brendan714
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Posts posted by brendan714
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Also, when I try to upload images to my cache page, I randomly get this error:
It's not related to image size - my image is less than 5 MB. If I refresh the page, the image uploads properly.
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11 hours ago, SawaSawa said:
Image uploads seem, for me at least to have a number of problems some new and some old:
1) In the past when preparing a cache description for a new hide, it was possible to upload multiple images one after the other from the same image upload page.
Now after an image has loaded, you are taken back to the cache 'home' page to start a new edit. This is really frustrating.
I do agree with this point as being a frustrating change from what it used to be. While writing up a new cache page this morning, the process of adding photos took several additional clicks. It would be nice to be able to upload a photo and stay on the photo upload page rather than get re-directed back to the cache page. Or even better, if a bulk image upload option were available (similar to cache logs where you can upload several images at once), that would be ideal!
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1 hour ago, Oceansazul said:
Thanks for all of your ongoing feedback. We have been working in the background to address bugs you have raised in this thread - thank you for the detailed repro steps when you have them, those are so helpful in isolating the issues. We are working to increase the photo limit to 10 MiB, from 5. We hope to have that fix out by the end of this week.
Thank you, that will be a great improvement!
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Honestly, I'm very disappointed that the 5MB photo restriction has not been acknowledged and/or fixed by now.
I consider myself reasonably tech-savvy, and I cannot figure out how to even make my smartphone take photos in a lower resolution (IF I wanted to, which I don't). Since I don't even know how to take photos with a lower resolution (if that's even possible?), I'm left with the option of editing/compressing my photos - another thing I don't know how to do without dedicated software.
Long story short, this restriction for a service that encourages writing detailed logs with photos is extremely disappointing and frustrating. Please, this must be fixed.
As another poster mentioned, the game has continually been made more user-friendly for mobile (smartphone) users, yet this restriction takes that 2 steps backwards. Please realize that this will lead to people simply not uploading any photos to their logs, which I'm sure is not an intended side-effect.
For something that was never an issue in the past, it's frustrating that it is now a problem.
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I always get this error the first time I try to log a cache on any particular day:
Once I refresh the page it works fine, but it does seem like a bug to me.
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OK, I have to echo the comment that the 5MB photo limitation is incredibly frustrating, especially with pretty much all smartphones taking photos larger than 5MB by default. It means I either have to a) reduce the quality on my smartphone, b) edit the photos after I take them to compress to a smaller size or c) simply upload fewer or no photos at all to my geocaching logs.
I honestly don't want to do any of those things - it worked just fine previously?-
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A couple comments:
- I like the new image upload feature. After I click on "add details" for an image, it would be nice if the image preview was larger. It's a bit small to see what's going on in the image. If I zoom in the webpage, it looks like it's a high quality preview of the image, it's just that the size is really small.
- I wish there was a 2nd "post" button at the top or somewhere easily clickable so I don't have to scroll down to then find the post button. It would be a nice quality of life improvement when logging dozens of caches in one sitting.
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On 10/27/2023 at 12:25 PM, thebruce0 said:
It's the age-old question...
Since when is it an age-old question to archive caches potentially in good shape? Whether or not they have an active owner?
On 10/27/2023 at 12:25 PM, thebruce0 said:That would be an issue regardless of whether the listing was archived or not, if the owner is non-responsive. Better to not have any connection back to gc, ya?
Disagree, there are plenty of caches in Provincial Parks near me that have inactive owners. If the cache is still there in good shape, what's the worry?
On 10/27/2023 at 12:25 PM, thebruce0 said:And #1 is a great example of a reviewer changing their mind because they were convinced otherwise.
My argument is that this shouldn't be happening in the first place. Re #1: had nobody piped up, a cache very likely still in good shape would have been archived in a Provincial Park.
And that's not the first time a similar occurrence like this has happened... reviewers should be especially careful with cache in Alberta Provincial Parks because there's currently a moratorium on new cache hides in this particular area (Kananaskis). Meaning if a cache is archived, it's gone forever.
On 10/27/2023 at 12:25 PM, thebruce0 said:As we're often reminded, in those cases that people raise in the forum, there's almost certainly something else amiss about the situation that's not readily apparent to us.
I very much doubt that in the most recent case. The reviewer explicitly says "This cache has been flagged by Geocaching HQ as one that may need attention as it has not been found for a long time."
Since when is 1 year with 1 DNF considered "a long time"? Why is the CHS even flagging that?
On 10/27/2023 at 12:25 PM, thebruce0 said:Well, that's for them to decide, ya? Or appeals
Are there seriously people in the geocaching community who think a cache (assuming no obvious issues) should be put up on the archival chopping block after only 1 or 2 DNFs? Anybody who has actually played the game should understand that a cache can very VERY easily be DNFed even by experienced geocachers once or twice. 5 or 6 DNFs by experienced cachers? Now that sounds a little more serious to me.
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5 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:
Well, considering it's reviewers who took action, it's not the CHS that's of issue here which only provides reviewers flags for possible checking, it's your opinion of the judgment of the reviewers' call.
I suppose you're right. I just fail to see the benefit of archiving a cache that is likely still there - regardless of whether the owner is active or not. This is especially true in backcountry locations which may be in regulated government parks, etc.
What would the park managers think if they found out geotrash was left behind? It's not a good look for geocaching, I can tell you that for sure.
I certainly accept that reviewers are human and are volunteers. But as part of the "job", I would expect a review of the location and latest logs to confirm the cache is actually a candidate for archival. I think most people would agree that 1 or 2 DNFs should not be enough for permanent archival of a more remote cache placed in a government park (unless of course there is a very clear issue or the cache is proven gone - cases which don't apply to my above examples).
1) The CHS should not be alerting reviewers after only 1 or 2 DNFs.
2) The reviewers should not be taking action after only 1 or 2 DNFs, especially when the DNFs are questionable and especially not in backcountry/remote areas in regulated parks.
I'm not asking for perfection, but I think there's room for improvement here.
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I have to admit that I'm feeling frustrated by the Geocaching HQ CHS algorithm and its effect on backcountry geocaches. There have been several caches in the past couple years that have been hit in my area, including:
The 2 DNF logs should not be grounds for disabling and eventual archival - especially when you read that the DNFers did not even make it to GZ to conduct an actual search. Some local geocachers posted notes on the page which thankfully convinced the reviewer to reverse their decision. I am surprised that the reviewer did not review the DNF logs prior to disabling - surely it would have been archived had the community not noticed.
A very difficult hide near the top of a mountain - I found this cache and I am certain it will still be there based on how and where it was hidden. Sadly, despite the 4.5* difficulty rating, the cache was archived after being DNFed by only 2 separate groups. Also despite the fact it took 6 years for the first (and only) find, with the cache being DNFed by 4 different groups along the way.
The latest one from this week. One DNF in the past year was enough to get this one flagged by the CHS and disabled by the reviewer. Yes, the CO appears to be inactive or at least intermittently active - but one DNF alone should not be enough to trigger the CHS... or the reviewer to disable, IMO.
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I once again ask Geocaching HQ and the reviewers to give a little bit more leniency to backcountry geocaches vs urban hides. Caches in the backwoods are what made this hobby what it is today. And yet, the cases above are examples of interesting hides off the beaten track (which may all still be in place!) that got placed on the chopping block because of the CHS algorithm. One got saved thanks to locals voicing up, one got chopped, and now another is about to get chopped.
An urban cache and a backcountry cache cannot be treated the same. At the very least, I ask the reviewers to very carefully review the DNFs - some of these lonely caches may span years between finds. If nothing else, a few extra DNFs on the cache ensures that it is actually gone. I see no benefit in archiving a backcountry cache if there's a chance it may still be there. Geotrash in the woods is not a great look for the sustainability aspects of this hobby.
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Click on any disabled cache on the map and it will not pop up with information, I get a long white bar instead.
Getting onto the cache page of any disabled cache is now much more challenging.
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They're not archived caches but this is definitely a bug. Disabled caches don't pop up with any information when you click on them on the map.
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2 hours ago, Max and 99 said:
One option is to create a second account that includes solved coordinates that you don't find. So the map will show all the regular geocaches plus the solved coordinates.
Nice idea, but that's more effort than I'm willing to expend.
2 hours ago, predator1337 said:i found a good solution for me:
i have a samsung tablet with a famous geocaching app for android and in this app, i save all found and solved caches in a circle of 15 km arround my home coordinates.
i enable the 161m circle in this app, look on the map and i can see, where is place for new caches.
is this not an idea for you?
Aha! This appears to be the correct solution for me as it's easy & fast - just what I'm looking for - thanks! I could say (a lot) more, but I won't because it might get me in trouble
1 hour ago, Viajero Perdido said:PQs do include corrected coords for mysteries, etc, but no indication of the fact these are corrected coords. The API, eg "Update Cache" in Locus, does include that indication so you can choose, but in either case, you should be seeing the corrected location ... IF the app chooses to respect this. Groundspeak's beginner app chooses to ignore that, and if has both original and corrected available, insists on original. A design choice.
I suspect you're loading PQs into the Groundspeak app (are you?), which might then decide to check online and give you "better" appearance instead, all that purty geo-art in the original "art" locations. Ready to try another app?
No, I'm old school. I still run PQ's and load them up into my GPSr. I like to plan trips at home on my laptop, then in the field I like to use my GPSr, supplemented occasionally with my phone. But I prefer to geocache with my GPSr over phone. Loading PQ's into another app is a decent idea, but I think the option above is by far the easiest - I can just open up the map of the famous geocaching android app, then I get exactly what I want.
1 hour ago, arisoft said:This might be an accidentally left loophole but My Finds Pocket Query contains corrected coordinates.
The only problem is to find a suitable tool for rendering the content properly. The file may be too big for many tools. For example, I found this tool suitable for this task.
Good idea, thanks! Yes, finding a program with maps to read everything effectively is the most difficult part of this suggestion.
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The last thread I started was closed but did not provide a reasonable means of resolution to my problem. Although I would strongly suggest that such a feature should exist to see caches at the corrected coordinates, that is not the purpose of this thread. Really what I am looking for are some suggestions given the current limitations.
Let's say I want to hide a cache, but I want to view all the possible open locations by first looking at where all the existing caches are on the map. I want to make sure that if I choose a spot, that it isn't already taken up by an unknown cache or multi. I also don't want to email the reviewer to ask if a spot is open, and I really don't want to go hide something for it only to be proximity rejected later. All the puzzles and multis in the area I've solved, found and included final waypoints as corrected coordinates (let's ignore any stages of a multi for now).
I do not want to get a coordinate check. I'm looking in the hills/forest areas out of the city. I don't have a specific place in mind - I'd much rather look at a map and get an understanding of roughly what locations are open for hides. Taking a stab in the dark and getting a coordinate check of a random location is a waste of my time (and probably the reviewer's too) as looking at a map with corrected cache coordinates would solve my problem in 10 seconds.
I seem to recall that I used to be able to run a Pocket Query and the map would show all of the caches at their corrected coordinates, but for some reason that doesn't seem to work for me any more (?). All the unknown caches are still shown at the posted coordinates.
Does anybody have any methods available to see corrected coordinates for unknown caches on the map?
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8 minutes ago, Jayeffel said:
If I recall from previous message is either asking the reviewer about a certain set of coordinates or set up a new cache without publishing it so the coordinates are checked -- can be edited or deleted if needed due to response from reviewer.
No, I don't want to do that though. I'm looking in the hills/forest areas out of the city. I don't have a specific place in mind - I'd much rather look at a map and get an understanding of roughly what locations are open for hides. Taking a stab in the dark and getting a coordinate check of a random location is a waste of my time (and probably the reviewer's too) as looking at a map with corrected cache coordinates would solve my problem in 10 seconds.
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Let's say I want to hide a cache, but I want to view all the possible open locations by first looking at where all the existing caches are on the map. I want to make sure that if I choose a spot, that it isn't already taken up by an unknown cache or multi. I also don't want to email the reviewer to ask if a spot is open, and I really don't want to go hide something for it only to be proximity rejected later.
All the puzzles and multis in the area I've solved, found and included final waypoints as corrected coordinates (let's ignore any stages of a multi for now).
I seem to recall that I used to be able to run a Pocket Query and the map would show all of the caches at their corrected coordinates, but for some reason that doesn't seem to work for me any more. All the unknown caches are still at the posted coordinates.
How can I see the corrected coordinates for unknown caches on the map?
I think this has been suggested many times before, but a toggle on the browse map that switches between posted coordinates and corrected coordinates would be VERY helpful (and please make it sticky as I'd leave it on corrected coordinates forever, I don't care about geoart).
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I've said this with almost every other botched and buggy release before but... I'm sure it'd be easy to find a small dedicated group of experienced geocachers who would be willing to provide you with useful feedback before rolling out a major update to the public. It would probably only take a day or two to collect comments (I'm not sure how long it would be to implement changes, but at least you would be aware of some issues and could prioritize them).
I would be willing to suggest that a short internal review process with your clients would result in a lot more happy customers (and/or fewer angry customers) when you roll out an update to the public. (PS, I'm volunteering my name to help beta test future updates)
As a paying customer myself, it is quite frustrating to see almost every update take one step forward and two steps backwards.
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- Note: the results will stay within the existing 1,000 results limit.
This is a major limitation of the search system
- Info: displays if a geocache is part of a GeoTour or has an active Needs Maintenance attribute.
This is not very helpful, in my opinion, since most caches are NOT part of a GeoTour and a lot of caches that have an active "Needs Maintenance" attribute are owned by inactive or inattentive cache owners. The first 3 caches I clicked on with the NM attribute appear to be in perfectly fine shape. It's just that the owner didn't clear the icon. I don't think it's a helpful feature, if anything it seems distracting and misleading.
- Trackables: displays whether a cache currently has trackables logged inside it.
I think a small trackable icon on the left hand side would be better than a whole column devoted to this.
- View the region/country a cache belongs to below the geocache name.
This is good!
- Click the Favorite point total of a geocache in the search results to view the percentage of Favorite points to find logs:
This all looks very bland.
My additional comments:
- There seems to be a bug in the "home location"?? When I select "home location" from the filter option, it acts like my home is several hundred km from my actual home.
- I agree with the others that searching and mapping archived caches is a very important feature that has been lost.
- I like the option to filter for caches not found by others. How about an option for caches not owned by others? When I do a search of mutually unfound caches with friends, their owned caches should not be included in that list.
- I still think there is a lot of white space between rows of geocaches. This could be compressed significantly to prevent a ton of scrolling. With the search filling my entire screen, I can only see 8 caches. Compare that to the old search where I could see 14 caches at once because the rows were more compressed.
- The page option is much better than the infinitely scrollable list. That is a good change!
- Sorting by distance does not work properly. Mystery caches seem to be out of order. Maybe a difference between posted coords and actual/saved coords?
- Overall I like the filter options, but the list display of the caches following a search is very much inferior to how they were displayed using the old search. Once again, it feels like this update for the new search result list is much more inefficient (more scrolling, more white space, less info) than the old search / old way of listing caches.
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2 hours ago, Max and 99 said:
The deadline to log this geocache has been extended to December 31st 2022.
Given that most of the logs on the page appear to be about 5 minutes worth of effort, I am very surprised another year is being given to complete this task. You literally just need to pick up a piece of trash anywhere in the world, take a photo and log where you were at the time.
If anything, why not another one to encourage those who completed this task almost a full year ago to do it again?
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This is a useful feature to get a sense of the amount of time an adventure will take!
I think breaking up the first time slot to 0-15 and 16-30 would be helpful. I have found some AL's that take 5 minutes to complete because all 5 stages were within very close proximity.
And on the other end, I think having some more time categories above 120 min would be helpful as well. Maybe adding a few more time categories like 120 - 180, 181 - 240 and >240? I think that there's a guideline/suggestion that Adventures are to take less than 2 hours, but many take much longer than that if the locations are spaced out...
One more comment: why is it still called an Adventure LAB cache? Why not just an Adventure cache? The lab part is probably confusing for a lot of people (it kind of is for me, and I'm a more experienced geocacher). I think this experiment has been developed well beyond the "lab" stage?
It's confusing because the terms "Adventure Lab" and "Adventure" are used interchangeably. Go to the profile page on the app and everything is simply referred to as an "Adventure". Go to the forums, go to the online Adventure web pages, go to the terms of use, everything is called "Adventure Lab".
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As an update to this thread: In early April of this year I changed the posted coordinates of all my challenges which were experiencing trouble with newbies. Rather than having the physical cache at the posted coordinates, I moved the posted coords to a bogus location and added a visible final waypoint to the page with cache coordinates also clearly indicated in the description.
Since then, I have received zero 'found it' logs by newbies who found the cache but do not qualify for the challenge.
I have received one or two newbie DNFs (likely cachers who go looking at my bogus coordinates and fail to read through the cache description).
So, it would appear that the problem is solved - hooray!
That said, I am still very strongly of the opinion that challenge caches should have a separate icon. There are still many geocachers who don't understand the concept / rules of a challenge cache vs other mystery caches. Taking challenge caches out of the "mystery" bin just makes logical sense to me as one small step in the right direction.
Thank you to those who suggested helpful solutions ( @HoochDog @Isonzo Karst)
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I have infrequently been getting error messages when I try to open my search map. This has only started in the past 2-3 weeks:
It happens when I scroll down on a cache page and click "View Larger Map" and am directed to this link:
https://www.geocaching.com/play/map/GC9HGR9
If I refresh, it seems to work. But a lot of times I will get this error page.
I am on Chrome 94.0.4606.81
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34 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:
I'm probably just wildly making something out of nothing, but I'm curious....
In today's newsletter there's a big "Coming Soon" banner over an image of attributes. Could mean absolutely nothing, or a teaser of something in the works, and it has caught my interest.
Anyone know?
I saw the same and wondered the same. The attribute to the left of the horse is one that I have never seen before...?
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1 hour ago, Mausebiber said:
From my experience, if you leave everything blank it selects just everything, so the default search includes all cache types, all cache sizes, all difficulties and all terrains?. The filtering starts, once you select any of the items.
So, no cache type selected = blank = all cache type, cache type selected = small = just small.
Hmm, I agree with you that this seems to be the case. But it doesn't really make intuitive sense until you play with the search a little bit.
Why not just check all the boxes by default, then it's clear that everything is selected? Especially when there's a specific option to "select all" when everything is blank?
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Release Notes (Website: New geocache and trackable logging flow) - November 2, 2023
in Geocaching HQ communications
Posted
For the record I was using Chrome, so that does line up with my experience.