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Enlarge the PQ


Tiefflieger

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If I create a PQ it isn't possible to "find" more than 500 Caches/PQ. This is a kind of problem in bigger cities like Munich (more than 500 in a 20km radius) because you have to create several PQ with a very short range. Isn't it possible to change this limitation for premium members to a number like 2000 by the Groundspeak programmers? I think this would be very practicable.

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"Enlarge the PQ" :P Sounds like spam... :P

 

Although this is something desired by a number of people, including me, Groundspeak has made it clear in the past (and present) that they're not looking to change the feature any time soon. 500 it will be.

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on top of which, if you are actually in need of 2000 caches each day, i want to see you in action.

 

500 ought to hold you just fine.

 

even 500 a week should keep you busy.

Your missing the point. Its about opportunity. I load my gps (which holds 2000 with full info and I could load coords only for considerably more) in the morning because I don't know what part of town I'll be in at the end of my work day. 500 doesn't even begin to cover my potential work area, 2000 doesn't either, but its a better stretch than 500.

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One PQ can get you 500. You get five PER DAY. 5x500=2500.

And there being 7 days PER WEEK...7x2500=17,500.

 

In all honesty, I'd prefer one PQ per day of 2500 caches. Same amount of data per day per user, but less tweaking with dates/distances/etc to optimize them.

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on top of which, if you are actually in need of 2000 caches each day, i want to see you in action.

 

500 ought to hold you just fine.

 

even 500 a week should keep you busy.

The same lame argument used every time someone mentions that they want more caches in a PQ.

 

Whenever I load my GPS I fill it with nearly 1,000 of the closest caches. From time to time I'll find myself out with a few minutes to spare and decide to go caching, it's a good thing I have some loaded in my GPS so I can get a few that are near. From time to time I'll be driving somewhere and see on my GPS that I'm about to pass a cache so I'll pull over and grab it, so it's a good thing I had that cache loaded in my GPS.

 

If I loaded my GPS like Flask apparently does, I'd only leave the house with the caches that I thought I'd be able to get on that trip. I guess a 40 cache limit in PQs would be okay with her. :)

 

Large PQs have NEVER been requested because people are finding all the caches in the PQ and are standing around waiting for more PQs to become available so they can go back out again.

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One PQ can get you 500. You get five PER DAY. 5x500=2500.

And there being 7 days PER WEEK...7x2500=17,500.

 

In all honesty, I'd prefer one PQ per day of 2500 caches. Same amount of data per day per user, but less tweaking with dates/distances/etc to optimize them.

If the choice is 1 of 2500 or 5 of 500, I'll take the 5 because I can get a much wider area.

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One PQ can get you 500. You get five PER DAY. 5x500=2500.

I just hate when the moderators joins in to kill a discussion. All geocachers are entitled have their own opinion, but it seems sometimes that the moderators (and some other loudmouths) are fighting to keep GC the way it was when it started. If you are interested in preserving stuff: Become an archeologist or something.

I think a lot of the geocachers are interested in improving GC, and tries to express this in this forum.

 

This topic about enlarging of the PQs pops up quite often to be a question noone are interrested in.

 

I would love to have predefined national PQ's who gave me all caches in a country. This could be generated at 05:00 local time every day, and distributed to those who wanted to subscribe to them. Once generated the file could be accessible for instant download via the webpages. Simple and efficient.

 

Don't bother those who says this discussion is old, keep up wishing.

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One PQ can get you 500. You get five PER DAY. 5x500=2500.

And there being 7 days PER WEEK...7x2500=17,500.

 

In all honesty, I'd prefer one PQ per day of 2500 caches. Same amount of data per day per user, but less tweaking with dates/distances/etc to optimize them.

 

Those who make the database have told us that there is more load on the servers creating a PQ of 2500 vs 5 PQ's of 500. I wont even pretend to understand why but I'm willing to believe that they have tried it on a test machine. Because I want the best performance possible I am willing to work with this.

 

I currently have 1826 caches loaded in my GPS. No cache description is older than 6 days old. My GPS only holds 2000 caches. I'm still able to find a cache anytime the urge hits me.

 

The argument that you don't know where you are going to be is a straw man. I don't even know what state I might be in six hours from now. Look at my history of cache finds and you will see that it isn't unusual for me to be halfway across the country from one day to the next. Cached in all 50 states and have 50+ cache finds in 21 of them. I have cached in 1/4 of the counties in the US, most of them on a notice of less than 8 hours. A laptop with wireless networking and I can have caches for my next location in less than 5 minutes 95 percent of the time.

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I can understand the advantage of having the limit set to 2500 caches a day instead of 5 x 500 cache PQ's.

 

That way, those who want 5 x 500 PQ can have it their way and those wanting large amounts of data easily can. Personally, I've started an off-line database (for my own use only, don't worry [:)]) and being able to give 5 days dates (I use the date rather than area, ie 1/1/2000-1/1/2003 etc and have now got the complete list of dates for the whole of the UK. Obviously this will change as I find more and more are archived, but it's currently at just shy of 100 PQ's. This means that every day I need to delete the 5 most recently run queries and add the the 5 oldest queries. It is a pain, but it means I can define the data a lot more accurately on my own PC rather than through GC.com.

 

I wouldn't and don't see any problem in a change from 2500/day rather than 5 pqs@500 each/day. It means all users will get and have the ability to run their queries how it best suits them.

 

I expect a lot of people to say how ludicrous an idea this is, but if you read my post again and think, maybe you'll see the little difference it makes to the "traditional" users and significantly easier to those embracing different ways of getting their data

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I will jump on the bandwagon and say that I too would like to see the limit changed from 5 X 500 = 2500 per day to N X C = 2500 per day.

 

Unlike some of the others comments, I often create route PQs that at times do not even return 100 caches due to my filtering out of specific types or D/T rating limiting combined with a small radius, as such if I create that as a full fledged PQ I could potentially not get the full limit I am allowed. Now granted this is usually not a problem for me as I never really need all 2500 I can get back in a day but it would be nice to potentially have the option.

 

One reason I say this is that I plan to take a huge road trip next year and plan to create several such routes that are off the beaten path and could potentially see the option of limiting by total number of caches one can have returned per day versus a stock number of queries with a max return limit of 500 as reducing the number of days I have to do some manual work on GC and with my OLDB. IE. I could create 10 routes of approximately 100 caches returned per each and run the PQs the same day and still not reach the 2500 limit versus having to schedule them over 2 days and once again not come anywhere close to the 5000 that I could get in 2 days. No matter I will still get my planning done fitting in the current model or if it is changed. The big difference is that I could potentially spend N hours in one day doing my planning versus x hours one day and n minutes over a day more more pulling the already scheduled data form my e-mail and importing it in to GSAK.

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One PQ can get you 500. You get five PER DAY. 5x500=2500.

I just hate when the moderators joins in to kill a discussion.

 

I am not a moderator in this section of the forums, only in the Getting Started area. I have asked for the ability to have the "moderator" button removed from my posts in forums other than the Getting Started, but evidently, that's not an option with the current board set up.

 

All geocachers are entitled have their own opinion, but it seems sometimes that the moderators (and some other loudmouths) are fighting to keep GC the way it was when it started. If you are interested in preserving stuff: Become an archeologist or something.

I think a lot of the geocachers are interested in improving GC, and tries to express this in this forum.

 

Taking my comment that I'm not a mod here into context - I too am a cacher, and have just as much right to post my opinions here.

 

However, I did not state an opinion at ALL in this thread. Nor did I say that Geocaching needs to stay the same.

 

The original poster said "If I create a PQ it isn't possible to "find" more than 500 Caches/PQ"

Flask said "500 ought to hold you just fine. Even 500 a week should keep you busy."

 

My comment was directed at the original poster stating that a PQ isn't able to get more than 500. My comment was to show that you can get close to 2500 per day. I never disagreed with the fact that I'd prefer 2500 caches in a single PQ. I'd love that.

 

I really do wish that "some people" would stop reading more into posts than there is. :)

Edited by Markwell
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The argument that you don't know where you are going to be is a straw man. I don't even know what state I might be in six hours from now.
It's not a strawman if it's true. Over half of my caches have been found when I had the maximum loaded into my GPS and I was out with time to cache and decided to find some near me.

 

I live about 40 miles Northeast of Atlanta. Back when I first started a PQ of 500 would cover all of Metro Atlanta centered from my house. Now the closest 1,000 (using 2 PQs and the date placed trick) only gets me from my house to most of the way to the city. If I have to ride to the north side of town, for some reason (mtn-man's stomping ground) I know I won't be able to cache with the current set.

 

Obviously if I'm lucky enough to have time to go home and download a new PQ for that area I'll be okay, but that falls out of the "you don't know where you're going to be" argument you call a straw man.

 

When I travel for business I'll grab a PQ centered on my hotel. If I'm driving to see a customer, or if the meeting site is unknown before I leave home, I won't be sure that I'll be travelling within the area I've got caches downloaded for. Very often I've had time to cache, but had to wait until I was back to the hotel before doing so.

 

It's definitely not a strawman. It's a valid argument that more caches loaded would be more helpful than less helpful.

 

I'm guessing the 500 limit was set because at the time that was the limit for the number of waypoints most handheld GPSrs would hold. I'd love to see that number boosted higher so we didn't have to use the date trick when grabbing caches for a new location. As it is I'll just get 500 close to a hotel if I'm travelling. If the limit were 1000 I'd grab 1000 and be more likely to find caches while I was there.

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I think briansnat suggested 2500 caches per day, divided however you want. Whether 1 PQ with 2500, 25 PQs of 100...whatever, just a 2500 per day cache max.

 

I like this idea. As Mushtang said, in the past 500 caches was more than enough, but now there are so many caches, that people are forced to setup their PQs by date, readjusting dates several times on each PQ until they get it right.

 

I'm not questioning the 2500 limit per day. I think that's more than enough, but being able to download them in other combinations such as 1 @ 1500, 1 @ 250 and 1 @ 750 would be ideal.

Edited by Skippermark
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One issue for a size of PQ might be server power. A smaller array of data is much better and easier to manipulate than a much larger one. Sometimes the length of time to manipulate the data grows faster than the data itself.

 

I wouldn't mind the PQs remaining the same while a "super PQ" is paginated into 500 cache chunks. Then all of the resultant GPX files are zipped into one file and sent.

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If I loaded my GPS like Flask apparently does, I'd only leave the house with the caches that I thought I'd be able to get on that trip. I guess a 40 cache limit in PQs would be okay with her.

 

 

well, there's an unfortunate and loserly assumption.

 

here's what i had to say about it earlier:

 

i wish to address this "i don't know where i'll be" thing. periodically i leave my house to go geocaching and stay out for twenty-odd days at a stretch, living in my car and wandering wherever i wander. typically my area is within eight or nine hours' travel of my house, but i often do not know whether i will be in maine or maryland or ontario. even with that broad a field, i find that most of that wandering ends up being in western MA, central NY, and southern VT. it takes me two or three days' worth of PQs to fully charge my huge honkin' database of where i might possibly be at any given time, but when it comes right down to it, i don't need the list of every cache everywhere i might be. i don't usually find more than two dozen caches in a day, and it easy enough to fill up my time with conveniently placed caches without having 100% coverage everywhere i might be all of the time. often when i realize where i will be tomorrow (or this afternoon) i just run a PQ on the road for where i am NOW. this covers even the days when i wake up in connecticut and for some reason suddenly decide that in the afternoon i MUST be in northern maine, or when i'm in rhode island and suddenly decide that i MUST cache in harrisburg. if you have more peripatetic and mercurial travels and cannot run a decent PQ for where you'll be in a couple of hours, i'm going to suggest that perhaps you might reconsider how effective your use of data is.
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When I travel for business I'll grab a PQ centered on my hotel. If I'm driving to see a customer, or if the meeting site is unknown before I leave home, I won't be sure that I'll be travelling within the area I've got caches downloaded for. Very often I've had time to cache, but had to wait until I was back to the hotel before doing so.

 

It's definitely not a strawman. It's a valid argument that more caches loaded would be more helpful than less helpful.

I still don't think it's a valid argument. You just need better tools. A person in your situation needs a laptop with a cellular data card so you can just pull over to the side of the road and download more caches in just a few minutes. Heck, most phones that have web browsing capability can also be used as a wired "modem" for a laptop.

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I still don't think it's a valid argument. You just need better tools. A person in your situation needs a laptop with a cellular data card so you can just pull over to the side of the road and download more caches in just a few minutes. Heck, most phones that have web browsing capability can also be used as a wired "modem" for a laptop.

To add... Or making a few PQ's of different parts of the town.
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If I loaded my GPS like Flask apparently does, I'd only leave the house with the caches that I thought I'd be able to get on that trip. I guess a 40 cache limit in PQs would be okay with her.
well, there's an unfortunate and loserly assumption.

 

here's what i had to say about it earlier:

i wish to address this "i don't know where i'll be" thing. periodically i leave my house to go geocaching and stay out for twenty-odd days at a stretch, living in my car and wandering wherever i wander. typically my area is within eight or nine hours' travel of my house, but i often do not know whether i will be in maine or maryland or ontario. even with that broad a field, i find that most of that wandering ends up being in western MA, central NY, and southern VT. it takes me two or three days' worth of PQs to fully charge my huge honkin' database of where i might possibly be at any given time, but when it comes right down to it, i don't need the list of every cache everywhere i might be. i don't usually find more than two dozen caches in a day, and it easy enough to fill up my time with conveniently placed caches without having 100% coverage everywhere i might be all of the time. often when i realize where i will be tomorrow (or this afternoon) i just run a PQ on the road for where i am NOW. this covers even the days when i wake up in connecticut and for some reason suddenly decide that in the afternoon i MUST be in northern maine, or when i'm in rhode island and suddenly decide that i MUST cache in harrisburg. if you have more peripatetic and mercurial travels and cannot run a decent PQ for where you'll be in a couple of hours, i'm going to suggest that perhaps you might reconsider how effective your use of data is.

So if that's how you cache while you're on a walkabout, that's great. You use PQs in a way that suits you.

 

Other people would like to use them in a way that suits them, and are asking TPTB to consider a change that will make it easier for them to do so.

 

Why are you against this?

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I always enjoy it when others come along and do math for everyone as if there was even a remote chance that someone reading this forum does not have the insight or capability to do the math themselves. They come up with some really big number of caches that I could somehow get data for per day or week, and then ask how that could possibly not be enough as if anyone actually ran PQ’s with the intention of doing every cache returned. Well try driving through nearly any major metropolitan area in the world and you will quickly find that that “absurdly large” number of caches that you could obtain is indeed not enough. I plan to be in the Seattle area later this month and I am already too late to start gathering the data because of the limitations imposed by the system. I certainly do not plan to hit every cache that is on the map in my GPSr, but I do hope that there are always a few nearby when I am in the mood for some caching. The problem is that the deficiency is not with total number of caches but about area covered by them.

 

Before I started geocaching, one could obtain in one PQ all the data for the area that you can cover with a car in an hour. Today that requires 13 PQs in my home area and you have to know how to do some clever time-slicing. Instead of preparing for a trip by doing a download and filling that into a GPSr within a few minutes, this now requires 3 days of advanced planning. When I want to drive over to LilDevil’s house to go caching with him (he lives on the edge of my “home area”), I drive through an area with nearly 2000 caches that I want to be able to pick a few from as I go. When I get there I don’t know where he will want to go, so to be prepared, I need to have about a 1-hour radius around his house covered (another 10 PQs worth of data). Since I cannot pull data based on another cacher not-found data, I have to pull them all. I have to do more advanced planning for a little geocaching run with a friend than for an international business trip. This seems pretty absurd to me.

 

I would point out that all other areas related to geocaching data have increased up to two orders of magnitude over the last few years; today a single click to virtually any cache page moves more data than a zipped GPX file with 500 caches. With the increased density of caches in many geographic areas, the value of each 500-cache PQ has declined. And it is continuing to decline. I used to have occaisional problems with the 500-cache limit; I now have problems with it every time I use PQs.

 

There have been some massive changes at geocaching.com in recent year. Two, in particular, suggest that Groundspeak does indeed want to cater to cachers like me. The CaAR feature is one that is being improved regularly and provides us with awesome geographic PQs. And I was quite surprised earlier this year when geocaching.com came out with an application on a portable device that basically completely eliminated most of the reasons why I run PQs. The IPhone app pulls data directly out of the geocaching database in Seattle. (I don’t have such a phone - so I may be wrong about how it works). There are many more java phones than iPhones, so perhaps an app of this type is soon coming to my Blackberry. (Please, please, please,...). In essence this is what I have been emulating by cramming my off-line database into my 60CSx as custom POIs. Can I interpret these moves as Groundspeak coming to realize that many geocachers really do use data differently and that they can meet their needs better? If so, then there is hope that a change in the maximum number of caches returned in a PQ might be raised.

 

To continue to allow this valuable benefit to premium membership decline in value seems to me to be a fundamental business error.

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I still don't think it's a valid argument. You just need better tools. A person in your situation needs a laptop with a cellular data card so you can just pull over to the side of the road and download more caches in just a few minutes. Heck, most phones that have web browsing capability can also be used as a wired "modem" for a laptop.

I'm on the road a lot for work and sometimes don't know where I'll be, but I always have my iPhone & GC app with me and can quickly pull up a list of nearby caches if I have time to grab one.

 

If someone has a more basic phone, the WAP interface (http://wap.geocaching.com) works awesome. Just login, enter your coords and 10 nearby caches will be returned. View descriptions, hints, recent logs and even display a Google map of of the location.

 

That is probably more than enough for someone who's looking to find only a couple caches when they find themselves in an unexpected area.

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There are many more java phones than iPhones, so perhaps an app of this type is soon coming to my Blackberry. (Please, please, please,...).

For your BB, you could always get the Trimble Navigator. I used it for 8 months before getting my iPhone and found that it worked very well. Coords were accurate if you wanted to use it and not a regular GPS, plus your cache info is as current as what's on the GC servers.

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Why are you against this?

 

i'm not really against it; i'm just saying that this reason people give about needing HUGE pqs because they don't know where they're going to be just doesn't hold water.

 

if you're going THAT far out of your home range, you ought to have a clue ahead of time. even when i wake up i the morning unsure of whether i am going to new jersey or to maine, at some point on the way it stops being a surprise.

 

"oh, look!" i might say to myself, "i appear to be on interstate 87 southbound! perhaps i am not going to maine after all." and then i run a PQ wherever it is that i end up. it only takes a few minutes.

 

nobody really needs the cache page for every cache within a twelve hour drive of wherever they happen to be, not even if they're going to break the 24-hour record. not even if they intend to break that record every day for a week.

 

the bottom line is that nobody but nobody is going to run out of caches to find if they get 500 active caches nearest them each day. since they can get 2500 caches each day, there's just no excuse.

 

what keeps happening here is that what people really want to do is to maintain huge offline databases of every cache in their state/region/province and they try to make an argument for it on practical grounds. Groundspeak has already told us that they do not wish for people to maintain huge offline databases, so there's nothing left for these people to do but make silly and disingenuous claims about how much data they really NEED all at once.

 

and THAT's what i'm against.

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the bottom line is that nobody but nobody is going to run out of caches to find if they get 500 active caches nearest them each day. since they can get 2500 caches each day, there's just no excuse.

 

 

You have your own needs and others may have a different need. Of course, five PQs of 500 caches is more that enough for the usual days where I'm home.

 

When I go from Ottawa to Quebec City, I don't know if I'll be going on south or north side of the St. Lawrence River. And I don't know if I'll have the opportunity to stop in Montreal (there are about 4000 caches, just on the island). And I might take a different route when I'll come back.

 

What you want is to not miss any opportunity. You won't die if you're missing one, but since you're in that hobby, you want to find the caches when you go by them (otherwise, just go fishing). Really, the future might be for live applications connecting to geocaching.com (just like the iPhone utility). That's with the current business model of Groundspeak. Unfortunately, not everybody have the money for these tools, though. This would be much more expensive that an upgraded fee for a Premium membership could ever be.

 

I don't know if having larger PQs would raise the fees for Premium Members, or if it would introduce a fee for everyone (no more free access), but that's a Groundspeak call (when they will think enough people requested it).

 

I don't see what larger PQs would remove from people that are fighting against such a change. Really, there's no reason to not want larger PQs (other than maybe having to pay for a service you're using). Not a lot of things are free in life.

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If Groundspeak devotes the time and effort necessary to figuring out a way to protect the data base and allow people to download huge swathes of data, they are not spending time and effort on things I think are more important. I'm perfectly willing to allow you to plead your case but I demand the right to say I don't need that or want it.

 

I do feel that I have a vested interest in Groundspeak's success. I'm a geocacher and not a Letterboxer primarily when I got the urge to look for things in the woods, Geocaching.com allowed me to search for things to look for on a single site in an organized fashion. When someone posts on the web site that someone gave him a database of all the caches in a state, I worry. I don't want to suffer through the growing pains of another site and I certainly don't want to use a site that hasn't significantly changed since I started caching or one that requires me to beg for 2 sponsors before I can participate. If that happens, I guess I'll find a new hobby but since I don't want to find a new hobby, I root for the continuing success of Geocaching.com and I think that requires that keep in place reasonable measures to protect their assets.

Team Taran

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You have your own needs and others may have a different need. Of course, five PQs of 500 caches is more that enough for the usual days where I'm home.

 

 

even when i am in montreal for four days specifically to geocache, i don't come close to finding 500 caches over four days, let alone each day.

 

while you may feel that you NEED to have the opportunity to go to every cache that exists between points A and B, even if those points are in montreal where there are many, many caches, the simple fact is that you're just not going to even consider any but a few dozen as you pass through.

 

while i often head west on us 11 across northern NY, i will sometimes choose to cross over and return home by way of the north shore of the st. lawrence.

 

it would be much more efficient to do two "cache along a route" PQs, one for each shore, and if you really wanted to be fancy, one for, say the rive-sud at montreal. if you're passing through you don't need the whole city, but just enough to keep you busy on the way.

 

you might could get away with just running pqs for a few neighborhoods of montreal even if you're spending the whole week there. montreal has about 4000 caches just on the island, so instead of flailing wildly about the whole city and its suburbs, why not concentrate on the few hundred you might find in one area?

 

two day's worth of PQs gets me all of the montreal metro area and its burbs plus everything between my house and there.

 

just between parc angrignon and parc jarry there's enough to keep you busy for a whole day, and that don't come close to one PQ.

 

while in theory you might feel you have need for unlimited opportunity, in reality what you end up doing has a much tinier scope.

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What you want is to not miss any opportunity. You won't die if you're missing one, but since you're in that hobby, you want to find the caches when you go by them (otherwise, just go fishing). Really, the future might be for live applications connecting to geocaching.com (just like the iPhone utility). That's with the current business model of Groundspeak. Unfortunately, not everybody have the money for these tools, though. This would be much more expensive that an upgraded fee for a Premium membership could ever be.

 

I don't know if having larger PQs would raise the fees for Premium Members, or if it would introduce a fee for everyone (no more free access), but that's a Groundspeak call (when they will think enough people requested it).

 

I don't see what larger PQs would remove from people that are fighting against such a change. Really, there's no reason to not want larger PQs (other than maybe having to pay for a service you're using). Not a lot of things are free in life.

If you don't want to miss any opportunity then you will pay for tools that let you do that - whether an iPhone or a smart phone that runs Geocache Navigator or just one that gives you access to the wap.geocaching.com.

 

Most people are happy to just go on line and pick out a few caches. They don't even pay for a premium membership. If they want to geocache when they are traveling they pick out some caches on the route they are planning to take and print out some pages. If they think they may have to change plans, they can print out a few page on their alternate route. If for some reason they need to bypass all the caches they printed out before leaving it's no big deal. They will be other days they can go geocaching.

 

Some people become premium members. They find the number of caches they can download with PQs more than generous. They can't download every cache every place they might pass when they travel, but using caches along a route and other filters they can get a good selection of caches that cover the area. They are seldom in an area where they won't have any cache to find. Sure, they might find out that there was one in the parking lot of the McDonald's where they stopped for lunch. If they had only included that one in their PQ they could have gotten one more smiley. Still they found the one that was on someone's favorites list, so they aren't too upset that they missed the LPC at McDonalds. Some premium members will even develop a good sized database in GSAK of the caches in the areas they are most likely to be in. Then they can have even more caches loaded in their GPS when the are in those areas. On longer trips they will still have to plan a little better. If that isn't sufficient, they will invest in that iPhone or Blackberry and a geocaching app that lets them access the database from any place they have cell phone coverage.

 

For most people there is no reason to increase the overall number of caches you can download in a PQ. As cities become more cache dense, it becomes more appropriate to just be more selective in the caches you download. Caches along a route and other filtering techniques allow you to do this. Perhaps if Grounspeak were to figure out a way to have only the people who say they need more caches in their PQs to pay for this without raising the rates for the rest of us, it would be more palatable to me. But I still worry about people who might abuse this privilege and use the larger PQs in ways that violate the waypoint license agreement and impinge on the rights of Groundspeak and its partners to make some money off of mobile geocaching apps and the like. While Groundspeak would have some capability to enforce the license, it is not clear that they could recover enough to compensate for damages and to be enough of a deterrent to others who might also be thinking of using the PQ data in this way. Since they provide an alternative to those who say they need to be able to always find the nearest cache wherever they are (i.e. use an approved mobile app), the use of this as an argument for bigger PQs is unconvincing. If you need to always be able to find the nearest cache get an iPhone. If you are going to an area with poor cell phone coverage, order a PQ for that area while you are still in a area where you can get coverage. If you are worried about the one day every six years when there is a fire in the electrical vault in the building where Groundspeak's servers are, keep a few PQs around that have some caches in the areas you are most likely going to be in - or take a day off from geocaching and enjoy some other activity that day.

Edited by tozainamboku
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I use GSAK and just maintain a database of the caches in our country (not a lot of caches -> 200) but I use two databases one has found and caches in our country and the other is named foreign. That database holds the caches that I use when we visit another country. If the cache is not in the database i just use my phone or a wireless internet connection. Heck you can even go to a library or a caffe and use the computer there but i doubt that you don't have a phone that supports GPRS if not anything better.

 

Or you can just make a PQ of different parts of the town or use a "caches along a route" tool if you travel a lot and make sure that you cover all roads that you regulary use.

 

It's true that a country can have (many) more caches than our country but I still doubt that you can find 500 caches in a day not to mention 2500 caches if you use all your daily limit and there really ins't a reason to use big OLDB's.

 

But I do support the suggestion that you'd be able to have one 2500 PQ per day. Everything more would be just silly and I can guarantee that there would be a lot of people posting PQ's around on different sites. And I for one wouldn't like to see my caches on any other site.

Edited by Team Veverca
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Another ideas what may be helpful and will not make server more busy.

 

Some time ago I tried make PQ for whole Czech Republic, as I was planned visit this country and had no idea where exactly I will there. I used for it nearly whole space in my PQ's, and it took me about one hour to set it correct (use correct dates). After creating this and get all via email, I had to delete it from my PQ list, because was no space left for other PQ's. And no, if I had no saved links to these PQs I have to create it again :blink:

 

- Will be very nice if you can save settings of your PQ somewhere in your profile and use it when you need it. Keep limit caches in one PQ, daily and weekly limit, but add option for saving inactive PQs, what you might use in future.

 

- Other idea - if you create PQ and number of caches is largest than 500 can be automatically create more PQs, maximum 500 caches each. For Example - if your settings giving result 2725 caches will be created 6 PQs (5 PQs with 500 caches and one with 225). It will be very useful, and Groundspeak can still keep current limits.

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nobody really needs the cache page for every cache within a twelve hour drive of wherever they happen to be, not even if they're going to break the 24-hour record. not even if they intend to break that record every day for a week.

 

the bottom line is that nobody but nobody is going to run out of caches to find if they get 500 active caches nearest them each day. since they can get 2500 caches each day, there's just no excuse.

 

I've tried to stay out of these 4 or 5 concurrent threads of increasing the size of PQs (this week's Cache Rating System threads), but, if I may add...

 

To me, the only defensible arguement here is that GPS technology has changed over the years from a max of 500 waypoints to 1000 (and some newer models with 2000). Yes, POIs are a different story. This I can see, and maybe even support a change to 1000 per PQ. That would provide 5000 per day, which is still way more data than anyone would really need for a last minute cache run. If I was planning to travel cross-country, I would either plan ahead, or make use of the WAP site. What I can't see is the request to increase the size of PQs just because someone likes to play with data. If that's what one would like to do with their spare time, I'd be more than happy to make up some data for you to play with. After all, it's not geocaching, just playing with data. I do; however, support GS in their right to protect their database. The only real protection they have is to limit the amount of access to it. (I probably said that wrong, and expect to be corrected.)

 

In addition, the arguement of "stale data" doesn't hold water either. Adding an additional DNF to a cache that has 1 or more already logged is a good thing...let the CO know some maintenance is needed. NOT a cache to be avoided.

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it would be much more efficient to do two "cache along a route" PQs, one for each shore, and if you really wanted to be fancy, one for, say the rive-sud at montreal. if you're passing through you don't need the whole city, but just enough to keep you busy on the way.

I'm finding the new caches along a route feature to be very useful. We're planning on doing some caching in eastern NY sometime. We have a specific destination in mind but don't know if we want to take the southern or northern highway to get there. One PQ isn't enough to cover both roads, so I created a CAaR for the north and from the south and ended up with almost 500 caches between the 2 PQs.

 

We're now all set no matter which way we go and have more than enough caches to find along the way.

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- Other idea - if you create PQ and number of caches is largest than 500 can be automatically create more PQs, maximum 500 caches each. For Example - if your settings giving result 2725 caches will be created 6 PQs (5 PQs with 500 caches and one with 225). It will be very useful, and Groundspeak can still keep current limits.

How would that work? I'm trying to imagine how it would be coded. You'd need some very, very sophisticated software to handle the general case, and even then it would probably give different results (meaning, not match all of the same caches) 24 hours later.

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How would that work? I'm trying to imagine how it would be coded. You'd need some very, very sophisticated software to handle the general case...
Not really. Pagination. You see it every day. Server queries know where to start because you tell it where to start.

 

...and even then it would probably give different results (meaning, not match all of the same caches) 24 hours later.
Any PQ that is not created by a bookmark suffers the same fate. Any cache that fits the create would be included or caches archived removed. A non-issue as it affects all non-bookmark PQs.
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if your settings giving result 2725 caches will be created 6 PQs (5 PQs with 500 caches and one with 225). It will be very useful, and Groundspeak can still keep current limits.

That's not a current limit. :blink:

 

I think what sTeamTraen was meaning is that you could run 5 x 500 cache PQ's one day and then the next run the remaining 225 cache PQ. Obviously it would be a lot better if you could get a 2500 cache PQ even if it's just for an extra 30 seconds downloading 5 attachments from separate emails instead of 1 attachment, every little helps :(

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if your settings giving result 2725 caches will be created 6 PQs (5 PQs with 500 caches and one with 225). It will be very useful, and Groundspeak can still keep current limits.

That's not a current limit. :anitongue:

 

I think what sTeamTraen was meaning is that you could run 5 x 500 cache PQ's one day and then the next run the remaining 225 cache PQ. Obviously it would be a lot better if you could get a 2500 cache PQ even if it's just for an extra 30 seconds downloading 5 attachments from separate emails instead of 1 attachment, every little helps :laughing:

 

I'm not talking about sending it to my email, because I can 2500 per day and I'm not question that. I'm talking ONLY about CREATING PQ. Now I can CREATE 40 PQ in ONE DAY, there is no limit for this, the limit is for sending it to email.

 

Simple, isn't it?

 

Now, when I create PQ for area where is large density of caches i takes me long time, because I don't know what is date for 1st 500 caches placed in this area, what is for 2md etc. So I'm trying: 22 June 2005 - result - 376 caches, so I'm trying 31 December 2005 - result: 500 caches, what means there are more caches than 500 and I still don't know how many (no information about it). So I'm trying 15 November 2005 - result: 456 - not bad, but still trying best, because I waste 44 caches, what is important because there are limits 40 PQ's

 

I think this inot very complicated. Years ago, when sloppy disks were popular they had only 1,44 MB space. So was very hard use this space optimally if you had e.g. 10 files 1MB each. But if you packed all you data using ZIP or RAR packer you could define maximum size of one file. So I defined it as 1,44, and program automatically made files 1,44 MB and last was smaller. Similar could be with PQs.

 

and all the time I'm talking about CREATING PQs, NOT about SENDING :anibad:

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if your settings giving result 2725 caches will be created 6 PQs (5 PQs with 500 caches and one with 225). It will be very useful, and Groundspeak can still keep current limits.

That's not a current limit. :anitongue:

 

I think what sTeamTraen was meaning is that you could run 5 x 500 cache PQ's one day and then the next run the remaining 225 cache PQ. Obviously it would be a lot better if you could get a 2500 cache PQ even if it's just for an extra 30 seconds downloading 5 attachments from separate emails instead of 1 attachment, every little helps :laughing:

 

I'm not talking about sending it to my email, because I can 2500 per day and I'm not question that. I'm talking ONLY about CREATING PQ. Now I can CREATE 40 PQ in ONE DAY, there is no limit for this, the limit is for sending it to email.

 

Simple, isn't it?

 

Now, when I create PQ for area where is large density of caches i takes me long time, because I don't know what is date for 1st 500 caches placed in this area, what is for 2md etc. So I'm trying: 22 June 2005 - result - 376 caches, so I'm trying 31 December 2005 - result: 500 caches, what means there are more caches than 500 and I still don't know how many (no information about it). So I'm trying 15 November 2005 - result: 456 - not bad, but still trying best, because I waste 44 caches, what is important because there are limits 40 PQ's

 

I think this inot very complicated. Years ago, when sloppy disks were popular they had only 1,44 MB space. So was very hard use this space optimally if you had e.g. 10 files 1MB each. But if you packed all you data using ZIP or RAR packer you could define maximum size of one file. So I defined it as 1,44, and program automatically made files 1,44 MB and last was smaller. Similar could be with PQs.

 

and all the time I'm talking about CREATING PQs, NOT about SENDING :anibad:

No, the limit is for RUNNING the PQ against the server. You can have as many as 40 created (including the My Finds), but only 5 of them will run per day. It has nothing to do with email except that is how they are currently delivered.

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No, the limit is for RUNNING the PQ against the server. You can have as many as 40 created (including the My Finds), but only 5 of them will run per day. It has nothing to do with email except that is how they are currently delivered.

 

That is not technically true. I can run all 40 PQ's every day by clicking on the "Preview" followed by the page #'s. If I wanted to I could sit there and run 500 PQ's by changing the search parameters on one single PQ. And every time I do that, the server must run the PQ as I get a message saying it returned 500 caches.

 

The "5" limit only applies to having PQ's emailed.

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And every time I do that, the server must run the PQ as I get a message saying it returned 500 caches.

There is a big difference in resources required between an SQL "COUNT" that returns a single number and an SQL "SELECT" that returns all the data for all those caches.

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And every time I do that, the server must run the PQ as I get a message saying it returned 500 caches.

There is a big difference in resources required between an SQL "COUNT" that returns a single number and an SQL "SELECT" that returns all the data for all those caches.

Preview returns more than the count. In fact, if you do a google map preview, it has to go retrieve at least the name, code, type, status and coordinates of all the geocaches in your PQ.

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If I create a PQ it isn't possible to "find" more than 500 Caches/PQ. This is a kind of problem in bigger cities like Munich (more than 500 in a 20km radius) because you have to create several PQ with a very short range. Isn't it possible to change this limitation for premium members to a number like 2000 by the Groundspeak programmers? I think this would be very practicable.

I can't see where a limit of 500 caches is a big deal. If you run one PQ and get a return of 500 caches and do 20 caches a day, if you did every cache in the PQ, that would last you 25 days. In those 25 days you could run 125 more PQs for a maximum of 62,500 caches. That should keep you busy.

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No, the limit is for RUNNING the PQ against the server. You can have as many as 40 created (including the My Finds), but only 5 of them will run per day. It has nothing to do with email except that is how they are currently delivered.

 

I know my English is not quite good, but I think I explained clearly my think.

 

I KNOW about daily limit and limit caches in one PQ. But there is limit in CREATING PQs as well. When I created 39 PQs and tried only create (not run!) next one I spotted this red text:

 

Sorry. You have reached 40 total queries. You will need to delete a query in order to create a new one.

 

It means I can't CREATE more than 40 (sorry, more than 39) PQs. I spent good time creating PQ for one area, but now I have to delete it if I want only CREATE (not run!) other PQ. I'm not using now these PQs, but I will problably in half year, so I have to create it again! Only what I can do is save link to PQ in my browser favorites and create it again.

 

So still I'm asking for is:

- make possible create and save unlimited number of PQ

- make possible automatically create more PQs (e.g max 10 PQ) if more caches answers to your questions.

 

And keep your daily limits, it's not a problem. And don't tell me CREATING PQ make server busy...

Edited by toczygroszek
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You actually can create an unlimited number of PQs with a workaround in the system. PQs aren't ever deleted, they're just archived. Here's the work-around:

  • Open a PQ in the edit mode
  • Save the URL (either as a bookmark or in some other piece of software)
  • Save the PQ
  • On the PQ grid, delete the PQ
  • Open the URL that you saved, then save the PQ.
  • The deleted PQ will be saved again and available on your grid.

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You actually can create an unlimited number of PQs with a workaround in the system. PQs aren't ever deleted, they're just archived. Here's the work-around:

  • Open a PQ in the edit mode
  • Save the URL (either as a bookmark or in some other piece of software)
  • Save the PQ
  • On the PQ grid, delete the PQ
  • Open the URL that you saved, then save the PQ.
  • The deleted PQ will be saved again and available on your grid.

 

That little tidbit wins the "Gem of the Year" Award.

 

THANK YOU

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