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My Finds PQ every 6 days - need your support


_Shaddow_

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I contacted Groundspeak directly with this request but want me to post the idea here for feedback - if the community supports the idea then they will consider. How lame is that?! <_<

 

I'd like to see the number of waiting days changed from 7 days to 6 days between downloads of the My Finds pocket query.

 

Here’s why: I like to download My Finds each week on Saturday. But I have to wait until the time of day is later then that when making the request the previous week. So it follows then that each week the allowable download time occurs later and later in the day. Sometimes I have to remember to come back and set up the download or even worse I need to wait a week to get back on a resonable schedule. And because I never seem to be at my computer at same time, the progression will happen fairly quickly; I can be thrown off schedule in as short as a couple of weeks.

 

At 6 days, I can always download on Saturday without concern.

 

What are your thoughts about changing the lockout period for downloading the My Finds PQ from 7 days to 6 days?

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Here's one case where being able to see someone's numbers may actually allow for better replies to the OP.

 

At this time, no, I see no reason to support your request.

Perhaps if you had several thousand finds, and were finding a hundred or more a week I could see a reason for your request. But your data isn't changing all that much, so why do you need to run this PQ so often? It's easy enough to filter out finds from PQ's that are run for cache hunting. I care a lot more about the unfound caches out there than the ones I've already found.

 

I'd be OK if they only let us run 'my finds' once a month if it would improve the site performance.

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Here's one case where being able to see someone's numbers may actually allow for better replies to the OP.

 

At this time, no, I see no reason to support your request.

Perhaps if you had several thousand finds, and were finding a hundred or more a week I could see a reason for your request. But your data isn't changing all that much, so why do you need to run this PQ so often? It's easy enough to filter out finds from PQ's that are run for cache hunting. I care a lot more about the unfound caches out there than the ones I've already found.

 

I'd be OK if they only let us run 'my finds' once a month if it would improve the site performance.

I will admit I am probably doing it the old fashon way. I started in 2001 and have only ran one "My Finds"and that was for the Washington State Delorme Challenge and we have over 2800 finds. Being almost 84 we are not into power caching and only run PQs when we need them. I go along with wimseyguy on this.

Dick

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Here's one case where being able to see someone's numbers may actually allow for better replies to the OP.

 

At this time, no, I see no reason to support your request.

Perhaps if you had several thousand finds, and were finding a hundred or more a week I could see a reason for your request. But your data isn't changing all that much, so why do you need to run this PQ so often? It's easy enough to filter out finds from PQ's that are run for cache hunting. I care a lot more about the unfound caches out there than the ones I've already found.

 

I'd be OK if they only let us run 'my finds' once a month if it would improve the site performance.

I will admit I am probably doing it the old fashon way. I started in 2001 and have only ran one "My Finds"and that was for the Washington State Delorme Challenge and we have over 2800 finds. Being almost 84 we are not into power caching and only run PQs when we need them. I go along with wimseyguy on this.

Dick

As it turns out the request posed in the OP was already done last year, so he's able to run a My Finds PQ every 6 days if he wishes.

 

As Stunod pointed out, it was changed as a result of this thread.

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I'd be OK if they only let us run 'my finds' once a month if it would improve the site performance.

 

I run my MyFinds query once a month. I use a GSAK macro which displays my monthly totals so I really don't see the point of running it more often. The only time I might run it more frequently is if I've traveled somewhere new and can fill in new States/Countries on the US/World map. I just added two new states and hope to add three new countries from a trip in March.

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So, if I'm reading this thread correctly, GS suggested the OP post here for comment - implying that GS didn't know they resolved this issue last year? Also indicating that the change hasn't been visibly integrated yet, either.

If you take a look at that other thread, it was reported in June that people were able to run their finds PQ as often as every six days. I suppose that it's possible that this is one of those things that actually got changed when some other change was made, but I don't know.

 

Can someone try running a finds PQ at 6.5 days and let us know how it went?

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I don't find so many caches in a one week period that I feel a need to run the query on my finds very often. Since I filter out caches I've found in my PQs, I just don't feel a need to have a list of my finds that is updated every few days. I can easily remember the caches I've done within the last week and the area I've been caching in.

I use GSAK and keep a database of my finds there in case I want to refer back to it without going online.

I just don't see a need to run the query that often.

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There is no need to change the GUI. Before the change people complained because if they ran their My Finds query on Sunday they expected to be able to run it again seven days later - i.e., on Sunday. Because of the way it was implemented, each week you had to run a little later in the day than the previous week. After awhile this creep became significant, forcing people to have to run the next day or else skip a week to get back on track. The change was made to avoid the creep and allow people to run their My Finds query when they expected to run their My Finds query. The intent is to allow you run it once per week, not once per 6 days or 6.5 days. The documentation is correct, you can run your query once per week, at approximately the same time each week, without worrying about schedule creep.

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There is no need to change the GUI. Before the change people complained because if they ran their My Finds query on Sunday they expected to be able to run it again seven days later - i.e., on Sunday. Because of the way it was implemented, each week you had to run a little later in the day than the previous week. After awhile this creep became significant, forcing people to have to run the next day or else skip a week to get back on track. The change was made to avoid the creep and allow people to run their My Finds query when they expected to run their My Finds query. The intent is to allow you run it once per week, not once per 6 days or 6.5 days. The documentation is correct, you can run your query once per week, at approximately the same time each week, without worrying about schedule creep.

 

The page currently says "*The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." Obviously the wording is causing confusion with some, or this thread wouldn't have been created.

Edited by wubbh
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There is no need to change the GUI. Before the change people complained because if they ran their My Finds query on Sunday they expected to be able to run it again seven days later - i.e., on Sunday. Because of the way it was implemented, each week you had to run a little later in the day than the previous week. After awhile this creep became significant, forcing people to have to run the next day or else skip a week to get back on track. The change was made to avoid the creep and allow people to run their My Finds query when they expected to run their My Finds query. The intent is to allow you run it once per week, not once per 6 days or 6.5 days. The documentation is correct, you can run your query once per week, at approximately the same time each week, without worrying about schedule creep.

 

The page currently says "*The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." Obviously the wording is causing confusion with some, or this thread wouldn't have been created.

Still, the reason for not making the verbiage change makes sense.

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There is no need to change the GUI. Before the change people complained because if they ran their My Finds query on Sunday they expected to be able to run it again seven days later - i.e., on Sunday. Because of the way it was implemented, each week you had to run a little later in the day than the previous week. After awhile this creep became significant, forcing people to have to run the next day or else skip a week to get back on track. The change was made to avoid the creep and allow people to run their My Finds query when they expected to run their My Finds query. The intent is to allow you run it once per week, not once per 6 days or 6.5 days. The documentation is correct, you can run your query once per week, at approximately the same time each week, without worrying about schedule creep.

 

The page currently says "*The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." Obviously the wording is causing confusion with some, or this thread wouldn't have been created.

Still, the reason for not making the verbiage change makes sense.

I would also agree with toz's assessment. Well said.

 

Run the All Finds query at the bottom of the pocket query page.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/

 

Push the button, then wait for it to come in.

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There is no need to change the GUI. Before the change people complained because if they ran their My Finds query on Sunday they expected to be able to run it again seven days later - i.e., on Sunday. Because of the way it was implemented, each week you had to run a little later in the day than the previous week. After awhile this creep became significant, forcing people to have to run the next day or else skip a week to get back on track. The change was made to avoid the creep and allow people to run their My Finds query when they expected to run their My Finds query. The intent is to allow you run it once per week, not once per 6 days or 6.5 days. The documentation is correct, you can run your query once per week, at approximately the same time each week, without worrying about schedule creep.

 

The page currently says "*The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." Obviously the wording is causing confusion with some, or this thread wouldn't have been created.

Still, the reason for not making the verbiage change makes sense.

I would also agree with toz's assessment. Well said.

 

Run the All Finds query at the bottom of the pocket query page.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/

 

Push the button, then wait for it to come in.

 

That's the issue; creeping

 

I'm not sure why this would generate much discussion other then: ‘sure, no problem (what difference does it make to me).’ The only negative impact I can see is possibly a slight impact on server use but I doubt we are talking a difference the end user would notice.

 

“The intent is to allow you run it once per week, not once per 6 days or 6.5 days. The documentation is correct, you can run your query once per week, at approximately the same time each week, without worrying about schedule creep. “

Not following your logic: by my math 7 =/ 6… Every 6 days is required to download weekly - if run at 9:30 pm on Sat week 1 then 8:00 am on Sat week 2 then less then 6.5 day reset is required. If it is indeed the case that the clock resets after 6 days (144 hours) then the documentation is not clear. How about: “The My Finds PQ can be downloaded again on the 7th day following the latest download.”

 

Re: the other forum topic:

Thank you, helpful but how about a positive verification that it can be done already in less then 7 days (6 days, 6 days 12 hours, whatever) without ‘testing’ by myself or by others (then this is a non-topic). So far, no one has provided that positive confirmation, even GS support themselves.

 

It sure would be helpful if GS were to just confirm yes/no whether it is possible to download the My Finds PQ on the same day each week regardless of the time of day

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Re: the other forum topic:

Thank you, helpful but how about a positive verification that it can be done already in less then 7 days (6 days, 6 days 12 hours, whatever) without 'testing' by myself or by others (then this is a non-topic). So far, no one has provided that positive confirmation, even GS support themselves.

 

It sure would be helpful if GS were to just confirm yes/no whether it is possible to download the My Finds PQ on the same day each week regardless of the time of day

 

Not sure if you'll accept verification from a user, but I know for a fact that you can run it again 6 days after it last ran. I recently ran it prematurely (4 notes not yet changed to finds) and set a reminder to try again 6 days later...which I did successfully. (This is 6x24 hours later, not any time you want on the sixth day.)

 

I think the appearance of the "add to queue" button changes at that time (if you refresh?).

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I think we have too many programmers and engineers here. Once I worked at a place where someone put up a sign that said "The orange pot is decaffeinated coffee". Of course it didn't take long until one of the engineers changed it to read "The orange pot iscontains decaffeinated coffee". I came in later and found an empty orange pot on the burner, so I changed the sign to say "The orange pot is containsis for decaffeinated coffee".

 

Everyone understands the intent of "The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." I suppose you could change it to "The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days. There is a grace period of several hours so that you don't have to run this at the same time every week. Groundspeak reserves the right to adjust this grace period as they see fit."

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I think we have too many programmers and engineers here. Once I worked at a place where someone put up a sign that said "The orange pot is decaffeinated coffee". Of course it didn't take long until one of the engineers changed it to read "The orange pot iscontains decaffeinated coffee". I came in later and found an empty orange pot on the burner, so I changed the sign to say "The orange pot is containsis for decaffeinated coffee".[/color]"

 

:)

Engineers don't drink decaf... :D

 

 

Everyone understands the intent of "The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." I suppose you could change it to "The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days. There is a grace period of several hours so that you don't have to run this at the same time every week. Groundspeak reserves the right to adjust this grace period as they see fit."

 

Yea, your logic; it may need a check up

If eveyone knows that then this discussion would not be happening :D

 

I knew I would get flack for making a wording suggestion

Getting the words better would help others avoid this discussion

My Finds currently has this wording: "The Pocket Query can only run once every 7 days." and the lists the last time it ran, to the second.

But I don't have an issue with the wording, what matters to me is all in the OP - I just want to run it anytime every Saturday. If thats the case, great!

 

Not sure if you'll accept verification from a user, but I know for a fact that you can run it again 6 days after it last ran. I recently ran it prematurely (4 notes not yet changed to finds) and set a reminder to try again 6 days later...which I did successfully. (This is 6x24 hours later, not any time you want on the sixth day.)

 

I think the appearance of the "add to queue" button changes at that time (if you refresh?).

 

My experience is not being able to download each Sat until the clock seems to get past 7x24. Though I haven't run a test so I can't back it up as well.

 

When I first emailed this suggestion to GS, they told me to post it here to get feedback first and that they monitor the posting. They could simply provide the answer; I'll reply to support and see if I can get the current setting.

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My experience is not being able to download each Sat until the clock seems to get past 7x24. Though I haven't run a test so I can't back it up as well.

 

I hope you'll give it a try this week 144 hours after the last time it ran.

 

(I do agree the wording should be changed. There is a lot of effort here to make it appear that what Groundspeak left unchanged on the page is "correct". GS may be leery because of the arguments when it really was 168 hours and people complained that they couldn't run it every 7 days because of time drift.)

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... When I first emailed this suggestion to GS, they told me to post it here to get feedback first and that they monitor the posting. They could simply provide the answer; I'll reply to support and see if I can get the current setting.
I suspect that you received the standard answer reqarding unsolicited site change requests. The person who sent the email certainly might not be aware that this issue was resolved nine months ago.
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I ran my My Finds PQ last on 2/27/2009 12:54:21 PM, and I could run it right now (3/5/2009 5:30:00 PM) if I wanted to.

 

It was fixed months ago.

 

And, no. Don't schedule it. Scheduled PQ's suffer from creep. They run later and later every time they ru. Now, if they let us pick a time on a given day of the week, and it would run as close to that time as possible, it might just work.

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I ran my My Finds PQ last on 2/27/2009 12:54:21 PM, and I could run it right now (3/5/2009 5:30:00 PM) if I wanted to.

 

It was fixed months ago.

 

And, no. Don't schedule it. Scheduled PQ's suffer from creep. They run later and later every time they ru. Now, if they let us pick a time on a given day of the week, and it would run as close to that time as possible, it might just work.

Same here.

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It appears to have been 'fixed'

But, as I've said, that wasn't my experience

 

A simple "done" by GS will put this to bed for good

I'll clock watch next Saturday and post my results

 

I was able to get it to run this week at about 11:15 hr/mi short of a full 7 days :anibad:

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A nice option would be to have it regularly scheduled like other PQ's. That way you could just select "run it every week" and forget about it.

 

This would be a great option then we could just select what day we want it to run every week and be done with it.

 

Running once every 6/7 days is fine I don't do it more than that anyways but I would love to have the option to have it run once a week automatically without me having to add it queue every time I want it.

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A nice option would be to have it regularly scheduled like other PQ's. That way you could just select "run it every week" and forget about it.

 

This would be a great option then we could just select what day we want it to run every week and be done with it.

 

Running once every 6/7 days is fine I don't do it more than that anyways but I would love to have the option to have it run once a week automatically without me having to add it queue every time I want it.

That would be fine if it wasn't subject to the same time creep that occurs with the scheduled PQ's, or the problems where scheduled PQ's are skipped all together. Like a few of mine have recently been.

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If you have less than 500 finds, just make a PQ that will find all of your finds. This works for everything minus the archived caches. I do this if I want an update before the MyFinds can be run again.

 

Just select caches that I found, choose a point (like My Home Coordinates) and set the mileage to something crazy like 5000 miles for the radius. You can then merge with GSAK...

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I was able to download just after 6 days (6x24) so all is good <_<:laughing::D

Don't know if it was that way before or they changed it recently, and I really don't care which

Same here:

 

Last run 3-8-09 at 12:05 PM PST

Became available 3-14-09 at 12:06 PM PST

 

Six days to the minute.

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I just ran a My Finds PQ. The last time I ran it was about 3 weeks ago and everything was correct. The new one has bogus data - it says I haven't had any finds since January 7th 2009 and my total cache find is 6080. I'm actually up to 6625 as of yesterday. (Play Twilight Zone music.........) :rolleyes:

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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

 

Excellent idea!!

 

Great example of using technology to automate mundane tasks.

 

Let's hope they consider this request seriously.

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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

So, you want the website, which some people contend is already slow and having problems...especially with scheduled PQs...to every day run through its list of "run my My Finds PQs today"...then look at the data for those users to decide if there was activity, and not just any activity, but Found logs filtering out anything else, then if so run and send the PQ?

 

A nice feature maybe, if it worked, but it would take a lot of resources away from other things and delay those other scheduled PQs even more than they already are.

 

How hard is it really to visit the PQ page once a week and click the button to run the PQ?

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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

So, you want the website, which some people contend is already slow and having problems...especially with scheduled PQs...to every day run through its list of "run my My Finds PQs today"...then look at the data for those users to decide if there was activity, and not just any activity, but Found logs filtering out anything else, then if so run and send the PQ?

 

A nice feature maybe, if it worked, but it would take a lot of resources away from other things and delay those other scheduled PQs even more than they already are.

 

How hard is it really to visit the PQ page once a week and click the button to run the PQ?

 

Good point. Perhaps they should remove the "Send to GPX" and have people input the coordinates manually. That will save server time too.

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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

So, you want the website, which some people contend is already slow and having problems...especially with scheduled PQs...to every day run through its list of "run my My Finds PQs today"...then look at the data for those users to decide if there was activity, and not just any activity, but Found logs filtering out anything else, then if so run and send the PQ?

 

A nice feature maybe, if it worked, but it would take a lot of resources away from other things and delay those other scheduled PQs even more than they already are.

 

How hard is it really to visit the PQ page once a week and click the button to run the PQ?

 

Good point. Perhaps they should remove the "Send to GPX" and have people input the coordinates manually. That will save server time too.

Actually, I'm firmly in the 'remove the option for scheduling PQs' camp myself.

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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

So, you want the website, which some people contend is already slow and having problems...especially with scheduled PQs...to every day run through its list of "run my My Finds PQs today"...then look at the data for those users to decide if there was activity, and not just any activity, but Found logs filtering out anything else, then if so run and send the PQ?

 

A nice feature maybe, if it worked, but it would take a lot of resources away from other things and delay those other scheduled PQs even more than they already are.

 

How hard is it really to visit the PQ page once a week and click the button to run the PQ?

 

Good point. Perhaps they should remove the "Send to GPX" and have people input the coordinates manually. That will save server time too.

Actually, I'm firmly in the 'remove the option for scheduling PQs' camp myself.

 

Feel free to remove yours.

 

Others find the option extremely useful. Why would you do something manually and repetitively, when you can automate it? A significant portion of the IT industry is based on automating repetitive mundane tasks.

 

As for poor server response time etc. perhaps a better solution would be a moratorium on new memberships until the existing issues are resolved and existing memberships start receiving a consistently reliable service.

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Feel free to remove yours.

 

Others find the option extremely useful. Why would you do something manually and repetitively, when you can automate it?

I haven't pre-scheduled a query in several years. I get up in the morning, and decide where I'm going to cache that day. If I already have a query for that area that is less than 4 or 5 days old, I use it. Otherwise, I check the box to make that query run that day, or if necessary, create a new query to run.

 

No off-line databases. Just simple Pocket Queries, used the way they were intended.

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Actually, I'm firmly in the 'remove the option for scheduling PQs' camp myself.

Feel free to remove yours.

 

Others find the option extremely useful. Why would you do something manually and repetitively, when you can automate it? A significant portion of the IT industry is based on automating repetitive mundane tasks.

 

As for poor server response time etc. perhaps a better solution would be a moratorium on new memberships until the existing issues are resolved and existing memberships start receiving a consistently reliable service.

I don't have any scheduled PQs anymore. The only one I had up until a few weeks ago never changed that often so it didn't seem worth it. When I need fresh information to load into the GPSr, I'll run it...simple as that.

 

Now, since you and I will never agree on the necessity of scheduled PQs, let's agree to disagree and move on.

Edited by Allanon
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How about allowing members to specify a day like a normal PQ BUT it will only run IF the member has had activity in the time since it last ran. This would filter out inactive members.

 

ie I could select sunday but if I have not cached this week I would not recieve a new find PQ. Also, if I then cached on the tuesday I would not get a new findsPQ till the following sunday.

That would still result in tons more PQs being run.

 

I suspect that most people are like me. If they have ever run a 'my finds' PQ, they have only run it a few times. However, if you could schedule it to be run weekly, I feel that many (most?) people would go ahead and accept the option to have it sent to them weekly. This would further strain an already strained process.

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Why would you do something manually and repetitively, when you can automate it?

Because people turn them on, and forget to turn them off when they're not needed. Groundspeak periodically has to do a full system reset of all the schedules, just because of this. Wouldn't mind seeing one soon. It might speed things up a bit.

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Groundspeak periodically has to do a full system reset of all the schedules, just because of this. Wouldn't mind seeing one soon. It might speed things up a bit.

 

Do it now. If Groundspeak can't meet the current PQ demand, announce that all PQs are going to be turned off on xx/xx/xx unless they have been changed in the last month.

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If you have less than 500 finds, just make a PQ that will find all of your finds. This works for everything minus the archived caches. I do this if I want an update before the MyFinds can be run again.

 

Just select caches that I found, choose a point (like My Home Coordinates) and set the mileage to something crazy like 5000 miles for the radius. You can then merge with GSAK...

 

Great idea :rolleyes:

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