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Travel Bug Tracking -- A Call For More Features!


Jonmon

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I am a new Geocacher, and would really like to see some more detailed TB tracking on the site. I want to know which TB has traveled the farthest, or how many have visited a certain country, or crossed the ocean the most times. I need statistics! Is there a feature on the site or forums that I am missing, or does any one else crave this info?

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There used to be a page on the site that listed the top 10 travel bugs that travelled the farthest. Problem was this was encouraging abuse of the system. If you actually went in and looked at the travel history of those bugs, most of their logs were virtual logs where they were logged back and forth across oceans without ever physically making the trip.

 

Fortunately, recently many of those "virtual" bugs have been locked down so they can't be logged any more.

 

The website owners have long asserted that geocaching should not be a competitive sport, so I highly doubt you'll see any of these kind of stats.

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I think too many people use TBs as a method of tracking their own geocaching miles. The log it in/out of every cache they find. This renders any stats useless.

:lol:

I think that's why I'm considered an honest person. I'm not even smart enough to come up with the idea to do something like that. I'm not sure if I should feel bad or not.

 

Ron

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I think we should have other stats but nothing competative really. Maybe slowest moved TB or most countries hit. And to get these stats you HAVE to have pictures of that country with TB in it. Or something like that. And this would not be for virutal TBs or virutal moves. Or maybe you put your TB into the statistics group and others who do not care can keep theirs out. ;)

 

Wayne

AKA - Krycheck

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There used to be a page on the site that listed the top 10 travel bugs that travelled the farthest. Problem was this was encouraging abuse of the system. If you actually went in and looked at the travel history of those bugs, most of their logs were virtual logs where they were logged back and forth across oceans without ever physically making the trip.

Due to the mass cheating that occured when the statistics were available, there are no plans to add this feature in the near future. Perhaps if there are better checks in place this can happen again.

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I think too many people use TBs as a method of tracking their own geocaching miles.  The log it in/out of every cache they find.  This renders any stats useless.

;)

I think that's why I'm considered an honest person. I'm not even smart enough to come up with the idea to do something like that. I'm not sure if I should feel bad or not.

 

Ron

IMO, there's a difference between personal TBs that go with someone to every cache and purely "virtual" ones. While this does impact stats, in effect it differs from virtual logs since you are (in theory) physically taking a travel bug to the cache and picking it back up. I think there was a post somewhere from a long time ago in which personal mileage tracking was actually suggested as a valid use for TB tags by Jeremy (Can someone Markwell this?) My TB is attached to my keychain and has actually been to within feet of every cache I've logged it into since I bought it. Virtual TBs are problematic since they never actually visit a cache, and probably never leave someone's desk drawer. They are simply whisked around the world at whim, arbitrarily racking up miles as they go.

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If the travel bug is actually with the owner when they visit a cache, I don't see why it would be any different than another person who moved the travel bug from one cache to another.

 

This "virtual" travel bug nonsense is just a made up term to describe an abuse of the Travel Bug system.

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If the travel bug is actually with the owner when they visit a cache, I don't see why it would be any different than another person who moved the travel bug from one cache to another.

what if i left my coin at home or in the car, and it doesn't actually visit EVERY cache, but a majority of them. honestly, it often goes forgotten in my pocket. like at OTB just this week. when i got back to the car, i felt it in my pocket--wishing i would have taken a pic of it at the cache.

 

my coin

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what if i left my coin at home or in the car, and it doesn't actually visit EVERY cache, but a majority of them. honestly, it often goes forgotten in my pocket. like at OTB just this week. when i got back to the car, i felt it in my pocket--wishing i would have taken a pic of it at the cache.

I think the issue isn't when you visit a cache but your coin doesn't, but rather when the coin visits a cache that you don't :unsure:

 

The way I see it, personal coins and TB tags are ones that are not attached to a toy, but to a person (not literally, in most cases...). They still track the movements of a real object somewhere in the world, whether that object be a stuffed animal, a pet, or a cacher.

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I think the issue isn't when you visit a cache but your coin doesn't, but rather when the coin visits a cache that you don't.

Bingo!

 

My PTB is my shadow and sometimes I 'cast' it over a cache when needed, but not always. Perhaps I should change it to "my aura". Trust me that is always present. :unsure:

 

To answer the OP, yes it would be interesting information if the data was accurate, but like Where's George it's just not possible without a lot a restrictions and bug editing.

 

World records are cool, but in the meantime start watching and placing bugs that hold YOUR interest.

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I think too many people use TBs as a method of tracking their own geocaching miles.  The log it in/out of every cache they find.  This renders any stats useless.

:rolleyes:

I think that's why I'm considered an honest person. I'm not even smart enough to come up with the idea to do something like that. I'm not sure if I should feel bad or not.

 

Ron

Maybe the solution to that is to come up with a specific token for mileage tracking, and not call it a travel bug? I think using the TBs for personal milelage tracking isn't so much dishonest, as resourceful in the face of limited options. If there was some way of tracking personal miles that didn't involve using the bugs, I bet people would use it happily.

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If there was some way of tracking personal miles that didn't involve using the bugs, I bet people would use it happily.

I wonder... with the All Finds PQ now being availible, would it be possible to somehow use that data to calculate the total distance traveled while caching? Maybe some resourceful person could write a script or program, for example, that would arrange all finds by date and calculate the sum of the distances between each one in order (I'm not sure if the GSAK macro feature would have the ability to do this). The only problem would be multiple finds on the same date that aren't arranged chronologically, but maybe the locations of all caches found on one day could be averaged into one waypoint...

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I am a new Geocacher, and would really like to see some more detailed TB tracking on the site. I want to know which TB has traveled the farthest, or how many have visited a certain country, or crossed the ocean the most times. I need statistics! Is there a feature on the site or forums that I am missing, or does any one else crave this info?

If you find a real (not virtual) travel bug with more actual mileage than this one, please let me know. I'll let you count the countries and ocean crossings. :huh:

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