cacherstats & other sites

[Skippermark]

Periodically I'll check out some of the statistics sites, and I noticed that sometimes the states listed for people are wrong. For instance, someone might be listed in one state but lives elsewhere. Maybe they moved and didn't update their home coords?

 

Or, someone hasn't moved at all but their state changes to a different one. I would have guessed the sites went off of the home coordinates of each user, but maybe it's figured some different way?

 

Awhile back I did a test and changed my home coords to Antarctica for a couple weeks but the stat sites still list me as being in CT. Is it because the majority of my finds have been here?

[+5 Caching Campers]

On the cacherstats website he says that he "made certain assuptions about your location." He doesn't go on to say what these assumptions are, but does say that if they are incorrect you can email him and he'll list you in the right location.

 

http://www.cacherstats.com/LocationIndex.html

Edited September 24, 2009 by CSI:Cache Scene Investigators

[Keystone]

I am moving this thread from the Geocaching.com Web Site forum to the Geocaching Topics forum.

[+rob3k]

I wouldn't think these sites would have access to your home coordinates? Probably bases it on the state from which most of your finds are from just like you are thinking. Maybe they even weight recent finds higher than finds a year+ old to account for someone with thousands of finds never being updated if they move.

 

But just a guess.

Edited September 24, 2009 by rob3k

[+DanOCan]

I wouldn't think these sites would have access to your home coordinates? Probably bases it on the state from which most of your finds are from just like you are thinking. Maybe they even weight recent finds higher than finds a year+ old to account for someone with thousands of finds never being updated if they move.

 

But just a guess.

 

That would be my guess too. I would be more than a little concerned if it was that easy to access someone's exact home coordinates from this site.

[+webscouter.]

I would think that it looks at the your first finds. Most cachers will find their first 10 finds nearest their home.

[+JeremyR]

I believe that in the case of Cacherstats, it obtains its data from a selection of caches in each country and once you have a log on some of those, you'll be 'picked up' by it's database. Presumably it parses the selected cache pages every once in a while and refreshes it's database.

 

I know that there's at least one cache on my watchlist that gets a note posted to it every once in a while which reads along the lines of "I'm posting this to activate my profile on Cacherstats"

 

AFAIK, Cacherstats only holds your find count and perceived location and according to the FAQ, the latter is derived from the locations of the first two monitored caches that you post a log to.

 

[edited for clarity]

Edited September 24, 2009 by JeremyR

[Skippermark]

Thanks, JeremyR. I wouldn't have thought that it has access to your home coords, but I was always curious how it knew where someone lived.

 

From the FAQ, it seems like if someone's location changes, they have to contact the owner of the site to get it changed.

[+hurleyanne]

AFAIK, Cacherstats only holds your find count and perceived location and according to the FAQ, the latter is derived from the locations of the first two monitored caches that you post a log to.

 

I'm not so sure....

 

We had a couple of people in our province who were put into the wrong location. To me it seemed as though someone had looked at the cachers' profiles, because if they had looked at their finds it would have been obvious which province they were from. SK had been interpreted at Slovakia, not Saskatchewan. I presume that Slovakian URLs end in .sk

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

Periodically I'll check out some of the statistics sites, and I noticed that sometimes the states listed for people are wrong. For instance, someone might be listed in one state but lives elsewhere. Maybe they moved and didn't update their home coords?

 

Or, someone hasn't moved at all but their state changes to a different one. I would have guessed the sites went off of the home coordinates of each user, but maybe it's figured some different way?

 

Awhile back I did a test and changed my home coords to Antarctica for a couple weeks but the stat sites still list me as being in CT. Is it because the majority of my finds have been here?

 

I wondered about that too. Sometimes I live in the state of Confusion, other times in a state of Dismay, oftentimes in the state of Limbo, rarely though in any state of Mind!