jholly

The last thing I would do is contact Garmin. They don't know their product or understand how their product operate. Personally I think your running into a distance issue. Garmins will not display all caches beyond 50 miles and there are limits on how many they will display. As you move towards where the "missing" caches are they will magically appear on the list and on the map. If you use basecamp to download what is on your Garmin you will find that the "missing" caches are there.

I'm still confused. How does my find count interfere with how you play the game? Is it because you feel embarrassed that my find count is 10 times your find count? Quite frankly I really don't care what your find count is. It matters not the slightest to me. Alamogols and Bobcams score does not affect how I play the game. You like to do paddle caches, I don't own anything that floats. How does that interfere with you getting your paddle caches? I really would like to understand why you feel my find count interferes with your game, because I don't really understand how I play the game affects how you play the game. Yes there are some really rude people around, but since I don't have to sleep with them I really don't let what they say bother me. It's not that your or anyone elses find count interferes with how I play the game. It's the way some people play the game in order to achieve a high find count that can impact how others play the game. The "you're just jealous of my high find count" argument is bull pucky. I don't recall whether it was in this thread or another that I posted a screen shot of an area near Seoul, Korea which had many short "series" of caches and a large park that was completely saturated with a couple different "series of caches". Although the screen shot was from South Korea, it was not atypical. Look at the maps of many large and mid size cities in the U.S. and Europe, and it's not all that different. As a cache hider (I refuse to use the term maker), the practice of placing many caches as close to each other as possible effectively blocks me or anyone else from placing a cache in what might be an area with some interesting locations. If there were some interesting caches in those areas that were placed for reasons other than to cater to those that want to achieve a high find count, they've becoming more and more difficult to discover because we don't have adequate tools to efficiently filter out what we don't want to find. Whenever a thread comes up bemoaning the quality of online lines (the infamous TFTC/cut-n-paste logs), inevitably someone will post "when you find 200 caches a day, you don't have time to write unique logs". In other words, the pursuit of high find counts trumps a proper thank you to the hider that placed those caches for the "I don't have time to write long logs" geocacher, and in todays game, that's become acceptable. It's become acceptable to leap frog caches, post found it logs for driving a vehicle while someone else finds the cache, swap containers or throw down a film pot if the cache can't be found in 45 seconds (can't spend too much time searching....we've got to find 800+ caches today). If people weren't so caught up in achieving high find counts I contend we'd see fewer throwdowns. Those that are all about the numbers probably don't see a problem with throwdowns (after all...it helps increase their find count...rather than waste five minutes of their time for a DNF) but we've seen plenty of stories about throwdown caches when the actual cache was right were it was hidden and now the CO has to go out and remove the extra container. If people want to achieve high find counts, that's fine. It's what people will do in pursuit of those high find counts, and how the game has changed to cater to those that pursue high find counts that *does* have an impact on the game. It may not impact those that are trying to achieve high find counts, but that doesn't mean that it's not negatively impacting the game for those that aren't. So the distillation seems to be folks are placing to many caches. After placing a peanut jar in a park no further caches should be placed in that park lest we cater to the number whores. When doing caches in any environment everyone only does every other cache while claiming all driven past. And If I don't immediately find that D3/D3.5 cache I throw down a film can. Well I hate to pop your bubble, but as long as caches conform to the listing guidelines they will be listed. Learn how to use the tools on the site or 3rd party tools to achieve the results you want. Maybe a good place to start is placed date. As for leapfrogging, never done it, never considered it. As for throwdowns, yeah on Route 66 or ET when I find an empty stone cairn. The wind will blow them away if they are not completely covered. As for cut and past logs, on power trails you betcha, for random caches I'm doing while traveling or doing some clean up around home, each cache gets at least a sentence or two unique to that cache. Of course the LPCs are probably a terse quick find. And yeah I'm guilty of putting two six cache series out on a tree farm. I put the caches at least .25 miles apart so others could still place caches. I get lots of positive logs from these series so I guess most folks like them. And incidentally, I did my first six cache series back in 2008 so they have been around for quite a while, not a recent phenomenon.

Actually no, I realize making that request would be futile. The request is for the API developers to honor the hide this souvenir flag I can set on my personal profile page. I don't care if they give me the souvenir, a nice lackey gave me a way to hide it on my public Groundspeak profile. I want the API to honor my request to hide the souvenir so it does not show up on project-gc. To me this is very acceptable solution and probably less traumatic and emotional for the marketing department.

I'm still confused. How does my find count interfere with how you play the game? Is it because you feel embarrassed that my find count is 10 times your find count? Quite frankly I really don't care what your find count is. It matters not the slightest to me. Alamogols and Bobcams score does not affect how I play the game. You like to do paddle caches, I don't own anything that floats. How does that interfere with you getting your paddle caches? I really would like to understand why you feel my find count interferes with your game, because I don't really understand how I play the game affects how you play the game. Yes there are some really rude people around, but since I don't have to sleep with them I really don't let what they say bother me.

I see I can get some more digital graffiti all over my profile again in the month of August. Some will like it and some could, like myself, care less. I really don't want them. Yes I can block them from my Groundspeak public profile and for this I really appreciate what was done by a lackey one weekend. But Please API developers, can you check the flag on souvenirs before you send them on their way to see if I chose to hide the souvenir and not send it? I would appreciate that.

And Lab Caches get this money how? Lab caches may get people to attend a mega-event to get a coveted icon or to allow them to bump up their smiley without having to log "attended" multiple times. Perhaps that gets someone to stick around more than 8 finds, perhaps not. It could be that Groundspeak marketing has a better insight on how to attract new cachers than you or I (or those who complain that geocaching has changed). But my guess is that they are just throwing ideas against the wall to see what sticks. If something doesn't stick they can always say that next time they'll make better mistakes. I know that some people will assume that marketing drives development. As I said, this is the traditional model. From what I have seen, Groundspeak is not a traditional company. They attend the event, visit the GS vendor booth and spend money. Worked, didn't?

Of course my sandbox idea is speculative. It is based on the original announcement of Lab Caches which mentioned the idea of Geocaching Labs as a place where developers would come up with new idea for Geocaching.com. Later on when discussing Lab Caches being included in statistics, Moun10bike remarked that this was something the developers were looking as part of long term plans to update the website. Of course only when Lab Caches have been made available to geocachers to log do we see the results. So far, Lab Caches have been used as temporary caches for some mega events - initially the GC HQ block party - and the I <3 Geocaching promotion in February. These are likely marketing ideas. To some it may apppear that marketing is using the development team to come up with gimmicks to attract geocachers. I tend to think that the developers are taking the lead looking for ways to improve the website - possibly longer term - and that when they show what they have to marketing, the marketing team is comming up with ways to use these capabilities in the short term. People use to a traditional environment may think I have it a backwards. Marketing defines what the next product is and the developers do what they are told. But modern internet companies often give the developers more control over what they work on, and marketing has to come up with products to use what gets developed. When I was working (software, unix os) the development was shaped by what marketing thought they needed to be competitive. We did do some product improvement, but largely the feature set was driven more by marketing. To make the lab caches more acceptable, probably because they saw the acceptance waning, they incorporated the finds into the site statistics. Of course 3rd party solutions are still sucking swap water. GS has to be a marketing driven company and they need to attract a constant stream of new players, especially given that the median player only has 8 finds before they disappear. So you have to do something during those 8 finds to get what money you can.

Actually I have always viewed lab caches as something for GS to use for their block parties. The lost and found celebration they had some temporary caches around Fremont, then at the first block party they again had some temps around Fremont. These where just like all other event temp caches, they didn't count and had no real rules. Then in 2012 they had the challenges. So last year with no challenges and folks not liking doing temps for no smiley we got lab caches. A sort of counting temporary that can be associated with events and don't have to follow the rules. They are not real caches and are intended to be very short lived. I never viewed them as a sandbox for the developers to play with, but more something for the marketing team to use to attract folks to the block party.

This is for those that keep bringing this up. Many global moderators post with their personal accounts when they are not acting as an official moderator. This allows many of us to post a personal opinions without people thinking that it is an opinion of Groundspeak, or related to something that they have told us. Most do not hide their other account, it is just h. This is not the same as a sock puppet. Please go back to your regular stations and do not bring this up again. It does not serve any valid purpose. Just as you posted this I was just thinking that there is a major disconnect between Groundspeak and it's long time users, apart from the odd moderator or once in a while Mount10bike posting to quell some fire there really is no acknowledgement from GS of the concerns of their core customers. All suggestions and/or feedback is essentially ignored, there are so many topics crying out and they just get ignored, it is sad how the long term customers are being ignored. Geocaching used to be a hobby/sport, now it seems to be turning into another iPhone app. Roman! you seem to be under impression there is a symbiotic relationship between Groundspeak and the people that use their listing service or buy their products. In my opinion there isn't. Groundspeak is a medium sized closely held private company that is run for the financial benefit of its owners and for the financial benefit of its employees. It provides a listing service and some for-pay products that work in conjunction with the listing service and it provides physical products and tracking numbers for folks that want to produce their own products that tie into the Groundspeak business. Simply put, they are not running the business for your benefit, they are running it for their benefit. They also enjoy a 99.9% monopoly on the listing business and a 100% monopoly on the tracking number business. They are pretty much in the same position as J. D. Rockefeller was in the kerosene business. As I recall JD didn't listen to much in the way of feedback until Teddy Roosevelt gave him some. So once you accept that GS is being run for the benefit of its owners and they are the only game in town you then can live at peace and not get upset by what GS does or doesn't do. As for geocaching being a hobby/sport, it still is. GS just elected to provide products that enhance their revenue stream. Other than that, not much has changed since 2002.

Sorry I don't see that at all. For the CO that has been hiding quality caches they are not going to suddenly start putting out 2-300 film cans at a time now. For those that put ammo cans in the woods they are not going to suddenly start hanging preforms on trees along a county road for miles. Those CO's are going to continue to hide those type of caches. So how has that game changed? Oh, you need to do a bit of work to find the caches you want. That is what has changed. What has not changed is the website's ability for you to do it directly on the website but you must now employee a 3rd party solution. And that is unfortunate that the website now depends on 3rd party solutions for their customers to enjoy their game.

I guess I missed that marketing campaign. I've never seen anything from GS promoting power trails and outside of the picture on the top page they don't promote caches in remote areas. They did have a fling at promoting better quality caches. And speaking of old skool, the first cache hidden was a 5 gal pail buried next to a road. Not exactly what folks seem to fondly remember.

I don't think it is so much as losing interest as not having the interest in the first place. A stat published by Moun10Bike With half of the cachers "leaving" after 8 finds I would say they have an awful short attention span, or it was trying out the app they downloaded, finding was something they did not like and then deleted the app.

We are talking about the MyFinds PQ. Why would you want to delete the archived caches from your found db? And the MyFinds PQ *does* return archived caches. Also the MyFinds PQ only returns one log, yours. As for only needing the last five, it might be nice to have the sixth log since that is the one that has the updated coordinates in it. But you go thrashing around 100 feet away from where the cache is while I go right to it.

I did just realize that's what's missing - my lab caches. So I guess if I save them in different GSAK DB and then copy them over to my Found DB every time I update it that will work. Unhappy that they're not automatically in the pq. I'm confused. Why would you have to copy the lab caches over each time you load your MyFinds PQ? Unless you have ticked the clear database before loading your lab caches should not be disturbed. There are very very few cases where you want to clear the db before loading a PQ. One reason to not clear it is because you can now accumulate logs. Another is you don't loose your delorme square information, or information you have in the user notes. I think I would take a hard look at your work flow and justify why you need to clear the database everytime.

Lab caches are not real caches. So, I delete most of mine 'finds'. Keeps my stats better. Using your logic, virtual caches aren't real caches, and as such they should not count, either... Is there some reason your overlooking earthcaches and webcam caches?

Lab caches are not real caches. So, I delete most of mine 'finds'. Keeps my stats better. I agree that lab caches are not real caches. But my approach is simpler and easier, I don't bother wasting time finding them.

The weekly email use to be text. It was nice, quick and easy to scan. But then it went HTML. Your basic train wreck. But it does have some nice green in it. The comments were overwhelming bring back the text. We're still waiting. I suspect the email change will follow a similar course. Unwanted, not desired, but we get it any how.

HTML sucks, text is cool.

But the introduction of the Giga Event type didn't cause any problems, so I don't think introducing a new cache type is that big a deal. Yeah there are really a lot of Giga events and the use of a gps to find them is imperative. So I guess everyone was able to successfully filter for giga events on their gps units and they displayed the correct icon on the map.

The most recent update should provide ample proof that new cache types are something that is really hard to do. If changing unknown to mystery breaks 3rd party software and hardware, just think what adding a whole new type will do. No thanks, the boat sailed and we pretty well are stuck with what we have. Unless, of course, you can convince Garmin, Delorme, Magellan and all the other hardware vendors to support the new types. And don't forget all the 3rd party software vendors.

2068, wow! There are 19 within ten miles of me. (And I didn't think it was that many, ten miles is a little further than I estimated in my head.)Yeah, and that 10-mile radius includes several square miles of the San Francisco Bay, where the cache density is significantly lower than it is on land. Yeah, but not zero.

The reviewer did say As I said Groundspeak will always side with the landowner. Yes I know it is illegal for the landowner to put the restriction on the RoW, but is it illegal for Groundspeak? It is after all listed on Groundpeaks site and Groundspeak does get a say on what can/should be in the listings they host. In just about all cases the landowner issue is that the cache exits and the way to resolve the is issue is to archive the cache. The landowner certainly could have asked for the cache to be archived in this case to resolve the "issue" of folks using the RoW to access the cache. But they did not, but instead asked for the restriction on the RoW, which they knew was illegal and which they knew the reviewer would not do but probably were confident that Groundspeak would require the restriction. Now that the reviewer is gone I wonder if the cache is still there and did a lackey edit in the restriction or did the cache get archived? As for Groundspeak not listening to the reviewer, I'm sure they did, but the policy of always doing what it takes to resolve issues with the landowner took precedence over any arguments. Groundspeak simply will not argue points of law with a landowner. Your first answer regarding the issue being deliberately escalate refers to a completely separate incident and not the ROW issue. Regarding your second response, you confirm that you understand that it is illegal for the landowner to put a restriction on a RoW so if Groundspeak insist on a listing on a public domain including a restriction on a RoW then this must be illegal as well. End of story! On small problem, www.geocaching.com is not a public domain, it is a private website owned by a private company. They have lots to say about what goes on their site.

The reviewer did say As I said Groundspeak will always side with the landowner. Yes I know it is illegal for the landowner to put the restriction on the RoW, but is it illegal for Groundspeak? It is after all listed on Groundpeaks site and Groundspeak does get a say on what can/should be in the listings they host. In just about all cases the landowner issue is that the cache exits and the way to resolve the is issue is to archive the cache. The landowner certainly could have asked for the cache to be archived in this case to resolve the "issue" of folks using the RoW to access the cache. But they did not, but instead asked for the restriction on the RoW, which they knew was illegal and which they knew the reviewer would not do but probably were confident that Groundspeak would require the restriction. Now that the reviewer is gone I wonder if the cache is still there and did a lackey edit in the restriction or did the cache get archived? As for Groundspeak not listening to the reviewer, I'm sure they did, but the policy of always doing what it takes to resolve issues with the landowner took precedence over any arguments. Groundspeak simply will not argue points of law with a landowner.

I know that you're a lynchpin of caching in this part of the world, and it's a shame if you really decide to leave caching (or at least, take a back seat). As we know, Groundspeak will not be affected, nor care, in the slightest about it. Even if all of us that have heard about this issue decide not to renew it will matter to them not one jot. It's an ironic situation that people criticise them for not caring, and then somehow expect them to care when you leave! If it makes you feel better then go ahead, but the people affected will be those who have enjoyed your event organising efforts and cache placements. "TPTB" are unlikely to even hear about it, and if they do they won't be interested. I have been watching from afar and my opinion this was a manufactured situation simply to settle a beef with a reviewer. We all know that Groundspeak's policy is to *always* side with the landowner regarding a cache. There is no discussion, just satisfy the landowner. So either the landowner is the one with a beef with the reviewer or is good friends with the one that does have a beef and the landowner raises the issue of using the RoW to access the cache. Of course he can't do that, but when it gets back to Groundspeak it does not matter, they will *always* do what the landowner asks, which is to restrict the use of the RoW. So I would not totally put the blame on Groundspeak, they are simply following a policy they have had in place for years. I would put a lot of the blame on the person using Groundspeak as a weapon against the reviewer. I find it interesting that the course to solve the problem was not archive the cache, but to restrict the use of the RoW, something the reviewer could not do in good faith but what Groundspeak sees as a way to resolve the landowner's complaint.

The owners manual can be found here. The Quick start guide can be found here. Since your a premium member you might want the consider using PQ's or downloading directly from the cache page. The Garmin replacement for mapsource is Basecamp. You can also use EasyGPS to load waypoints to your unit.