Yellow ants

This is not helpful - or respectful - commentary. We are aware of the inconsistency and what is required to address it. And the Block Party may not be of interest to you, but there is no need to frown about it. Color inside the lines, please. Another example of Groundspeak's brilliant customer service. Bless your heart!

Excellent, cheers.

I don't see any option on the maps page to get rid of the Google map and go back to the nice Mapquest one. Can someone point me to it?

NO THEY ARE NOT. Geebus. Last week, a Premium and a "normal" member saw exactly the same maps. The Premium member had the extra option to hide/show caches based on their type. Now, a Premium and a "normal" member see exactly the same maps. The Premium member has the extra option to hide/show caches based on their type.

Since when were "issues" ever solved by having a meeting? I sincerely don't understand all the fuss here. I'll grant you that it sucks right now for the people in areas with little OSM coverage, but conversely the coverage is frequently better when you get to more exotic places like e.g. Marrakesh, where OSM got the streets in the souk mapped. I also find that the cartographic quality of google's maps has been declining in the last year or so, culminating with misplaced English-language labels strewn all over the maps now. And still, it's not like the geocaching.com maps are the absolutely only way to see caches on a map. Have a look at the OpenCycleMap. It doesn't have hillshading but it does have contour lines. And - as opposed to the google terrain map - it actually has other stuff than roads on it at the same time. Biggest loss at the moment seems to be quality satellite images.

Where does this misconception come from? A premium membership gives you: Ability to Favo(u)rite a cache (BFD) Statistics (BFD) Filters on maps, allowing you to hide the different types of caches (nice) Lists (nice) Custom searches aka PQs (killer app!) Email notifications (nice) Caches along a route (meh, can be useful from time to time) Support geocaching.com aka "pay the bills" Note that everybody have access to the same maps, whether paying or non-paying. A lot of people here clearly have NO CLUE why they are paying for premium membership.

Thanks for kicking Google maps to the kerb where they belong. Shame the sat images have to go with them, but you can of course still use GSAK et al for that. I hope that, should you for some reason decide to allow people to pay for access to google maps on gc.com, you will keep it separate from the regular premium membership and offer it as an optional upgrade. I have no interest paying for something I can easily get for free.

Forcing people to not use standard functionality (Ctrl+P) and instead use a small link that is hidden in the middle of the page is called "an abysmal user interface" in specialist terms. The problem could easily be solved by creating a print-specific CSS style sheet, but based on the available evidence I sincerely doubt Groundspeak's developers have the technical proficiency to pull that off.

You start by installing AdBlockPlus (works with Firefox or Chrome) and then enter the lines above as custom filters. If you are using Internet Explorer, you will need to look into the custom CSS someone else posted here, as ABP doesn't work in IE.

With the caveat that some of these might be out of date, here is what I currently have to restore some semblance of sanity to gc.com: geocaching.com##div#Print geocaching.com#div(class^=CacheDetailPageAds clear) geocaching.com#div(class^=FavoritesStatusWidget) geocaching.com#div(class^=MasterPageAds) geocaching.com#div(class^=mxStats) geocaching.com#div(id^=feedback-tab) geocaching.com#fieldset(class^=DisclaimerWidget) geocaching.com#fieldset(class^=NotesWidget) geocaching.com#footer geocaching.com#p(class=SocialMediaIcons NoBottomSpacing right) geocaching.com#p(class^=logOwnerAvatar) geocaching.com#p(class^=logOwnerBadge) geocaching.com#p(class^=logOwnerStats) There are 13 now after I grabbed the print-hiding rule upthread EDIT: Three more here ... geocaching.com#a(id^=ctl00_hlNavResources) geocaching.com#a(id^=ctl00_hlNavShop) geocaching.com#a(id^=ctl00_hlNavVideos) Thank you for your valuable input. Did you notice that the "morons" outnumber you infinity to one in this thread before posting your pearls of wisdom?

Love the new avatars! And who cares about the exact dates? Just kidding; this might be one of the most inane updates ever. I now maintain no less than 12 ABP rules to keep the worst cruft off the gc.com pages.

The mapquest "map" is completely useless, unless its primary purpose is to deliver a copyright message. Get rid of that. If you're too cheap to pay for the extra gmap impressions, put in OpenStreetMap.

KPBS are posting short headlines to their twitter page @ http://twitter.com/kpbsnews The Fark thread is amazing, with transcripts of the scanner traffic.

Opencaching.de does a good job for Germany. But it has free GPX files, so I guess you can say it doesn't offer what Groundspeak offers. Startup?!? Groundspeak was founded in 2000. That's practically mesozoic in internet time!

That doesn't make sense. I can run at most 35 PQs per week; having 40, 400 or 4000 PQs lying dormant associated with my user account doesn't increase CPU usage; at worst it increases database storage by a few kilobytes. You are correct. The amount of CPU usage to display an already generated PQ is very small compared to the CPU usage to generate the PQ. That is one of the reasons why there are limits on PQ generation and no limits on the number of times you can view the PQ. You're still not making sense. I can modify my queries all I want; and since a modified query might be almost but not quite identical to the old one, or totally different from the original query, this must be exactly as computationally expensive as creating a new query (since you are, in effect, creating a new query).

That doesn't make sense. I can run at most 35 PQs per week; having 40, 400 or 4000 PQs lying dormant associated with my user account doesn't increase CPU usage; at worst it increases database storage by a few kilobytes.

Sure they are. They can allow IRA, NRA, ETA, AAA, WTO and any other TLA-sponsored caches for all I care, and even if I did care I couldn't do one iota to stop them. What's confusing to me and, apparently, other of their customers is how they apply their guidelines with seeming inconsistency. As an addendum to your "American coy run by Americans", here's a blurb (first paragraph, no less) from the Groundspeak Inc. "About Us" page: Emphasis added by me. If you want to run a global operation, you also need to cater to your global customers, not just the Americans. Part of that, to me, at least - and apparently also to Groundspeak until these caches were approved in spite of former decisions to the opposite on similar caches - means keeping caching free of political or other inflammatory content.

Then why aren't the caches on the gc.com google maps modified as well? They show up right on target, allowing ...

Sure you are. Do you need a tupperware box for that? Seriously, this isn't about remembering. It's about Groundspeak Inc. and their rules, er, guidelines for international geocaching in a world that holds people of other nationalities than American. What would you think if you, prior to a business trip to Cairo, made a PQ and saw a bunch of "Remember 9-11" caches? There are stupid people in all nations of the world. Why do we need to bring that into our hobby?

Oh, just like at an event?

Indeed. I think I'll make a "Remember the heroes of Bunker Hill" cache, commemorating the unsung British heroes who selflessly died fighting an inherently evil terrorist insurgency.

I did not name you in any posts. I have not addressed you directly as you have with me in at least two posts previous in this thread. I have not made any personal attacks in any of my comments. I am not harassing you simply by participating in a forum discussion that you are choosing to participate in. I hope that a third party can look at this sequence of posts in this thread and verify that I've been very reasonable in it while you have chosen to attack my character with suggestions of dropping a giant silver spoon (from my mouth) and making it personal with statements like (paraphrasing) "juggler's never placed a cache". Well put, and some well-argued posts on the topic from you, Juggler. I have been wondering about the exact same things.

I think you mean impeccable ...

How do you know? All the GPX files I've looked at have been correctly UTF-8 encoded. Including this one. (The cache in question is GCXVE4. No problems here.)

It's irrelevant for all but US lawyers. I generally remove superfluous elements on sites I visit often in order to gain screen real estate (nice when browsing in 1024x768 from my laptop), to quicker read the actual content and have a calmer web user experience.