robnzh
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Posts posted by robnzh
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I didn't have a chance to comment on more detail till now.
It is hard to know where to start there are so many issues.
Though it seems there are complex ways of doing some things I will concentrate on problems for a user who doesn't want to have to do things the hard way, that is most of us, and particularly those using the search for the first time.
The first reaction is "what on earth....." when confronted with a search bar and no instructions other than the word "filter" and a few sample searches. This in itself enough to deter people from proceeding further and will mean some will give up altogether- fewer members for Groundspeak!
Many of us want to search for a cache by name. It seems the only way to do this is to do a search on the location. I don't know what else to say except that it is totally ridiculous and cumbersome.
People inside the USA will know their state but for those outside not necessarily so, for example here in New Zealand our "states" are North Island, South Island and Chatham Islands, none of which are actual states in the political sense of the word so without a drop down menu people will have no idea what "state" they are in unless they were here before the changes! In any case a state search is useless when restricted to 30 miles/50 kilometres. There are those including me who used to use the state search frequently both in our own "state" and others for various reasons, e.g. we solve puzzles outside our area ready to pay a visit, and/or we may decide to plan where we go on vacation based on the area with the most interesting caches.
As an aside I chose Tawa, a significant suburban area in Wellington, New Zealand (formerly known as Tawa Flat) and it doesn't recognize the location unless you type Tawa, Wellington, it's about time that was fixed!
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Don't worry about changing it. As people will be leaving the site in droves it won't really be needed.
The search assumes that people have some knowledge before using it. They will just take one look, be completely puzzled and leave in disgust.
You presume that people will make the same assumptions you have, you have expertise that they don't.
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When I log in using wap.geocaching.com I get the following error- I have tested it on a web browser to see if it was just a problem on my phone, but it isn't:
Could not load file or assembly 'Groundspeak.Utilities, Version=1.0.0.6, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified.
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It appears to be working now.
There were a number of communication issues, in particular that the first we heard about the update was on Jeremy's Facebook page shortly before it occurred and the announcement on the webpage was put up at relatively short notice, it took a while to get responses in the forum about the problem afterwards, questions on geocaching.com Facebook page were ignored and there has been nothing official on this thread to say the problem has been fixed. I hope geocaching.com/Groundpeak will take a good look at how it communicates with its customers, many of whom pay to use it, if they wish to remain competitive.
Also the fact that such a major and obvious issue after a server upgrade seems to have gone unnoticed until pointed out by users shows that their testing regime needs a review too- either that or they knew but didn't communicate that they were working on it till we complained- in that case see previous paragraph about communication!
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When searching for Wellington (with or without New Zealand added) it brings up caches for the Wairarapa. There appears to be no connection with Wellington in the caches brought up. Tried on two different computers but currently using Google Chrome 19.0.1084.52 on a PC with Windows 7.
Sorry forgot to say this is in hide and seek a cache with no other criteria set.
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When searching for Wellington (with or without New Zealand added) it brings up caches for the Wairarapa. There appears to be no connection with Wellington in the caches brought up. Tried on two different computers but currently using Google Chrome 19.0.1084.52 on a PC with Windows 7.
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still waiting for the assurances- I have a feeling I may not get them
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• Added Facebook Connect to login process
So can we have your assurance that Facebook will not (1) be tailoring ads to the fact we are geocachers
(2) be able to track when we have logged a geocache, therefore knowing where we have been.
I doubt it so will be sticking with conventional login!
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• Added Facebook Connect to login process
So can we have your assurance that Facebook will not (1) be tailoring ads to the fact we are geocachers
(2) be able to track when we have logged a geocache, therefore knowing where we have been.
I doubt it so will be sticking with conventional login!
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I can't find release notes for whatever was the cause of the site maintenance yesterday, however please could you avoid site updates on Friday US time if possible because that is Saturday (in case of New Zealand Saturday midday) in Asia and the Pacific when a lot of people are likely to want to go caching. Thanks.
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I posted about this issue in a WAP related thread here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=285087&view=findpost&p=4911898. We had to take the site down in order to fix a security exploit. We expected that it would be up at the end of the last week, but there has been a bit more to do to properly plug the hole. I'll follow up to see where we are shortly.
WAP-related but not related to this issue until someone made it so- you needed to make a separate topic of it to lower the difficulty level of the search!
But thanks for the followup anyway and I agree with the person who said the interim message should be updated. -
This probably doesn't belong here but that's part of the problem, that it has not been mentioned anywhere in the forums as far as I can see, or anywhere else except on the WAP site itself on the day that the wap.geocaching.com site has gone down for maintenance for a "few days" since November 29th- (hmmm nice birthday present for me...) how many is a few? (I wonder how many cachers got caught in the field finding the search wasn't available any more?)
Feel free to move this to an appropriate forum in order to reply, then hopefully we might know what is going on....
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When a user is not signed in the logs are duplicated for at least new caches. As this may be the first introduction to geocaching.com for a new cacher it needs to be fixed- first impressions count! (And please please fix all bugs before doing any new enhancements!) Random example GC36J3Z viewed in Firefox - note that you will not see the bug if logged in.
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I don't see any mention in the list of the bug in notification emails for trackables where it is picking up the log entry number and changing it from a T to a G in the cache link instead of showing the correct cache number: example notification for log coord.info/TL260XZK shows the cache as coord.info/GL260XZK (should be GC19M64.)
This has been happening for some time, was reported in the appropriate forum, and the example I am quoting is very recent but pre-latest update. I can't test whether it has been fixed until I get the next notification so could you tell us please and if it hasn't, give it priority for the next update?
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The bug with incorrect links in notification emails has NOT been fixed.
Example: received notification that TBBB5D has been placed in a TB Hotel, link to the cache is shown as http://coord.info/GL245YEJ which it seems has been picked up from the log link http://coord.info/TL245YEJ.
The link to the cache should in fact be http://coord.info/GC2CGVT
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Also just found this http://geocass.wordpress.com/2010/06/08/geocaching-excuses/
But in some circumstances it is better not to approach the cache at all, I heard recently of a cache placed of all places on a trash can in a playground, a cacher was asked by a child if he was poor, presumably the kid thought that the cacher was digging any food scraps etc out of the trash can! (and if the cacher MUST plant in a playground where any cachers would be rather obvious and could be at risk of being put under suspicion, -it's not illegal in our location to be in a playground without a kid present but it can be darn risky- there was a perfectly good hide under a table right next to the can!)
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Obviously to say you are geocaching is the best answer if you are sure they are not likely to steal the cache afterwards!
I don't believe in lying either but it can be very tricky to find something to say if you are unsure about whether the person can be trusted. But don't forget that the person who muggles you can be a fellow cacher also trying to be discreet- it has happened to me- I was unsure of the people and was evasive until they went a few metres, turned round and were obviously looking at or for something and turned out to be very nice cachers!
I was within a short distance but not quite visibly close to a cache (GPS coverage had temporarily dropped out so I was trying to get a reading) when someone muggled me after seeing my GPS and said something along the lines of "are you one of those people that look for those things?"- it seemed safe to say yes, especially seeing I was a safe distance from the cache. It turned out that he worked with a cacher so knew a bit about it, so in the end I took him with me when I did find the cache. He mentioned the colleague's real name which didn't mean anything to me and didn't know his caching name. I later found out that his colleague was..... the cache owner!
(Hoping I might have recruited a new cacher but if so I haven't heard!) -
Obviously to say you are geocaching is the best answer if you are sure they are not likely to steal the cache afterwards!
I don't believe in lying either but it can be very tricky to find something to say if you are unsure about whether the person can be trusted. But don't forget that the person who muggles you can be a fellow cacher also trying to be discreet- it has happened to me- I was unsure of the people and was evasive until they went a few metres, turned round and were obviously looking at or for something and turned out to be very nice cachers!
I was within a short distance but not quite visibly close to a cache (GPS coverage had temporarily dropped out so I was trying to get a reading) when someone muggled me after seeing my GPS and said something along the lines of "are you one of those people that look for those things?"- it seemed safe to say yes, especially seeing I was a safe distance from the cache. It turned out that he worked with a cacher so knew a bit about it, so in the end I took him with me when I did find the cache. He mentioned the colleague's real name which didn't mean anything to me and didn't know his caching name. I later found out that his colleague was..... the cache owner!
(Hoping I might have recruited a new cacher but if so I haven't heard!) -
I don't think the date issue should wait "till the next update"- it needs a special update immediately. (I guess this is a somewhat misguided attempt to compensate for the fact that it can be Monday in some parts of the world when it is Tuesday in others.)
Among other things there are several "challenge caches" (not to be confused with the new challenges) which require you to have logged other caches after a specific date, or on specific days of the year.
And how about the fact that online logs need to correspond with what is in the written log?- makes it difficult for the cache owner to verify finds in any cases of doubt.
And re the new challenges- who will have the doubtful distinction of suffering personal injury or worse from accepting and carrying out a badly thought out challenge?
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Re the Facebook picture there was a report (possibly true!) I think in Readers Digest, about a lady who went to the library to ask for this very popular book that everyone was reading called Face.
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just to clarify referring to the scroll on the home page.
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Does anyone else find the scrolling list of found and DNF caches annoying? Using up valuable bandwidth too for those who pay by the amount of data downloaded and/or have data caps. Solution for me- just get off that page as fast as I can but even then it has already loaded some!
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Appears some (all?) new caches are not appearing on the maps- at least when you click on "view larger map."
Examples: GC2VK3E and GC2VK24.
Yep, I made a post earlier in the thread...... caches that were archived almost 11 hrs before were still showing on the map.... looks like the map is not 'live' - which is completely useless....... and I still cannot get the 'bubble' to appear so I can click on the cache for a description...... and where have the cache listings gone from down the right hand side........ I could go on.....
Yes, that is correct. Some time ago Nate stated that the beta maps are only regened so often. What your looking at is the cached version of the last regen. That is why they are so fast and can zoom out so far. The original maps I believe are real time.
What is the point in that? We need to know what caches are there now, not what caches were or were not there 11 hours ago.
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Not sure if this is the result of the upgrades or not, but the date format option does not allow us to enter logs in the format DD/MM/YYYY (numerical) as used in many parts of the world. (We can of course use the month in words instead.)
But thanks for the followup anyway and I agree with the person who said the interim message should be updated.
Instant Notify not working
in Website
Posted
You now have numerous responses showing that this is still happening and setting "tips and tricks" does not solve the problem. You need to give a high priority to getting to the root of this as for many notifications are one of the main feature for which cachers become premium members. So if this incentive is "broken" it could have financial consequences resulting from fewer cachers becoming premium