[FEATURE] Notification of what's hot (favorites)

[I!]

For PMs, because we're special: optional ability to receive notification of favourites as they are awarded within X miles of home. Perhaps later the option not to be told about favourites on caches you've already visited.

 

Subject: [GEO] Favorites: 15 for Bog Snorkel III

 

You are receiving this email because you asked to be told about favorites awarded close to your home location.

 

Visit Traditional Cache

Bog Snorkel III

http://coord.info/GC98765

 

Change your favorites-notification settings:

http://www.geocaching.com/my/oh/my/what/a/great/idea.aspx

[+L0ne.R]

For PMs, because we're special: optional ability to receive notification of favourites as they are awarded within X miles of home. Perhaps later the option not to be told about favourites on caches you've already visited.

 

Subject: [GEO] Favorites: 15 for Bog Snorkel III

 

You are receiving this email because you asked to be told about favorites awarded close to your home location.

 

Visit Traditional Cache

Bog Snorkel III

http://coord.info/GC98765

 

Change your favorites-notification settings:

http://www.geocachin...great/idea.aspx

 

I like this idea. Especially with the option to not include found caches.

[+Markwell]

I'd rather that they just be included in pocket queries. Favorites can come or go with such malleability. For example, in the course of probably 30 seconds, I could favorite, unfavorite, favorite, unfavorite, and favorite a cache as I tried to determine if I really meant to give cache X my favorite points. That would have generated three e-mails. Ick. I'd much rather have that "At the time this pocket query was run, these caches had X number of favorites, and the number of premium member accounts that logged a find on this cache was Z".

[I!]

OK, how about making it a single daily summary email (cuts down the load on GS's outgoing mail, too); or making it a weekly summary in the newsletter?

 

Favorites added near your home location

+4 (total: 15) Bog Snorkel III (Traditional Cache, 5.5mi SE)

+2 (total: 24) Dead Badger Cache (Puzzle/Mystery Cache, 24mi N)

+2 (total: 19) The Magic Roundabout (Traditional Cache, 0.9mi NW)

...

etc

Edited December 5, 2011 by I!

[+L0ne.R]

I'd rather that they just be included in pocket queries.

 

If it was an either/or thing then I too think the priority should be Favorites in the PQs.

I like I!'s workaround suggestion of a weekly digest alert.

[Moun10Bike]

We have the request in our database to send out a notification to the cache owner when someone favorites his or her cache.

[cezanne]

We have the request in our database to send out a notification to the cache owner when someone favorites his or her cache.

 

It would be fine if this could be switched off. It is not that important for me to be notified about each favourite point assigned to one of my caches.

I see favourite points mainly as a way for people to collect a list of their favourite caches and not something that I need to follow closely.

Typically, I can say from the logs whether or not someone enjoyed my caches and I am notified about the logs anyway.

 

 

Cezanne

[I!]

We have the request in our database to send out a notification to the cache owner when someone favorites his or her cache.

This doesn't address my more general request of favourites-notification for any cache in the area. Will you update suggestion number 26937 accordingly?

[I!]

I'd rather that they just be included in pocket queries.

If it was an either/or thing then I too think the priority should be Favorites in the PQs.

Won't favourites in PQs just give you the total number of favourite points for each cache returned by the query?

 

That's not what I was after in my suggestion: I want to know what's hot this week - either a "+N favourites this week" for each recently-favourited cache in the area (see post #4), or notifications as they happen (as originally suggested).

[Moun10Bike]

We have the request in our database to send out a notification to the cache owner when someone favorites his or her cache.

This doesn't address my more general request of favourites-notification for any cache in the area. Will you update suggestion number 26937 accordingly?

 

Sorry for the misunderstanding. 26937 will remain as it is (cache owner notification of favorites); your idea is completely separate and so I have removed the connection with that database entry and this thread.

[I!]

OK, no problem. Could you please change the title to: "notification of what's hot (favourites)", as I think that would make the intent clearer.

[+L0ne.R]

We have the request in our database to send out a notification to the cache owner when someone favorites his or her cache.

 

It would be fine if this could be switched off. It is not that important for me to be notified about each favourite point assigned to one of my caches.

I see favourite points mainly as a way for people to collect a list of their favourite caches and not something that I need to follow closely.

Typically, I can say from the logs whether or not someone enjoyed my caches and I am notified about the logs anyway.

 

Cezanne

 

I agree. As a CO I don't see the need to be notified when one of our caches gets a favorite vote.

[+niraD]

I like the idea of being notified of caches receiving a lot of Favorites points near me as part of the weekly email. However, I'm concerned that I'd see the same problem I currently see with the events lists. With the events listed in the weekly email, I have to scan to figure out which ones are close enough to actually attend; most are too far away. With Favorites listed in the weekly email, I'd probably have to do the same thing.

 

Perhaps there could be various threshold settings, for example:

Show mega-events within [200] miles.

Show events within [20] miles.

Show caches receiving [5] Favorites votes this week within [50] miles.

[+northernpenguin]

I'd love this idea - match it to caches receiving over 5 fav points in the radius that you guys send me info about local events in the weekly mailer. This would be superb for filtering out the power trails (upon power trails upon power trails around here) and let me see those gems that the community is finding, without having to blanket the area with PQs.

[I!]

Bump! (another shot, in case it was a concept ahead of its time)

 

Any more interest in this idea to separate the gold from the gravel, so to speak?

[+Walts Hunting]

As I was reading this I was surprised about Markwell's comment re: changing the PQ since it seems a settled matter that changing the GPX schema is a long dead idea with the implementation of API. Then I saw the BUMP and went back and read the date of his statement and understood. I haven't heard about this being a possibility but again it is doable with gsak up to a point. Make a PQ of the closest 1,000 caches you haven't found. Have GSAK add the favorites count and then get someone over on the gsak forums to do a macro that does a cache info update and ttrack the change in the last week for favorites.

Edited October 6, 2013 by Walts Hunting

[I!]

Great idea re GSAK - thanks!

[+DanPan]

With some magic algorithms you will find upcoming caches in favorite points and caches that are popular right now.

 

shortcut to Map & List "What's hot?" in UK

Edited October 6, 2013 by DanPan

[+redants]

We have the request in our database to send out a notification to the cache owner when someone favorites his or her cache.

That's a good idea

[I!]

With some magic algorithms you will find upcoming caches in favorite points and caches that are popular right now.

Very interesting; I wonder if it was spurred by this discussion? I think I pointed the project-gc people at this thread a while back, but I don't recall getting a reply.

 

A pity that "Focus on home coordinates has been temporary disabled due to lack of performance with the database backend", as the map's rather sparsely populated. Perhaps a slightly more magical algorithm is needed ...