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If changes are afoot...


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Ooh loads of things.

 

1. A more common sense approach to the commercial guidelines for event caches.

2. The ability to specify the number of days in the "Found in the last 7 days" PQ option.

3. A return of Locationless* and Virtual caches.

4. Ordnance survey maps on cache pages (Streetmap being one way).

5. A cache award system. Say you get 3 stars to award to the best caches you find in a month, more icons!

6. An increase in the maximum number of caches included in a PQ download.

 

But I can't see any of the above happening.

 

Philip

 

* Only so can get the icon :)

 

Edited to add, I would like Nano added as as cache size (so I can filter them out in PQ's).

Edited by pklong
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Edited to add, I would like Nano added as as cache size (so I can filter them out in PQ's).

 

Excellent idea!

 

I would also love to see 1 stage off-set multis have a different icon to 2+ stage multis and to be able to run the 'My Finds' PQ more than once a week would be great.

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3. A return of Locationless* and Virtual caches.

 

Edited to add, I would like Nano added as as cache size (so I can filter them out in PQ's).

 

Although I do like a virtual,I think we would become saturated by them if they are returned.

I also vote for a nano category,as there are more hidden and found everyday.

I am in favour of nanos by the way.

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I'd love to see a cache rating/voting system where cachers get to rate a cache.

 

Although I like the idea of giving the caches personal ratings I think it can only be a bad thing. We know everyone who takes part in caching is not always honest then there are personality clashes and the like, so we would end up with people rubbishing other peoples caches for no reason. At present people can give caches a bad write up in the log and this still does not affect the overall cache.

 

Possibly you would need a seperate datebase for personal rating.

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I don't think there are changes afoot, but if there were:

  • Everyone to be informed when changes to the guidelines, or the way the guidelines are applied, occur
  • Increase the number of caches returned in a PQ
  • The ability to do a PQ for archived caches

I can't see the last 2 happening and I can understand that, but I think the first should happen and there's no reason why it shouldn't.

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I don't think there are changes afoot, but if there were:

  • Everyone to be informed when changes to the guidelines, or the way the guidelines are applied, occur
    Definitely agree with this one...
  • Increase the number of caches returned in a PQ
    Perhaps they could do something similar to the "my finds" query - and allow a much larger PQ (eg The whole of the UK) once a week.
  • The ability to do a PQ for archived caches
    Why? If you've found it, it will be in your my finds query - if not, well, it was archived for a reason....

I can't see the last 2 happening and I can understand that, but I think the first should happen and there's no reason why it shouldn't.

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I don't think there are changes afoot, but if there were:

Changes afoot.

Trig Points on site, similar to Waymarks :lol:

Already there.

Also these and these and these and others...

 

I don't know how they're getting away with it, but the very popular "Victoria's Post Boxes" are here.It looks quite recent as I hadn't noticed it before, and only a few have been logged (82 at the moment).

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They're getting away with it, I guess, because the category owners weren't around when Royal Mail asked us to stop recording and publishing them. Wasn't it a locationless cache?

It was indeed: the new one appears to be exactly the same. I guess that it hasn't been spotted yet. Or perhaps these days the market for antique letter boxes has dried up. The other possibility is that there's no health and safety/insurance/terrorist angle so they're not bothered.

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3. A return of Locationless* and Virtual caches.

 

Terrific idea. That means I could go ahead with my "A Road Virtual Boredom 1 -10 series". A quick series designed to give drivers a break while driving from A to B. Ten caches over a couple of miles where you have to collect some information from road signs. It would be really good because on some of them you wouldn't even have to get out of the car. Admittedly on one or two you might have to pull off a busy main road into a farmer's gateway but they would get loads of visits thus proving their popularity. Just think of the numbers you could rack up. It would really take geocaching to a new level and I might even consider extending it to supermarket car parks. :lol:

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I'd love to see a cache rating/voting system where cachers get to rate a cache.

This must be one of the most-discussed ideas here, and the weaknesses are well known.

 

My idea is for the cache submitter to place the cache in a category (or more than one category), as most of the complaints about poor-quality caches seem to be because people expect a cache to be something it wasn't meant to be. An example is a cacher who loves long hill walks to ammo boxes complaining about poor caches, after finding that most new caches in his area are micros two minutes from the car park.

 

Possibly the new version of gc.com will have this facility.

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3. A return of Locationless* and Virtual caches.

We've had this discussion elsewhere, and there's a suggestion that not all locationless caches have been locked. As far as I can check (which isn't far), those that have been directly copied across to Waymarking (such as Lighthouses and Palindromes) do seem to have been locked. Perhaps if you find one that isn't in Waymarking then you might still be able to log it, but I don't know how you get a list of the old Locationless category. A few have been logged fairly recently "with permission", whatever that means.

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Like the Idea of History Caches, just as relevant as Earth caches in me opinion.

Quote from 'www.earthcache.org':-

"They take people to sites that can help explain the formation of landscapes"

 

I would interpret this is as follows (using a couple of historical examples):-

 

If something historical has effected the landscape in an area, then it could be an earthcache. For example:-

- Many towns and villages have grown up around a geographical feature (river mouth for example), and their development has dramatically affected the landscape - therefore the town or village (or part of it) could be the earthcache...

- Historical structures such as churches, castles, canals, dykes, mounds etc.. have had a similar effect on the development of the formation of the landscape in Britain...

 

Someone must agree, as within the 'Earthcache' type, there are several classifications, one being 'Historical Site'. We have only 5 of these active in the UK - GC11F8K, GC19CHX, GC15QKM, GC18FZ7 and GC18G0Q.

 

So, with some research and planning we might be able to make more use of the 'EarthCache' cache type for some of our British historical sites.

 

But, I'm not saying I don't agree with the need for a more specific 'HistoryCache' cache type though, Great Idea! :lol:

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I'd love to see a cache rating/voting system where cachers get to rate a cache.

This must be one of the most-discussed ideas here, and the weaknesses are well known.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the suggestion, we already have a rating system on GeocacheUK. It works very well and is very useful. It's a great example of what UK cachers can do when Groundspeak doesn't want to do it.

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I'd love to see a cache rating/voting system where cachers get to rate a cache.

This must be one of the most-discussed ideas here, and the weaknesses are well known.

Unless I'm misunderstanding the suggestion, we already have a rating system on GeocacheUK. It works very well and is very useful. It's a great example of what UK cachers can do when Groundspeak doesn't want to do it.

My point excatly, its a good system but it relies on another site. Something like that on geocaching.com would be great. I know that personalities/gripes come into things but if everyone is only allowed to vote once on a cache then any sour grapes ratings would soon be offset by the general good ratings (if it was a good cache).
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it relies on another site

But what's wrong with that? You're surely not suggesting, after everything that's happened in the last few days, that everything worldwide that has anything at all to do with geocaching should be hosted by Groundspeak? :lol:

 

There are many many sites complementary to Groundspeak's, all of which provide many useful services to geocachers. Long may it continue.

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But what's wrong with that? You're surely not suggesting, after everything that's happened in the last few days, that everything worldwide that has anything at all to do with geocaching should be hosted by Groundspeak? :lol:

 

There are many many sites complementary to Groundspeak's, all of which provide many useful services to geocachers. Long may it continue.

It does work well, and is better for being on an independent site. Although when it comes down to it, I tend to use bookmarks to try and find the best caches in an area.

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darn double post the server said I was dropped :lol:

To stop the forums from random double posting :P

Sorry, sometimes I remove double posts. I delete theirs before seeing your quote. Funny one though. Usually the post goes though. Just go back a couple of steps to the main forum menu, hit refresh and then you can see if the post took.

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You're surely not suggesting, after everything that's happened in the last few days, that everything worldwide that has anything at all to do with geocaching should be hosted by Groundspeak? :lol:

Perish the thought - the angle that I was coming from was stability and longevity - with sites coming and going these days reliability can be an issue if you are relying on multiple sites to get something done.
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I wonder Locationless

As you know, locationless caches were (mostly) migrated. As geocaching and Waymarking are being merged this year, I guess that's what they were referring to.

 

Merged? So everyones Waymarking count will be added to their Geocaching finds?

No. I think that is an over-simplification of this post in the Announcements Forum:

There will be some minor changes. Instead of a Geocaching.com account you will have a Groundspeak account. Technically you already have one but you will actually be updating your account information on Groundspeak. Don't worry, we'll make this completely painless.

 

Since account data will be centralized, things you do on other Groundspeak sites will be modified in your main profile. So add an additional saved location and you can search from it on both Waymarking and Geocaching.com. Waymarking and Geocaching information will also be merged but in a way that should please both Waymarkers and Geocachers.

I don't take that to mean that find counts will be merged, but who knows.

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I wonder Locationless

As you know, locationless caches were (mostly) migrated. As geocaching and Waymarking are being merged this year, I guess that's what they were referring to.

 

Merged? So everyones Waymarking count will be added to their Geocaching finds?

No. I think that is an over-simplification of this post in the Announcements Forum:

There will be some minor changes. Instead of a Geocaching.com account you will have a Groundspeak account. Technically you already have one but you will actually be updating your account information on Groundspeak. Don't worry, we'll make this completely painless.

 

Since account data will be centralized, things you do on other Groundspeak sites will be modified in your main profile. So add an additional saved location and you can search from it on both Waymarking and Geocaching.com. Waymarking and Geocaching information will also be merged but in a way that should please both Waymarkers and Geocachers.

I don't take that to mean that find counts will be merged, but who knows.

 

I hope note - Visit a bridge and claim it under 27 different categories... The two really won't go together...

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Trig Points on site, similar to Waymarks :lol:

 

Of course, I meant Benchmarks :P

 

FWIW, benchmarks don't count towards your finds count (see our finds as we have 18 benchmarks) - it's just a place to log them. Putting trigs on this site would add nowt to what already exists on the trigpointing site - apart from having the database managed by Groundspeak rather than in the UK.

Edited by Pengy&Tigger
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it relies on another site

But what's wrong with that? You're surely not suggesting, after everything that's happened in the last few days, that everything worldwide that has anything at all to do with geocaching should be hosted by Groundspeak? :P

 

There are many many sites complementary to Groundspeak's, all of which provide many useful services to geocachers. Long may it continue.

 

Yes there are many websites offering additional services - such as GAGB forums. :lol: But some people :D don't want to use those websites and their functions despite offering a perfectly good alternative. You could argue it's the same with geocacheuk.com.

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I hope note - Visit a bridge and claim it under 27 different categories...

Why not, if that's what you really want to do? Sounds a bit tedious but it wouldn't bother me if people did that. It used to happen with Locationless (maybe not 27 times), but so what if you have a big Locationless find count?

Yeah but BoL's point still stands - Geocaching & Waymarking are very different and merging the find counts wouldn't be sensible. But I don't think that's being seriously proposed anyway.

 

When people talk about "merging" Geocaching & Waymarking in the context of Phoenix/V2 from what I've read from Groundspeak's statements (eg this)- it's more in a behind-the scenes architectural sense in the way the data is stored. Each will retain their individuality via different presentation "skins".

 

Whatever goodies Phoenix offers I'm sure there will be resistance due to people's innate conservatism. I just hope Groundspeak don't rush it into production. We don't want a Geocaching Terminal 5! :lol:

 

(Edited to change wrong acronym for Groundspeak)

Edited by Team Sieni
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Yeah but BoL's point still stands - Geocaching & Waymarking are very different and merging the find counts wouldn't be sensible. But I don't think that's being seriously proposed anyway.

I wasn't suggesting that the actual numbers would be merged: I expect that there will be tabs (as there are now), but in addition to "waymark lists" and "waymark category grid" there will also be "geocache lists". On the page you'll be able to select "grid type" as you can now.

 

Whatever goodies Phoenix offers I'm sure there will be resistance due to people's innate conservatism. I just hope Groundspeak don't rush it into production. We don't want a Geocaching Terminal 5! :huh:

It doesn't look as if they're exactly rushing: Jeremy's announcement seems extremely cautious on timescale.

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i. An area of the forum for premium members to air their grievances without risk of censorship.

 

I'm not sure how much one can expect for 15 quid a year. Premium members pay for access to specific functionality of the site, nothing more. Groundspeak is not a cooperative or a foundation. You're a "member" in the sense you might be a paying "member" of a casino; it doesn't mean you're a partner. Perhaps the word should be changed to "paying customer", but then I suppose the title for non-premium members would have to be "Freeloader". :D

 

More generally on the "censorship" issue: since last Wednesday I have seen two suspensions of posting privileges. One was for a very short time and for straightforward violations of the forum terms of use, notably using a sock puppet (which, FWIW, was therefore not a premium member account :huh:). The other was for calling Groundspeak "Nazis". If you want to run a forum where anyone can call anyone else a Nazi, you may find that it doesn't attract the quality of discussion you were hoping for.

 

What I do see is that criticism of Groundspeak's policies which does not descend into name-calling, seems to be fairly well tolerated. I'm not sure that if I were to post even the most constructively-worded criticism of the business policies of McDonald's, Dell, BT, or my local corner grocer on the forum of their site, that it would stay up for quite as long.

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