wesi

Looking through my posts from back when you introduced the "mess-age center", I totally hated it. I still don't like it, but it DOES keep clutter out of my mailbox. For people sending in answers to my Earthcaches, it is easy to handle from within the app while out in the field. So, overall, Message Center and I ain't friends, but we get along. The current update seems to have removed some of the layout nuisance, and has made things cleaner and slicker. The "you got mail" orange goofball seems to tell the truth for the first time in a year or so. So far so good. Time will tell how it behaves in real life, but on first sight, I like the changes. Now, speaking of email clutter .... can you maybe consider adding an option to TBs so that "discover" logs can be set to not trigger an email? One of my TBs was unfortunate enough to attend a GIGA event. Of course the TB itself got lost or stolen, as is sadly par for the course at most large events. But I am still getting buried in "discover" emails, two months after the event.

I understand that the plump tangerine floating over the "Message" icon means that I have new messages, and that it clears once I read them. But ever since the "Calendar" update (which I like) went live, I also seem to have the tangerine floating over my avatar icon. And I plain just can't figure out what I need to "click" to acknowledge whatever news for me that it desperately wants to indicate. It temporarily goes away, but next time I visit the page, it is BAAACK. I know I have five unpublished caches, and 30 draft logs that I have yet to submit. I hope that's not the reason for the tangerine? If not, then what is?

I bow my head in awe of your secret knowledge! Thank you, this actually works! Now, why would you ... No, never mind . .

Aye, there's the rub. I sure understand you can't do everything at once. But .... Clyde (master of eternal GSAK fame) and ganja1447 (amazing overlord of project-gc.com) both actually created and are maintaining their massively useful community tools WITHOUT the benefit of a steady income stream from Premium Members, trackable buyers, and lucrative corporate sponsors. As a chef, I would be seriously embarrassed if someone took an item off my lunch menu, and turned it into a stellar gourmet meal, at no extra charge. "resources" ?? Really ??? Nothing personal, Nate. Remember, we b*tch because we care. .

Howdy, Nate! Thanks for joining the party. You'll notice that your customers are hard to please. Don't fret, nothing personal. We b*tch because we care. Speaking of which, I'm wondering how hard it could be to finally add MEGA and CITO to the available filters on the homepage search? "Event" just doesn' suffice, I don't want to scroll through 50 ice cream socials just to find the next CITO in my 'hood! I've been kinda resigned to doing my searches and cache sleuthing via GSAK, or on project-gc.com. Using the API, they can do things that geocaching.com - even after years - still can't seem to figure out, in spite of having direct access to the backend?! .

With all due respect, dear HiddenGnome, geocaching.com did not necessarily go to great lengths to make themselves appear as if they care about user feedback over the past 2+ years or so. So I can certainly understand cachers who opt to take matters into their own hands and clean up their news feed by unfriending, rather than to wait for a future update that likely won't ever happen. After all, I am still running my procmail "frogturd" script from 3 years ago because I don't care squat for all that marketing and images and twitter and facebook clutter that you put into the emails. There was lots of feedback against it, but it never changed. This thread shows a lot of VERY sensible web site designs, by web professionals no less, who would LOVE to help you with getting things right. It is a bit of a stretch from a for-profit to a non-profit, but I hope you eventually get there, post all your code as OpenSource onto GITHUB, and watch the site TAKE OFF to never-before-imagined levels, at no cost. Until then: procmail and unfriending: it is.

+1. And add a section for owned caches that have the "Needs Maintenance" flag set Right now, it is more a scrollboard and whitespaceboard than a dashboard

Yep. The MESSagecenter bug is back. My "browser is not supported" irrespective of which browser or OS that I try to use. Edit: ... and 20min later, it is working again. Arrgh!

+1. Hello, Groundspeak. You made everyone move to the Messenger, ignoring long forum threads that pled for the ability to opt out, and asked for the possibility to retain regular email as the sole communication channel. Now, can you kindly make sure the messenger doesn't stop at "mess", and also includes the more helpful "enger" bit? Thanks.

Can you please maybe consider bringing back the option of turning what the map displays into a POCKET QUERY? Yes, I am one of the old fashioned cachers who use a real GPS, not a mobile phone, and I don't care squat about lists or offline bookmarks or backpacks or listicles or whatever. If I can't load a search result into GSAK, I don't use. Period.

Apologies for bumping this old thread, but I wanted to follow up in case this is helpful for some cacher who faces the same decision. Yes, I actually got a 64s for Christmas, and have been using it since. The transition from my beloved 60CSx was pretty smooth, most of the interface is sufficiently similar to ease you right in. What I like best: - finding caches didn't change much - waypoints with reasonable names, no more 16 char limits - full GC listings in the GPS, with all the information needed to find a multi or log an Earthcache. Since I'm usually "offline-caching", this is a big boon to me. No more print-outs or hand notes! - massive storage space! I added a 32GB SD card. And I have been all over the place, east coast, west coast, europe, but never had to delete anything yet to make room for new waypoints or topo maps. - the USB connector cover and battery compartment cover are way more sturdy in the 64S than they were in the 60CSx What I dont like quite as much: - takes a longer time to start up - accuracy and lock-on time did not improve much. The addition of Glosnass seems to primarily add jitter, not reliability - coordinate averaging didn't improve in accuracy. the interface makes a big show of it, but lies just as much as ever. as before, the best proof is to walk away 100yds and to come back. - the 64s eats way more battery. and in cold weather, it displays the "battery low" warning about 10 seconds before the screen goes blank. - switching between waypoint and geocache navigation plumb doesn't make sense to me. i don't get it why there are like 10 different "dashboards" for what basically all is: navigation. - I haven't found a way yet to retrieve POIs with ExpertGPS. After a hike, I get the track, but not the GCs I marked as found, because the GCs (as exported from GSAK) are POIs. If you know how, please share! Overall, I haven't used my resuscitated 60CSx much since I got the 64s, which - shortcomings aside - I guess is a sign that the new toy is at least equivalent.

Nice work. Though a [X] Plaintext Email option on the Profile/Preferences page would be even better, and not require any such glue logic within the email tools. This was brought up umpteen times when the email format changed to the annoying new HTML default in July 2014. Groundspeak though continues to send Facebook and Twitter icons, plus lots of other HTML crud that nobody wants, particularly not on mobile devices. I also use glue logic - my "frogturd" procmail script removes most of the mess. But GC.com is the only service where I have to pre-process emails to make them less annoying. And it is even a service that I pay membership fees for, whereas plenty of other services that I use give me the choice between HTML and ASCII email for free. Go figure.

Did you perchance today change the format of the notification emails, without posting release notes? I have an elaborate procmail rule that removes all the frog turd from your mails, and today, it got bent all out of shape. All the found logs that I got on my caches were messed up. Nevermind, I will adjust the filter. But it would be nice if code changes that affect paying members could be accompanied by release notes. Thanks!

Helpful feedback, thanks everyone! Based on your comments, someone dear to me now suggests, thinly veiled, that Santa might potentially maybe eventually who knows probably leave a 64s in a stocking cache somewhere offtrail in the woods. I know that Santa is awfully unpredictable and unreliable when compared to Amazon, but I still hope that my repaired 60CSx survives long enough to find that cache .

@everyone, thanks for the feedback and advice! @sviking, there is a transparent plastic piece inside that serves as counter for the top two third of screws that hold the back cover. This piece broke into fragments that scattered inside the unit. The two halves must have shifted against each other as a result and must have also shifted the board inside, because the LCD display socket was broken off at one side and the LCD flex PCB connector didn't fit/stay put anymore. That's what I ended up soldering, which was a pain because that stuff is TINY. Obviously, with the top screws useless, it also didn't close properly anymore, a circumstance that I fixed with super glue and epoxy, but this makes future repairs unlikely. -> Hence the Q about the 64s. But at least I got the 60CSx back into working order, so that I can say goodbye properly. After all we've been thru together, this seems only fitting .

Today, I accidentally dropped my beloved 60CSx onto a solid floor. Kerplunk! After like four hours of tinkering, soldering, super-glueing and epoxying, I'm happy to say that I got it back to working order. But it sure isn't watertight anymore, so it's downhill from here. The 64s would be my obvious choice for a replacement, but reading the reviews, it sounds like the only people who like the 64 are the ones who never knew the 60. I can (grudgingly, by carrying spares) deal with battery life that sucks. What I can't have is unreliability, because I'm not just caching but also backpacking offtrail in remote areas. Any advice from owners who know both devices? Tnx!

Was there an update today [Nov 9] that triggers emails for "visited" logs on TBs?? I got a couple of them just now? And if they persist, without ability to adjust, I'll have to update my procmail rules to /dev/null them, because I sure have no interest to receive one email per visit of geocachers who check my TBs into every cache that they find along the ET Trail...

Very true. It seems as if these days, for some, all caches are Wherigo's, where you just have to "walk into" the approximate bubble of the coordinates, so that your phone can automatically increment the smiley count, and robo-log a "TFTCB" (thanks for the coordinate bubble). Kudos to Dave Ulmer for inventing the game before smartphones were ubiquitous. It would be a VERY different game otherwise, and one that I likely wouldn't play.

What is wrong with community maintenance? Completing the Jasmer would likely be impossible by now, if it weren't for community maintenance. I have found lots of great hides where the original owner "disappeared" without adopting the cache over. If the local community takes over and properly looks after the hide, what's wrong with that? I'm also familiar with a case where the community looks after the hides of a deceased cacher. Her estate never claimed the GC account, but her original mountaintop hides remain, and are painstakingly maintained by her friends. I'm pretty sure she would have loved that tribute more than anything else. Reading the GC.com announcement, it sounds to me like they primarily aim at "unmaintained", rather than "ownerless". I certainly agree to the former.

Looking at the statistics of the "Road Trip", there are 450'000 who got the first souvenir, but only about 12'000 who passed the finish line. 12'000 cachers. Across a globe that is littered with 2.8mio caches. That ain't a whole lot. And not a reassuring sign of widespread "community" engagement. But this explains the recent changes to the website, with the "Search" and "Message Center". My guess is that "clicks" and "ad revenue" are on steady decline, and The Powers are panicking. New cachers likely don't ever visit the web site and just write their "Found it" two word logs (at least twice, for every cache) via mobile app. Facebook was in a similar pinch three years ago, when they just couldn't figure out how to reel in the mobile phone population for revenue. They worked it out, and my guess is that Groundspeak right now is just copying from that playbook. Frankly, under these circumstances, I can "understand" and accept the changes to the site, as well as the site features that used to be useful, but were made less so. Still, I thought we were "friends", and a community. Why not come clean, and make your reasoning clear? If you tell me that Signal's Lily Pad is 2mio$ in the doldrums because of declining ad revenue, and this is why you either have to ramp up the site visits, or the membership fee, hey, you got my vote to do either or both. You know, at least 12'000 of us still love you and this hobby. But we don't feel all that loved-back lately.

Wow. I managed to get the exact result of what I wanted from the new search! If you just felt the Earth rotation hesitate for a nanosecond, this was probably it. https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?origin=New+York,+United+States&ot=1&g=33&types=2,3,8,137,5,11&fav=20&o=2&e=1 . Perfect! But now how do I turn these 489 hides into a pocket query or GPX download, so that I can actually *USE* them? What am I missing?

How about stopping to "break what works" until the replacement functionality is really proven to work? (Thankuflly) I wasn't in the beta program of either search or message center, but from what I hear, the beta testers predicted a good part of the mess that ensued. So what gives? If you insist on pandering to the smartphone-only demographic, why not allow for a phase-out period where you give the users the choice of what they prefer? And if the usage numbers show that the users prefer the "old" search or email functionality, to revert back? Your customer is the outdoorsy cacher. Once you switch to an approach where your customer is the paying advertiser, and the cacher is the product being sold, there is no turning back, and the hobby won't ever be the same. I hope we haven't crossed that Jordan yet, but after the recent changes, I'm frankly not sure.

Well.. yes. Europe loves dreaming of and virtually visiting foreign places, and picking up apparently available smileys along the way is sort-of accepted as a result of this wanderlust. Cheating? Maybe. The flip side of this is though that Europeans, and particularly Germans, are almost embarrassingly honest if they lose or misplace a Geocoin. I have received four! replacement coins from Germans so far, who were absolutely contrite to have lost or misplaced my coin or TB that they took from a cache. Likewise, cachers in the US have fudged up a dozen of my trackables, but I have yet to see anyone even fessing up, let alone make amends. And on the topic of codes in caches: Don't. Making everything massively complicated for the 99.5% of honest people just to maybe catch the 0.5% cheaters is what the IRS do. And it wastes a lot of everyone's time. Let's keep this as a game, and not turn it into the Big Brother version of Caching. If you suspect bogus logs, hike your butt out there to your cache, check the paper log, and then contact the "finders" who just appear in the online version. No big deal.

Geocaching HQ, you have a new message! wesi has sent you a new message! No we are not telling you what it is. Visit the website to view and reply to this message. View wesi's profile. This is an automated message from wesi (N 41° 26.000 W 070° 36.000) for Geocaching HQ. Add wesi to your address book to ensure delivery of a content free message! Click here to manage your email preferences that don't really manage them. Twitter Facebook Ad Linkedin Ad Share Tweet Whatever [Edited to add: Hm. Looks like I used the wrong web site function to comment on the release. Apologies!]

Okay, so far so good. But now, how about giving the addressee the option to [X] Receive all Messages as Email ? You can charge me 5$ extra on my premium membership for the privilege if you like, in compensation for my bypassing your oh-so-useful ads, but kindly give us the option. Thanks.