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HiddenGnome

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Posts posted by HiddenGnome

    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    Hello! I wanted to drop in and give an update on what we have been working on.

    • As the promotion began we saw that new caches being published were not correctly being awarded a detective so on Friday we deployed an update to automatically assign the detective. We also made sure that events that get published would only receive a clue if the event falls within the same time frame as the promotion. 
    • Before the promotion launched we made a last minute decision to exclude disabled geocaches from the general distribution algorithm so that rare clues would not be placed in geocaches that might not be available during the promotion. We wanted to make sure that disabled geocaches that were re-enabled would include a clue, but because of the last minute nature of the decision we did not have time to make the changes necessary to add those automatically. For that reason we chose to assign all disabled geocaches with a Detective from the start. In hindsight we understand that this caused some confusion and searching on the web was hindered by the large number of disabled geocaches in some regions. We have been working to make adjustments and the system will now automatically add a detective to geocaches when they are re-enabled. With that change in place we have removed the clue from the disabled geocaches that we seeded before the promotion. A separate background process is now running that is updating the search results so that the disabled geocaches will not show up when searching for a Detective on the web map. Going forward, geocaches that get disabled during the promotion and include a clue (of any level) will still be displayed based on the normal behavior of the search results.
    • In a small number of cases when a geocache is published there is a longer than normal latency between the publishing of the geocache and a clue being added. Because of this latency the clue does not always get registered in the search results because the registration is triggered before the clue is added. We are currently adding an extra check to ensure that every clue is registered properly after the geocache is published.
    • Upvote 5
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    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    16 minutes ago, fizzymagic said:

    Web-based map is broken.  Shows the filtered caches on the left-hand list but they do not all appear on the map.

     

    How about a "small update" to fix this rather large problem?

     

    Sorry about the snark.  It's just that I have lived through so many years of Groundspeak not implementing features that we begged for that it is particularly galling to see so much wasted effort on a promotion that doesn't even work properly.

     

    I am sorry that you are missing data on your map. Can you provide more details about what you are seeing? What filters are you using to search and what area are you searching in?

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    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    7 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

    I completely agree, and it happens time and again with new features, it seems like the customers ARE the testers.

     

    I wonder if there's scope for a new breed of community volunteer, we already have reviewers & translators, perhaps they could recruit volunteer testers and test this stuff out on the staging site. I think there enough people in the community with various levels of software/design/infrastructure experience who would be prepared to poke & prod new releases for them.

    I acknowledge that there were issues during the launch of this promotion and I take responsibility for that. I don't like that members of the community have to deal with bugs and come across situations that were not anticipated. This promotion is both the most complex and most tested promotion we have ever launched. Yes, there were bugs. However, I can assure you that there are a lot fewer bugs then before we had 20 people hammering on the system for 2 days. We are continuing to evaluate how we work and how we can improve. Sometimes the changes we make aren't felt directly by the community, but we are continuing to make improvements none-the-less.

     

    I am not going to make excuses for releasing code that has bugs, but we also cannot always cover every single permutation that might arise. What I will promise is that we will try to catch as many bugs as possible before a release and then fix the bugs that do make it to the community quickly. We are a small team and are moving quickly to address issues. I apologize for inconveniences that anyone has experienced and I thank you for your patience.

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    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    1 minute ago, Max and 99 said:

    Drats! I was hoping my new cache would have a clue!

     

    All new caches will have a clue. Sometime today the system will begin picking up new caches automatically. If your cache is published before then it might not have a clue for up to an hour, but I am regularly running a script to add clues to new caches. I am also keeping an eye on this thread in case there is a cache that doesn't have a clue.

    • Helpful 2
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    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    7 hours ago, bruzie said:

     

    A new (virtual) cache that was published today at 2019-07-12 0000 UTC doesn't have the Detective clue. With your use of tense here, does that mean it won't get the clue? (GC89178)

     

    4 hours ago, Tungstène said:

    GC89ZXC and GC8A72F were published today by a friend of mine but none has a clue. Is it expected behaviour, @HiddenGnome
    ?

     

    If the geocache was created before this week then it is expected to not have a Clue when it is published. We are working on a small update to automatically add a Clue whenever a geocache is published which should be ready soon. Until then I am running a script that will retroactively add the Clue to recently published geocaches.

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    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    I mentioned earlier that I would provide additional background into the issue people reported about not collecting their Clues. This issue was initially difficult to troubleshoot because it was not the result of an error per se - in fact, as far as the system was concerned it was behaving correctly.

     

    Some quick background - in order to complete the Mystery at the Museum you need to collect a variety of Clues. Each Clue has unique attributes associated with it, i.e. number of finds required, level required to unlock, and activation date. Every Clue has an activation date of today at 12 (noon) UTC.

     

    When a geocache is logged the system compares the date of the log with the activation date of the Clue to make sure it falls within the allowable window. However, because of an issue with how dates are formatted from the website when they are converted to UTC there were a number of instances where the log date was interpreted as being before noon UTC. According to the system those logs did not fall within the allowable window and so were ignored. Logging from the app did not have this issue because the dates were not experiencing the same formatting issue.

     

    Once we realized this was happening we made a couple of small modifications that would resolve the issue and deployed them to our servers. Once deployed I saw (so I thought) the data that we were expecting and announced that the issues was resolved. What I did not realize was that although the issue had been correctly identified and a fix applied the servers did not get properly reset and so did not pick up the necessary changes. That was my mistake, both on not properly resetting the servers and for relaying that the issue had been fixed prematurely. When we realized that the servers had not picked up the changes it was a simple fix at that point to force the update and triple check the data was returning correctly.

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    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    1 minute ago, arminus said:

     

    great, re-logging yields the souvenir, but clicking on it (https://www.geocaching.com/souvenir/?guid=e234c8a2-191d-4727-81aa-41fd61405daf)

    gives my a 500...

     

    I am glad that you were able to successfully collect your clue and that you received your souvenir. We are currently investigating why the souvenirs from this promotion are delivering an error when they are clicked. The fact that the souvenir is being displayed on your profile page means that it was properly awarded and once we sort out the error you will be able to view it fully.

    • Upvote 1

    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    53 minutes ago, arminus said:

     

    can't confirm this: https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC88KZ2

    Published today, should have an inspector clue according to the blog entry ("New geocaches published between July 11 and August 11, 2019 will all receive the detective clue.")

     

    just deleted the log and re-logged it (Firefox on the website) - still no clue

    deleted again, tried to log through the app, can't log a found since the app thinks I already found it

    re-logged it on the website (and generated some spam for the watchers I guess...) - again no clue

     

    Hi @arminus - geocaches that were created earlier this week and published today are not currently receiving a Clue which includes the geocache that you mentioned. We are currently working to update the system to make sure that Clues are correctly distributed going forward. Geocaches that were recently published have had a Clue added retroactively. Now that the geocache includes a clue you will need to re-log the geocache in order to receive your Clue.

    • Helpful 2

    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    Hello everyone!

     

    For those of you who have been having trouble collecting Clues when logging a geocache I sincerely apologize. The issue should now be resolved. The fastest way to get your clue will be to (once again) delete your log and re-post it. I will follow-up with a further explanation shortly.

     

    If you continue to have issues please include the GC code or a link to the log, if possible.

     

    Thanks!

    • Helpful 1

    The biggest jewel heist in history!

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    2 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

    I did another search, to caches that I have not found, that do have the detective clue, and got a list. When I click on the cache page, it does NOT have the Detective Clue, just the generic message that you need to find clues to proceed.

     

    Hello - would you mind sharing which geocache you are looking at? Thanks!

    Release Notes (Website: Event start and end times) - January 15, 2019

    in Geocaching HQ communications

    Posted

    41 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

    PS, at the top of the event page, why is time not right beside (or underneath) date?  Conceptually, they belong together, no?

     

    Placing the event date on the same line as the time was initially presented by the team. However, the current layout was chosen because it maintains a consistent layout with non-event caches. During this transition period there are still events with no time selected and the layout was confusing when the date was on a separate line without the time.

    5 new country souvenirs (2018)

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    1 minute ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

     

    Although it's not the "official" souvenirs list, the A-Team souvenirs page (https://thea-team.net/souvenir)  is generally very up-to-date (though they haven't yet added the 5 most recent souvenirs).  

     

    Would you mind pointing me to the "official" list that you are referring to?

    5 new country souvenirs (2018)

    in General geocaching topics

    Posted

    I apologize for the time that it has taken to get everyone's USA souvenir awarded. We ran into some technical issues that we haven't run into with other souvenirs because of the large number of souvenirs that needed to be awarded this time around. It took a few iterations to update the background process, but we are very close to having all of the souvenirs awarded. 

    • Helpful 2

    Message center generates mail with wrong subject/content

    in Website

    Posted

    @Funky_Boris - Thank you for bring this up because it could be more clear. The email that you are receiving is a copy of your own message. This happens if you have selected the option in Message Center to "forward messages to email" (see attached). When that feature was added we re-used the existing email template which is causing your username to be added twice because you are both the sender and the receiver of the email.

     

    "Geocaching: {receiving_username}, you have a new message from {sending_username}!"

    MessageCenter.png

    • Helpful 1

    Circular Walks

    in How do I...?

    Posted

    I was recently in the Yorkshire area for the UK Mega and was introduced to the circular walks (and the public footpaths) for the first time. There were multiple series that were created around the Ripon and Harrogate areas that I had the opportunity to experience. I have fallen in love with them, but sadly it is not something that seems to have transferred to the US. During my adventures I came across a List that someone created. The geocaches on the list are the first cache in each series with a description about where it is located. Hopefully some of these are nearby!

     

    https://www.geocaching.com/bookmarks/view.aspx?guid=09597bd2-59c4-47be-90a4-f4914cb7043b

    • Upvote 1

    Notifications not working

    in Website

    Posted

    13 hours ago, Scarch said:

    Sometime after Feb, text notifications resumed, and I have received consistently.

     

    beginning today, text alerts have stopped. About 10 caches have published with no alert text.

     

    hoping this can be revisited.

     

    any others having the same issue

     

    iOS and ATT

     

    Hello @Scarch - I am sorry to hear that you are not receiving your text notifications. These are an important aspect of the game and I can appreciate your frustration. I checked our logs and I can see that in the last 36 hours 11 cache published notifications have been sent successfully to your secondary email address. Unfortunately, we are aware through similar reports in the past that text notifications through ATTs service are sometimes unreliable despite a successful sent message on our end.

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