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Pocket Queries


Alan White

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When I returned from holiday I was puzzled to find that all my PQs had been turned off. Thinking there'd been some kind of glitch I simply turned them all back on and thought no more of it.

 

I just happened to check again and I find that the ones that have run recently have been turned off again. What's happening?

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Per the instructions in the pocket query e-mail, as a temporary measure to help the performance of the pocket query generator, you need to click on the link in the e-mail in order to re-schedule that pocket query to run the following week. Or, if you'd rather not click a lot of links, just go to your pocket query page once a week and re-activate all your queries. You can keep a printout to remind yourself which days you had them scheduled for.

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Uh? I don't see the PQ mail - the file is picked up by GSAK.

 

I set up PQs to run as per schedule. I didn't used to have to go and tell them to run again. What's the point of a scheduler if I have to prompt it every time?

 

What is the nature of the problem with the PQ generator? And how temporary is temporary? Life is too short to have to go and visit all my PQs every day.

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You don't have to visit them every day, just once a week.

That's what computers are for: to automate repetitive tasks so that my short life can be used for actually finding the caches rather than clicking boxes on a screen.

 

I don't want a PQ to run next week. I want it to run the next time it's scheduled for - usually a couple of days ahead.

 

Perhaps someone from Groundspeak could explain how this restriction is of benefit to the customer?

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You don't have to visit them every day, just once a week.

That's what computers are for: to automate repetitive tasks so that my short life can be used for actually finding the caches rather than clicking boxes on a screen.

 

I don't want a PQ to run next week. I want it to run the next time it's scheduled for - usually a couple of days ahead.

 

Perhaps someone from Groundspeak could explain how this restriction is of benefit to the customer?

I'm not from Groundspeak but Ill take a crack at it.

 

PQ's are run by a dedicated server which is maxed out most of the time handling all the PQ's. In an attempt to filter out automatic PQ's by inactive members, they started adding a link into the emails asking people to click it if they want their PQ's re-newed.

 

As I understand it, it has helped.

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You don't have to visit them every day, just once a week.

That's what computers are for: to automate repetitive tasks so that my short life can be used for actually finding the caches rather than clicking boxes on a screen.

 

I don't want a PQ to run next week. I want it to run the next time it's scheduled for - usually a couple of days ahead.

 

Perhaps someone from Groundspeak could explain how this restriction is of benefit to the customer?

I don't work for Groundspeak, but here goes.

 

You may have noticed that your PQs have been arriving later and later. Heck, sometimes people don't even receive them. This is because so many PQs are being requested that the machines that create them are getting whelmed. The idea behind having the requester click on a link if they are still interested in receiving them stems from the hypothesis that many people receive their PQs so frequently (sometimes every few days) more out of habit than need.

 

In order to give the machines some relief until a better solution can be implemented, it was decided to send a message with each PQ with a link that one could click on if they really do need the PQ to continue to be sent.

 

You might consider whether you really need the data as often as you are requesting it.

 

Ummm, what WH said.

Edited by sbell111
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I'm not from Groundspeak but Ill take a crack at it.

 

PQ's are run by a dedicated server which is maxed out most of the time handling all the PQ's. In an attempt to filter out automatic PQ's by inactive members, they started adding a link into the emails asking people to click it if they want their PQ's re-newed.

 

As I understand it, it has helped.

Sorry, I don't buy that logic at all.

 

Firstly, if the server running the PQs is maxed out then all that's necessary is to wheel in more or bigger. Is this not what the fee is for?

 

Secondly, there's no such thing as an inactive PM. When the prepaid time expires then they're no longer a PM so their PQs will stop anyway. While someone is a PM then they're entitled to their PQs.

 

Lastly, well, yes, if you stop running the PQs then of course the problem will go away. It's not providing the service though, is it?

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Sorry, I don't buy that logic at all.

First. Its not my logic, I am simply passing along information that Jeremy has himself disseminated.

 

Secondly, I believe this is only a stop-gap measure until a long term solution can be implemented.

Edited by WH
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Sorry, I don't buy that logic at all.
Ummm, just how much is that logic in the window? B)
Firstly, if the server running the PQs is maxed out then all that's necessary is to wheel in more or bigger. Is this not what the fee is for?

Sure, (I assume) but you can't just wiggle your nose and have everything purchased, received, and installed. :lol:

Secondly, there's no such thing as an inactive PM. When the prepaid time expires then they're no longer a PM so their PQs will stop anyway. While someone is a PM then they're entitled to their PQs.

Sure they are, and that is why everyone receives email notification and a cool little link to click on. :laughing:

Lastly, well, yes, if you stop running the PQs then of course the problem will go away. It's not providing the service though, is it?
I got my PQ really quickly this week. Thanks, Groundspeak! :P Edited by sbell111
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I don't. What I need is to have a cache included in a PQ whenever anything about it changes. Unfortunately this isn't an option.

You lost me. Whenever anything about what changes? The cache? You can still do that.

 

Ever since PQs were offered, I've received a PQ of my local area. All changes are in there (except archivals, but lets not go near those worms).

 

How often do you need these changes?

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I like the new system.

 

And, I'm sure there are many paid up members who can't go caching for a week or two or longer because of complications in their lives. If they don't go in and uncheck all those PQs -- which they won't because their lives are too busy to Geocache -- those PQs still run, using up much-needed server resources.

 

If you absolutely need new data for a quick caching trip, just create a new query for the intended search location.

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The link is of no use unless 1) you read the mail 2) you're logged in 3) you're logged in to the account which owns the PQ.

 

"My PQ"? Great, I'm happy that your one PQ works for you. I have 35 PQs. Sure, sometimes they fail to run. I don't lose sleep over it. It's better than having to spend time manually doing something that used to happen automatically.

 

I'm obviously flogging a dead horse, since everyone but me seems happy with this degradation of service, so I'll go to bed now.

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You lost me.  Whenever anything about what changes?  The cache?  You can still do that.

I'm always willing to learn, so please do say how I can do this. I tried it when I first started using PQs and could never get it to work reliably.

 

I need data about all caches in the UK. When a cache is created I need to know of its existence. When a cache is logged or changed in any way I need to know about it. I need to know as often as the data changes.

 

I think its clear that we use PQs in different ways. Nothing wrong with that, but perhaps we just both need reminding of it.

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Might I suggest that you use some of the sorting capabilities of GSAK?

I do use GSAK - extensively.

 

But there's a catch-22 there. I need the PQs to put the data into GSAK....

But certainly you don't need the data on more than several hundred, or a thousand nearby caches at any one time.

 

Now if you were going on a road trip in the U.S. from Maine to San Diego, well then you would need to run a lot of PQs, but short of that, why do you need so much data?

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... why do you need so much data?

Short answer: convenience.

 

Longish answer: I run my ultra refined PQs on a schedule in order to have a more complete data set than the PQs themselves allow. I've saved my PQs since the beginning, therefor I have historical records for every log that has been included in a PQ that I've received. This allows us to refer back to logs that someone may reference has holding more complete clues or more accurate coordinates. We've been thwarted several times because of this and it frustrates us.

 

Additionally, we don't have to make any decisions about where we are going ahead of time. In fact, I could set things up so we are already on the road before I load the GPSs and PDA. If we get 100 mile down the road and decide to go somewhere else, we can. Why? Because we've been collecting listings of every cache in our normal stmping grounds.

 

Where is our stomping grounds? Start with all of western North Carolina, all of South Carolina, most of eastern Georgia, and the north east of Florida; some 4000 caches or there abouts.

 

It's like having geocaching.com on our laptop.

 

Another answer: we paid for it, so why shouldn't we?

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Well, sbell111, if you are not working for the folks here, then why are you going out of you way to try to convice Alan White of something that is really not your's to convince anyone about. What any of us want to do with the data is our business. Since we paid to get the data, we are free to make as much use of it as we see fit. The fact is that the system was presented to us as being in some sort of danger and the scheduling system was "temporarily broken" as an experiment to try to see if it would fix the problem. The theory being that lots of scheduled PQs are not really needed by many of the Premium users.

 

Alan White, the system currently behaves differently as a temporary experiment to see if YOU will really miss your PQs. Since you obviously want to get what you paid for, you are not the target of this. But don't hold your breath waiting for an apology.

 

I don't have GSAK retrieve my PQ results for me, but I too lost data that I expected to get.

 

This approach is just a "band aid". Perhaps it will work for a short time. Anyway, we are through seven days of this now, so perhaps the promise will be kept soon to revert back to the way it is supposed to run. Personally I would like to see a more sophisticated scheduling tool that allows for both recurrent scheduling with and without an end-date. I too will not hold my breath for that.

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I'm not from Groundspeak but Ill take a crack at it.

 

PQ's are run by a dedicated server which is maxed out most of the time handling all the PQ's. In an attempt to filter out automatic PQ's by inactive members, they started adding a link into the emails asking people to click it if they want their PQ's re-newed.

 

As I understand it, it has helped.

Sorry, I don't buy that logic at all.

 

Firstly, if the server running the PQs is maxed out then all that's necessary is to wheel in more or bigger. Is this not what the fee is for?

 

Secondly, there's no such thing as an inactive PM. When the prepaid time expires then they're no longer a PM so their PQs will stop anyway. While someone is a PM then they're entitled to their PQs.

 

Lastly, well, yes, if you stop running the PQs then of course the problem will go away. It's not providing the service though, is it?

 

you have an excelent arguement but apparently there is no tie between the expiratioin of the membership and the killing of the PQ -

 

so for now all ya gotta do is go re-up them.

 

I gott say that previously I got 3-4 out of 7 pq's now I get one every day at about 1:30 AM and sometimes I even get 2

 

AND WOULD YOU BELIEVE IT!! I GOT 3 LAST FRIDAY!!

 

Something must be working!!

 

Thanks J!

 

cc\

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Thanks for your answer, but the OP you are not.

Maybe not, but CR admirably sums up the - perfectly valid - reasons.

 

As I said earlier, we all need to remember that not everyone does things in the same way. I'm glad that 1 PQ serves your needs. It doesn't serve mine. For this reason I've paid for two PM accounts to give me the extra flexibility. I'm happy to pay even more, as the benefit to me greatly outweighs the current cost. Of course I didn't set the fee, but I did expect that for that fee I'd get certain functionality. Now that functionality has been changed so that it no longer provides the features I need. So perhaps Groundspeak could say how much they would charge to return the functionality back to what I thought I'd already paid for?

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apparently there is no tie between the expiratioin of the membership and the killing of the PQ

An obvious change to be made there, then. All PM features should stop automatically the day after the subscription expires.

 

The reason you got all 3 PQs last Fri is because I only got one, as the rest had been turned off without notification. Yes, I did want them.

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apparently there is no tie between the expiratioin of the membership and the killing of the PQ

An obvious change to be made there, then. All PM features should stop automatically the day after the subscription expires.

 

The reason you got all 3 PQs last Fri is because I only got one, as the rest had been turned off without notification. Yes, I did want them.

"without notification"!?!?!

 

By my count you were notified 35 times, if you chose to delete the notifications then that was a mistake on your part.

 

[Edit typo]

Edited by Tharagleb
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I only got one, as the rest had been turned off without notification. Yes, I did want them.

To expand on tharagleb's comment, the notification was in the e-mail with the PQ.

 

Now you, like me, probably didn't see that since you may be using GSAK to grab and process those PQs.

 

It would have been nice to have some better notification...maybe an announcement on the PQ listing screen, but at least we now know what the rules are and how to deal with it.

 

(I am getting my once a week PQs much earlier in the day. I'm surprised that there was so many deadwood PQs that must have been running.)

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apparently there is no tie between the expiratioin of the membership and the killing of the PQ

An obvious change to be made there, then. All PM features should stop automatically the day after the subscription expires.

 

The reason you got all 3 PQs last Fri is because I only got one, as the rest had been turned off without notification. Yes, I did want them.

"without notification"!?!?!

 

By my count you were notified 35 times, if you chose to delete the notifications then that was a mistake on your part.

 

[Edit typo]

I don't know that I can disagree with Alan on that point. Since Gmail is free, and has a huge capacity, it seems to be popular with geocaching.com users. GSAK users seem to get into the habit of downloading the GPX files directly without actually reading the text. It seems to be a short step to people who may have set up a gmail account specifically for loading GPX files into GSAK. Perhaps this behavior was unknown or unexpected by TPTB.

 

A weekly notification with a differently formatted subject line would be more likely to be noticed by these users (since GSAK would not have downloaded and deleted it). A notice posted at the top of the PQ page would have been noticed, since that is where people who are having trouble getting their PQs are likely to go first. This is what annoyed me, and what I think is annoying Alan: The notification of the change in handling PQs could have been handled better. I had to figure out what was going on, but when I came to this forum, there was the topic about the PQs, which answered my questions. I would guess that the total elapsed time from question to answer was under 1/2 hour.

 

I don't find the current situation all that unbearable, and I understand this is a temporary, emergency patch. I can think of other things that TPTB might do to alleviate the server load on specific days. I hope they are working on long term solutions that will restore normal function soon, and they have said that they are.

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Seriously - do you really NEED all that data??

 

It is available online - always up-to-date. So what if your particular offline data is a few hours or days old??

 

I just don't get it - and I am as addicted to this as anyone I have ever met. What exactly do you do with all the data? How do you use it? Why isn't a more occasional update ok? What functionality does the website not afford you? How does updating 4000 caches worth of information weekly help you find them?

 

And what's with complaining about paying $3 per month? Seems pretty cheap to me.

 

If I take all this whining to its logical conclusion - folks will want a download of the entire database 4 times per day so that they don't have to bother with visiting the website. Convenience........how far should it go?

 

If making you visit the website just 1 time per week for about 2 minutes to check a few boxes solves the problem without buying expensive addtional equipment than I think it is a valid solution. If you can't spend that 2 mintues than I don't think you really need all that data. Convienience indeed!!

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I don't know that I can disagree with Alan on that point.

 

<snip>

My name happens to be "Alan" too, so I thought at first that you were agreeing with me. :mad:

 

I strongly object to the "without notification" phrase. Just because GSAK gobbled up your email doesn't mean it never existed.

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I strongly object to the "without notification" phrase. Just because GSAK gobbled up your email doesn't mean it never existed.

Yeah, but there is notification and there is notification.

 

They could have done it much better.

 

When the end of the ad on TV shows a page of fine print for 5 seconds, do you think you have been properly notified?

 

(Edit: typo)

Edited by beejay&esskay
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I strongly object to the "without notification" phrase. Just because GSAK gobbled up your email doesn't mean it never existed.

Yeah, but there is notification and there is notification.

 

They could have done it much better.

 

When the end of the ad on TV shows a page of fine print for 5 seconds, do you think you have been properly notified?

 

(Edit: typo)

I will concede your point if you will concede mine. (Which I think you kinda did?)

 

In other words I accept your apology. :mad:

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In other words I accept your apology.  :mad:

I think it's Alan White, not me that you are looking for an apology from...since I don't think I ever said I wasn't notified...

 

But I guess anything that will stop this argument is a good thing....so apology acceptance confirmed. :mad:

No, I wasn't looking for an apology from anyone. The "I accept your apology" was from another thread where it was used when no apology was tendered. Maybe you already knew that...

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Here we go with the "My $30 makes me God" again.

 

Personally, if I'm running a service distributing information to my customers automatically via email, and there is a policy update on how that very information is going to be distributed, how am I going to distribute it to my customers? That's right, in an email containing the very information I'm distributing. Why? Because I intended that email to be seen by my customers before they used the data included. Am I going to get terribly upset if a customer misses an important notice or some of their data because they are using a THIRD PARTY software application and a web service hosted on another site to shortcut the message delivery system I had intended? Sorry, but nope. I told you I was going to change something, you just never bothered to look at it.

 

Personally, I can't even begin to imagine why someone would need to run 35 PQ's every single week. And I know of plenty of website services out there that despite having a paid membership option, still limit you on the amount of data you can retrieve from them in a given time--some GIS-data hosting services come to mind. I have no inside knowledge of the workings of the data center where gc.com is hosted, but I can guarantee you that the servers running pq's are NOTHING like the humble machines we use to browse the site every day. Ours cost $1,000. You'd be AMAZED how fast you can kill $50,000 setting up web hosting machines. I recently helped set up part of a data center where the CASE for one component cost $2,000 (or was it $20,000....I can't remember)--and fit on the passenger seat of a Chevy Tahoe. Plus, parts have to be ordered, installed, wired, programmed, etc etc etc. It does not happen overnight, and it is not cheap. Especially when the masses are screaming to use our $30 membership fees to come up with a 'better' solution for locationless/virtuals, or do this, or do that..............

 

...........wow, so I really took off there...

 

And I should say that I am one of the guys that this solution has weeded out. I had ONE pq set up to run twice a week to update the caches in my area. (Have 8 other pq's set up, run them only when I need) When I saw the note in my pq email about having to click the link at the bottom to recieve the pq again next week, I sat back and thought about it. The last time I actually loaded a pq into GSAK was probably 3 weeks ago, but I never really gave any thought to disabeling the auto-run. THESE are the inactive accounts that they refer to. I'm still here, still caching, still enjoying the premium membership benefits, just don't need as much as I was getting. Maybe the solution is to disable the 'click-to-renew' policy in the next week or so, and then have it be a standing policy that every 3-6 months, or as determined to be necessary, it will be reinstated for a two week period to clean out the unneeded pq's.

 

Like I said, I don't understand the need to have a full history of every single cache within 2,000 miles of my home, but up until my last hard drive crash, I had virtually EVERY email sent to me in the last 8 years. I was almost devastated when I noticed I had lost it, until I realized it was no big deal. What I'm saying is to each their own..........but I don't understand.

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Sorry, but nope. I told you I was going to change something, you just never bothered to look at it.

Actually, this should just be a symptom of me not being in touch with my customers.

 

Automation is a wonderful thing. Knowing what's out there, I'd know that many of those emails would never see human eyes. If I didn't it would be a failure on my part.

 

Additionally, there is a switch in your profile that says, "Inform me of new features and changes to the web site." If it was me, that's the mechanism I'd use. If that switch was on and the user is a paying user, a speical email would have been sent out. That is what it's for, right?

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Ahh, but you've stumbled upon another problem: a user has to check the box to be updated on changes to the website, etc. to recieve such emails. If they're so rushed/whatever that they have to automate the process of importing pq's, what do you think the odds of looking at another admin email from gc.com are? Especially if the email goes to the same account as the pq's--the account they never look at, just let GSAK do it's thing at. And, the change to pq's wasn't a change to the website, it was a change to a premium member feature. My guess is the 'change to website' email goes out to all registered gc.com users, premium member or not. Which amounts to a whole lot of essentially 'junk' mail for non-premium members.

 

Bottom line, we were notified both in the pq emails as well in the forums. If you take a moment once a week to check into your pq page and make sure they're checked to run the way you want, you'll be fine.

Edited by dkwolf
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You're reaching and your logic doesn't hold water. I do read the other emails, or at least the subject lines, of all other emails that come from gc.com. It's only the PQs I have sent to that special email box--there is the ability to send those to boxes other than the one in your profile.

 

The change to the functionality of the PQs is not a change to the website? This just shows you're arguing just to argue.

 

...and that's not worth my time.

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I applaud and cheer the work Jeremy and the rest of the Groundspeak crew does to keep this hobby as inexpensive as it is. I don't mind being flexible every once in a while if it means keeping everything running smoothly.

 

If you or anyone else doesn't like it, take your $30 per year and go play somewhere else.

Edited by WH
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If you or anyone else doesn't like it, take your $30 per year and go play somewhere else.

ROFL! Standard party line answer finally comes out. Typical.

 

Me, my $30, and my caches, too, right? Why does everyone who spouts that trival always forget about taking the caches, too?

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