Jump to content

Protest


Arse&Hemi

Recommended Posts

To protest the recent changes made to geocaching.com, we are temporarily disabling all our active cache hides (163 total) for one week beginning 01-18-10. If you are unhappy with the changes made to geocaching.com and want your voices heard, disable your cache hides along with us. Together we can perhaps get the point across.

Edited by Arse&Hemi
Link to comment

i don't see what exactly is that supposed to accomplish

 

except punishing other cachers by acting immaturely

 

chages have to be done, maybe Groundspeak rushed into it without much testing, but the reactions i see from a lot of people are getting way out of hand and blown out of proportion

 

report the bugs and communicate in a civil manner and it will all work eventually

 

i'm part of many communities and i've been trough upgrades and its never flawless

 

i can see how some people don't have a grasp on that concept and think that its slam dunk upgrading a software such as a website, but for the love of caching either educate yourself or bare with them till they fix it

Edited by t4e
Link to comment

i don't see what exactly is that supposed to accomplish

 

except punishing other cachers by acting immaturely

 

chages have to be done, maybe Groundspeak rushed into it without much testing, but the reactions i see from a lot of people are getting way out of hand and blown out of proportion

 

report the bugs and communicate in a civil manner and it will all work eventually

 

i'm part of many communities and i've been trough upgrades and its never flawless

 

i can see how some people don't have a grasp on that concept and think that its slam dunk upgrading a software such as a website, but for the love of caching either educate yourself or bare with them till they fix it

 

Not punishing anyone, just making a point. You should know that any good design is tested thoroughly before it's made public. The lack of proper testing and communication with the community are the problem here.

Link to comment

 

Not punishing anyone, just making a point. You should know that any good design is tested thoroughly before it's made public. The lack of proper testing and communication with the community are the problem here.

 

i agree with the proper testing and communication with the community, but i don't think disabling your caches will influence Groundspeak in any way

 

maybe there's better ways of getting your point across, like an e-mail to them explaining the concerns of the community and endorsed by as many members as you can gather

Link to comment

 

Not punishing anyone, just making a point. You should know that any good design is tested thoroughly before it's made public. The lack of proper testing and communication with the community are the problem here.

 

i agree with the proper testing and communication with the community, but i don't think disabling your caches will influence Groundspeak in any way

 

maybe there's better ways of getting your point across, like an e-mail to them explaining the concerns of the community and endorsed by as many members as you can gather

 

We have voiced our concerns in the appropriate forums. Now we are taking action.

Link to comment

In my country Sweden, one geocacher is taking this a step further and actually archiving listings on geocaching.com and putting them on opencaching.se instead.

Examples:

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...22-9d00cf61d9e3

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...0f-68a846dfcdd4

 

When something like this starts to happen, it can go fast.

 

Why did he only do it with only 2 of his 50 hides??? Not much of a protest.

Link to comment

Yes, the protest action is flawed. It may as well have been a geocide. The only folks you punish are yourself and your fellow cachers.

 

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

Not thrilled with the new look but it is only slightly worse than the old look. I am not going to throw a temper tantrum over it though.

 

I must ask though. Do you really feel that you are a better or more worthy cacher than someone with 4 hides?

Link to comment

 

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

i looked at some of your cache pages, and only have yourself to blame for choosing to design it that way

 

BTW: Good Luck wit your protest!

Edited by t4e
Link to comment

As a result of me actually kind of liking the new design - I guess I'll head out and plant a few caches this week.

I agree with StarBrand 100%. Disabling caches is the same as throwing a tantrum, taking your toys and going home. It won't change a thing, it will simply prevent people who might enjoy finding the OP's caches from looking for them.

 

I'm not 100% pleased with the site redesign, but I can certainly live with it. Since the OP seems to be using number of hides as some sort of screwy criterion, I'll save them the trouble of looking up my stats: I have just five hides right now, and none of them were affected that much by the site changes. Then again, I try very hard to make my cache pages readable on portable devices like PDAs, cell phones, and high-end GPSr's. For that reason, I avoid using cache page formatting that is likely to look ugly or be unusable on these devices.

 

I'm not in a position to hide any new caches this week, but if I were, I think I'd make it a point to hide some during this "protest period" simply to protest the idea of this sort of protest. :rolleyes:

 

--Larry

Link to comment

To protest the recent changes made to geocaching.com, we are temporarily disabling all our active cache hides (163 total) for one week beginning 01-18-10. If you are unhappy with the changes made to geocaching.com and want your voices heard, disable your cache hides along with us. Together we can perhaps get the point across.

 

Let me get this straight, you're protesting some minor design tweaks by disabling your caches? :rolleyes:

Link to comment

I hope that those that archived their caches in protest don't want them unarchived. It won't happen.

 

I love the "shoot yourself in the foot to protest guns" analogy by AZcachemeister. Priceless.

 

I am sure that if the security issues with the old site format caused the original poster to end up with a virus somehow, they would be screaming at Groundspeak for not doing something about. I may not like all of the changes, but it isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things and I appreciate that they took steps to make the site more secure. I've noticed that the odd character formatting is indeed gone and appreciate their efforts to make us all more secure.

Link to comment

I am sure that if the security issues with the old site format caused the original poster to end up with a virus somehow, they would be screaming at Groundspeak for not doing something about.

Whoa, now this is interesting. I don't remember reading anywhere that any of the recent site changes were due to security concerns. If this were more widely known, it might cool off some of the extreme rhetoric and ranting we've been subjected to the past few days.

 

--Larry

Link to comment

I hope that those that archived their caches in protest don't want them unarchived. It won't happen.

 

I love the "shoot yourself in the foot to protest guns" analogy by AZcachemeister. Priceless.

 

I am sure that if the security issues with the old site format caused the original poster to end up with a virus somehow, they would be screaming at Groundspeak for not doing something about. I may not like all of the changes, but it isn't that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things and I appreciate that they took steps to make the site more secure. I've noticed that the odd character formatting is indeed gone and appreciate their efforts to make us all more secure.

I think the Sweidsh guy who archived his caches on geocaching.com and listed them on opencaching.se won't want them unarchived. But how can you be sure that they won't be unarchived if the cache owner wants that? I am not so sure that the Swedish reviewers would deny such a request if e.g. Groundspeak apologized for the troubles caused by the latest update and reverted some of the changes.

 

I think you see events like the archiving as some kind of protest, but also as some kind of evaluation of the other cache listing site. It has already gained attention in the Swedish geocaching forum on www.geocaching.se and I am sure that more will follow and move some of their caches to other sites.

 

Personally I think it is sad that there has to be more than one geocaching site. If Groundspeak would be more friendly to its users and not treating the cache listings as their own property, I don't think there would any need for an alternative to geocaching.com.

 

About the security issues: Is it true that this is the reason for the layout changes? Or is it just a rumour? I am still surprised that I didn't receive any information about the update prior to it happen e.g. in the newsletter, nor can I find any information about the update on the start page of geocaching.com. It would be very nice to receive some official information on the start page about the update, why it was made, what the benefits will be and how you are supposed to report issues (not everyone is reading the forum).

 

iller

Edited by iller
Link to comment

As a result of me actually kind of liking the new design - I guess I'll head out and plant a few caches this week.

Wow, that's extactly what I thought. I didn't hide anyone because it's a rainy weekend!

 

I cannot see any problem with the new design. (Any real problem I mean). It's more a matter of taste.

Link to comment

As a result of me actually kind of liking the new design - I guess I'll head out and plant a few caches this week.

Wow, that's extactly what I thought. I didn't hide anyone because it's a rainy weekend!

 

I cannot see any problem with the new design. (Any real problem I mean). It's more a matter of taste.

 

I'll bet you guys like pickled herring and Limburger cheese to. :)

Link to comment

I am sure that if the security issues with the old site format caused the original poster to end up with a virus somehow, they would be screaming at Groundspeak for not doing something about.

Whoa, now this is interesting. I don't remember reading anywhere that any of the recent site changes were due to security concerns. If this were more widely known, it might cool off some of the extreme rhetoric and ranting we've been subjected to the past few days.

 

--Larry

Moun10Bike said it. I thought it was interesting that it was glossed over. I most certainly noticed it. I think there were obviously other reasons for the changes made, but I'll be happy to live with the changes if the site is more secure.

 

What are the chances that all the workaround I'm doing now will still be valid in a few days, weeks with a next update on Tidy (that's how you call it?)

 

HTML Tidy will not be updated for a long, long time (the one we were previously using came out in something like 2003). The change was necessary due to security issues. Remember those strange characters that would appear at the end of some cache descriptions? The devs narrowed it down to memory leaks involving the old version of HTML Tidy. Such an issue could have been exploited by a hacker.

 

By the way, I realize he is talking about HTML Tidy. The old version was integrated into the site though, so a roll back to the old site would include a roll back to the old HTML Tidy. Again, I will live with the current changes so they don't have to go back to square one. I would rather them work on what we have than go back to what we had.

Edited by mtn-man
Link to comment

Ok. I'm not trolling this time. I seriously need someone to tell me.

 

What is different? The intro-site looks different but geocaching.com looks the same to me. Am I this unobservant?!

Something you should be able notice directly is that there is much more white space in cache listings. But I think what really annoys some people is that their carefully crafted cache descriptions in html no longer render properly. This doesn't bother me very much since they would probably not render properly in the extremly limited html browser on my GPS device so I think they should be rewritten anyway.

 

I am more bothered that accented characters like åäö that are used a lot in my country are getting exported as &-codes ("&" followed by a code like "auml", "ouml", followed by ";") in GPX files and my GPS cannot render this html code properly.

Edited by iller
Link to comment

Moun10Bike said it. I thought it was interesting that it was glossed over. I most certainly noticed it. I think there were obviously other reasons for the changes made, but I'll be happy to live with the changes if the site is more secure.

I did miss that post, thanks for reposting it. Personally, that makes a big difference in turns of understanding why some of the changes were made.

 

By the way, I realize he is talking about HTML Tidy. The old version was integrated into the site though, so a roll back to the old site would include a roll back to the old HTML Tidy. Again, I will live with the current changes so they don't have to go back to square one. I would rather them work on what we have than go back to what we had.

Agreed. In any case, it would really surprise me if they simply rolled back all the changes as if they'd never happened. I'd be willing to bet good money that that just isn't going to happen at this point.

 

--Larry

Link to comment

Yes, the protest action is flawed. It may as well have been a geocide. The only folks you punish are yourself and your fellow cachers.

 

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

How many caches do I need to participate in this protest?

Link to comment

Yes, the protest action is flawed. It may as well have been a geocide. The only folks you punish are yourself and your fellow cachers.

 

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

How many caches do I need to participate in this protest?

I'm guessing that snarky comment dealing with a cacher's number of hides didn't win them any friends in this "protest"....

 

--Larry

Link to comment

Sometimes I wish the forum has a built in poll mechanism, so that I can vote on a topic without posting something no one is interested in reading. Add me to a "this is a bad idea" camp. I'd post more but the first 2 responses pretty much summed up my feelings.

 

As for HTML Tidy security flaw, tying a fix for that to the redesign of the look of the website sounds like something the U.S. Congress does, not an Internet website.

Edited by Chrysalides
Link to comment

To protest the recent changes made to geocaching.com, we are temporarily disabling all our active cache hides (163 total) for one week beginning 01-18-10. If you are unhappy with the changes made to geocaching.com and want your voices heard, disable your cache hides along with us. Together we can perhaps get the point across.

 

I get that change can be really hard for people...but your plan sounds like a terrible knee-jerk reaction that will only serve to punish cachers in your local area. What have they ever done to you? Nothing.

 

Your "protest" will likely not amount to a hill of beans with TPTB. Maybe if you feel that strongly about it you should archive your caches and let some other people who aren't so upset with change get a crack at your spots. :)

Link to comment

As far as I know in Germany no caches will (can) be published since 13.January.

'Cause the reviewers tools do not work anymore!

 

I can't understand why Groundspeak set the changes alive...

Don't they have a test enviroment and saw the problems ?!

Most of the reviewer's Greasemonkey tools have been adjusted days ago. I was reviewing caches the whole time, though it took longer for the first day or two. I don't know where you got this "information", but there is no reason why caches cannot be reviewed at this point or at any time related to site changes.

Link to comment

Yes, the protest action is flawed. It may as well have been a geocide. The only folks you punish are yourself and your fellow cachers.

 

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

How many caches do I need to participate in this protest?

I'm guessing that snarky comment dealing with a cacher's number of hides didn't win them any friends in this "protest"....

 

--Larry

 

I know and it kinda makes me sad. :shocked:

 

 

Well, just a little bit sad. :)

 

 

No, not at all really. :huh:

 

 

Well, I'm off to burn some more marshmallows in OT. Have fun at your protest!

Link to comment

 

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

i looked at some of your cache pages, and only have yourself to blame for choosing to design it that way

 

BTW: Good Luck wit your protest!

 

Of course, we are the ones to blame. :)

Link to comment

As far as I know in Germany no caches will (can) be published since 13.January.

'Cause the reviewers tools do not work anymore!

 

I can't understand why Groundspeak set the changes alive...

Don't they have a test enviroment and saw the problems ?!

 

How do you explain all these caches published in Germany since January 13th?

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?country_id=79

 

(lots of events in the first few pages that you'll need to page through)

Edited by Stunod
Link to comment

"I must ask though. Do you really feel that you are a better or more worthy cacher than someone with 4 hides?"

 

Who said anyone was better?

 

Could be just the impression left by the rude remark to Totemlake.

 

We wrote:

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

What part of our statement is rude? We are stating facts; he has 4 hides, his 4 hides are unaffected by the recent changes as far as we know, his 4 cache pages appear to look ok. However, several of our cache pages have been altered drastically due to the recent changes.

Edited by Arse&Hemi
Link to comment

 

We wrote:

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

What part of our statement is rude? We are stating facts; he has 4 hides, his 4 hides are unaffected by the recent changes as far as we know, his 4 cache pages appear to look ok. However, several of our cache pages have been altered drastically due to the recent changes.

Oh, I just love it when someone says something that is clearly designed to be condecending, and then claims that they are only stating facts. Get real.

 

That's just like the street thugs who are careful to word their threats in such a way that they cannot be proven to be threats.

 

Oh...I never said that I was going to hurt him, I just said he might get hurt.

 

edited for spelling

Edited by WRITE SHOP ROBERT
Link to comment

 

We wrote:

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

What part of our statement is rude? We are stating facts; he has 4 hides, his 4 hides are unaffected by the recent changes as far as we know, his 4 cache pages appear to look ok. However, several of our cache pages have been altered drastically due to the recent changes.

Oh, I just love it when someone says something that is clearly designed to be condecending, and then claims that they are only stating facts. Get real.

 

That's just like the street thugs who are caresul to word their threats in such a way that they cannot be proven to be threats.

 

Oh...I never said that I was going to hurt him, I just said he might get hurt.

Well, it could also be that the amount of work needed for Arse&Hemi to go through their 163 active caches and modify the html code where it is broken, is quite a lot of work and that they have a lot more reason to complain about the layout changes than someone with 4 caches that render properly with the new layout.

 

Arse&Hemi has invested a lot of unpaid time and effort in geocaching.com with their caches and I can understand their frustration when they have to invest a lot more time and effort just because someone decided to change the layout of geocaching.com without prior notice.

 

So yes, I think that someone with 163 active caches has a lot more reasons to complain for the amount of work they will have to put in, than someone with 4 caches.

 

Of course, anyone regardless of the number of caches he/she has hidden, has equal right to complain about the layout issues for caches own by other users, but that is quite a different thing.

 

iller

Edited by iller
Link to comment

 

Well, it could also be that the amount of work needed for Arse&Hemi to go through their 163 active caches and modify the html code where it is broken, is quite a lot of work and that they have a lot more reason to complain about the layout changes than someone with 4 caches that render properly with the new layout.

 

Arse&Hemi has invested a lot of unpaid time and effort in geocaching.com with their caches and I can understand their frustration when they have to invest a lot more time and effort just because someone decided to change the layout of geocaching.com without prior notice.

 

So yes, I think that someone with 163 active caches has a lot more reasons to complain for the amount of work they will have to put in, than someone with 4 caches.

 

Of course, anyone regardless of the number of caches he/she has hidden, has equal right to complain about the layout issues for caches own by other users, but that is quite a different thing.

 

iller

 

if he used the proper html this would have never happened, but most likely is done is some page editor and than pasted onto the geocaching page and that is always prone to breaking at some point

 

tbh i wish people would keep their listings plain and simple, without all the fancy shmanzi useless stuff that only makes the page load slower and unusable for most people that try using it in the field on a cell phone, PDA etc, we can't all afford an iPhone or blackberry

 

i don't understand what place has here your comment about "investing unpaid time and effort on geocaching.com"

 

while i agree that is frustrating to have to redo them all geocaching its a voluntary hobby not a job

but as i said above, maybe this will serve as a lesson to keep it simple in the future

 

 

Of course, we are the ones to blame. :)

 

yes, as per above

Edited by t4e
Link to comment

 

We wrote:

Probably none of your 4 hides have been affected, but many of ours have been.

 

What part of our statement is rude? We are stating facts; he has 4 hides, his 4 hides are unaffected by the recent changes as far as we know, his 4 cache pages appear to look ok. However, several of our cache pages have been altered drastically due to the recent changes.

Oh, I just love it when someone says something that is clearly designed to be condecending, and then claims that they are only stating facts. Get real.

 

That's just like the street thugs who are caresul to word their threats in such a way that they cannot be proven to be threats.

 

Oh...I never said that I was going to hurt him, I just said he might get hurt.

Well, it could also be that the amount of work needed for Arse&Hemi to go through their 163 active caches and modify the html code where it is broken, is quite a lot of work and that they have a lot more reason to complain about the layout changes than someone with 4 caches that render properly with the new layout.

 

Arse&Hemi has invested a lot of unpaid time and effort in geocaching.com with their caches and I can understand their frustration when they have to invest a lot more time and effort just because someone decided to change the layout of geocaching.com without prior notice.

 

So yes, I think that someone with 163 active caches has a lot more reasons to complain for the amount of work they will have to put in, than someone with 4 caches.

 

Of course, anyone regardless of the number of caches he/she has hidden, has equal right to complain about the layout issues for caches own by other users, but that is quite a different thing.

 

iller

 

Welcome to the world of cache ownership. Can't handle it? Then perhaps it is time to archive a few.

 

If the OPs statement had been a mere point of fact they would not have found it necessary to highlite the number in red.

Link to comment
This discussion gets my vote for TMWTE

OK, I'll bite. What's TMWTE?

 

The Most Worthless Thread Ever

 

Keep in mind that the concept isn't a bad one but to announce it on the forum of the company you are protesting, well thats silly.

 

What will work is if people use all their friend connections to convince people to move to another site and not announce it.

 

In all my years, the customer never told the company they were switching, if they were really switching. The customers just all of a sudden disappear.

Link to comment
This discussion gets my vote for TMWTE

OK, I'll bite. What's TMWTE?

 

The Most Worthless Thread Ever

 

Keep in mind that the concept isn't a bad one but to announce it on the forum of the company you are protesting, well thats silly.

 

What will work is if people use all their friend connections to convince people to move to another site and not announce it.

 

In all my years, the customer never told the company they were switching, if they were really switching. The customers just all of a sudden disappear.

 

I don't think the OP wants to leave GC.com. I think he is trying to force GS to change things back to how they were before the latest update. I also don't think he will make any progress.

 

No matter how big the fulcrum nothing is gonna move without the lever.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...