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Geocaching.com site update August 18th 2011


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Folks, the avatars and find counts have only been temporarily removed from logs while we investigate the site slowdown that has occurred since Thursday's update. When that issue has been tracked down and fixed, they will return.

 

And you guys thought they were listening.

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Tried out the new challenges. Completed a couple to see what happens next. Now I want to delete the fact that I even attempted these. I don't like the fact that the display in the upper right of the GC home page shows finds/completed as a combined number - it should only show finds. Challenges, if they stick around, should be treated JUST LIKE TRACKABLES. They show up in your lists but are not counted in any way with TRUE geocaching - which is what we are most intersted in anyway.

 

Please advise on how to remove 'completed' flag from challenges (note: one of the ones we completed is now archived - but still counted as completed.?)...

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Folks, the avatars and find counts have only been temporarily removed from logs while we investigate the site slowdown that has occurred since Thursday's update. When that issue has been tracked down and fixed, they will return.

 

And would it be possible to show two numbers instead of one?

What I imagine is to have beside (to the right of the avatar) two lines: the number of geocaches and the number of challenges. If you wish, you can later also add the number of waymarks and benchmarks in a similar manner. There seems to be enough place beside the avatar for (at least) two numbers. And if yuo remove the avatars, there would be even more place for it.

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I have not commented in the forum before but the additon of the avitar to the logs is a major one to me. This is not necessary and make the log list too long.

 

Greenegger

 

+1

 

How many new features that don't improve the site or caching have they added in the past several months? Wonder what the next "bright idea" will be?

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At approximately 4 PM Pacific Time (GMT -7), we released a site update which should have corrected the performance issues we experienced throughout the day. We'll continue to monitor the site closely this evening, but if you do notice anything not working correctly, please let us know.

 

-Elias

As of 12:17 Pm Pacific time, it's not loading.

Edited by Dgwphotos
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At approximately 4 PM Pacific Time (GMT -7), we released a site update which should have corrected the performance issues we experienced throughout the day. We'll continue to monitor the site closely this evening, but if you do notice anything not working correctly, please let us know.

 

-Elias

As of 12:17 Pm Pacific time, it's not loading.

 

And it's back. According to the tweet, it should be all better now. I still don't see any find counts though.

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BRING BACK THE GEOCACHE FIND COUNT!

 

How are we supposed to tell the difference between the experienced cachers and the casual Tom Dick and Harry blank phone loggers.

 

How does the find count help with this? You could have 10K "finds" and never found a real cache. With the number hounds numbers are meaningless and displaying them with the log only encurages the numbers hounds and helps thier delusion that lots of numbers equals a great cacher. I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

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I've an idea let's pretend the 18th August didnt happen

 

- perform a complete rollback (we know that site worked properly)

- delete all the challenges already done/accepted etc

- fix the bugs in the new site

- BETA test it

- and then re-release the new site including challenges to a fanfare of trumpets!!!

 

We'll have already gotten use to the idea of how the challenges should be used rather than the ill-conceived release examples and we'll probably all be a lot less miserable.

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BRING BACK THE GEOCACHE FIND COUNT!

 

How are we supposed to tell the difference between the experienced cachers and the casual Tom Dick and Harry blank phone loggers.

 

How does the find count help with this? You could have 10K "finds" and never found a real cache. With the number hounds numbers are meaningless and displaying them with the log only encourages the numbers hounds and helps their delusion that lots of numbers equals a great cacher. I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

 

+1. Let's put less emphasis on the numbers. If someone really needs to know, check the finder's profile.

Edited by Lone R
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BRING BACK THE GEOCACHE FIND COUNT!

 

How are we supposed to tell the difference between the experienced cachers and the casual Tom Dick and Harry blank phone loggers.

 

How does the find count help with this? You could have 10K "finds" and never found a real cache. With the number hounds numbers are meaningless and displaying them with the log only encurages the numbers hounds and helps thier delusion that lots of numbers equals a great cacher. I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

 

Even the date you started caching is not necessarily correct. From my profile information: I started caching in September of 2007. During my 1st year of caching I adopted some geocoins & some caches so my profile changed to say I have been a member since July 20, 2005. I haven’t figured out how to correct that so it stays for now.

Edited by crcclu
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BRING BACK THE GEOCACHE FIND COUNT!

 

How are we supposed to tell the difference between the experienced cachers and the casual Tom Dick and Harry blank phone loggers.

How does the find count help with this? You could have 10K "finds" and never found a real cache. With the number hounds numbers are meaningless and displaying them with the log only encurages the numbers hounds and helps thier delusion that lots of numbers equals a great cacher. I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

We know who the armchair cachers are...it is easy to filter their entries from the true cachers. These people think they are clever, but are only fooling themselves. The find counts do make a difference when you are monitoring and maintaining hundreds of hides. This fact was mentioned by someone else earlier in the thread, but bears repeating. The find counts also help provide motivation to the 'true' cachers. In our area there are dozens hovering in the 4000 range. It is as entertaining as a automobile race to watch the race to the next milestones. How can you congratulate your friends on achieving the milestone if the numbers aren't readily available. Or send the newbie a note of congrats at reaching their first hundred. These numbers have been an important part of the game.

Edited by y2kcompliant
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Folks, the avatars and find counts have only been temporarily removed from logs while we investigate the site slowdown that has occurred since Thursday's update. When that issue has been tracked down and fixed, they will return.

Most of the day today we had a banner stating your working on technical issues. The banner is gone but the sucky logs have not changed. Does this mean the problem is fixed and we're stuck with what we got? Or did you just decide to take the banner down and are still working on the problem? Any chance you can roll that part of the code back and restore what we had before? Or is this strictly a one way street? If so, strange way to run a train, or is it that windows does not have a good RCS tool?

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Folks, the avatars and find counts have only been temporarily removed from logs while we investigate the site slowdown that has occurred since Thursday's update. When that issue has been tracked down and fixed, they will return.

Most of the day today we had a banner stating your working on technical issues. The banner is gone but the sucky logs have not changed. Does this mean the problem is fixed and we're stuck with what we got? Or did you just decide to take the banner down and are still working on the problem? Any chance you can roll that part of the code back and restore what we had before? Or is this strictly a one way street? If so, strange way to run a train, or is it that windows does not have a good RCS tool?

 

We fixed the site slowdown issue. We will soon be releasing a hotfix to make other desired adjustments, including "repairing" the logs and tweaking Challenges. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

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Folks, the avatars and find counts have only been temporarily removed from logs while we investigate the site slowdown that has occurred since Thursday's update. When that issue has been tracked down and fixed, they will return.

Most of the day today we had a banner stating your working on technical issues. The banner is gone but the sucky logs have not changed. Does this mean the problem is fixed and we're stuck with what we got? Or did you just decide to take the banner down and are still working on the problem? Any chance you can roll that part of the code back and restore what we had before? Or is this strictly a one way street? If so, strange way to run a train, or is it that windows does not have a good RCS tool?

 

We fixed the site slowdown issue. We will soon be releasing a hotfix to make other desired adjustments, including "repairing" the logs and tweaking Challenges. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

 

Thank you for your reply. I look forward to the hotfix.

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I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

 

really?

 

http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=179d1e30-459d-40c5-a810-206680a5c288&wid=2dbf3053-dac8-4592-8f7c-a7f71553d8dd&ds=2

 

how many examples you want me to provide?

 

How does your example have ANY relavance to the issue? Someone who quit caching 10 yeara ago is not going to show up in a PQ of recent caches. Sure nothing is perfect, but I would bet 95% of the time the month and date you started caching will give you a better ideal than find count on how serioulsy to take a DNF from the cachers.

 

More importantly, the find count is not included in the PQ. So when I am out in the field with just my GPS and the PQs loaded I have nothing to judge a cacher by. Unlike the find count, adding the date someone started caching to the PQ would be easy. If we had dates instead of find count, we would have useful info in our PQs.

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Folks, the avatars and find counts have only been temporarily removed from logs while we investigate the site slowdown that has occurred since Thursday's update. When that issue has been tracked down and fixed, they will return.

Most of the day today we had a banner stating your working on technical issues. The banner is gone but the sucky logs have not changed. Does this mean the problem is fixed and we're stuck with what we got? Or did you just decide to take the banner down and are still working on the problem? Any chance you can roll that part of the code back and restore what we had before? Or is this strictly a one way street? If so, strange way to run a train, or is it that windows does not have a good RCS tool?

 

We fixed the site slowdown issue. We will soon be releasing a hotfix to make other desired adjustments, including "repairing" the logs and tweaking Challenges. Thanks for your understanding and patience.

 

Does the Hotfix include the adoption issue?

 

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BRING BACK THE GEOCACHE FIND COUNT!

 

How are we supposed to tell the difference between the experienced cachers and the casual Tom Dick and Harry blank phone loggers.

How does the find count help with this? You could have 10K "finds" and never found a real cache. With the number hounds numbers are meaningless and displaying them with the log only encurages the numbers hounds and helps thier delusion that lots of numbers equals a great cacher. I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

We know who the armchair cachers are...it is easy to filter their entries from the true cachers. These people think they are clever, but are only fooling themselves. The find counts do make a difference when you are monitoring and maintaining hundreds of hides. This fact was mentioned by someone else earlier in the thread, but bears repeating. The find counts also help provide motivation to the 'true' cachers. In our area there are dozens hovering in the 4000 range. It is as entertaining as a automobile race to watch the race to the next milestones. How can you congratulate your friends on achieving the milestone if the numbers aren't readily available. Or send the newbie a note of congrats at reaching their first hundred. These numbers have been an important part of the game.

 

I am saying, don't put the find number in the logs - I am saying put the date you started caching in the logs and PQs. You could still see the numbers by clicking on the cacher.

 

I think cachers with hundreds of hides are responsible for lots of the garbage we have out there. I think we should limit cachers to 50 active hides. When I hid my 43rd cache I had the most hides in the world and I eventually discovered I had too many active hides. 50 seems more than reasonable. So I don't care about someone with hundreds of hides.

 

Yea back in the day numbers meant something. But when you can claim a 1,000 finds in a day riding down the rode moving film canisters from one spot to another or claim 100 finds for volunteering at an event, unfortunately numbers are now meaningless. I used to congratulate people when they reached milestones. I don['t any more. Congratulating them on their anniversary seems better than reaching a milestone.

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PLEASE split the cache finds and challenge completion numbers. Compare to this:

 

Yesterday I ate 6 snack items. Does it matter if they were 2 vegetables and 6 chocolate bars, or opposite? Of course! Caches/vegetables is the hard stuff that takes stamina, challenges/chocolate bars is the (lovely) dessert that comes so easily...

 

I'd like to support the challenge idea, but I won't spend more time on it until it stops cluttering my cache finds.

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Combining geocache finds and challenges makes no sense. It's a different "game". From gc.com home page:

 

"Geocaching is a real-world outdoor treasure hunting game. Players try to locate hidden containers, called geocaches,"

 

From gc.com geocache types page:

 

"Geocaching Challenges: ... Challenges are not technically geocaches, but you do earn a smiley for completing them."

 

A Challenge does not meet even Groundspeak's own definition of a Geocache.

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These scripts are a nice idea, but really, should we shave to install scripts to fix what should never have been broken?

 

You are investing a lot of time and talent in cleaning up mistakes made by some one in a management position at Groundspeak. Wouldn't you think Groundspeak would take note of that and do some of their own "cleaning up"?

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BRING BACK THE GEOCACHE FIND COUNT!

 

How are we supposed to tell the difference between the experienced cachers and the casual Tom Dick and Harry blank phone loggers.

How does the find count help with this? You could have 10K "finds" and never found a real cache. With the number hounds numbers are meaningless and displaying them with the log only encurages the numbers hounds and helps thier delusion that lots of numbers equals a great cacher. I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

We know who the armchair cachers are...it is easy to filter their entries from the true cachers. These people think they are clever, but are only fooling themselves. The find counts do make a difference when you are monitoring and maintaining hundreds of hides. This fact was mentioned by someone else earlier in the thread, but bears repeating. The find counts also help provide motivation to the 'true' cachers. In our area there are dozens hovering in the 4000 range. It is as entertaining as a automobile race to watch the race to the next milestones. How can you congratulate your friends on achieving the milestone if the numbers aren't readily available. Or send the newbie a note of congrats at reaching their first hundred. These numbers have been an important part of the game.

 

I am saying, don't put the find number in the logs - I am saying put the date you started caching in the logs and PQs. You could still see the numbers by clicking on the cacher.

 

I think cachers with hundreds of hides are responsible for lots of the garbage we have out there. I think we should limit cachers to 50 active hides. When I hid my 43rd cache I had the most hides in the world and I eventually discovered I had too many active hides. 50 seems more than reasonable. So I don't care about someone with hundreds of hides.

 

Yea back in the day numbers meant something. But when you can claim a 1,000 finds in a day riding down the rode moving film canisters from one spot to another or claim 100 finds for volunteering at an event, unfortunately numbers are now meaningless. I used to congratulate people when they reached milestones. I don['t any more. Congratulating them on their anniversary seems better than reaching a milestone.

 

I agree again, except for "unfortunately numbers are now meaningless". I think it's fortunate. ^_^

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I say no numbers, provide the month and year they started caching. That would be better info to judge how serious to take a cacher and it would have less impact on the system. It could also be included in PQs.

 

really?

 

http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=179d1e30-459d-40c5-a810-206680a5c288&wid=2dbf3053-dac8-4592-8f7c-a7f71553d8dd&ds=2

 

how many examples you want me to provide?

 

 

How does your example have ANY relavance to the issue? Someone who quit caching 10 yeara ago is not going to show up in a PQ of recent caches. Sure nothing is perfect, but I would bet 95% of the time the month and date you started caching will give you a better ideal than find count on how serioulsy to take a DNF from the cachers.

 

More importantly, the find count is not included in the PQ. So when I am out in the field with just my GPS and the PQs loaded I have nothing to judge a cacher by. Unlike the find count, adding the date someone started caching to the PQ would be easy. If we had dates instead of find count, we would have useful info in our PQs.

 

it is very relevant, you said the date when someone started caching is a better judgement tool and i gave you one example that its not

in fact as far as i'm concerned there is nothing available that would be a good judgement tool, not even showing both number of finds and start date

some people don't even log their finds, rather they post a note, they are most likely the old timers with a lot of experience, based on your assumptions you would disregard their logs

 

a log can be useless or helpful regardless of how long someone has been caching

 

as for DNF's, what's the difference who wrote it? you can either go look for it anyway or not

isn't that what caching is all about, go out and try to find it?

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Does the Hotfix include the adoption issue?

 

 

Yes.

 

any indication of when that might be? i see the banner is gone from the main site and i tried the adoption link sent to me in the email and still doesn't work

 

thanks

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I liked the way the site was before the changes.

 

Challenges are a different game entirely. Don't mix the number count with them on any part of the site. The old Virtuals provided a valuable service. Living near Washington, DC, where you could not place a cache near a Monument. Virtuals got folks to interesting locations. Challenges are no real substitute for Virtuals.

 

Numbers found and actual dates found provide important information, at least to me. Numbers are motivational and they also show how experienced the cacher placing a DNF might be. Actual dates help a Cache Owner know exactly when a problem is reported with their cache. I like to know the dates of finds and DNFs.

 

Could care less about the Avatars.

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These scripts are a nice idea, but really, should we shave to install scripts to fix what should never have been broken?

 

You are investing a lot of time and talent in cleaning up mistakes made by some one in a management position at Groundspeak. Wouldn't you think Groundspeak would take note of that and do some of their own "cleaning up"?

 

I agree entirely.

 

Unfortunately Groundspeaks' way of dealing with complaints is just to sit and wait until everyone gives up complaining. The 'Bring back the old smilies' request has been 'Under review' for months now. Goodness knows why they were changed in the first place! I use a GM script to switch them back to the old ones as well.

 

How many major changes can you name that have ever been backed out?

I can thing of one: the HTML editor for cache pages

 

 

Mark

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These scripts are a nice idea, but really, should we shave to install scripts to fix what should never have been broken?

 

You are investing a lot of time and talent in cleaning up mistakes made by some one in a management position at Groundspeak. Wouldn't you think Groundspeak would take note of that and do some of their own "cleaning up"?

 

I agree entirely.

 

Unfortunately Groundspeaks' way of dealing with complaints is just to sit and wait until everyone gives up complaining. The 'Bring back the old smilies' request has been 'Under review' for months now. Goodness knows why they were changed in the first place! I use a GM script to switch them back to the old ones as well.

 

How many major changes can you name that have ever been backed out?

I can thing of one: the HTML editor for cache pages

 

 

Mark

 

i'm still waiting for them to remove the stupid fixed width, i even took the time to answer the survey they sent out yet nothing has been done about it and the Feedback thread shows it "under review"

 

for now i can only conclude that pretty much everything in the Feedback, that they don't like, is falling into deaf ears and sits in the "internal queue for review"

 

i would love to see the size of that internal queue lol

Edited by t4e
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as for DNF's, what's the difference who wrote it? you can either go look for it anyway or not

isn't that what caching is all about, go out and try to find it?

I use the counter when evaluating DNF's on caches *I* own. As I mentioned I have a guardrail hide that seems to attract lots of DNF's from low count finders, and occasional one from the finders around several hundred and none from ones approaching or over 1,000. If I get 3 or 4 DNF's from the first group I pretty much ignore the situation, all is fine. If I get one or two from the last group I take a trip. The middle group I wait and see. Yes I could get this information by clicking on profiles, but that is a bunch of clicking for what was right there before.

 

In the field I don't care. Since all I own is a dumb phone I need to load my GPS before I leave home. The four squares on GSAK pretty much tell me what I need to know about looking and I don't care about find counts of the finders or DNF'ers.

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any indication of when that might be? i see the banner is gone from the main site and i tried the adoption link sent to me in the email and still doesn't work

 

 

I can't give you a precise time. We are meeting to go through all of the issues and prioritize them. We will then release hotfixes as dev work proceeds and warrants, with the most important things coming in the earlier waves.

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for now i can only conclude that pretty much everything in the Feedback, that they don't like, is falling into deaf ears and sits in the "internal queue for review"

 

 

I'm sorry that you've gotten this impression. Things go to "Under Review" when we feel that there has been enough community response in feedback to warrant adding to our issues tracking database. The items in that database are then routinely reviewed and prioritized in triage meetings by management and the dev team. Yes, some items fail to make the cut and get postponed until the next dev cycle, but that is part of the process of software development.

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as for DNF's, what's the difference who wrote it? you can either go look for it anyway or not

isn't that what caching is all about, go out and try to find it?

I use the counter when evaluating DNF's on caches *I* own. As I mentioned I have a guardrail hide that seems to attract lots of DNF's from low count finders, and occasional one from the finders around several hundred and none from ones approaching or over 1,000. If I get 3 or 4 DNF's from the first group I pretty much ignore the situation, all is fine. If I get one or two from the last group I take a trip. The middle group I wait and see. Yes I could get this information by clicking on profiles, but that is a bunch of clicking for what was right there before.

 

In the field I don't care. Since all I own is a dumb phone I need to load my GPS before I leave home. The four squares on GSAK pretty much tell me what I need to know about looking and I don't care about find counts of the finders or DNF'ers.

 

I agree and also use the find counts for the same purpose. The four squares on GSAK is a feature many have asked for on the mobile apps as well that just keeps getting ignored. Not sure why as it seems like it'd be simple enough to implement?

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I can't give you a precise time. We are meeting to go through all of the issues and prioritize them. We will then release hotfixes as dev work proceeds and warrants, with the most important things coming in the earlier waves.

 

I'm sorry that you've gotten this impression. Things go to "Under Review" when we feel that there has been enough community response in feedback to warrant adding to our issues tracking database. The items in that database are then routinely reviewed and prioritized in triage meetings by management and the dev team. Yes, some items fail to make the cut and get postponed until the next dev cycle, but that is part of the process of software development.

 

Thank you for the feedback and thank you for the explanation on the "Under Review". I also wondered what that meant.

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I've just spotted something else not quite right. Do you remember a while back where an update caused the links for trackables to fail? It seeme to be back again. The "View past trackables" link is only a link if there are actually trackables logged into the cache.

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I've just spotted something else not quite right. Do you remember a while back where an update caused the links for trackables to fail? It seeme to be back again. The "View past trackables" link is only a link if there are actually trackables logged into the cache.

 

Can't confirm that, here's what I see:

 

screenshot082311142155.png

 

(and the link actually works too)

Edited by dfx
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I've just spotted something else not quite right. Do you remember a while back where an update caused the links for trackables to fail? It seeme to be back again. The "View past trackables" link is only a link if there are actually trackables logged into the cache.

 

Can't confirm that, here's what I see:

 

screenshot082311142155.png

 

(and the link actually works too)

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for now i can only conclude that pretty much everything in the Feedback, that they don't like, is falling into deaf ears and sits in the "internal queue for review"

 

 

I'm sorry that you've gotten this impression. Things go to "Under Review" when we feel that there has been enough community response in feedback to warrant adding to our issues tracking database. The items in that database are then routinely reviewed and prioritized in triage meetings by management and the dev team. Yes, some items fail to make the cut and get postponed until the next dev cycle, but that is part of the process of software development.

 

as opposed to suggestions, broken features should take priority and the adoption has been a long standing feature on GC, i don't see how fixing that has to be determined by the community support

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