geodanimal

What makes streak challenges so terrible is that they inherently incentivize inefficient use of both time and fuel, and ultimately they turn a fun hobby into drudgery. Yes, yes, I hear the chorus of people chiming in to say "Nobody is forcing you to participate, it's just a stupid bit of digital artwork, yadda yadda yadda." Sure, but those people are missing the point. I honestly don't mind skipping the challenge and not getting the souvenir. But it bothers me nonetheless on principle because I don't think it's useful or wise for Groundspeak to promote geocaching in a way that incentivizes wasteful inefficiency. It's simply irresponsible. That's my gripe. And since these forums are the place to share such feedback, I'm coming out of the woodwork to share it. Most geocachers seem to have at least some OCD tendencies, and streak challenges obviously play to those. Some people may even seem to enjoy leaning into that kind of compulsiveness, perhaps because they are compulsive by nature, but almost everyone I've ever talked to about streaks has said that it began to make geocaching feel like a chore, and the only good part was finally deciding to give it up. It does not actually encourage more caching (or even more importantly, more FUN caching); in fact, it has the opposite effect. It creates an incentive to find only one cache per day, because any more than that is wasteful and leads to more inefficiency. YES, yes, I know -- people are free to ignore all this and cache in whatever way is comfortable for them -- but the point is THIS is what Groundspeak is incentivizing, and it's messed up. Shame on you, Groundspeak.

THIS! I just had a couple big days of caching, with over a couple hundred finds. I uploaded all the drafts/fieldnotes, and then before posting any logs on any of them, I suffered some uncertainty about whether I had actually included everything. So because I wanted to make sure nothing was duplicated, I deleted everything and started over. NOW I CANNOT UPLOAD any of my 200+ drafts. Having to drag up each of those webpages manually to log them all is going to make me very, very frustrated. Groundspeak, this is not helpful! At the very least, there should be prominent warnings indicating that deleting a draft will result in never ever being able to use it again, even if you haven't followed through and posted a log from it! But seriously, how boneheaded is that?!

Thanks! Indeed, that was what caused the missing souvenir for me. I do remember reading that now, and it makes perfect sense -- but I had forgotten. So I went out and found another cache, and problem solved! But I still think it's weird that Groundspeak often can't seem to get the dates right. That ought to be super simple.

It's just after 5pm here in California, and I just logged a cache that I found today, 02/22/2022. No Deuces Wild souvenir. The Everest souvenir did pop, however, and the date for that one shows tomorrow, 02/23/2022. FAIL. Earlier this morning, I was logging a cache on my daughter's account that we found together yesterday. By mistake, I initially used TODAY as the find date for that cache, and BOOM, she got the Deuces Wild souvenir. Naturally I edited the find and changed the date back to yesterday. But my other daughter and myself are now apparently left out of the Deuces Wild souvenir, simply because we logged them after 5pm?? When exactly is the cutoff time? Kinda seems like it ought to be midnight, don't ya think? It really shouldn't be such a hard thing to get people's time zones correct, since presumably everyone has "home" coordinates entered into their profile. Geolocation is what geocaching is all about. FIGURE IT OUT.

No, I did not. That's why I clearly said I hadn't received any emails. And still haven't. But whatever -- thanks to Mordor2, I guess I have the necessary URL now.

I got all the souvenirs. Still no email about a trackable... How long might one have to wait for this email? In my email preferences, I have elected to not receive the weekly newsletter and education & promotional emails. Is that going to screw things up for me here, or is this separate from all that?

I agree with most everyone else here. The current arrangement for cache page titles is still awkward to the point of being useless. Give me: GC#####, Cache Name, by Cachername That's the only information that really matters, and that's the order in which it should appear. I simply cannot fathom the rationale for cluttering up the cache page title with Cache Type and Location info. Please fix it (again)!

Yes, thank you for the many fine improvements! But I must emphatically agree with Backup regarding the new way that images are being handled: AMEN to that! Casually glancing at images is now much slower and drastically less convenient. The mouse over trick was simple and nearly instantaneous. Now it's gotta go through that whole fancy screen fade thing. Sure, it looks nifty the first couple times you see it, but then it's just tedious. Simpler and more streamlined is better. Yep, very clunky. But I like Backup's suggestion -- it would be the best of both worlds, I suppose. (Although I still think I'd almost never use the slide show thing. Ick.)

First of all, I really like using the Google Map Search feature to pan around and look for caches in an area. I wish it would show more than 20 caches at a time, but I can understand the need for some constraints. So, here's my suggestion: I've got my little Google Map window dotted with a bunch of cache markers, and on the right side I've got a nice listing of all those caches with links. Click on one of those links, and it pops up an extra cache info box above the map. Basically, I *hate* the popup cache info box. All it does is shove the map I'm using further down my screen. If I click on a link in the cache listing (or on one of the markers), what I *want* to see is the full cache page! I want to read the cache description, look at the past few logs, etc. In other words, the popup info box doesn't give me info that I consider useful, and it merely creates an extra tedious hoop to jump through in order to open the full cache page that I'm interested in. Bottom line: please get rid of the popup cache info box, and when you click on a link or marker, just open the full cache page for that cache! Thanks.

I think it took us about an hour from leaving the car to back to the car. Speed may depend on sure-footedness on a sloppy trail. I think it might have been a little longer than an hour... Maybe 1.5 hours or so. I just remember that we got back to the car right at 10:00 PM, and I can't believe we started as late as 9:00. Anyway, I think Janet and I will be interested in going along for the ride again just to get acquainted with some of these names in meatspace.

Howdy folks! The lovely wife and I have signed a few logs in the East Bay over the last few months (enough that I recognize a lot of names here), so I thought maybe it was time I posted in the forum and said Hi. We now return you to your normally scheduled geocaching.