sdarken

Nicely said Photographer Jim. I think you and I share a similar perspective on stats. For the most part they are a pretty personal thing :- probably about as interesting as vacation photos are to people that weren't there. The discussion about whether Find Counts should exist and what they mean is several years too late. I dont think there is any way they will disappear however I'd support a change to the website whereby people could opt out of having their own find count calculated/displayed. It would be fascinating to see how many people would take advantage of that functionality if it ever existed. As for whether you can judge a person by their find count, I think anyone with the slightest intelligence already knows that comparing one person to the next based on find count is a pretty meaningless thing to do and I've never heard it suggested that a person with 2000 finds is in any way superior to someone with 250 finds. Obviously, if someone has only ever found 5 caches and has 2 weeks experience there are certain opinions that are likely to be out of sync with more experienced cachers ("What a cool light pole cache"). In the same way that I wouldn't trust the opinion of a mechanic that had only ever fixed 1 car, I'd probably judge a cacher with 2 weeks experience in the same way. If I was talking to a couple of mechanics that had fixed 300 or 700 cars respectively, I'd probably try judge what they are saying by other ways (attitude & clarity), and a give their relative experience roughly equal weight. I understand when people say "I dont want stats because I'd rather see Groundspeak focus their resources elsewhere". I dont understand the attitude of "I dont like stats therefore I dont want you to have them either". I presume that for some people, the find count subject is painful enough that any discussion about stats gets treated with the same negative attitude regardless of how innocuous the stats are.

In regard to cost, in the business model I was suggesting, the new functionality would be funded by people who use it. INATN has already created the functionality so a partnership might be relatively quick and easy to implement. "Free" doesn't usually work as a business model. You only have to read those recent INATN threads to see that every business needs a revenue stream to pay for costs. Servers and bandwidth are not free. In regard to Groundspeak's reluctance to turn geocaching into a competition. They effectively did that when they started tracking find counts. Lots of people have extra stats on their pages already and I dont see it making the game more competitive. Frankly, I dont care about other peoples stats any more than they care about mine. Adding more stats to personal profiles is not likely to change the game. (INATN has a bunch of TOP 10 stats and other stats that compare cachers to each other. I'm not proposing that Groundspeak should start generating those. I'm purely talking about personal stats.) I really just see see this idea as a potential revenue stream for Groundspeak/INATN and a convenience for those people that want to pay for it.

I've been thinking for a while that perhaps Groundspeak should start offering the ability to generate stats for people's profile pages :- maybe by introducing a small optional charge. Lots of people currently use Cachestats, GSAK/Findstatsgen3 or INATN but I know of several people that would like to have stats on their profile but are technologically challenged. Perhaps it's time for Groundspeak and a 3rd party such as itsnotaboutthenumbers.com to team up to provide a simple integrated solution. To support the cost of providing this service I could see people paying a small amount. eg: a one-time $5 charge. This would only be for people that wanted the stats. Not a cost that everyone would pay for. So what do you think? Is there a demand for this service and how much would you be willing to pay for it?

In regard to #5, I'd love to see something like that though I could understand if this might put a lot of extra stress on the mail server. Also I wouldn't want an email for each individual photo upload anyway - if someone uploaded 10 photos I wouldn't want 10 emails. As an alternative, how about either: 1. A daily summary email of photo uploads Subject : Geocaching Daily Photo Upload Summary Body: Photos were uploaded to the following caches owned by you: Cache xxxxx : Photos uploaded 2 ----- [View Gallery Link] Cache yyyyy : Photos uploaded 3 ----- [View Gallery Link] or 2. Put the "last photo upload" date on the Owned Caches page: http://www.geocaching.com/my/owned.aspx If I could see that date, (along with the ability to sort my list of caches so that the most recent photo uploads were at the top), I'd be happy to go and check look at the photos without having to be sent an email.

To find lots of caches in one day (if you dont mind too much about the "quality" aspect) here are a few basic tips: 1. Find an area that has a lot of caches. 2. Within that area, pick out caches that have a low level of difficulty and a low terrain rating. Ingore caches that have lots of recent DNFs. 3. Plan a rough driving route so that you dont spend a lot of time back-tracking. 4. Print out the cache pages (or a summary of the important info) with hints decrypted - or better yet, go paperless. 5. Ideally, use a GPSr that is preloaded with all the waypoints and use auto-routing to get you from one cache to the next. 6. Dont spend long looking for each cache. If you can't find one, move on. 7. Take a couple of friends :- the more eyes, the quicker you'll find each one (and the easier it is to navigate). Have fun and stop when it's not fun any more. There are lots of other ways to increase your find count but these will get you started.

I found a little over a thousand in my first year. (Started caching mid-2006) There is a cacher near here that found over 3500 in his first year. As others have said, that statistic will be a reflection of when you started caching, your geographic location, the amount of free time you have and the level of your obsession.

I copied this table out of a forum thread earlier this year (but I didn't note the URL of the thread). The formatting got a bit messed up but it shows states listed in descending cache density. eg: DC has 88 caches in 68 square miles for an average of 1.28 caches per square mile, CA has 47072 caches in 163,696 square miles for an average of .28 caches per square mile. STATE CACHES AREA DENSITY DC 88 68 1.288433382 RI 702 1,214 0.578253707 CT 2917 5,543 0.526249323 NJ 3959 8,721 0.453961702 MA 4255 10,555 0.40312648 DE 893 2,489 0.358778626 NH 2915 9,350 0.311764706 CA 47072 163,696 0.287557424 MD 3096 12,407 0.249536552 PA 10340 46,055 0.224514168 OH 10046 44,825 0.224116007 IN 8159 36,418 0.224037564 FL 14417 65,755 0.219253289 NC 10630 53,819 0.197513889 TN 8276 42,143 0.196378995 NY 10054 54,556 0.184287704 WA 11546 71,300 0.161935484 VA 6174 42,774 0.14434002 VT 1280 9,614 0.133139172 IL 7141 57,914 0.123303519 I'd be interested to see a similar chart based on density compared to population but I'm too lazy to make one myself.

[This is a somewhat dusty thread] Even though I dont play the FTF game myself, I thought that this was a pretty notable record by another player: Over 875 FTFs from 5300 total finds: http://www.geocaching.com/profile/Default....b38b80&ds=2

A real pain, I know! Especially on multi's when you're entering them in the field (literally). I have gotten into the habit of manually entered points get a - (minus sign) in front of them and then when I do a search I switch to "by name" and they're at the top of the sort list because if they're not the closest then you have to scroll to find the name you just entered (as well as remember the name you just entered). (At least on the 60CSX that I use) a quick way to find the waypoint that you just entered is to use the Recent Finds option. You'll find the new waypoint at the top of the list and you can immediately use the Goto option.

I understand your point but even if I know that your photo came from "c:\documents and settings\my pictures\geoccaching2008" I can't do anything with that information unless I already have access to your computer. By the way, you can delete, edit, re-upload photos if there is a specific reason why you think the path information is a security risk to you.

Even if you figure out a way, you probably wouldn't want to copy the caches from your GPSr to your Palm because your GPSr only contains some very limited information (name, coordinates etc) whereas you'll want the Palm to contain the complete description, hints, past logs etc. My suggestion: Open a single pocket query in GSAK then send the file to your GPSr and Export it your Palm. There is a little setup involved to get things running smoothly but it's well worth the effort.

I'm with The NVG on this one. I'd be working on a couple of my own lists to leave behind rather than spending time stewing over the existing list. Adding some additional lists would dilute the cache-owners point since subsequent finders will have several things to read. In addition, if the new lists put the cache owner in a less-than-favorable position on the list, he/she may understand why someone people would take offense to original list. If you have the skills / interest, try the GSAK macro that ranks caches based on log-length. More interesting caches tend to have longer average log lengths. If you were to rank all of the nearby caches using this macro (and the hider's caches came out near the bottom) that might make an interesting list. Quite often (but I wouldn't say always) people with the kind of agenda suggested by this cache will be the kind of people that favor quantity over quality. Of course you'll want to be careful to not offend anyone else with your additional lists.

For checking the distance between two points I use FizzyCalc (previously called GeoCalc). It can also covert coordinates between different formats and a bunch of other things that I've never used. Link: http://www.fizzymagic.net/Geocaching/FizzyCalc/index.html

After submitting a log I usually hit the Back button a couple of times to get back to the description of the cache and then I use one of the links you mentioned (most commonly "nearby caches that I haven't found" ) but I like your suggestion as it would speed the up the logging process.

I've noticed recently that when I get a new cache published, one of the emails that I receive has a couple of small errors: Subject : Listing Published on Geocaching.com Body: This is an automated message from Geocaching This is a quick message to let you know that your cache has been published by reviewer: Nomex. You can visit your listing at the following location: Buzzard Burnhttp://obey.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=42c3c039-234b-4f42-b5f6-867b43b0066e Errors: - There is no space between the cache name and the URL. This has been mentioned in the forums before - The URL references a server called obey.geocaching.com This appears to be a server that reviewers use.

Actually ORIGINAL STASH TRIBUTE PLAQUE (GCGV0P) is at the site of the original stash. There's a plaque and a cache. The Un-Original Stash cache is about 75 feet away. Apparently Groundspeak made an except to the .1 mile rule for these two.

This doesn't completely solve the O.P's request but here's a solution that would get close to providing the functionality without generating lots of emails: On the "Owned" geocaches page (http://www.geocaching.com/my/owned.aspx), how about adding a column for "Lastest Photos Uploaded" (or similar wording) that shows the date that photos were most recently added for each owned cache. The date could be a hyperlink back to log containing the photos. That way the cache owner could quickly scan the list for new photos and jump straight to the page. (A little "NEW" graphic could even be added to upload dates less than a week old in the same way that new caches are highlighted on some pages). If the owned-geocaches page could be sorted on the "latest photos" date that would be even better especially for people that have more caches than fit on one page.

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