The Hawks

As others stated before, the FTF is an unofficial part of the game that should be kept local to the communities.

If this can be taken as an official Groundspeak statement, it's close to ok. We all know the website often is slow as hell, and if Google Earth is one of the reasons for this (which I think is correct) disabling it is the only way for now to cope with resource problems. But from what we got from Groundspeak, it wasn't so sure until now that the feature would ever come back. If they are re-implementing it in a more efficient way, then could we please be kept up to date about that? -nik

Hi, Severity: Minor Reproducible: Always Page: User Gallery Action: Browse through several pages of a user gallery, reaching page 10 of xx Expected: Links to pages should increase to more than 10 Actual result: 10 is the last available page until "Next" is clicked (then it starts from 11) Cheers, Nik

I have only seen the $30 per year Premium memberhip offered. Maybe others would be interested in the other arrangements that are available. Please describe your arrangement and what you pay for it. Easy, you can do it too; get a second account or three or four. And now something that doesn't violate the terms of use, eh ? How would that violate TOS? There sure is something about only one account per person or something .... at least I think there was when I last studied it. In any case, mind the emoticon.

I have only seen the $30 per year Premium memberhip offered. Maybe others would be interested in the other arrangements that are available. Please describe your arrangement and what you pay for it. Easy, you can do it too; get a second account or three or four. And now something that doesn't violate the terms of use, eh ?

Groundspeak seems to be enjoying the removal of useful features as a sport. First the PDF, then the KML. Why not remove the Geocache database, add some more marketing, buy eBay and Amazon and have a full-time marketing website? -nik

Open letter to Groundspeak and everyone who is interested Hi fellow cachers, dear Groundspeak lackeys, Groundspeak heads, when I learnt about Geocaching some time around June 2006, it used to be a great and funny sport that provided outdoor adventures, fun with the community and much more. Then, over time, young geocachers abused the original idea for strange kind of things, including questionable micro-cache series and other stuff. For nothing of that, Groundspeak can be held accountable, of course. But recently, the main aspect that removes the fun from Geocaching, especially from hiding "quality" caches, is Groundspeak, their rules, and what reviewers make of it. These rules, or "guidelines", are intended to prevent the sport from being spoiled by geocachers that do not care about laws and the comunity and such. However, I have been stumbling upon strange and very questionable "rules" lately, mainly while having geocaches reviewed by the German volunteers eigengott and GC-Knecht. I am not saying that they are acting inappropriately, but at least, they cannot refer to official resources stating what they are saying. I am providing some examples for that: I have placed several stages of a multi-cache in a (freely accessible) tunnel 5m below the city. The volunteers wanted me to provide coordinates for those stages. I cannot measure them with 5m of concrete above my head. Two more stages and the cache itself can be found with coordinates and GPS as required by the guidelines. I have placed a short multi-cache in the area around a shopping mall where a lost place (freely accessible) can be found. I wa providing information about the shopping mall (more or less a collection of small shops) and its historic background as a cotton production plant. That was refused because I was providing its name (which is not protected by law but more what locals call it). I am allowed to guide cachers there by coordinates but am not allowed to tell its name - what's that? I want to unarchive a long multi-cache that has been archived for over a year. The reviewers and appeals@geocaching.com refuse to unarchive it and I am advised to create a new listing. Neither the cache nor the listing have changed, quite a few cachers already logged the cache. Now I am told to spam the database with an identical copy of the listing, make cachers log it again, etc. - there is no obvious reason that an average human being can understand. Most of this is not stated in the guidelines but was discussed in some reviewer forum not open to the public. Hiding and publishing good geocaches with informative and interesting listings is getting really hard with all these limitations that more destroy than enhance the fun. Guys (and girls): Is this really necessary? With kind regards, Nik

Not working for me either. There's still the annoying but non-critical issue with the "Add to queue" button not greying out, and now this. It doesn't seem to me that Groundspeak is doing too much fpr their $30, as PQ is a PM-only feature -nik

As I am just messing around with multiple maps and a notepad trying to visualize some mystery cache solutions, I thought that the feature suggested here could be converted into somethin really useful. I'd consider it convenient to have the possibility to add personal waypoints to listings, for example the solution of a mystery. These should then be visible on a map, i.e. for mysteries instead of the (missleading) listing coordinates. -nik

Hi there, I am currently looking for features that already exist on the website but could be improved by propagating their use throughout the website. For example, I would consider it more convenient if the own experience with a geocache, i.e. its "found status", could be found in more places than the search result lists. Especially, a smiley or a tick (the icon, not the animal ) or something should be placed in cache listings of caches that were already found and in bookmark lists. Regards, Nik

The new print version is nothing but crap, the old one was way better. Just look at the links in this listing (some HTML seems to be stripped), the map is not zoomable anymore, and so on. I never used the PDF function, but I understand that so many users want it back. And a rollback for the HTML print version would be great, because this is a real "downgrade"! -nik

I tried Firefox on my Desktop computer and it practically froze the entire thing, even when I had lots of memory and I was only running the browser. I had to delete it and then go into RegEdit and pick out the leftover pieces of Firefox the uninstall program didn't take out. Because of that, Firefox isn't getting anywhere near my laptop!!! I bet you are using Trend Micro PC-cillin Antivirus 11 or some crap like that ... Opt-in! Basically, you're right, but there's nothing about that in the contract.

Ah, now look! That's the basic concept of what I requested earlier today! Opt-in! Plus, what I would like to see most is that these waypoints are spread over the site, like in maps and such.

opt-in

Finally, after so many years! Miracles do happen ... The edit profile page looks pretty messy though ... And the "My Profile" link in the nav bar is missing an image.

I think you misunderstood what I was describing. The waypoints I would like to create are only for personal use, in order to get some convenience when working with GC.com by being able to use private reference points in all parts of the site. -nik

Hi, as I have been planning several cachingtours with friends lately, I thougth that it would perhaps be a godo idea to let users cerate personal waypoints that show up on maps, can be used to do searches etc. I know that some interpretation of this feature could be realized using Pocket Queries (like createng a PQ with my friend's home as centre and then doign my work with that), but I would really love to have such waypoints shown on maps and other palces on the side. I also imagine that this feature can be extended to several other ideas as well. Regards, Nik

Oh yes, and the photo is missing as well. Another user reports to me that nothing is wrong in her account. [edit] Now after I logged out and in again three times, everything is fine .... strange ...

Hi, now this is cool - see attached screenshots. http://pub.naturalnet.de/~nik/gccombug.JPG http://pub.naturalnet.de/~nik/gccombug2.JPG I am a Premium Member since unknown, have to renew this in about 10 months and have not found or hidden any caches ... Everything else looks ok, so nothing serious, but a bit strange it is ... -nik

Hi, a website of mine (www.geojoker.de) produces direct links to GC.com user profiles of the form http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?u=Username . This does not work for user names with German umlauts or other special chars that are maskes by the PHP urlencode() function. For example, the user "Steinwälzer" whos profile should be available at http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?u=Steinw%E4lzer (with the umlaut ä masked as %E4, which is correct) but isn't. Any suggestions? Regards, Nik

Hi there, I just wanted to publish a new earth cache, but couldn't find the cache type in the list. I know that Earthcaches have been grandfathered some time ago, but I thought they were back again because this cache has been published recently. Can anyone tell me why I can't publish an earthcache, or, why grufftymilo could? Regards, Nik

Some times, I find it hard to figure out which caches on my "owned items" list need maintenance. I would really love to have the "needs maintenance" icon show up next to the cache entry in case the attribute is set! What do you think about this? -nik

Believe me, there are developers in this world who are able to work around this quite nicely, and I think this is not the reason because not even the scheduled time for the query is shown as it was several months ago.

This is not the question. The question is whether this is the kind of feedback an intuitive user interface should give ...

I am experiencing this problem with: Firefox 3.0.4 on Ubuntu Linux 8.10 Firefox 3.0.3 on WIndows 2000 Firefox 3.0.3 on Windows XP Internet Explorer 6 on WIndows 2000 Internet Explorer 7 on Windows XP Regards, Nik