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Pocket Queries


kenai16

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Quit passing it off as a aol problem. You admitted it as being a geocache problem and said it was being worked out. They say it is not a high priority problem then after I comment about it, surprisingly I get my week old queries and a statement from you saying it had a status of "high". make up my mind.

There were 13 emails to you on our server waiting to be delivered to AOL. You're lucky, one of them got through. I'd estimate we're delivering less than 10% of our daily email volume to AOL right now, so your 1 out of 13 is consistent with what we're seeing. I'm not passing this off as an AOL problem, it is an AOL problem.

 

I'll try to be more clear as to our priorities:

 

1. Improving the performance of the PQ generator so that PQs get generated faster - very high priority.

2. Worrying about AOL not delivering your email in a timely fashon - very low priority.

 

I'll send you a PM with the log entries showing that AOL is refusing to accept your mail so you can follow up with them.

 

:) Elias

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All Pocket Queries ran yesterday as well as the backlog from the previous day. And today the queries are running through fine and are slated to complete this evening (Pacific). With the read-only database now back online and some work on how Pocket Queries generate, even the everyday queries are getting out fine.

 

I mentioned this before but we're going to create a "bump" queue that will raise the priority of your query for that day. That way if you have a query that runs often and you really need it before you take off to grandma's house, you can click the bump and it will get to you faster - depending of course on how many people are also clicking bump on their own queues.

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On the AOL problem, very frustrating to say the least but there had to be something that triggered the blocking of GC.com mail. For you that brag about gmail or some other ISP,,, there's absolutely no reason to think that something similar can't happen with them as well. Problems like this are gonna come up sooner or later no matter what site you use. I'm sorry, but the opinion that AOL sucks is yours and not everyone agrees with that opinion!
holy cow. if AOL is blocking emails and anyone from Groundspeak can provide documentation of this, I will go after AOL as well as an end user (although I hope someone at Groundspeak can speak for everyone directly to them if that's the case).
Quit passing it off as a aol problem.
This is not really for the PQ problems, but just for those that continue to bleed AOL issues into these PQ threads.

 

Please re-read the posts above. The staff at Groundspeak have indicated that they are aware of TWO major issues. First, that the PQ generator was having difficulties, and that the work-around until they resolved the issue was that you could create new queries. It sounds like Jeremy's post has addressed these problems and hopefully all of the PQs will be sent merrily on their way.

 

As far as AOL - yes, there is a HUGE problem with AOL in that there is evidently no way for the USERS to storm the castle and indicate that this is a problem. Groundspeak and Geocaching.com can click "Send" on the e-mail, but if AOL is blocking and not receiving these, how is it Groundspeak's problem? If the singing telegram guy comes to your door while you're napping, and your wife doesn't answer the door, do you blame the singing telegram man because you didn't get it? Elias has indicated that as soon as AOL opens the floodgates, AOL users will most likely be deluged by their old mail, much like the Santa Claus at the end of Miracle on 34th Street.

 

some other ISP,,, there's absolutely no reason to think that something similar can't happen
I think the problem is because AOL IS one of the biggest ISPs. Here's some documentation as to how AOL determines to block e-mails.

 

When an AOL member clicks "this is spam" for a piece of email sent from one of your IPs, this is considered a "complaint".

<snip>

We suggest using custom email headers or a custom remove link in the email to help you determine what part of your member base may have subscribed in error.

<snip>

We suggest removing members from your list who have marked the mail as spam. If they continue to receive the email and mark it as spam it will continue to generate complaints.

 

So, if I understand it, every time someone receives an e-mail from Geocaching.com to their AOL account and marks it as "spam", Geocaching.com gets one demerit. Get enough demerits, and AOL stops sending your e-mail through. The only way to return the situation to normal is to set up this "feedback loop" thingy, and pile on more "good" mail to balance out the demerits.

 

So, I don't blame GC.com from putting fixing the PQs on a higher priority than fixing a problem that AOL has created by THEIR rules and procedures that reduces service to THEIR customers.

Edited by Markwell
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I apologise if it turns out to be a aol problem. Thank you for making this a high priority issue and working on it. Can you tell me why aol would mark this spam? Is it just because I get emails from this on a regular basis and why does it only mark this spam. I know you are not aol and may not have the answers, but it is only pocket queries it is blocking...confused.

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Can you tell me why aol would mark this spam?

It's not AOL marking it as spam, it's the USERS of AOL that are marking it as spam. Some guy signs up here, puts some stuff on his watchlist and starts getting emails. Later, he gets tired of geocaching, and instead of coming back here and removing stuff from his watchlist (or changing his email address to null), he starts flagging the emails as spam with the AOL mail reader. AOL gets these flags and thinks geocaching.com is some big filthy spammer and blocks ALL emails from geocaching.com, including ones to other members who still want the email.

 

Lovely world, eh? :lol:

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FYI... my PQs seem to be arriving now. I got the two that were scheduled on Monday. My email is through Rogers/Yahoo.

 

I went in and enabled two of them for today and they arrived within half an hour. They're also scheduled for tomorrow, so we'll see if they arrive as scheduled.

 

So far, so good. :lol:

 

Scott

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Can you tell me why aol would mark this spam?

It's not AOL marking it as spam, it's the USERS of AOL that are marking it as spam. Some guy signs up here, puts some stuff on his watchlist and starts getting emails. Later, he gets tired of geocaching, and instead of coming back here and removing stuff from his watchlist (or changing his email address to null), he starts flagging the emails as spam with the AOL mail reader. AOL gets these flags and thinks geocaching.com is some big filthy spammer and blocks ALL emails from geocaching.com, including ones to other members who still want the email.

 

Lovely world, eh? :lol:

 

Is there a way to get my queries even though some nob is to lazy to do the proper thing. I would like to continue to get queries and not have this happen again. I lost a 4 day "cache along a route' trip due to this problem.

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Can you tell me why aol would mark this spam?

It's not AOL marking it as spam, it's the USERS of AOL that are marking it as spam. Some guy signs up here, puts some stuff on his watchlist and starts getting emails. Later, he gets tired of geocaching, and instead of coming back here and removing stuff from his watchlist (or changing his email address to null), he starts flagging the emails as spam with the AOL mail reader. AOL gets these flags and thinks geocaching.com is some big filthy spammer and blocks ALL emails from geocaching.com, including ones to other members who still want the email.

 

Lovely world, eh? :)

 

Or more likely, someone named SalesmanSockPuppet uses the Send Email to User link to send unsolicited mail to another geocacher. Or if the Sock Puppet were really a Spammer, they could post a log to a cache that has a lot of people watching it (another reason why geocaching.com should remove the number of people watching a cache from the cache page) Fortunately, anyone trying this would soon be reported to Geocaching.com and would soon be banned - but I could see an AOL member hitting the report SPAM button without realizing that AOL would consider geocaching.com the spammer.

 

I remember having a watchlist on an event in Michigan where a geocoin of mine had been dropped. I thought I was being spammed when people started logging 40 to 50 attended logs each :lol:

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Can you tell me why aol would mark this spam?

It's not AOL marking it as spam, it's the USERS of AOL that are marking it as spam. Some guy signs up here, puts some stuff on his watchlist and starts getting emails. Later, he gets tired of geocaching, and instead of coming back here and removing stuff from his watchlist (or changing his email address to null), he starts flagging the emails as spam with the AOL mail reader. AOL gets these flags and thinks geocaching.com is some big filthy spammer and blocks ALL emails from geocaching.com, including ones to other members who still want the email.

 

Lovely world, eh? :lol:

 

Is there a way to get my queries even though some nob is to lazy to do the proper thing. I would like to continue to get queries and not have this happen again. I lost a 4 day "cache along a route' trip due to this problem.

Get a Gmail account for your PQs. Many of the people here do that.

 

I have no problem getting my GC.com mail through my regular ISP. :)

 

Edit to add appropriate quote.

Edited by Miragee
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Or more likely, someone named SalesmanSockPuppet uses the Send Email to User link to send unsolicited mail to another geocacher.

 

Ancedotally it is usually the way Lil Devil was saying. Someone just decides to ban the emails in their inbox instead of unsubscribing to geocaching.com

 

However, one thing I don't understand is, given the history and volume of emails to AOL users, it would be obvious to them that 99.99% of the emails are requested. It should base spam reports on the history and volume of solicited emails and compare them to the spam reports.

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hey, so I got the error log from the emails that geocaching.com tried to send to my AOL that got blocked, etc.

 

I chatted w/ AOL help and showed them the logs.

 

their reply:

 

7:48:22 PM AOLTechPJT

AOL may have received large amounts of junk e-mail from someone using this domain name. Please ask the sender of the e-mail to ask their system administrator or Internet Service Provider to call the AOL® Postmaster Hotline at 1-888-212-5537.

 

7:48:42 PM AOLTechPJT

The Postmaster Team, which is available 7 days a week, 24 hours a day, can work with the ISP to quickly resolve the issue.

Additional information is available at the AOL Postmaster Web Site: http://postmaster.info.aol.com/

 

 

So, I've PM'd this back to the groudspeak guy who sent me the error messages..hopefully they will call the postmaster team. geocaching.com applied to AOL for whitelist status but seems to be still in process.

 

hopefully a few phone calls and maybe a little work and this could be resolved in part...we;ll see!!

 

meanwhile, emails to non-AOL are going through, selected 'run then uncheck' for my PQ .. interesting that the run then delete didn't run (I think).

 

edit: oh yeah, also, Groundspeak guy told me they have implemented the feedback loop already

 

edit: well, I'll be....now my 3 aol emails showed up..........mysteriously 8 hours after they were sent...this is weird.

Edited by thefiveofus
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AOL may have received large amounts of junk e-mail from someone using this domain name
Nope.
Please ask the sender of the e-mail to ask their system administrator or Internet Service Provider to call the AOL® Postmaster
They've already contacted the Postmaster, and AOL still won't unblock. Edited by Markwell
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What if you add whatever the PQ email address is to your contacts? Unless AOL is even dumber than I thought, that should whitelist the address.

Unfortunately, that won't help. The mail is being blocked before AOL even looks at it.

 

:D Elias

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Back to the PQ thing. I would like an option in my PQ to only get the waypoints (e.g., NNNNNN-wpts.gpx) and not the full thing. This would greatly reduce the file size (by a factor of 20 in my case, that's after compressing). More importantly, the server wouldn't have to run all those other table queries.

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I think he's misinterpreting the fact that the NNNNNN-wpts.gpx contains just the waypoints of the caches, when in fact it contains just the ADDITIONAL waypoints for the caches.

 

It seems that the posted just needs waypoints and coordinates, which indeed would work if he received the LOC files.

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I use a netscape.net account, which I just figured out is "owned" by AOL even though it isn't AOL. All of my Groundspeak mail for the last 2 weeks, not just PQs, was delayed by 2-7 days. I'm assuming this is all part of the same ISP problem described above?

 

(At any rate, I switched my desired PQs back to my work addy and they came right away.)

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I tried running my first PQ today, and I haven't had any luck :(

I do not have AOL or Yahoo. I checked with my ISP, and they

don't have GC.com blacklisted at all. I tried sending a PQ to another

email address, and still nothing ~sigh~

 

Did you select a "day" to run? Did they turn BOLD and have a date/time run to the right?

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After all my complaining for the last couple of weeks I'm glad to say that my PQs are all coming through nice and prompt. I did change from 2 dailies to 14 in total running 2 a day and a week apart but I'm happy to stick to that.

 

Thanks for fixing whatever the problem was and here's hoping we can get on without any more problems for a while :(

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I tried running my first PQ today, and I haven't had any luck <_<

I do not have AOL or Yahoo. I checked with my ISP, and they

don't have GC.com blacklisted at all. I tried sending a PQ to another

email address, and still nothing ~sigh~

 

Same deal here.

I set up my first PQ, and ran it. I get a preview page, but when I view my PQ's they just show "Never" in the last run collum. No Email ..nothing.

 

How long does one usually need to wait for them ot run the first time?

TFTH

 

Hailmars

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FWIW, I work for IT in for the State of Vermont and we had the same thing happen to us. People applying for jobs would get email from us and the applicants started flagging us as spam. The entire domain "vermont.gov" got black-listed on AOL and all our emails went undelivered.

 

I believe it was fixed fairly quickly by AOL but that is probably ONLY because we are a state government.

 

[Edit: Sorry if that was off-topic, I forgot which thread this was. <_< ]

Edited by Tharagleb
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I tried running my first PQ today, and I haven't had any luck <_<

I do not have AOL or Yahoo. I checked with my ISP, and they

don't have GC.com blacklisted at all. I tried sending a PQ to another

email address, and still nothing ~sigh~

 

Did you select a "day" to run? Did they turn BOLD and have a date/time run to the right?

 

That was the ticket! I thought that by just submitting the PQ, it would

run... I never did anything with the other screen. I got it now - Thank

you soooooo much! :ph34r:

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