Challenge completion approval by owner

[+ATXTracker]

I submitted what I think is a reasonable suggestion to the feedback forum and it was promptly declined. I completely believe that Groundspeak has the right to decline any idea, but it seems like they are especially active today trying to minimize the negative feedback. I've been making legitimate attempts to provide positive constructive feedback to address problem I see. Is the feedback forum there so Groundspeak can have a controlled conversation, or is it for users to share ideas with each other?

 

Let's keep it positive and constructive; no need to be overly petty. I'm curious if others think the he following a reasonable idea to have in that forum?

 

[+geocat_]

I have seen several good ideas get shot down tonight. I think GS is in panic mode and just throwing water on all the fires. Hopefully they can start to actually listen to their stakeholders in a couple days.

[+uxorious]

I have seen several good ideas get shot down tonight. I think GS is in panic mode and just throwing water on all the fires. Hopefully they can start to actually listen to their stakeholders in a couple days.

They won't, they don't have to. They really are the only game in town, and can treat us anyway they want. If we want to cache we will just have to put up with it.

 

And yes they are the only game in town. I've tried the other Geocaching sites and they are useless.

[jholly]

I have seen several good ideas get shot down tonight. I think GS is in panic mode and just throwing water on all the fires. Hopefully they can start to actually listen to their stakeholders in a couple days.

They won't, they don't have to. They really are the only game in town, and can treat us anyway they want. If we want to cache we will just have to put up with it.

 

And yes they are the only game in town. I've tried the other Geocaching sites and they are useless.

And GS is working hard at making this site useless and irrelevant.

[+sbell111]

I submitted what I think is a reasonable suggestion to the feedback forum and it was promptly declined. I completely believe that Groundspeak has the right to decline any idea, but it seems like they are especially active today trying to minimize the negative feedback. I've been making legitimate attempts to provide positive constructive feedback to address problem I see. Is the feedback forum there so Groundspeak can have a controlled conversation, or is it for users to share ideas with each other?

 

Let's keep it positive and constructive; no need to be overly petty. I'm curious if others think the he following a reasonable idea to have in that forum?

 

You made a suggestion that they had already considered, so they posted their position and denied teh suggestion. I'm not seeing the problem.

[+Cryptosporidium-623]

I think it's reasonable. The problem I see is that we already have CO's that don't check their logs for signatures and don't verify that their Virtuals, Earthcaches, Mystery/Challenge Caches are being logged properly. Giving them another thing to "not check" doesn't seem like time well spent.

 

Just my 2 galactic credits.

Edited August 19, 2011 by Cryptosporidium-623

[GOF and Bacall]

See a bad log? Flag it. Let GS deal with it. Not that I am convinced they will unless it contains offensive language. I think GS is getting tired of arbitrating issues between cache owners and cache finders.

[cezanne]

 

You made a suggestion that they had already considered, so they posted their position and denied teh suggestion. I'm not seeing the problem.

 

I agree that it is their right to deny the suggestion as it is their site. However, I do not think that they will manage it in this way to motivate cachers to come up with what Groundspeak considers as good challenges. They want to encourage cachers to lead by example and forget that hardly any cacher will like to create a challenge and then see that others are submitting arm-chair logs for that challenge without any chance to react.

 

Why should anyone take the effort and come up with a nice challenge if the result will be just frustrating?

 

Cezanne

[knowschad]

I think there are problems with your idea, but I also think it is a mistake for Groundspeak to be stifling the discussion. The issues are real; burying the discussion will not make the problems go away.

 

The problems I see with your idea is, that I complete a challenge (let's, for the sake of argument, a very difficult challenge), I have to wait for you to approve my challenge, but you may no longer be active.

 

And even more to the point, does the challenge creator even have any sort of special access to their challenge once it has been created? From what I have read so far, they do not. It isn't their challenge once it has been accepted.

[+Ecylram]

I think there are problems with your idea, but I also think it is a mistake for Groundspeak to be stifling the discussion. The issues are real; burying the discussion will not make the problems go away.

 

The problems I see with your idea is, that I complete a challenge (let's, for the sake of argument, a very difficult challenge), I have to wait for you to approve my challenge, but you may no longer be active.

 

And even more to the point, does the challenge creator even have any sort of special access to their challenge once it has been created? From what I have read so far, they do not. It isn't their challenge once it has been accepted.

 

To your point...

 

We've got a cacher in our area that has a challenge cache where they will not provide the final coordinates until they feel the challenge has been met. (Yes, I know this isn't allowed but it exists.) Cachers wait for months to get the final coordinates. The potential finder will send emails and contact other cachers on what to do. It creates a lot of angst and discontent. I'd hate to see this issue on a larger scale.

[cezanne]

The potential finder will send emails and contact other cachers on what to do. It creates a lot of angst and discontent. I'd hate to see this issue on a larger scale.

 

I any case, it appears to work reasonable well for Earthcaches.

 

Cezanne

[+JeePSer]

The whole point behind the challenges as I understand it is to give people reasons to get outside and do something. If people would rather spend their time going through old photos or just sit in front of the computer logging challenges it doesn't stop you from getting out and doing challenges. You create the challenge but the community owns it. You have the ability to flag a challenge as inappropriate. And with enough flags on a challenge it gets archived. You also have the ability to flag user logs on challenges. Not sure if a certain number for flags will get logs deleted though.

[+sbell111]

The whole point behind the challenges as I understand it is to give people reasons to get outside and do something.

I thought the point of challenges was to satisfy those who wanted the return of virts. Shallenges actually do this pretty well. As a bonus, they allow those people who like webcam caches and ALRs (and LCs with worldwide challenges) to get those experiences back, also.

[+GeoGeeBee]

I submitted what I think is a reasonable suggestion to the feedback forum and it was promptly declined. I completely believe that Groundspeak has the right to decline any idea, but it seems like they are especially active today trying to minimize the negative feedback. I've been making legitimate attempts to provide positive constructive feedback to address problem I see. Is the feedback forum there so Groundspeak can have a controlled conversation, or is it for users to share ideas with each other?

 

Let's keep it positive and constructive; no need to be overly petty. I'm curious if others think the he following a reasonable idea to have in that forum?

 

Any user can flag a log if it is obviously bogus. Enough flags and the log will be deleted. Challenges are "owned" by the community, not the person who created them.

[+GeoBain]

See a bad log? Flag it. Let GS deal with it. Not that I am convinced they will unless it contains offensive language. I think GS is getting tired of arbitrating issues between cache owners and cache finders.

 

I was surprised that they got into the log arbitration business to begin with.

[+CanadianRockies]

Any user can flag a log if it is obviously bogus.

I don't seem to have the ability to flag bogus logs. I can flag a log as "prohibited," "offensive," or "spam," but not "obviously bogus."

[+CanadianRockies]

The problems I see with your idea is, that I complete a challenge (let's, for the sake of argument, a very difficult challenge), I have to wait for you to approve my challenge, but you may no longer be active.

This issue could be avoided by giving challenge owners/creators the ability to delete bogus logs rather than the ability to approve completions before they get logged...like cache owners can delete bogus logs.

 

And even more to the point, does the challenge creator even have any sort of special access to their challenge once it has been created?

I think that was the point of the feedback suggestion...to give the challenge creator this kind of access.

[+Manville Possum]

I have seen several good ideas get shot down tonight. I think GS is in panic mode and just throwing water on all the fires. Hopefully they can start to actually listen to their stakeholders in a couple days.

They won't, they don't have to. They really are the only game in town, and can treat us anyway they want. If we want to cache we will just have to put up with it.

 

And yes they are the only game in town. I've tried the other Geocaching sites and they are useless.

Garmin's site just had some updates too. It will by tough to armchair a traditional without the code. I would not call that site useless, it has real virtuals, and is made up of 95% or more of imported listings from this site. I'm not choosing one site over the other, because I enjoy both.

[+fuzziebear3]

I think the challenges should be 'owned' by the creator, that this give them some accountability to create good quality challenges.

 

I think the owner should not have to approve the completions (too much time/overhead there), but that they should have the ability to deny/delete those that do not meet the challenge.

Yes, this could be used against someone, but hopefully we can all play nice together. This is no different than a cache owner deleting a bogus log on a cache.

 

And of course the owner should be able to archive them ... what if the location goes away, becomes unsafe, or unsightly. Just like archiving a cache that no longer is good. This does not preclude the community from voting and flagging, so 'abandoned' challenges could be archived by community action as well.

[+GeoGeeBee]

Any user can flag a log if it is obviously bogus.

I don't seem to have the ability to flag bogus logs. I can flag a log as "prohibited," "offensive," or "spam," but not "obviously bogus."

I find obviously bogus logs to be offensive. If the creator of the challenge said "do task A and then log this," and the person logs without completing task A, then they have violated the challenge creators rules, therefore the log is prohibited. If they have placed bogus logs on a number of challenges, that's spam.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Any user can flag a log if it is obviously bogus.

I don't seem to have the ability to flag bogus logs. I can flag a log as "prohibited," "offensive," or "spam," but not "obviously bogus."

I find obviously bogus logs to be offensive. If the creator of the challenge said "do task A and then log this," and the person logs without completing task A, then they have violated the challenge creators rules, therefore the log is prohibited. If they have placed bogus logs on a number of challenges, that's spam.

 

Here's an idea I had that I posted in another thread that keeps the community moderated approach...

 

The community moderated concept for a location aware social media game is not new. There is a game that has been mentioned here a few times called iSpy (a mobile app). Essentially, someone goes out and takes a photo of something distinctive at a specific location. It's called a "mission". Others can the search for missions, then attempt to "solve them" by navigating to the location, and taking their own photo such that it looks as close as possible to the original. Even you don't participate in the creation or solving of missions, you can click on a "Verify" button and it will show you a random pairing of of original and solution images and then you can give it a thumbs up/down. As soon as you submit a vote it presents the next original/solution pairing from some sort of random queue. You can't specifically select a mission, and it doesn't show the creator/solver for either of the images thus it avoids the issue of someone in a feud with another player. I have no idea what, if anything, happens if a bunch of people post a thumbs down on a specific solution.

 

So what if a similar approach were done for challenges. From the main challenges page one could click on a verify button. It would display the text of a random challenge and a "Completed" log. Then you could post a thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate whether or not you felt the challenge was completed as intended. Since some challenges might be unverifiable (i.e. most action challenges) an "abstain" vote would probably be necessary. However, if when creating an action challenge the creator asks for some sort of evidence (i.e. a track log for a "hike this trail" challenge) and the completion log doesn't contain it, posting a thumbs down vote would seem to be justified. If some minimum of thumbs up votes were posted, a solution could be marked as "verified" and no longer show up in the queue. If some number of thumbs down votes were made (or based on a ratio) perhaps generating a message to the person posting the completion log which asks for additional evidence or the log will be deleted could work as a mechanism for community moderated log verification.

[knowschad]

The potential finder will send emails and contact other cachers on what to do. It creates a lot of angst and discontent. I'd hate to see this issue on a larger scale.

 

I any case, it appears to work reasonable well for Earthcaches.

 

Cezanne

I have never done an Earthcache or virtual where I waited for a response from the cache owner before I logged my "find".