dprovan

I can't say, but I thought we were discussing a change that made them *less* visible, basically impossible to find. I don't think anyone here is recommending they be made more visible than they have been until now. If anyone anywhere is desperate for more finds, then it must be because no new caches at all are being planted in their area, and even with that, I'd expect them to just give up before they made it a habit to search for archived caches since archived caches are almost never there. But if such a person were that desperate, then I'd feel pity for them and wouldn't mind at all if they looked for all the archived caches they wanted. It's hard for me to imagine a culture of looking for archived caches would develop in a situation like that since, if there's any culture at all, it would be easier and more fun for it to turn into a culture of planting new caches. Searching for archived caches is a specialized taste. There's no danger of it becoming popular, and it's certainly no way to pad your numbers. I wouldn't want the search to make it any easier, but not because of any fear of it causing ugliness.

For so many reasons, I can't believe this is a significant problem, but even if it is somewhere, it shouldn't be a consideration in deciding what searches should return.

As I said, I think the intention is to stop people from seeing caches that are not important to them, not preventing them from seeking them. Newbies don't look for archived caches, so locking them would serve no purpose here. I don't think we need a specific reason to search for archived caches listings. We search for them because we want to see them. The fact that they are archived is immaterial in general. Having said that, I think your example of events is a particularly important one since they're probably the most important example of something with historical value even after they are archived. Obviously we don't want archived events when we're searching for events that will happen in the future, but it makes just as little sense to leave out archived events if we're searching for events that happened in the past.

I agree with your logic and wonder the same thing. Unfortunately, I cannot rule out that the government restrictions aren't, in fact, requiring companies to provide privacy features even in cases where the entire point of their product is to present a public forum.

The answer is simple: we can't search for archived caches because they don't want us to look for archived caches. The problem here is that we search for caches for two completely different reasons. The first reason, the one the updated search function is designed for, is to figure out what caches we're going to go out and find today. But the other reason to search is to look at the history, what caches we and others have found in the past. When we're searching for that information, the archived caches mean exactly as much to us as any other cache because they weren't archived at the time we're considering. That's where the search results aren't meeting our needs and expectations. I can't believe there's a serious problem with people looking for archived caches, since it's already hard enough to learn about them. I think the thinking here is more that it's pointless (and confusing) to show caches that aren't there to someone that's going out to geocache. I can't believe more than a handful of archived caches are logged in any given month -- and most of them are probably valid logs, anyway, like logging a find when one completes an archived challenge -- so I don't think prohibiting them from being logged would make one bit of difference to the decision about showing them in searches. As it happens, I haven't had an opportunity to use the new search yet for looking at historical finds, so I don't really know exactly what this problem looks like in practice, but theoretically it seems like when I'm just searching for caches, suppressing archived caches makes sense, but whenever I'm looking for caches that a specific person has found in the past, archived caches should be presented. These used to be two different kinds of searches, but, as I understand it, the problem with this release is that they're now both done using the same search mechanism, but the fact that the two kinds of searches are looking for two different kinds of results hasn't been taken into account in how the search is performed.

I agree this is sad, but I have to concede that GS has no choice. There's a world wide assault going on against any sense of community in modern societies, and I see GS as more of a victim than a perpetrator. "People" -- well, actually their governments -- are demanding exactly what GS is giving them: the freedom to join a community while simultaneously hiding from it, thus undermining the very point of the community.

I'm actually not sure this is an established fact. Someone *thinks* some people like to see the geoart after completion, and comments in the forums often mention that, but I don't recall anyone in the forums actually saying they'd prefer it. Seems like every week or two I run into yet another example where returning the cache location to the posted coordinates is unhelpful and confusing. And I haven't yet had a case where I've found it preferable.

I see what you're talking about. I stopped using that approach because it's clumsy and difficult to select only the GC code from the link text. The click and drag is not only difficult to do precisely, I also tended to invoke the link by accident way too often. But at least back in those days, when I succeeded in selecting only it and copied it, I got just the GC code. What you're pointing out is that now the title is somehow mysteriously included in the copied text even though it's not selected. Is that just a bug, or are they trying to do something they think is reasonable? I assume the former because I can't imagine a useful reason for adding the title. Anyway, I concede that looks wrong, but even when I want just the code -- and I often do -- I open the link as we've been describing, then double click on the GC code to select only it. I find that way easier than carefully trying to select only the link text. I've been using that technique for years without even thinking about it.

I've always had to do it that way. Long ago I discovered it was virtually impossible to grab only the link unless I opened the text box. I've always seen it as more of a browser problem than a web page problem.

The point at which I'd give a detailed hint is when it's unfair to expect anyone to find the cache using a GPSr alone. I don't know about the star of difficulty, but the important observation is that no matter how perfect you manage to get your coordinates, seekers are going to run into exactly the same problem, and all the fancy tricks you used to get the precisely correct coordinates aren't going to be available to them. Kudos for doing everything you can to figure out the coordinates, but don't fool yourself into thinking the accuracy of your coordinates is useful to a seeker.

Not particularly hard, but not part of ALs, either. The fact that I could, if I cared, work around it is off the point. I'm not so much complaining that I can't write a decent log but rather explaining why almost no one writes decent logs. I write extensive logs for geocaches, so implying that I'm looking for excuses not to write them for ALs is laughable.

Yes, unless you want to make finding the other caches part of the puzzle -- not something I'd suggest -- you should list the other caches and include links to them. If you want to be really nice, put all 4 in a public bookmark list so people can see them all listed and put them on a map. In addition, point the other way: include pointers with links to the bonus cache in the descriptions of the traditionals.

Or I could go home and write a decent log on my desktop, which is what I do for geocaches but can't do for ALs.

It's not being on a phone I don't like, it's writing a log without a keyboard.

Well, actually, I do remember some people suggesting that a rating system would improve "cache quality". In fact, I suspect the rating system in ALs may be a response to those suggestions, a way to test how well it works (or, if you're cynical, show that it doesn't work so people will stop asking for it). I see this a lot differently, but I think we come to the same conclusion. I suspect most AL creators are fine reading honest reviews and probably don't really page attention to the grades, but I don't think they'd miss either much if they weren't there. Don't most of us actually think of the "reviews" as just logs where people can report their experiences? And I'd be astonished to discover that many seekers look at reviews before deciding to tackle an AL. I've never even considered looking at the reviews first. I had to go check just now to make sure you could do that before you completed the AL yourself since that's the only way I ever get to the reviews. So my conclusion is that the existing system isn't particularly interesting to anyone, so I don't see any problem with changing it to a favorite system if we want to. I just enter a log and don't for a second think of it as a review. And the log is short and superficial because I've got more important things to do in the field than the annoying process of writing a detailed log on a cell phone. For a long time, I didn't notice that I could grade the AL, and now that I know, I never do it, anyway.

Can you be a little more specific about what in my response causes you to dismiss it as "angels on a pin"? Favorite points are the way to make the better ones stand out. I think the problems we're discussing are fundamental to a rating system, not a failure in how people are rating ALs.

I think all caches with a theme that extends through to the final are clever and I enjoy clever things. I don't think this is any more or less interesting for challenge caches, but I do sometimes find it convenient. For example, I find it an advantage when a challenge for lots of tree climbs is, itself, a difficult tree climb because that means I won't be any more liikely to find the final than meet the challenge. And I'd definitely like any challenge to find a certain number of large caches to be itself a large cache. Of course, some are forbidden. It used to be something of a tradition to put a puzzle on a challenge to find so many puzzle caches, but that's no longer allowed.

I'm not disagreeing with you, but I equate the tradition of rating 5 stars to the tradition of applauding enthusiastically at school performances no matter how bad. It's not so much a fear of appearing critical; it's more a desire to be encouraging. Let's pretend that scores were more accurate so, for example, ALs at the bottom of the barrel -- for example, technically OK but still not very interesting -- got rated 3. And let's also imagine everyone could see the rating each reviewer gave. Wouldn't it be reasonable for the ALO to expect the log -- oops, I mean "review" -- to provide information so he could improve his AL? You seem to be defending someone that rates the AL down but then doesn't give any explanation to make the rating useful, so the ALO has to ask.

Why? Are we all supposed to grade on the curve? No, I think if the average was 3.0, everyone would be complaining about the low quality of adventure labs. Isn't GS granting adventure lab credits based on how well they think those COs will be at creating adventure labs? Shouldn't we expect -- in fact, shouldn't we *demand* -- that almost all adventure labs be very good or excellent?

I would say the expectation is that you mention the log is full in your found log. If you want and there's room, you can add to the log, by which I mean add more log sheets, but leave the old log there. The only reason not to leave the old log is if there's no room for it. I think different places have different standards when there is no room for a new log. I personally don't have a problem with you replacing the log, but, as you can see, some COs will be annoyed. All I'll say is that *if* you decide to remove the old log, post pictures of it in your found log so the CO can see who signed it. If you want, you can also ask the CO whether he wants the physical log and work out a way to get it to him. I disagree with the others about filing an NM. I think that's overkill even though the system now encourages it.

The short answer is "no", and I don't want you to get your hopes up. But to some degree, it works as you hoped. *If* you get the AL loaded *and keep it loaded*, you can visit each stage and the AL with remember that you were there even though it can't get on-line to confirm your answer. You can even tell if your answer is right because if it isn't right, it says so, but if it is right, it puts up a spinny wheel so you know it's accepted your answer and is trying to register that fact with the wide world. The problem I've had is that even if I load the AL in advance, the app tends to time out if I don't actively talk to it. Then when I wake it back up, it has to reload the AL, so if I'm out of touch, I'm screwed. In addition, sometimes when it tries to register my answer on-line but fails, it will hang altogether so I have to shutdown the app myself, leaving me the reload problem again. If you won't have any connectivity, then forget it 'cuz you'll never get started. But if you can go into the nearest cafe to get on a wifi from time to time, you might be able to pull it off.

I'm sympathetic to GS's problem, especially the frustration at being compared to companies with orders of magnitude more resources for UI development, but this is frankly "baffle them with BS." As far as I can see, only one section of this huge document applies to this conversation, so let's actually introduce it here:

NM tells the owner the cache needs maintenance. If the CO does nothing to fix the problem, someone needs to post an NA to tell the *reviewer* it needs taken off the books. So my guess is that the problem here is NAs are not used when they should be in Portugal. Other responders have talked about the health score, which is basically the automated process you're suggesting, but that's just GS's solution the the basic problem that in some areas, people don't post NAs. So start posting NAs and start solving the problem without GS's help.

These sound like new caches, so I'd forget about the old archived versions. Yes, you can use the same name and description. If you want, you can add a pointer to the old cache so people can see the new cache's heritage.

I guess I consider it a different word if it has a different meaning, but whatever. Does it matter to you whether Rowling knew about the existing word, or would you still say she didn't invent it even if she'd never heard the word before? Yes, again, I meant the word being used with the meaning of "uninitiated".