks an easy add to the PQ selection menu. Just my two (Euro)cents

A few remarks about such a rating system. 1. It is probably far less reliable than you might think. For those who know a bit statistics, have a look at the binomial distribution with p=0.1 and compare the size of the standard deviation to the mean for some n you deem reasonable. Even if this is an extremely simplified model, there is nothing thrilling about the accurateness of the outcome. 2. By using such a system, one is throwing away information. Any system that uses only binary information like here (yes=in the list, no=not in the list) is inferior to any system that uses more shades (like the 1 to 5 stars mentionned in this thread). What worsens the information content of this statistic is the fact that the yes'ses don't occur 1 in 2 times but only 1 in 10. An information measure (entropy) differs by a factor 5 in this case. 3. Have manually compiled such lists in my country (Belgium). Very interesting but what came on top in this list, were long hikes, multicaches requiring several hours or near a day. The Dutch have started a similar system on their website. The table equally shows caches that people consider as memorable but again these are - looking at the cache descriptions - complicated well elaborated mysterycaches or long hikes. It looks like such a system would not help much the traveller in a foreign city or country with limited time available. Also, this example makes clear that quality (average as in a rating system or individual as in a cache recommendation system) is multidimensional and that time is an important dimension in this set.

That's another view at it. Agree. Always worked with GSAK and made selections therein.

As far as I know, attribute information doesn't appear in the GPX-files, hence it is not available as offline information in a Pocket PC or Laptop when one needs it.

Could be different in different areas of this world. I live in Europe, have been travelling a lot the last weeks (Scandinavia, Germany, ..) , and yes many caches are not suited for electronic caching (I am excluding mysterycaches already). Proportionally there are more multicaches here (I live in Belgium) and many contain extra pictures (often REALLY needed) and more of the features I mentionned. It makes sense to have this quality label.

I have found caches a ) by using printouts b ) using my pocket PC fed by pocket queries (paperless caching) (while on travel but also starting from home) a ) printouts : I have thrown tons of paper to the garbage bin. One has always to print more than one can do for sure in case.. . Unfortunately , cachetexts often change. So : throw away , print new for the next cachetrip. b ) paperless caching using PDA Disadvantage : Many caches require pictures (spoiler or other), some have a hyperlink to another site in their text, some require some homework, some mention that you should take a few other things with you to find the cache. Result : One has to browse through dozens (hundreds) of caches on a laptop or Pocket PC in order to find caches where only the cachetext is sufficient to find them. Therefore : FEATURE REQUEST : POCKET QUERY READY TO CACHE QUALITY LABEL Could be a tag in the xml-files : Pocket_Query_ready = YES/NO It should be easily selectable off line (for example in GSAK) It should not be an icon/attribute since this not included in the GPX-files (the purpose is that one can select caches suited for PDA when on travel). This Quality Label should be checked by reviewers before publishing a cache (cache may contain pictures but none should be necessary to find the cache, no homework required, no other equipment necessary except the cachetext and the GPSr, no hidden second layer in the cachtext such as a link to another website [understand that one has usually no internet connection while travelling with a Pocket PC]) ONE STEP FURTHER : In order to allow more paperless caching, it might be a good thing if images could be sent over parallel to the Pocket Queries (not all but at least these deemed necessary to find the cache)

Well it can be done perfectly. It is possible to have the system look for people similar to you that rate caches high when you rate them high and inversely and give you suggestions about caches you probably would like. There is more to say of course ...

Perhaps there are some non trustable intermediary knots active on the internet or someone of their personnel collecting email-addresses for a fee (??). Just was wondering about that.

Habitant en Belgique, les pires cas que je me rappelle sont : - ticket de train périmé (peut-être qu'il était valide quand on l'a posé) - pièces d'échange d'ordinateur vétuste tel qu'un ventilateur (et dont on ne sait pas quand et sur quel modèle il marchera) Vos exemples (plus graves) me font penser que ces caches ont été découvertes par des non-geocacheurs. Selon mon experience, ça arrive plus qu'on le pense (d'après certains indices dont je dispose). De toute façon, c'est très rare que je fais des échanges, par conséquent pas un grand problème pour moi (mais je suis d'accord qu'il y a des geocacheurs qui ont des gouts un peu spéciaux). Si mon épouse m'accompagne, c'est elle qui se charge des goodies. Si nous achetons un stock de goodies, on pense surtout au plus petits pour qui c'est encore un vrai trésor qu'ils trouvent. Les adultes ont les moyens pour acheter ces petites choses eux mêmes.

This approves upon a fixed range, in that it garantuees in the long run that every cacher rates other caches with the same average. On the other hand, it preassumes that any cacher visits "average" caches which is not necessarily true (even only restricted to his own opinion about caches).

Some recap. 1. Markwell's summary 2. An answer (by me) . . . . It's here I agree with that ! The very best caches are often long hikes or time-consuming, not typical the type of cache one would do week on. Second : word spreads quickly about the very best caches, the proposed system would be redundant for these at some degree. But ... It's here Now 90% is a matter of appreciation ... But I fear we will go into a Yahoo-games scenario with lots of players coming and as many leaving disgusted A rating system is part of something broader. Geocaching.com's role is that of the middleman trying to match offer and demand. (Other) Information and the ability of selecting quickly among lots of information is important too. I think some of the cache-attributes could have been more precise (instead of "long hike" it could have been the distance). What to think to force cache-owners to describe very shortly what the hike is about : "a walk mainly in the streets and the community park of ...", "a walk in the forest and along the lakes of ...". When having to write down option (1), one can hope that some cache-owners will think a second time about their cache (at least some... ) Before deciding on any system, I would suggest to try it out small-scale with paper and pencil (or spreadsheet ) say at the level of a county or so with the help of volunteers. Some folks (not me) don't like their caches being rated. Here is a possibility : An option in the profile : I don't want to see ratings of my/any caches. In addition, I personally would welcome the option : "I don't want to see any found statistics" too. Here's another argument for a cache rating system. In a few cases logs are deleted by the owner. Geocaching.com takes a very simple view "the cache is the owner's property". I.m.o. the balance of power is too much in favor of the owner, a rating system would somewhat restore that. ( ... a statistic of deleted logs per owner would tell something too ) Finally, another few words about the proposed methods. Any 0-1 answer is the most imprecise (take any statistics course about the binomial distribution, experiment with various values of p and calculate the standard deviation). It requires LOTS of data before one can decide which of two options is definitely better. A ranking on scale is somewhat better, rather than 1 ... 10 I would advise A, B, C ... F as a scale given some misunderstandings about the scale 1-10 (see via link on second line of this page). Allowing people to allocate a freely chosen number to a cache is i.m.o. the richest in information content

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All scheduled PQ's are for a week, that is a cycle. So I would think that after a week all unused PQ's would be shifted out. Why do we still have to confirm the next PQ? Why?

I think the timezone can be kept (or is?) in the usersprofile. The date should then always be correct. And if someone wants to shift his day to 3 AM, that could then be easily done by changing your usersprofile and selecting a timezone 3 hours different. By the way, there is the default N(orth) and W(est) which causes many errors elsewhere in the world. A phenomenon well known by approvers in several countries who often have to correct wrong coordinates in new caches, just by example. Same problem often when looking for caches around some point. A suggestion perhaps to extend the userprofile?

PQ's are used in various ways and are used because the appropriate alternative doesn't exist. Groundspeak maybe or probably doesn't know, but they could go out and find out ... In many countries and states there are people who keep up to date theit national statistics. In Belgium they publish lots of statistics : number of founds in Belgium by Belgian cachers, ... This is done by analysing many PQ's. It would be far simpler that Groundspeak would offer files with such statistics directly too, no PQ's needed anymore for that. Every 3 weeks or so, I make a manual update of the all-world-finds of the top 50 Belgian cachers (by viewing some 70 pages). It is work that could easily be replaced by making national statistics available by Groundspeak. I.m.o. these are very simple batch-jobs. Personally, I like the trade off : reduce the PQ's size (say to 250) and offer standardized prerun queries (say of size 1000) that cover most demand. A side remark, there is something like hardware planning, how does it come the hardware is not able to cope with the increased number of PQ's ?

I wouldn't need PQ's provided there is a page where downloads are available for all caches splitted up per country, state or part of it (say contains some 1000 caches per download and the files would be zipped). I live in Belgium, that is some 1000+ caches, Germany could be split up in 10 groups or so of 1000 caches. If these would be refreshed daily, that would be fine. Many people (like me) use GSAK and the final queries are made within GSAK, so and as far as I am conserned, I don't need the PQ's with all their complexity.

Agree, agree, ... sigh. But it is up to Groundspeak/geocaching.com to decide and take action. Proposal(s)