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tr1976

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Dear geocaching.com,

 

can I pay more $ to you to be able to get more than 500 caches in a PQ or create more PQs during 24h?

 

If not, why not?

 

BR,

tr1976

You can create another account and pay for one month. A mere $3 USD. You'll be able to run another 5 queries that way. :)

 

I'll add that you will have established a new account to use as a sock puppet for any evil caches you want to hide in your locale.

 

Also, just to avoid any other frustrations.... remember the no vacation cache policy.

Edited by TotemLake
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Dear geocaching.com,

 

can I pay more $ to you to be able to get more than 500 caches in a PQ or create more PQs during 24h?

 

If not, why not?

 

BR,

tr1976

You can create another account and pay for one month. A mere $3 USD. You'll be able to run another 5 queries that way. :)

 

Yes but it would be much easier to write fewer PQs. That would also save gc.com resources.

 

I'll add that you will have established a new account to use as a sock puppet for any evil caches you want to hide in your locale.

 

Also, just to avoid any other frustrations.... remember the no vacation cache policy.

 

What are you talking about? No caches during vacations? Evil caches? Stop drinking it.. :)

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I think you may misunderstand the intended purpose of Pocket Queries. They were created with the intent of you loading up your GPS and going out to find caches. You can currently pull up to 2500 per day and over 17,000 caches in a week. The database is kept totally up-to-date for you on the web servers. There are a few recent discussions along these lines on this very page if you scroll down a bit.

 

If you really need it - $30 a year is dirt cheap to double the above limits.

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I think you may misunderstand the intended purpose of Pocket Queries. They were created with the intent of you loading up your GPS and going out to find caches. You can currently pull up to 2500 per day and over 17,000 caches in a week. The database is kept totally up-to-date for you on the web servers. There are a few recent discussions along these lines on this very page if you scroll down a bit.

 

If you really need it - $30 a year is dirt cheap to double the above limits.

 

No I have not misunderstood anything. What I proposed was that why can't I pay e.g. $30 extra to create 1000 cache PQs. That would halve the number of PQs in the system, halve my time needed to create the PQs, double the number of of caches going into my devices and keep the number of dollars the same (compared to doubling the number of accounts). The problem is that the number of caches is increasing exponentially no matter how you formulate your PQs.

Edited by tr1976
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I think you may misunderstand the intended purpose of Pocket Queries. They were created with the intent of you loading up your GPS and going out to find caches. You can currently pull up to 2500 per day and over 17,000 caches in a week. The database is kept totally up-to-date for you on the web servers. There are a few recent discussions along these lines on this very page if you scroll down a bit.

 

If you really need it - $30 a year is dirt cheap to double the above limits.

No I have not misunderstood anything. What I proposed was that why can't I pay e.g. $30 extra to create 1000 cache PQs. That would halve the number of PQs in the system, halve my time needed to create the PQs, double the number of of caches going into my devices and keep the number of dollars the same (compared to doubling the number of accounts). The problem is that the number of caches is increasing exponentially no matter how you formulate your PQs.
Two thoughts:

 

First, you asked for a way to create more PQs and that was given to you. I'm sorry if that wasn't your 'A' solution.

 

Second, wouldn't a business prefer you to take the option of buying an additional membership, rather than giving all PMs the ability to get more for the same amount of money?

 

If you want to be able to download more caches, buy another membership. You get what you want, the company gets paid for it, and those of us who don't need more don't have to pay more.

 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

Edited by sbell111
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i guess i just don't understand, there's no way i'm going to do 500 caches in a day or a week so why do i need a PQ for 1000 a day ???????? i update my gps and pda once a week to get the new caches and the new log info. yes, i'm new to this with just 135 finds but, am i missing something ???

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i guess i just don't understand, there's no way i'm going to do 500 caches in a day or a week so why do i need a PQ for 1000 a day ????????

My only "devil's advocate" argument is that I tend to load caches in and around areas I frequent or am traveling, in case I ever suddenly decide to break out the GPS and go for a hunt nearby. Of course, cache density is quite thick around here, too. Then again, lately my main objective these days is to simply start clearing out "cache free zones" nearby... of course, I only have like 1-1.5k or so "local" caches in my DB at the moment.

 

Also, on a separate note, we've recently discussed making a cross country drive and, of course, we'll need/want to be caching most of it (though gas prices might make that a tad... crazy). I'm currently pondering "how" to get a reasonable cache list along our anticipated, but still subject-to-change, route.

Edited by russellvt
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I've asked this question before, but no one who knows the answer has ever responded:

 

How large could a PQ get before the "average" email server would not allow it to be received? I mean, I know the PQs are zipped, so they are smaller than the could be, but they do have a "size" right?

So theoretically at some point they would be "too big" to be received as an attachment---Yes? No?

 

Can someone explain to someone like me, who can send and receive attachments but doesn't really get how zipped files are smaller than the size they ultimately open into?

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i guess i just don't understand, there's no way i'm going to do 500 caches in a day or a week so why do i need a PQ for 1000 a day ????????

My only "devil's advocate" argument is that I tend to load caches in and around areas I frequent or am traveling, in case I ever suddenly decide to break out the GPS and go for a hunt nearby. Of course, cache density is quite thick around here, too. Then again, lately my main objective these days is to simply start clearing out "cache free zones" nearby... of course, I only have like 1-1.5k or so "local" caches in my DB at the moment.

 

Also, on a separate note, we've recently discussed making a cross country drive and, of course, we'll need/want to be caching most of it (though gas prices might make that a tad... crazy). I'm currently pondering "how" to get a reasonable cache list along our anticipated, but still subject-to-change, route.

Laptop/GSAK/Good Map program. Best flexibility I had on the Yellowstone trip. Granted, the info was growing stale by the day, but if the hunt turned into a DNF, it was still an adventure.

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I've asked this question before, but no one who knows the answer has ever responded:

 

How large could a PQ get before the "average" email server would not allow it to be received? I mean, I know the PQs are zipped, so they are smaller than the could be, but they do have a "size" right?

So theoretically at some point they would be "too big" to be received as an attachment---Yes? No?

Well... "large" used to be around 64k or more. About the largest PQ I can remember receiving was probably about 256k or so... maybe more. These days, that's not really that large... but it all comes down to what your administrator defines as "too big" -- usually a meg or two (1024k is one meg) is pretty safe

 

Can someone explain to someone like me, who can send and receive attachments but doesn't really get how zipped files are smaller than the size they ultimately open into?

Well... there are many different ways to compress data. A very simple one could be to note that printable characters only occupy a small/predictable segment of the eight-bit byte for the english character set (Aka ASCII)... and the "high order bit" is never used with those characters, so can be ignored. So, if you simply "remove" that bit and effectively "compress" the rest together, you already have a 1/8th sized savings in this "compressed" format (and re-expanding that same data is as simple as just adding the 0-bit back in after every seven bits of the compressed stream).

 

Of course, there are much better ways (aka algorithms) to compress data and save space, such as the zip form you mentioned... but that's one of simplest example I think I could easily relate, here, in any real understandable form (it's also one of the very first ones I remember writing back when I was still in school). *laugh*

Edited by russellvt
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Dear geocaching.com,

 

can I pay more $ to you to be able to get more than 500 caches in a PQ or create more PQs during 24h?

 

If not, why not?

 

BR,

tr1976

You can create another account and pay for one month. A mere $3 USD. You'll be able to run another 5 queries that way. ;)

 

Yes but it would be much easier to write fewer PQs. That would also save gc.com resources.

 

I'll add that you will have established a new account to use as a sock puppet for any evil caches you want to hide in your locale.

 

Also, just to avoid any other frustrations.... remember the no vacation cache policy.

 

What are you talking about? No caches during vacations? Evil caches? Stop drinking it.. :unsure:

 

I just had to give you a perfect example of a sock puppet evil cache.

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i guess i just don't understand, there's no way i'm going to do 500 caches in a day or a week so why do i need a PQ for 1000 a day ???????? i update my gps and pda once a week to get the new caches and the new log info. yes, i'm new to this with just 135 finds but, am i missing something ???

 

Of course you don't need more than 500 caches in the device if you have planned to find each of

them. However, if you "just go somewhere", you might want to have the area covered, just in case

you find an opportunity for caching. For example, I have the nearest 2000 from home updated to my GPS

once a week. It covers roughly a 100 km (= 60 miles) radius. That way the number of times

I go geocaching increases because I don't have to plan for each trip very carefully. I may

do "opportunistic" or "ad hoc" caching after a meeting in the nearby city etc, etc, as I have the GPS with me, with the caches loaded. No time wasted for planning, no time wasted for creating PQs for each trip. Of course I also do planned trips where I create bookmark lists of what I will search. But then it's also good to have the caches you didn't plan to search just in case the plan changes.

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Also, on a separate note, we've recently discussed making a cross country drive and, of course, we'll need/want to be caching most of it (though gas prices might make that a tad... crazy). I'm currently pondering "how" to get a reasonable cache list along our anticipated, but still subject-to-change, route.

 

Your gas prices are still half of what we have here. I will save a lot of money by driving and caching there, not here :unsure:

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I think you may misunderstand the intended purpose of Pocket Queries. They were created with the intent of you loading up your GPS and going out to find caches. You can currently pull up to 2500 per day and over 17,000 caches in a week. The database is kept totally up-to-date for you on the web servers. There are a few recent discussions along these lines on this very page if you scroll down a bit.

 

If you really need it - $30 a year is dirt cheap to double the above limits.

No I have not misunderstood anything. What I proposed was that why can't I pay e.g. $30 extra to create 1000 cache PQs. That would halve the number of PQs in the system, halve my time needed to create the PQs, double the number of of caches going into my devices and keep the number of dollars the same (compared to doubling the number of accounts). The problem is that the number of caches is increasing exponentially no matter how you formulate your PQs.
Two thoughts:

 

First, you asked for a way to create more PQs and that was given to you. I'm sorry if that wasn't your 'A' solution.

 

Second, wouldn't a business prefer you to take the option of buying an additional membership, rather than giving all PMs the ability to get more for the same amount of money?

 

If you want to be able to download more caches, buy another membership. You get what you want, the company gets paid for it, and those of us who don't need more don't have to pay more.

 

Winner, winner, chicken dinner.

 

OK, that is the best solution. Thanks for pointing that out. I was just trying to propose, whether it would be possible to "upgrade" my account so that the effect would be the same as having multiple accounts but it would be a somewhat cleaner solution with only one username and password. I never proposed giving

everybody more with the same money. I proposed for possibility to pay more to easily get more.

 

But I'll go with this multiple account solution until something better turns up. Thankfully that is made

possible (some web sites forbid multiple accounts by same person).

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Ignoring all the regular arguments pro & anti, it seems that this is one of the most frequently asked for changes in these forums. It reappears every couple of days from someone else.

 

Groundspeak is a business and a business relies on supplying its customers' needs to survive and prosper. If a subset of its customer base keeps on asking (and offering to pay) for this feature then why not give it to them? Groundspeak gets the money, the customers get what they want and the rest of us who are happy with the status quo won't need to keep explaining why these people don't really need what they're asking for.

 

Win - win all round. :rolleyes:

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There is no need to add a different way. You can already buy additional memberships. That is the current way to get what the op asked for.

 

The OP asked for more than 500 in a PQ OR more PQs in a day. He is willing to pay more. There is already a system in place for this. It's been there all along. As the OP said.

Thankfully that is made

possible (some web sites forbid multiple accounts by same person).

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Thinking about it some more I wonder if there IS a case to be made for a different approach :rolleyes: !!

 

Consider this scenario. I am going on holiday for a couple of weeks to a new area. Fortunately it's cache rich so there's going to be plenty of choice for me to enjoy ;) I'll be without internet access for the two weeks so I need to get a "small" offline database on my Laptop which I can access while I'm away.

 

I try and create a PQ covering my target area of 20 miles centred around where I'm staying. I chose 20 miles as that's within easy reach for a day's caching. Knowing there's a lot of caches to choose from I limit my search to just Traditional caches.

 

Unfortunately this still returns over 1000 caches so I then have to create 4 or 5 small overlapping circles and run PQ's for each of them, each one returning up to 500 caches many of which are duplicates.

 

Yes this can be handled in GSAK which strips out duplicates and can present a combined database but it does seem overly complicated.

 

The problem is that each of the 5 daily PQ's is limited to 500 caches giving a daily "allowance" of 2500 caches. As many people have said, 2500 caches should be enough for anyone and I agree.

 

My proposed solution to this problem would be to limit the number of results found per day to the current 2500 rather than by the number of PQ's that could be run. So for instance in the above scenario I could set up one PQ which can return, say, 1500 caches. I would then have another 1000 caches available in another PQ if I wanted it (or two PQ's with 500 each).

 

At the moment, no matter how many Premium Memberships I pay for I still can't get all the caches based on a single location.

 

To be clear, in one day I could run one PQ that returns up to 2500 caches, or two PQ's returning 1250 each, or 5 PQ's returning 500 each etc.

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There is no need to add a different way. You can already buy additional memberships. That is the current way to get what the op asked for.

 

The OP asked for more than 500 in a PQ OR more PQs in a day. He is willing to pay more. There is already a system in place for this. It's been there all along. As the OP said.

Thankfully that is made

possible (some web sites forbid multiple accounts by same person).

Buying another membership is a kludge at best.

 

The problem of adding more and more accounts are the accounts are not tied together. The additional accounts will not know which caches to filter out for those that are found or owned by the original account. The additional accounts would have to ignore those caches and then the work load would increase for the user. If one does go that route then pulling complete datasets is really the only way to go. "Get'em all and let GSAK sort'em out."

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Unfortunately this still returns over 1000 caches so I then have to create 4 or 5 small overlapping circles and run PQ's for each of them, each one returning up to 500 caches many of which are duplicates.

The overlapping circle approach is almost always a poor way to approach dense areas.

 

Leave your center location and circle radius the same and split the PQs up by date placed. You'll not have any duplicates then.

 

Wishlist Item: Function on this site that will alert you to the fact your query returns more than 500 results and offers to split the query into the appropriate number of queries based on date. This will save from us, the user, from having to hit the site so hard to do it. At present we have to guess at a date, submit, preview, edit, repeat until we get what we want.

 

Then repeat again every couple of months.

 

We know the site can create queries for us as we have the "duplicate query" function. This proposal would be similar but with some tweaking of the date placed filter.

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Thinking about it some more I wonder if there IS a case to be made for a different approach :rolleyes: !!

 

Consider this scenario. I am going on holiday for a couple of weeks to a new area. Fortunately it's cache rich so there's going to be plenty of choice for me to enjoy ;) I'll be without internet access for the two weeks so I need to get a "small" offline database on my Laptop which I can access while I'm away.

 

I try and create a PQ covering my target area of 20 miles centred around where I'm staying. I chose 20 miles as that's within easy reach for a day's caching. Knowing there's a lot of caches to choose from I limit my search to just Traditional caches.

 

Unfortunately this still returns over 1000 caches so I then have to create 4 or 5 small overlapping circles and run PQ's for each of them, each one returning up to 500 caches many of which are duplicates.

 

Yes this can be handled in GSAK which strips out duplicates and can present a combined database but it does seem overly complicated.

 

The problem is that each of the 5 daily PQ's is limited to 500 caches giving a daily "allowance" of 2500 caches. As many people have said, 2500 caches should be enough for anyone and I agree.

 

My proposed solution to this problem would be to limit the number of results found per day to the current 2500 rather than by the number of PQ's that could be run. So for instance in the above scenario I could set up one PQ which can return, say, 1500 caches. I would then have another 1000 caches available in another PQ if I wanted it (or two PQ's with 500 each).

 

At the moment, no matter how many Premium Memberships I pay for I still can't get all the caches based on a single location.

 

To be clear, in one day I could run one PQ that returns up to 2500 caches, or two PQ's returning 1250 each, or 5 PQ's returning 500 each etc.

Ignoring all current pros and cons merely suppresses already available processes for the sake of arguing the need of another solution. That's not good business sense.

 

This proposal ignores the filter by date which is a more efficient way of returning all caches in a given area and is very doable within the 5 cache limitation per day. Further filtering by cache type, difficulty and or terrain will provide a wider spread of the type of cache you really prefer to hunt for. These are current solutions which meet your criteria.

 

If you're planning only to deviate from a route by 20 miles, then the route PQ makes a better solution. Creating alternative routes are also possible. Again, meeting the criteria.

 

The old debate that you want to have fresh data so you don't run into an archived or disabled cache doesn't really wash as this event can happen at anytime.

 

The data is guaranteed fresh for the first 30 seconds upon receipt. After that, cache owners could be sabotaging your attempt to gain your smiley. (That's tongue in cheek, btw, but you get the point).

 

As soon as I see a show stopping reason for increasing the number of returns, I'll back it. So far, none I have seen presented in these forums since the limitation of total PQs was raised to 40 has been a show stopping cause for it. Yes there are a subset level of requests for it, but it is mostly due to a refusal to use the current system as it stands. The general statement is "I know there are other ways to do it, but my idea is better" is the most we hear in here.

 

The current system was developed based on protecting the database from scrapers who wanted to start their own business of listing caches and the limitations of the technology that was delivering it based on what the customer base originally asked for.

 

Yes, technology has advanced with major improvements, but there is the cost of upgrades to consider. Not one business I'm aware of will dump their technology before their ability to completely depreciate it is complete. Groundspeak however has started an upgrade and add-on process beginning shortly after I started to 1) improve reliability and uptime and 2) provide more services for premium memberships at 3) no additional rise in cost. That is their business model depending solely upon increasing premium memberships to fuel this process. That's pretty generous. It can easily go to a tiered membership process. The problem with that as it is now with the current system, will be an increasing sense of entitlement and elitism which has been decried for years in an attempt to keep most of the playing field level for all members.

 

So again I say, come up with a show stopper reason for increasing the level of PQs or the number of returns and you will see Groundspeak be more responsive.

 

All of this is academic though, if V3.0 (of which the development is currently their main focus) allows for this to happen.

Edited by TotemLake
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Unfortunately this still returns over 1000 caches so I then have to create 4 or 5 small overlapping circles and run PQ's for each of them, each one returning up to 500 caches many of which are duplicates.

The overlapping circle approach is almost always a poor way to approach dense areas.

 

Leave your center location and circle radius the same and split the PQs up by date placed. You'll not have any duplicates then.

 

Wishlist Item: Function on this site that will alert you to the fact your query returns more than 500 results and offers to split the query into the appropriate number of queries based on date. This will save from us, the user, from having to hit the site so hard to do it. At present we have to guess at a date, submit, preview, edit, repeat until we get what we want.

 

Then repeat again every couple of months.

 

We know the site can create queries for us as we have the "duplicate query" function. This proposal would be similar but with some tweaking of the date placed filter.

 

I like this wishlist. It makes good sense and decreases the number of times you have to run the PQ just to see where you are with the 500 limit.

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I suspect that an option of different membership levels would both make money for Groundspeak and be quite widely taken up. It could even be infinitely variable: $3 gets you 5x500 PQs for a month, every $0.50 extra gets you another PQs and they can have another 50 caches each, etc.

 

But I think it would be a bad idea, for at least two reasons:

- You would have the people who want 10 PQs but only 100 caches each, or only 3 PQs but 1000 caches each, etc etc etc. The "buy another membership" trick is a fair workaround and at least there's only one pair of numbers (5 and 500) to argue about.

- It really isn't Groundspeak's style. It would create even more levels within the community, where there's already a sizable minority of people who are pretty militant about the payment issue, both on the "I'm not paying, it should all be free" and also on the "People who don't pay are disgraceful freeloaders" side of the argument.

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