Enchanted Shadow
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Posts posted by Enchanted Shadow
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Here are two things you can do now:
1) Exclude caches with terrain and difficulty less than 2 from your PQs. This will increase the odds of getting "good" caches in your PQs.
2) If 2500/day is not enough then signup for 10 premium memberships. For only $30/month you could get 25,000 caches/day.
To your first point, that's not acceptable, because sometimes those stats are what's called for. And ease doesn't necessarily match up with quality.
And to your second point - yes, I suppose that's always possible. But the point, however, is that geocaching has grown so much that the limits should be raised in general. If your employer is significantly underpaying you, what is called for is for you to get a raise - not for you to get a second job.
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One feature that might work is to let people request 2500 caches and then have the site sent you your entire allotment of 5 PQs for that day with those 2500 unique caches from your center point. I know that you can do this using date ranges but this would make it much more user friendly.
I posted a thread requesting PQ consolidation a year and a half ago. While some suggestions were made to help alleviate my particular issues, the number of caches in existence have made this more necessary again. However, at this point, we need more than consolidation, we also need larger limits.
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Ignore this - the GC website burped and submitted this before I had a chance to type anything.
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I've considered it. I don't think it's right to request 180,000 caches per week.
That would be all of the caches I haven't found within 860 miles of home for me. From your New Jersey area, that comes up to about 1000 miles - all the way to Minneapolis. With 47 finds, you need that many caches to choose from?
I'm not trying to judge, I just think it's a poor waste of resources to send out that many caches when the main database is so readily available. Granted, the system goes down occassionally, but can anyone remember a time when the system was down more than two days?
And even if it WERE down for two days, what's the worst that could happen? You go out with old pocket query data, have a great stroll in the park and don't find a cache because someone picked it up a couple of hours ago. That's still not too bad unless you are dreadfully concerned about the numbers.
It *IS* possible to just load up 30 or 40 caches in your GPS and go out and find them. Geocaching DID exist prior to pocket queries, and I'm not sure that this request of 180K caches makes any sense at all to me.
Forgive me, and please don't take this for being overly defensive, but I get these sets of arguments every time I discuss my PQ useage. I'm going to copy some of what I've written in the past to summarize the final list of items that every argument seems to distill down to:
1. Not everyone Geocaches in the same way, and not everyone uses PQs in the same way.
2. Just because someone does it differently does not mean that it is wrong.
3. People have every right to cache in a manner different than you ("you" meaning generically, not you specifically).
Now, that being said, I'll give you *some* of the specifics that apply to me:
1. I travel a lot, and I don't always know where I'm going ahead of time.
2. I have easily and spontaneously traveled 200 miles away on *WHIM*.
3. I often do not have internet access when I travel.
4. Because of the spontenaity involved, ANY outage of GC.com is a day killer. And the outages/slowdowns are not sparse.
In light of those items, I need a fairly comprehensive database available to me on my own system/laptop/gps. And given how often caches can change, or be archived, or be muggled, as well as how often one particular finder's log will make the difference between finding a cache or not, I make it standard procedure for my database to always be up to date.
I hope that helps you to understand why I do what I do, and I hope this doesn't degenerate into another nightmare of users screaming "but *I* don't need that many caches downloaded, so there's no possible reason that anyone *else* would!"
And as to your comment, "With 47 finds, you need that many caches to choose from?", I offer the following:
1. I don't always log my finds.
2. GC isn't the sole source of caches that I look for.
3. The fact that I don't have the free time to find 100 caches per week makes it all the more important that I have the ability to choose good ones, rather than being indiscriminate.
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I have to agree that the PQ limits (ALL of them) are at this point very outdated and insufficient.
To everyone who argues otherwise - I will point out again (as I have in the past) that different people cache differently. And just because the limits are sufficient for the way you do it does not invalidate anyone else's way of doing it. Personally, I use GSAK, I don't know where I'm going to be in advance, and I'm highly selective about what caches I try to look for. Being able to load up GSAK on a laptop wherever I am and look for caches that match what I'm in the mood for is vital to how I cache.
For me, simply maintaining a 100 mile radius is currently taking up TWENTY FIVE pocket queries! And I can't even get that data in one shot, but it has to come over a period of five days out of seven - which doesn't leave much room for other PQs that might be needed on the fly.
The growth of geocaching has accelerated significantly from when the current limits were first imposed. After all, how many PQs did it take to get a 100 mile radius, five years ago? How many does it take now? At this point, ALL the PQ limits should be at least tripled in order to keep up. And yes, that means 1500 results per PQ, 15 PQs per day, and 120 PQs per week.
I'm sure some of you will say that that's overkill - and perhaps for you, it is. But for others, it's not - so please be considerate before you judge.
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I tried to make a route using GPX today but it wouldn't upload either. Done it before and I use memory map.
Downloaded Google Earth as I wanted the route. Now the computer is playing up GREAT!!
So there is a problem that needs looking at, as the OP is not alone.
Fantastic! I'm glad it's not just me - I was hoping I wasn't just being dim on one of the steps.
Unfortunately, as I refuse to use Google Earth for plotting routes, that won't do as a workaround for me. But if this is a definite bug with GC, than I suppose I can wait a bit until it's fixed.
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From what I see there, that does not look like a valid route to me.
-Raine
Why not? All this feature is (or at least, should be) is a radius search emanating from a multi-segment line. I have two points picked out, and all I'm looking for is all caches within a specified distance from the line connecting those two points.
Or did you mean that the structure of the file isn't valid?
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I'm trying to explore the Caches Along a Route feature, but I can't get it to work.
I don't want to use Google Earth, so I'm going the MapSource route (using MapSource 6.12.4). To my knowledge, I'm doing what I'm supposed to:
1. Empty new MapSource file with nothing but the Route
2. Save as GPX
3. Upload to GC
But when I upload the file, I see an empty list - the route I uploaded doesn't appear anywhere.
I created a test route with two points picked at random - here is the complete text of the GPX file:
--------------------------------------------------
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
<gpx xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"'>http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1" creator="MapSource 6.12.4" version="1.1" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
<metadata>
<link href="http://www.garmin.com">
<text>Garmin International</text>
</link>
<time>2007-08-16T07:01:31Z</time>
<bounds maxlat="39.5297578" maxlon="-89.6456909" minlat="38.0783833" minlon="-91.3967261"/>
</metadata>
<rte>
<name>Test Route</name>
<extensions>
<gpxx:RouteExtension xmlns:gpxx="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3"'>http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3 http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtens...3.xsd">
<gpxx:IsAutoNamed>false</gpxx:IsAutoNamed>
</gpxx:RouteExtension>
</extensions>
<rtept lat="38.0783833" lon="-91.3967261">
<time>2007-08-16T07:00:55Z</time>
<name>I-44</name>
<cmt>I-44</cmt>
<desc>I-44</desc>
<sym>Waypoint</sym>
<extensions>
<gpxx:RoutePointExtension xmlns:gpxx="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3"'>http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3 http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtens...3.xsd">
<gpxx:Subclass>010013ea70003a0084000d1bbf005f134102</gpxx:Subclass>
</gpxx:RoutePointExtension>
</extensions>
</rtept>
<rtept lat="39.5297578" lon="-89.6456909">
<time>2007-08-16T07:00:59Z</time>
<name>I-55</name>
<cmt>I-55</cmt>
<desc>I-55</desc>
<sym>Waypoint</sym>
<extensions>
<gpxx:RoutePointExtension xmlns:gpxx="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3"'>http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtensions/v3 http://www.garmin.com/xmlschemas/GpxExtens...3.xsd">
<gpxx:Subclass>010013ea70005e002e010d1cc0002c1c0040</gpxx:Subclass>
</gpxx:RoutePointExtension>
</extensions>
</rtept>
</rte>
</gpx>
--------------------------------------------------
Am I doing something wrong, or is GC experiencing problems right now? Or do I need to manually edit the GPX file somehow?
Any help would be appreciated. Thanks!
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I would like to request that cache attributes please be incorporated into the GPX files.
Having them there would make it a lot easier to do more detailed searches in GSAK (and other apps, I'm guessing).
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What about just simply having GC create PQ's for each state on a daily basis. That way only 50 PQ's would need to be generated.
For most users, that would be more than enough.
As long as it was done daily, and there were no restrictions on downloading, I would love that.
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For me, the whole cell-phone thing is not so useful, as I am not allowed to have anything wireless at work, which means I tend to be on the trailing edge of that kind of technology.
The Cell-Phone thing is useless to me as well. I'm often in areas with limited or no cell-reception, internet access via cell costs me additional money, and it's too much of a pain by comparison. I'd rather have an offline database. That way, I also don't have to worry about GC site outages.
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I can't believe I read the whole thing! That's a whole heck of alot of PQs to find 31 caches. And at a total cost of about $9, 3months membership, a real bargain!
1. I don't always log my finds.
2. GC isn't the sole source of caches that I look for.
3. The fact that I don't have the free time to find 100 caches per week makes it all the more important that I have the ability to choose good ones, rather than being indiscriminate.
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I have the same problem. I checked it on multiple machines - it's *definitely* the GC site.
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I also apologize for mistaking your post as hypocracy. That probably wasn't your intent. In no way was it meant to be customer service. I further mistook your other posts as indirect attacks to my post when you ignored it. I'm sure it was all just a big misunderstanding. Please accept my apology.
Accepted, and thank you. I think we can put this thread to rest - God knows it certainly got its exercise.
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Clever twisting of my post indeed!!
I never stated anything about your request - only the NEED for that many caches to be carried with you. However you come about aquiring them.
I too often drive 200 miles on a whim. Always found a few minutes to get that PQ. I virtually never have Internet access when I travel - therefore the NEED to plan ahead as I cannot get 1000's of caches instantly.
Can't address your need to Randomly drive around. Except to encourage you to take a different tack and plan ahead.
I have read and read your posts - still not answered to my satisfaction (IMHO).
My 1/1 suggestion was just an idea to overcome your problem. Nothing more. Not trying to force anything upon you. Chill dude!!!
If I misunderstood your tone, than I humbly apologize.
As to the rest of your post, what you don't seem to realize is that what I do *is* planning ahead. The way I do it, I *can* drive spontaneously anywhere I want and still have the caches at my fingertips. By planning ahead as *I* do it, I have *more* freedom, not less.
That's why I find it amusing that you're telling me to plan ahead. Right now, I haven't found anyone who's doing a *better* job of planning ahead with circumstances such as mine.
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Dude. Seriously. Do you really want complete honesty? My take is you just want someone to acknowledge your pain because I offered you complete honesty and you threw it back in my face as poor customer service.
Jeremy, if you look carefully, you'll note that I never directly replied to or complained about your first post in this thread. Your telling me that you have no plans to adjust PQs at this time and telling me about your plans for future service was fine. I didn't have any problem with that, which is why I didn't reply. Between that and the suggestion that I try sorting by date, I considered the original purpose of my posting this thread to be done and dealt with.
My complaints about your manner and customer service were in regards to your third and fourth posts. And those had NOTHING to do with your telling me the state of things in regards to Groundspeak's plans for current and future service.
So please don't accuse me of something I didn't do.
A difference of opinion is not poor customer service. You just need to work on making that distinction.
As I stated above, that was NEVER the issue.
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Ok - lets use logic - re-read this thread.
Now - using logic - you want something that cannot and will not be delivered to you (anytime soon). Stated clearly.
Actually, my initial post stated clearly that I *knew* the resistance requests for increased PQ limits are met with, and therefore that was NOT what I was requesting. Instead, I thought that a consolidation of the current EXISTING limits might be a good compromise.
You will note, if you bother to read the original post, that contrary to your suggestions, I did not take a "gimme gimme" attitude, but instead - I asked if my idea of consolidating the existing limits would be an acceptable compromise.
Therefore - you cannot cache the "way you want".
Yet you continue to insist that you have to.
You have not yet defined clearly (to me) exactly why you NEED all these caches at your disposal. You have expressed that you WANT them but not NEED.
Ultimately, the line is blurred between need and want in this case - as no one is going to keel over and die if geocaching died in its entirety. That being said, take a look at what I stated about how I cache:
1. I travel a lot, and I don't always know where I'm going ahead of time.
2. I have easily and spontaneously traveled 200 miles away on *WHIM*.
3. I often do not have internet access when I travel.
Now, you suggested earlier that I do all the 1/1 micros first, then all the 1/1 regulars, etc... But that doesn't work for me, because that's not how I like to cache. And you know what? That is ENTIRELY within my prerogative. Some people hate micros, some people hate mystery caches, some people hate easy caches - are you going to tell them they're being unreasonable in not searching for those? No, lest you forget, this is a *hobby*. You do it as you enjoy it. If you can't understand that, than I'm afraid that remains your problem.
You also implied earlier that I can just take 10 minutes to generate an on-the-spot PQ. Well, let's examine that, shall we?
1. I don't always know where I'm going ahead of time.
Therefore, where am I going to generate a PQ for?
2. I have easily and spontaneously traveled 200 miles away on *WHIM*.
Therefore, I can't just generate a PQ for a 5 mile radius from me. It won't work.
3. I often do not have internet access when I travel.
Therefore, I can't necessarily generate a PQ on the road.
You say I haven't defined clearly why I need all those caches at my disposal. I think I stated it pretty clearly on my earlier post.
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I'm completely sincere. I appreciate feedback, good or bad. Receiving feedback at all is in my opinion a badge of honor. It wasn't even a form letter. I didn't copy and paste it from anywhere.
2. Being honest and being kind are not mutually exclusive.
I'm serious here. I appreciate the feedback and will consider it.
You realize that it's hard to believe that when you said earlier that you would treat me with excellent customer service *instead* of complete honesty...
In my first response in my thread I didn't dismiss your recommendation outright. I just noted that it wasn't the big priority of the moment so not to expect anything to happen in the near term. I also pointed out that recommendations have been made to do what you want to do.
I'm not sure exactly what you want at this point other than your needs met now. I'm afraid we can't accomodate the needs of everyone now. But I appreciate the feedback.
Insofar as the technical nature of my initial inquiry, the suggestion made by a few others to try sorting by date is a possible partial remedy. I will try that and see if it reduces the headache of management I have to go through now. That is sufficient for now.
Any further conversation in this thread is going to be in response to users who can't possibly understand how someone could do things differently than they do, and general conversation relating to business/CS practices.
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Need?????
Sounds like a "want" to me.
Can't imagine any set of circumstances that would absolutely require access to a few thousand caches. Use the PQ to find all the 1/1 micros - have fun finding those. Then shoot for 1/1 regulars. As you find and ignore caches the numbers in your PQ's will fall.
Heck it would be nice to carry the entire database with me wherever I go but I can take 10 minutes to plan a bit.
StarBrand, as I've tried to convey previously, the way *you* might do things does not necessarily work for everyone else. Just because *you* can't imagine any set of circumstances that would require what I do, doesn't mean they don't exist. And if you read what I posted about how I cache, you might be able to rely on a logical set of facts, instead of your imagination.
How I use PQs are *my* way of planning. And they suit *my* needs. You want to take 10 minutes to plan? Go right ahead. I don't always have those 10 minutes.
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You know you're right. From now on I will treat you with excellent customer service instead of complete honesty about our strategy and planning for new features that benefit the broader geocaching community. So here you go.
Enchanted Shadow,
Thanks for your post! At Groundspeak we appreciate the feedback we receive from geocachers around the world, and sincerely thank you for your request regarding improvements to our Pocket Query features. We'll pass on your information to our technical department who will consider your ideas as part of future features on Geocaching.com.
Thanks again and happy Geocaching!
A few points to be made here:
1. Minus the lack of sincerity and form-letter approach, that wouldn't have been a bad response.
2. Being honest and being kind are not mutually exclusive.
3. People aren't looking for superficial customer service. Saying you'll take something under consideration, while you're throwing out the proposal under the desk with nary a thought doesn't do anyone any good.
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I am reminded of a quote "the needs of the many out weigh the needs of the few or the one"
However, the more accurate version of that quote is that the needs of the many do not necessarily outweight the needs of the few or the one. Otherwise, think about where that leaves civil rights.
This is how most companies run there customer service. You have to balance what you can give. If only a few want something and to give it to them would cause issue with a greater majority then the few are left to work with what they have.
I completely understand that point of view. I really do. My biggest complaint is not that some users aren't getting what they're asking for, it's how their concerns, needs, and desires are being summarily dismissed, and more generally, how they are being treated.
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If you would like to speak with Customer Service please write us at contact@geocaching.com and we'll be happy to assist you!
Warm regards,
Nate
Groundspeak Inc.
Thank you OpinioNate.
However, my understanding is that Jeremy is the top of the Groundspeak food chain. Am I wrong? Because if not, than I honestly don't see how speaking with Customer Service will achieve anything. Please let me know if I am incorrect about any of this.
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So just keep stepping on everyone who tries to say that they have needs different than yours. After all, your opinion is the only one that matters, right?
No. Apparently yours is.
As usual, Jeremy, your customer service and understanding of your customers is lacking.
I *never* at any point indicated that I thought my opinion should be the only one that matters. What I am constantly fighting for, however, is the right to have my opinion be ONE of the ones that matter.
You and many other users are in the habit of stomping on users who do things differently than you. You *could* listen to them and treat them like their opinion matters to you, but you don't. And that's not saying that you should cater to every whim, but what constantly seems to escape you is that it's possible to say no politely, kindly, and with an explaination. And more to the point, to say no only AFTER you have given the opinion of your customers the respect and consideration they are due.
To have this kind of behavior coming from other users is bad enough, but from management? You need to get some training in Customer Service. And that is not a personal attack, but an honest opinion.
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Try asking for a disconnected pocket google of their search index for your use. They may say yes. They are, like, geniuses and stuff so you never know.
It's a poor analogy. I don't know why you continue to ignore users that give you ways to get the information you want now.
To your first point, actually *yours* is the poor analogy. Offering a disconnected pocket google of their search index is not normally a service they offer. Whereas, the equivalent, in the form of PQs *is* a service that your customers are paying for.
To your second point, I acknowledged the advice I was given, and admitted that it might help. How is that ignoring anyone?
Pocket Queries - will they ever go beyond 500
in Website
Posted
What makes you think that 99% of people are happy with the current limitations? Because they haven't voiced their opinions here? If they've done any searching in the boards, they'd see how most people who suggest such a thing get jumped on by a whole lot of people who take it personally because someone isn't caching the way *they* do, and either be too frightened or too disgusted to even try to mention it.
As to the other suggestion, it doesn't work because I use constant updates for all caches. Otherwise logs and changes wouldn't show up. A cache doesn't have to be disabled in order for it to be moved, or for some other aspect to be modified.