[FEATURE] Award More Than One Favorite Point to a Cache

[+dkington]

There are many caches out there that I would award more than one favorite point to if I could. This feature would help people to see more accurately what the most well-liked caches around them are. Many caches are not found by many people, maybe because of high terrain and/or difficulty ratings and because of this, even someone hides an absolutely amazing cache that is, say a 3.5/3.5 it will not get as many favorite points as say, a mediocre cache that is a 1.5/1.5. This disproportionately reflects how well liked these caches are. But if more than one favorite point could be awarded to caches that would more accurately reflect how well liked the caches are. Note that I'm not suggesting favorite points become easier to obtain, I just think that if you find a cache that you greatly enjoy, you should be able to award as many of your favorite points to that cache as you like. I understand that this could still be impacted by how many people have found the cache but it would greatly lessen the effect, and also show you just how well liked the caches were by the cachers that have found them.

[+Husky_Patrol]

You can see how well liked a cache is by looking at the ratio of favourites to finds. That's the more accurate way to know how well liked a cache is as opposed to allowing more favourite points to be handed to a cache by a single person. Then you also have the cachers who never hand out favourite points but they say in the written log that the cache was a favourite, so it's really just an arbitrary system anyway.

[+niraD]

This has been suggested before:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=294172

 

Personally, I think a system that allowed multiple favorites votes could have worked when the Favorites system was first introduced, but I don't think the benefit of converting to such a system now would be worth the effort or disruption involved.

[+tozainamboku]

I was opposed to this idea when Favorite points first came out and I am still opposed to it.

 

Favorite points tell me one thing - and that is how many premium geocachers felt a cache was in the top 10% of those they found (or better if they don't use all their favorite points). I'm not even that hot on the idea of using the percent of finders that gave it a favorite point as certain types of caches are likely to get a high percentage and others, because they are found more often, will get lower percentages.

 

To me, seen a cache with several favorite points only means that a several cachers liked the cache. If it's a local cache, I can look to see who gave it a favorite point and if they're from people I know and who have similar likes to mine, I can use that to decide if I want to search for the cache. If it's not local, or I don't recognize anyone who gave it a favorite point, all I can do is say that the more people who favorited a cache, the more likely I am to enjoy it.

 

I really don't care that one cacher favorited one cache 5 times more than another cache. I assume they liked both caches and that will tell me if I'm likely to like the caches. Since the 5 points may be for some reason that I don't care the least about, it only serves to confuse me. Did different people like the cache or was it just one person who really liked it but whose tastes are totally different than mine. I can see extra points being awarded for reasons I don't care about. I say allow only one favorite vote per cache and if five different people liked for different reasons than I would like a cache, so be it. If five different people liked a cache there is a pretty good chance I will have something in common with at least one of them.

[+ShaunEM]

This would be a terrible idea. I would no longer be able to determine if a cache really was a favorite by looking at it's points.

 

You *know* people or small groups of people would apply loads of favorite points to complete CRAP caches.

[+Ambient_Skater]

I never even look at the number of favorite points to determine if a cache is good or not, so it wouldn't matter to me.

[AZcachemeister]

 

Favorite points tell me one thing - and that is how many premium geocachers felt a cache was in the top 10% of those they found

 

Nope.

All it tells you is how many cachers clicked that button.

Did they REALLY like it, or were they compelled to choose one because they just earned to opportunity to do so?

Was it chosen because it was the best least objectionable out of ten skirt-lifters?

[+tozainamboku]

 

Favorite points tell me one thing - and that is how many premium geocachers felt a cache was in the top 10% of those they found

 

Nope.

All it tells you is how many cachers clicked that button.

Did they REALLY like it, or were they compelled to choose one because they just earned to opportunity to do so?

Was it chosen because it was the best least objectionable out of ten skirt-lifters?

You sound like me.

 

True any voting system, particularly an internet based one, is susceptible to fraud and abuse. However I feel that keeping the favorite system from being a vote on which cache is the best has worked fairly well. Instead of apportioning votes based on a subjective view of which cache is better, you only have to answer a simple question - of all the caches you found is this in your top 10%. Certainly there are some people who may give out one favorite to every ten caches they find. So if they find 10 skirt-lifters, then they give the point to their favorite among the ten. But I tend to doubt this skews the results much.

[+StarBrand]

I guess that would sort of equal - "I liked this one a bunch" vs "I liked this one a little bit". I am not sure that subtle distinction would make a huge difference to seekers.

[+Hurricane Luke]

I don't mean to be harsh, but I've always thought the idea of awarding multiple favorites points to a cache is AWFUL. The binary system we have at the moment (yes, it gets a favorite point, or no, it doesn't) is fantastic because of its simplicity, and ease-of-use - there's no worrying about which people gave a particular cache more than a single point, how many caches you can favorite with the number of given points you currently have, etc.

 

THIS is how Apple became such a successful company - by keeping things simple & clean and eliminating distractions. Groundspeak has got it spot on here, leave it as it is.

 

Changing that would require a number of back end changes along with UI changes, and anyway, my interpretation of favorites is that they're not subjective, instead they're an absolute method of measuring a caches' quality. It's either in your top 10% or it isn't.

 

Please - no changes to the favorites system in any way!

[+Lil Devil]

I totally agree with Hurricane Luke. This would be a mess.

 

Just one likely scenario: Someone who doesn't use the Favorites system decides to dump all 1,000 of his points on his friends new cache. A few people do this in an area, and the whole system becomes useless. At least now when someone throws a FavPoint at an otherwise non-deserving cache, it gets lost in the noise.

 

However, I think the suggestion in this thread would be a fantastic addition.

[AZcachemeister]

I would like the option to award a one-half favorite point.

Wait, scratch that.

I want the option to award one quarter, one half, and three quarters favorite points...in addition to the one complete full favorite point now available.