pppingme

This isn't a bug There are many who would disagree This is an issue with rules and policies, the site follows as such. A bug is something that affects functionality, such as not being able to create a PQ, such as not allowing a PQ to be scheduled because the site can't count to 5, such as returning ZERO results in a PQ, when there are caches that meet the criteria, such as not being able to go to the next page or previous page of a listing of caches, such as the site returning random useless errors. Last I checked, having two finds logged to a cache doesn't affect or break the site. As a side issue, I don't agree with a hard coded limitation, there are sometimes valid reasons to log 2 finds. If a cache owner doesn't like that someone has logged two finds, he/she is free to delete one of the logs.

This isn't a bug

I can name 3 older than the bookmark paging bug. - Can only create 39 PQ's not 40 - Selecting home coords AND a state on a PQ returns zero results - PQ's that lap (run after midnight) count against the next days PQ's The first two have been documented in the forums in the past and continue to come up, the 3rd really wasn't an issue till lately, but has hit me in the past. I could probably come up with more given time.

The bigger picture that GC is missing here, and you will too after more people catch on, is that as people abandon scheduling them on the GC site, those people will start resorting to 3rd party tools. I stated in an earlier post that 5 minutes with Google showed me several tools to do just that. The people using these tools aren't going to schedule them to run early or something, they are going to schedule them to run 30 minutes before they get home from work, here is where the snowball effect will really kick in. Those that don't care about a late PQ will continue to use GC's scheduling, those that do will use 3rd party tools that will really slam the system through the weekend. Running an "on demand" PQ will become impossible on a Friday afternoon. The people that are "giving up on scheduling and simply creating new ones" are the exact ones that are going to resort to these 3rd party tools to do those functions for them.

The snowball comes from everyone coming home Friday afternoon and running their PQ's on the spot, right now it "seems" to be working but when enough people start doing this it will fail. I know there's a couple times on Friday afternoons I've waited 30 minutes for an "instant" (new, never run before) PQ to run. Thats not consistent right now, but it will be worse in the future if GC doesn't get this bug fixed. Every week more people are doing this (snowball building) and eventually it will be out of control.

I too have heard the rumours of "instant PQ's" but don't see what or how those would work. Does the mere fact of unclicking the scheduled date, then re-clicking it bump the PQ to a higher priority? If so then there is no need to duplicate a PQ, just write the simplest of keystroke sequences to automatically click and click again a pixel on your screen. Something I mentioned some hundred thousands of words ago. It works best by copying then running the copy and deleting when done. Unselecting/reselecting the same PQ doesn't seem to do much in terms of priority. Your reply got me thinking and about 5 minutes with Google showed me these tools already exist. Anytime a site ignores problems, the users will develop workarounds, and those workarounds can't be optimized by the site. Its really to GC's advantage to acknowledge the problem and fix it now, or this really will get out of hand. GC can optimize (and fix whatever they broke) how scheduled PQ's work, but they will never be able to control when users submit "on demand" PQ's. What will happen here is everyone is going to give up on scheduled PQ's, especially over the weekend, and everyone is going to come home from work on Friday at 5 and all hit their macro's at the same time. Instant PQ's will then take hours to generate. People asking for PQ's at 5 won't get them until 10, too late for caching. Yet GC continues to ignore the problem. The real sad thing here is that this isn't a problem caused by excessive usage or an unexpected surge in PQ's, but rather a site change/bug introduced a couple months ago, they broke something and now won't acknowledge it.

You forgot forum posting. $30 divided by 365 days equals 8.219 cents per day. Divide that by 24 hours and you get 0.342 cents per hour. Just simple math. No one here uses the site 24x7 as you suggest, this post by its self removes any credibility you might have had by making such absurd comparisons. You don't use a doctor 24/7 either. The absurd comparison was not made by me, as I have already said. Try to keep up. I didn't even say anything about a Dr in my quote, your the one that keeps bringing up a Dr and your the one that gave the bad math claiming that everyone uses the site 24/7. Some isn't keeping up, but its not me. I really don't see the relevance or advantage of releasing that info, <snip> Yeah, I figured you would not back your statement with facts. Your credibility is shot down a little more. I run three web sites that gets more traffic than any of yours do. Anyone can say that. (I do run our company's web site and personally own 15 URL's.) There's a reason I didn't mention my sites here, its simply not appropriate for this forum. If you wish, you can PM me and I might consider telling you something about them, but then again, to quote you, "someone isn't keeping up" (but its not me). I and thousands of others cachers do just fine with five logs. You might get a DNF every now and then. Does your world end? Only a few come here complaining about this issue. Most of the time it seems to be those who run the same PQ every day to build a personal database, as you have now said that you do. Fully within the TOU. Actually for that matter, you seem to be the only one here that has an issue, yeah yeah, I know, Jeremy has commented on it in the past, but only in the context of stale data, NOT in the context of getting more log data, so be sure you don't twist his words either and over-broadly apply them. Maybe, and yes I do understand the frustration with the end of the week slowdown. I just think you are contributing to the problem with having to have every single log on every single cache in this manner. Those that build a personal database can easily run a query on an off day and select "Placed during the last week" and you will have your caches. Still, that was not the original intent. It was to be used as I described in the post of mine above this one. And again your still avoiding the real issue here. You or anyone associated with GC have yet to even admit that there was a change a couple months ago that clearly is causing problems, again you just want to point blame somewhere else and hope that no one else but me notices the real problem. The "weekend slowdown" was not an issue before, and would not be an issue now, IF THE ORIGINAL PROBLEM GETS FIXED. You can't even admit there's an issue that started a couple months ago, even though the significant increase in posts related to this clearly documents it.

Hmm.. According to mtn-man, your an abuser.

You forgot forum posting. $30 divided by 365 days equals 8.219 cents per day. Divide that by 24 hours and you get 0.342 cents per hour. Just simple math. No one here uses the site 24x7 as you suggest, this post by its self removes any credibility you might have had by making such absurd comparisons. Please, tell us which sites. I am curious what your monthly bandwidth is compared to this site. It is easy to compare, so just let us know which sites those are. I really don't see the relevance or advantage of releasing that info, this isn't a comparison of my site is better than yours (which it is), its a solid fact to state that sites don't cost anywhere near $3/month to run. If you want to know a few facts, I'll tell you these, I have multiple sites that have higher traffic ratings than geocaching.com according to all the major rating/ranking services, all of those same sites with the higher ratings have much more than the 60-80,000 users here, all have higher bandwidth requirements (and to quote jeremy, bandwidth isn't a major cost here anyway, to quote me, we are in an era of the cheapest bandwidth you've ever seen, feel free to search my quote). If your stuck on bandwidth being the major cost you have no idea how a data intensive site works, I do. Yes, but this service is not designed for you to maintain an offline database. You are abusing the service, at the detriment of thousands of other users. I use the service as it is intended and don't have a problem except occasionally. I know that Fridays are going to be busy (partially due to abusers of the system), so I work around it. GC promises 5 PQ's per day, how I use them is not an "abuse of the system". If GC can't deliver 5, they shouldn't promise 5, plain and simple. The fact that I pull 5 (and actually I only average 3 most days, 4 a few others, not 5) is clearly within whats promised to me. Loading those to my GPS receiver, my PDA, or printing them out and dancing on them then building a bonfire after the danceisn't relative here, nor an "abuse of the system". The reality here is that GC can't deliver PQ's in a format requested (more than 5 logs, I like 10 when I'm in the field), so I'm forced to accumulate logs. One thing that you continue to gloss over and try to redirect peoples thinking away from is the fact that GC broke something a couple months ago and its been broken since. No one has even acknowledged a problem, people like you just want to scream that others are just "abusing" the system, and you try and distract from the real problem. The fact that something is broke is very clear as evidenced by the surge in complaints about PQ's since the "upgrade".

I'm not even sure how you get 34 cents or whatever, since you didn't explain it, but for the 5 to 10 minutes a month I do actually spend on the site, your WAY OFF. I do nothing online that I don't have to. I write my logs offline, I decide my caches I'm hitting for the day offline, there is very little site interaction from me. Further, an online site should only cost fractions of a penny per month per user to actually run. If it costs more than that, then its not being run correctly. I speak from authority here I run sites much larger than this site and I know what true user costs are. Further, the site is a COLLECTIVE service, not an individual service, to drag your dr example in again, a collective service is going to cost way less than an individual service (like a dr), because there is NO one on one time at all on the site. At $3/month I do think the service is WAY overpriced, why do I pay it? Because there is currently no competition and because I don't want the frustrations of dealing with a website thats constantly having issues, its easier and faster to maintain the data offline (and no, I don't have a database of my whole state, I have a reasonable sized circle I maintain, reasonable being defined as the furthest out I travel on a regular basis). Once a reasonable competition site shows up, ground-speak WILL loose their business, they aren't receptive to problems, they seem more focused on developing sites that no one else uses (Waymarking, Wherigo, etc.). Ground-speak also seems to have this attitude that they own the sport, they don't, they just happen to own the site that is the most popular this week. They may have a few "loyals" stick around, but people are going to move. There are bugs that I reported more than two years ago that still haven't been fixed, a lot of which haven't even been acknowledged.

A doctor does not spend quality time with you. You have got to be kidding me. Does a doctor show up to events and hang out with you like Jeremy and crew? They were just at a geocaching event in Washington DC last week. They were at Geowoodstock the last two years. They were just at an event in Massachusetts several weeks ago. A doctor has doctor's aids come in and do all of the prep work and paper work and then will breeze into you room, spend very little time with you, then tell the doctor's aids to finish things up. I've had surgery where it was a local anesthetic so I was awake, and the doctor also flies into the room after all of the other people do all of the prep work, gets the job done quickly and then flies out and lets the other finish up. After surgery, they pass quickly through recovery, do a quick check to see if you are OK, then move on to the next patient. I don't have these issues with my Dr, he does spend quality time with me, if yours doesn't, thats not my problem, your the one that brought up the comparision. As far as Jeremy spending time at events, thats PR, not him helping me. In no way does his attendance at an event affect me, except that I know I paid for his attendance. If Jeremy consistently shunned events, more people would loose more respect for him, driving people away. Any company owner has a responsibility to his company of doing good PR if they want their company to succeed. I personally could care less about Jeremy's attendance at an event and it would not affect my decision in a positive way to be at that event. I've also had heart surgery and my Dr was there every single step, from before the first IV went in, communicating with every single person every step of the way, and was the 2nd person I saw when I "recovered", only because he did take a break after a 12 hour surgery.

Funny one. I love good comedy. How much do you pay per hour for the services of your doctor? How much do you pay per hour for the services of Groundspeak? Increase the pay to Groundspeak to equal the pay to your doctor, and I would imagine you might see a difference. Heck, for that matter, pay me that rate and I would personally do your PQ's for you manually. Got your check book handy? I take credit cards through paypal too. Just let me know when you are ready for me to get to work. Not even close to being in context. Dr's have extreme educations before they practice. By Jeremy's own admission, this started as a "hobby site" that was initially thrown together in a couple hours. Also, a Dr spends quality one on one time with me. If a "programmer" spends even 80 hours on the site in a month, when you divide that by the estimated 80 thousand premium members, that only amounts to 3.6 seconds a month per user, I think paying $3/month more than compensates the 3.6 seconds of programming time I got out of it. By the way, for those keeping track, that works out to about $3000/hour, WAY MORE THAN ANY DOCTOR I KNOW MAKES. So, to compare the fee paid to here vs the fee paid to a Dr, this site is getting WAY MORE. Your argument doesn't hold water. The only funny thing here is the way people cover up and defend the poor performance of the site.

Everything is west coast time, there is no compensation for time zone. I'm central so my PQ day runs from 2am to 2am. East cost PQ day would be 3am to 3am.

This is true, kind of, but also not totally in context for the complaints. "IF" and only if, you already have 5 scheduled, for the current day, then any carry over from the previous day and the full 5 for the current day will run. If you have lets say 2 carry over from the previous day, and you only had 2 scheduled for the current day, then the system will only let you run or schedule ONE more, where by all rights you should have the ability to schedule 3 more, so your cheated by 2. If something is already scheduled it will run, but if you try to run or schedule something, it counts anything that ran that day, scheduled or carry over, against you. So your statement, although true, is partially out of context to the complaints and doesn't match every complaint. As an additional note, if you have 5 scheduled for the current day, and you had 2 carry over from the previous day, if you un-schedule one for the current day (assuming it hasn't run yet), then you will not be able to reschedule it or another PQ in its place, you loose that spot once you un-check it.

Is ground-speak doing anything to resolve these issues? There was an obvious change in PQ behavior several months ago with all the other big site changes and PQ timing has been horrible ever since. This is evidenced by the sheer number of posts and threads on this subject. I had several weekly PQ's I ran, before those changes it was rare for me to wake up and they not be there, since the changes I'm lucky to get them by late evening. This isn't a case of just more people are running PQ's, this is a case of something change and ground-speak hasn't figured it out yet. I've had several times where it was getting late evening and they still hadn't run so I end up copying and running the copy. There was even a two day period that new PQ's didn't run. Daily PQ's are even worse. I still copy and run them on a regular basis. I finally had to split them up to run every two or three days and they will don't run by late evening. Ground-speak has either made major changes to how PQ's run or has eliminated equipment (how many "pq generators" were there, do they have their own replica of the databases or do they share one with other functions, etc.) . Such a dramatic change isn't from a swell in users, especially when it coincides with a major change in the site.

Do you use the four arrows in the corner to pan the map or do you grab and drag? I've never had issues (I am running FF, not IE and I don't use the arrows), but I did hear one other cacher in my area that I think uses IE complain about not being able to move around on the maps until I told him to grab and drag. I just tried and the arrows work, but you plus him makes me wonder if the arrows might be broke under IE or something?

Because sometimes its not really a separate account. For example, a lot of husband/wife teams log as one, others log as separate people, My wife and I choose to log separately, but that doesn't justify a 2nd "premium" membership, if it were enforced to the point that someone said she should have a separate premium membership, we would probably abandon her account and just log as one, or she just wouldn't log the premium caches. We have actually asked around and none of the local cachers who place premium caches have no problem with us doing this. Most have even gone as far as saying as long as there is at least one premium member they don't care who goes along and logs it.

Sure it does, your free to hunt or not hunt any cache you like or don't like. No, it doesn't. Saying you don't have to hunt the cache if you don't want to doesn't give you license to ignore the guidelines. But feel free to try it sometime, and see how fast your cache gets shot down in the review process. "I'm putting this cache in a daycare playground, without permission. But since people can choose not to hunt a cache, that makes it perfectly okay." Yeah, right. Good luck with that. But you have yet to show where there is actually a TOU issue, except that you, and only you, seem to think the model of GPS receiver you own is a national secret. I, nor anyone else here, has said ANYTHING about placing a cache that otherwise doesn't meet TOU of the site. You seem to be taking the attitude of "I don't think I personally like this so I'm going to equate it with placing a cache in middle of a day care, which I know is inappropriate, doesn't meet site TOU, and will clearly cause issues".

If they are showing has having run but your not getting them this most likely isn't a PQ issue but an email issue. What email provider are you using?

Sure it does, your free to hunt or not hunt any cache you like or don't like. I believe the site even accommodates this via the IGNORE feature. You seem to be the ONLY one here that see's a TOU violation, If thats your interpretation, feel free to ignore the cache. I don't think you'll find very many cachers that feel that same way. Its not like anyone is asking for your real name or address of social security number here, you know, things that the average person considers personal versus a pride point of the hobby/activity. MOGA says the park requires a release to be signed, since that does require real information maybe we should just archive that this year and not have it. After all, MOGA clearly violates this part of the TOU.

I assume you meant can't. I don't say that to be rude or ridicule in any way, but because some people will ignore the obvious. No, I think he's taking it a bit personal for some reason. A point that many people consider a point of pride he seems to think is quite personal. I'm actually quite shocked at his reply. My advise, if he doesn't like the logging requirements, don't hunt the cache. I know in my area, a cache was set up for this very purpose, I think the owner was doing a school paper or something, so for several months he asked everyone who found it to list their GPS, I didn't hear one complaint or grumble. In this case I think the owner has since lifted the extra logging requirement because he finished his research, but the cache is still in place.

Two questions... Are you selecting "home coordinates" AND a state? Are you choosing any conflicting attributes such as found and not found or owned and not owned?

If you just preview it, no, if you actually run it, yes. What options are you choosing? Hint: always preview a PQ before scheduling it to run.

I've had a lot of similar problems as every one else and have been thinking. Here is my proposed solution: - Give each user 5 PQ's per day, as it is now - Pool unused PQ's. Naturally the pool should have a limit and I would even be in favor of a small limit of maybe 15 - Continue to cap scheduled PQ's (marked "Run this query every week on the days checked") to 5 This has a lot of advantages to everyone and fixes these issues: - If PQ's lap (run the next day) - If PQ's don't run at all on a day due to the PQ generator being down or too busy - If someone occasionally needs to run a couple extra PQs, like for a vacation or something - It doesn't give any extra PQ's to users that area already maxing out the system running 5/day - It gives more flexibility to users that don't max out their 5/day

I think to a lot of users, the GPSr they choose is almost a pride factor and they love to share that info, at least us Garmin users anyway . Maybe Magellan users aren't quite as proud ? At a lot of events (where users aren't carrying gps receivers anyway) its probably one of the top questions asked.