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Everyone has a Favorite (point)


The-Eaves

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Hey guys.... Something that will increase the quality of the stats:

 

http://feedback.geocaching.com/forums/75775-geocaching-com/suggestions/2143349-everyone-has-a-favorite-point-

 

Suggestion copied from the Feedback site and pasted below. Visit the above link if you like the suggestion:

 

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

 

Why has the ability to tell the geocaching community which caches are your favorites been reserved for Premium Members only? Is it solely to motivate non-Premium Members to become Premium Members? If so I believe it is a short sighted notion! Here me out Geocaching.com - I am a Premium Member and would pay three times your asking price for the membership! I speak with the best intentions for the game which is geocaching and for the interests of GC.com...

 

1) A favorite point serves many purposes. First tells every cacher in the community which caches are the best and which ones to hunt for - For this function to work the number of favorite points must reflect accurately how much all the cachers who found the cache enjoyed the cache. If not everyone has a say the number means nothing!

 

They also exist to motivate Cache Owners (CO) to produce high quality caches - good listing, good location, well designed container - The CO must be rewarded for his/her effort by seeing how much everyone who found his/her cache enjoyed the hunt.

 

>>>Now by prescribing who may, and who may not express their opinions you deprive CO's of well deserved reward, and deprive geocachers out there from knowing about the best caches in town!.. Not ideal at all...

 

2) With the new GPX format being released (September I believe), favorite points will be available for statistical processing. Already I see the following happening: CO's who hide excellent caches are switching their caches into Premium Member Only (PMO) status to ensure that only cachers who have favorite points to award log their caches. This as they aim to maintain a high favorite point to find ratio. Like it or not geocaching is played as a numbers game by MANY (including myself)... and it is us that tend to hide the most epic caches. (and indeed those who hide the caches tend to find the most caches and drive the game)..

 

Soon the best caches are going to be PMO and the game is going to exist in two groups - PMs and nPM's...

 

3) Information is most valuable when it is non-biased and when there is a lot of it! Favorite points have already motivated the placement of some incredible caches - With the GPX update this will be even more prominent if made non-biased.

 

****What will happen if favorite points are made open to all***

Cache Owners will produce awesome caches, make them available to all, in order to glean the most possible favorite points. This results in a greater population of geocachers and Premium Memberships will be sold in greater numbers eventually - They will follow the natural progression to Premium Status as we all did before favorite points. The Premium Membership is well worth it and has never been under question.

 

This is a better and healthier way of growing the game and keeping it financially afloat.

 

This is not a motivation to give away freebies - I feel the value of opening up favorite points to all is greater for Premium Members than for non-PM's... And I don't feel being able to grant a favorite point is a major selling point for Premium Memberships in the first place...

 

Please don't just decline - At least review and hear what the community has to say... You guys at GC.com really rock btw. The API system has show that GC.com is an innovative and flexible company indeed!

Edited by The-Eaves
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Hey guys.... Something that will increase the quality of the stats:

 

http://feedback.geocaching.com/forums/75775-geocaching-com/suggestions/2143349-everyone-has-a-favorite-point-

 

Why has the ability to tell the geocaching community which caches are your favorites been reserved for Premium Members only?

 

I agree with the Groundspeak standpoint that only Premium (=Paid) members should have access to favourite points.

 

There are far too many "chancers" out there who would create sock puppet accounts, just to give their caches fave points (and fake finds).

 

Leave it as it is ... If it is not broken .....

 

PT

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@TechnoNut... You have an excellent point I must agree with you...

 

If you read the comments on the feedback forum you will see this post by Markwell:

 

>CO's who hide excellent caches are switching their

>caches into Premium Member Only (PMO) status

>to ensure that only cachers who have favorite

>points to award log their caches. This as they aim

>o maintain a high favorite point to find ratio.

 

Nope. The "percentage" that's shown for favorite points (the ratio you refer to) is shown as "13% Favorites/Premium Logs". So the ratio is how many favorite points measured against how many unique premium members have logged a find. With that in mind, the ratio already is not affected by the number of non-premium members.

 

Let's say I have a cache that has 50 finds (30 of which are premium members) and it has 16 favorite points. The favorites percentage is going to say 53%, not 32%. And if 400 non-premium members logged finds on the cache tomorrow, it would still say 53%.

 

My reply to him was this:

 

@Maxwell: Will the new GPX format include everything about each find log?

 

For what you say to be true the proposed new GPX format must include several essential pieces of information for each find log: Every cache must have the membership status for each log saved in the format! Or alternatively the number of Premium Member finds and DNF's must be recorded in the GPX file for every cache!

 

All the stats in my country are collected by running pocket queries that call the info on every active geocache in the country - therefore essential to know the membership status of each log made on every cache!

 

(Alternatively can some info be provided by admin as to whether or not this data will be in the new GPX format?)

 

Thanks guys...

 

So... Does anyone know if all the info the stats people need will be contained in the new pocket queries?

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@TechnoNut... You have an excellent point I must agree with you...

 

So... Does anyone know if all the info the stats people need will be contained in the new pocket queries?

 

*That* is the $64000 question. No one knows - as the sample GPX file has not yet been released by GS. Everyone is waiting for it, including Clyde (GSAK).

 

If I can hazard a quess, GS are still tweaking it, based on responses received in the various forums (fora?) and from 3rd party developers. The release has already been postponed at least once, and I am not holding my breath for 1 September.

 

We will just have to wait and see.

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As mentioned in another thread (Techno nuts), you can see a bit of what's comming if you use the GSAK Beta release. It includes a new column for favorites and when updating the stats from the website it also updates these favorites per cache. For those doing lots of caches in a group logging them is a complete pain, but with the new updates in GSAK it will take you only a few minutes (depending on your network connection) to log multiple caches. You can type/edit the log offline in GSAK and then upload your logs in one go... And there are others, and if I understand correctly it will be on us from pretty soon :laughing:

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