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Groundspeak is all about the $$$?


DCWarrior

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Too many whiny threads on the forum. I think y'all should go out and find some caches.

 

That's the thing, the whiners are not the ones out there finding caches, just in here whining.

 

That was brutal, Mrs. I. Did Roman hack your account and post that? :P I don't even get it. Who's whining? For me, someone mentioned ads (and cleavage), and I noted that I just recently started seeing IP address based ads that are "local" to me, and I posted one. And Millions of perplex all over the internets use ad blockers. I hardly think they need to be told to go outside and get fresh air. :)

 

Adsense ads are extremely intelligent and able to show ads based on the location and browsing habits of an individual. I do have a few theories why you are seeing "cleavage" ads, actually I only have one theory.

Guess they're wondering what sites you're at when you're not at gc.com?! ;)

 

Gotta use all of the usual tools to minimize ads discussed in this thread. Also, turn off "location services" on your smartphone except when caching or getting driving directions.

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Guess they're wondering what sites you're at when you're not at gc.com?! ;)

 

Gotta use all of the usual tools to minimize ads discussed in this thread. Also, turn off "location services" on your smartphone except when caching or getting driving directions.

I know if you are into cars, especially ricers and/or muscle cars, there is a lot of sexual oriented advertising as well as erectile disfunction linked. I suspect there are other heavy male areas that are targeted that require very little actual or no adult related browsing. I got a heavy dose of sexually oriented spam on Instagram when I posted a picture of a Car & Driver magazine from 1969 and featured a Dodge Challenger. Never had a problem under my weather oriented pictures.

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...

 

last post be The Weather Warrior is TOTALLY OFF TOPIC

 

I did some monitoring of my router logs and blocked all the IP's leading to Google Analytics and adleads. Stopped most tracking but i have to double-check every month as Google tryes to get in with a new Ip...

 

Anyway, back to topic.

 

IDC about GC making money. Someone's got to make a living, and servers aren't free, right? Sure not having descriptions in your GPS when you download the location is annoying when you forget your description paper, but what really bugs me is ppl who put a cache in and lock it out to premium members only. what is that saying, that they only want 'good' cachers to find it and not the street rabble?? In my area there's at least 5 caches, if not more, created by 'Adventure Tours' that are locked out. This just gets on my nerve. Geocaching should be open to everyone!

Edited by Saddle Mountain Man
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...

 

last post be The Weather Warrior is TOTALLY OFF TOPIC

 

I did some monitoring of my router logs and blocked all the IP's leading to Google Analytics and adleads. Stopped most tracking but i have to double-check every month as Google tryes to get in with a new Ip...

 

Anyway, back to topic.

 

IDC about GC making money. Someone's got to make a living, and servers aren't free, right? Sure not having descriptions in your GPS when you download the location is annoying when you forget your description paper, but what really bugs me is ppl who put a cache in and lock it out to premium members only. what is that saying, that they only want 'good' cachers to find it and not the street rabble?? In my area there's at least 5 caches, if not more, created by 'Adventure Tours' that are locked out. This just gets on my nerve. Geocaching should be open to everyone!

 

Why should geocaching be open to anyone?

 

If someone invests the time and money to hide a cache it's their right to make it PMO or not and there are many reasons COs choose to do so.

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It looks to me that some people with sour grapes hang around just to gripe. So what if the site is making money. So what if there is a Premium Member option. So what if there is no free lunch. If you don't like the site, go elsewhere and complain about that site for a while.

 

Hah, take a visit to the Garmin site's forums if you want to see complaining. Even some of the old fanboys are not too happy with it.

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...

 

last post be The Weather Warrior is TOTALLY OFF TOPIC

 

I did some monitoring of my router logs and blocked all the IP's leading to Google Analytics and adleads. Stopped most tracking but i have to double-check every month as Google tryes to get in with a new Ip...

 

Anyway, back to topic.

 

IDC about GC making money. Someone's got to make a living, and servers aren't free, right? Sure not having descriptions in your GPS when you download the location is annoying when you forget your description paper, but what really bugs me is ppl who put a cache in and lock it out to premium members only. what is that saying, that they only want 'good' cachers to find it and not the street rabble?? In my area there's at least 5 caches, if not more, created by 'Adventure Tours' that are locked out. This just gets on my nerve. Geocaching should be open to everyone!

 

How about hiding some yourself?

 

You've contributed zero dollars and zero caches to the hobby and you are complaining that other people aren't catering to you enough?

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...

 

last post be The Weather Warrior is TOTALLY OFF TOPIC

 

I did some monitoring of my router logs and blocked all the IP's leading to Google Analytics and adleads. Stopped most tracking but i have to double-check every month as Google tryes to get in with a new Ip...

 

Anyway, back to topic.

 

IDC about GC making money. Someone's got to make a living, and servers aren't free, right? Sure not having descriptions in your GPS when you download the location is annoying when you forget your description paper, but what really bugs me is ppl who put a cache in and lock it out to premium members only. what is that saying, that they only want 'good' cachers to find it and not the street rabble?? In my area there's at least 5 caches, if not more, created by 'Adventure Tours' that are locked out. This just gets on my nerve. Geocaching should be open to everyone!

 

How about hiding some yourself?

 

You've contributed zero dollars and zero caches to the hobby and you are complaining that other people aren't catering to you enough?

 

I get it now, they joined on Christmas and they expect everything to be a gift, I say Bah Humbug!

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OK I opened a search page and see this nonsense now. :rolleyes:

 

Time to turn AdBlock back on. :anitongue:

 

Yup, All Hail AdBlock!

I always did wonder why there was so much more white space in the recent site updates. :rolleyes:

 

Not whining, at least too much, here. Just noting my observation that there are now larger ads showing up on my geocaching pages, that have nothing to do with geocaching, which go along with the premise that geocaching is trying to make more money, which therefore has something to do with the title of this thread.

 

The little bit of whining i am doing is because i do not wish to see an R rated "dating service" type website advertised on geocaching.com. <_<

 

Proud Member of the SETX Gang!

 

Pretty ironic coming from someone whose sig line promotes some sexting group. :bad:

Edited by wimseyguy
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I hope Jeremy Irish and his folks are making millions upon millions of dollars. I hope Jeremy Irish can kindle his fireplace with hundred dollar bills. For a very small investment -- a couple of hundred bucks in a GPS unit and four years worth of premium membership -- I've gotten a terrific hobby, a lot more exercise, and seen places in my own home town I never knew about. For the price of a couple of months worth of going out to dinner? For the price of five or eight tanks of gas? Good on them all.

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It looks to me that some people with sour grapes hang around just to gripe. So what if the site is making money. So what if there is a Premium Member option. So what if there is no free lunch. If you don't like the site, go elsewhere and complain about that site for a while.

 

Hah, take a visit to the Garmin site's forums if you want to see complaining. Even some of the old fanboys are not too happy with it.

 

You said it friend. It used to be a place to go to complain about this site, but now it's all complaing about that site. I'll gladly pay to use this site. :)

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IDC about GC making money. Someone's got to make a living, and servers aren't free, right? Sure not having descriptions in your GPS when you download the location is annoying when you forget your description paper, but what really bugs me is ppl who put a cache in and lock it out to premium members only. what is that saying, that they only want 'good' cachers to find it and not the street rabble?? In my area there's at least 5 caches, if not more, created by 'Adventure Tours' that are locked out. This just gets on my nerve. Geocaching should be open to everyone!

 

We're getting very near 2,000,000 active caches on this website...surely there are still some non-PMO caches left for you to find.

 

A premium membership costs a whole whopping $30 a year and for that princely sum you are given the opportunity to place PMO caches if you so wish. The overwhelming number of caches are open to all, so most premium members do not take advantage of this perk. There are legitimate reasons to make a cache PMO but I'm betting alot of CO's make their caches premium just because they can. Keeping it from the unwashed masses is probably down the list a ways.

 

And in case you were wondering, most PMO caches are nothing special. They're the same caches you can find without paying for a premium membership...they just look fancier by being listed as a PMO.

 

 

I hope Jeremy Irish and his folks are making millions upon millions of dollars. I hope Jeremy Irish can kindle his fireplace with hundred dollar bills. For a very small investment -- a couple of hundred bucks in a GPS unit and four years worth of premium membership -- I've gotten a terrific hobby, a lot more exercise, and seen places in my own home town I never knew about. For the price of a couple of months worth of going out to dinner? For the price of five or eight tanks of gas? Good on them all.

Same here. As long as Groundspeak is making money, then this website will continue indefinitely and I can continue to look forward to $30 premium membership costs.

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I hope Jeremy Irish and his folks are making millions upon millions of dollars. I hope Jeremy Irish can kindle his fireplace with hundred dollar bills. For a very small investment -- a couple of hundred bucks in a GPS unit and four years worth of premium membership -- I've gotten a terrific hobby, a lot more exercise, and seen places in my own home town I never knew about.

 

Actually, my sincere thanks primarily go to the cache hiders in my area and not to Groundspeak. GS provides some infrastructure, but the heart and the soul of geocaching is the community. I do not care at all about PQs, improved cache maps, bookmark lists and many other features that have added to the site over the years. On the other hand, there have been many changes like allowing powertrails and opening up geocaching.com to many languages that changed geocaching to the worse for me. So the level of thankfullness I feel towards Groundspeak is rather limited. I do not take it for granted, but it is clear to me that their wish to focus on growth is against what I personally welcome.

The issue of commercialism is for me not about whether Jeremy and others earn a lot and not about whether the 30$ PM-ship is cheap or expensive (I regard it as cheap), but about the dangers of turning something into a business that should not be a business from my point of view.

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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I hope Jeremy Irish and his folks are making millions upon millions of dollars. I hope Jeremy Irish can kindle his fireplace with hundred dollar bills. For a very small investment -- a couple of hundred bucks in a GPS unit and four years worth of premium membership -- I've gotten a terrific hobby, a lot more exercise, and seen places in my own home town I never knew about. For the price of a couple of months worth of going out to dinner? For the price of five or eight tanks of gas? Good on them all.

Agree. People have to make a living. When you can make a living offering a product that adds value to the lives of others at a low cost (about 50 cents/week???) I think said person has the concept of Right Livelihood pretty down pat.

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I hope Jeremy Irish and his folks are making millions upon millions of dollars. I hope Jeremy Irish can kindle his fireplace with hundred dollar bills. For a very small investment -- a couple of hundred bucks in a GPS unit and four years worth of premium membership -- I've gotten a terrific hobby, a lot more exercise, and seen places in my own home town I never knew about.

 

Actually, my sincere thanks primarily go to the cache hiders in my area and not to Groundspeak. GS provides some infrastructure, but the heart and the soul of geocaching is the community. I do not care at all about PQs, improved cache maps, bookmark lists and many other features that have added to the site over the years. On the other hand, there have been many changes like allowing powertrails and opening up geocaching.com to many languages that changed geocaching to the worse for me. So the level of thankfullness I feel towards Groundspeak is rather limited. I do not take it for granted, but it is clear to me that their wish to focus on growth is against what I personally welcome.

The issue of commercialism is for me not about whether Jeremy and others earn a lot and not about whether the 30$ PM-ship is cheap or expensive (I regard it as cheap), but about the dangers of turning something into a business that should not be a business from my point of view.

 

Cezanne

 

I love going on all day hikes up some mountain.

I love going on 50 km bie rides along awesome trails.

I'm happy fo Q&e P&Gs when my wife wants to go to Ikea.

I had a blast on Route 66 and look forward to my next power trail.

I think geoart s cool and am heading to Idaho in May.

 

I'm glad Geocaching is "commercialized" as I have a vast variety of caches to choose from to satisfy my needs.

 

I have never, using available tools and common sense had an issue of finding the caches I want to seek contrary to people's complaint that they have to filter through a lot of crap.

Edited by Roman!
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I'm glad Geocaching is "commercialized" as I have a vast variety of caches to choose from to satisfy my needs.

 

Do you really think that this is mainly due to Groundspeak or to your fellow geocachers?

 

I have never, using available tools and common sense had an issue of finding the caches I want to seek contrary to people's complaint that they have to filter through a lot of crap.

 

What I tried to say has no connection to filtering and also not to a micro picture of what a single cacher or a few cachers might prefer - it was about the picture at a macro level. I feel that the rate of growth and other issues that endager the further existence of geocaching in the way I love it in my country (at least in the long run) are brought along to some extent by Groundspeak's policy/approach which is governed to a huge extent by what is profitable for them (not necessarily only in terms of money). Of course, the situation in my country and countries like Germany differs considerably from the situation say in the US. There certain ways of regulation and moreover people who deal with issues brought along by geocaching exist on both sides (i.e. land managers and others representing the authority level and e.g. geocaching associations and other lobbies for geocachers on the geocaching side).

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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I'm glad Geocaching is "commercialized" as I have a vast variety of caches to choose from to satisfy my needs.

 

Do you really think that this is mainly due to Groundspeak or to your fellow geocachers?

 

That is a simple, yet excellent point. Groundspeak HQ didn't place 2,000,000 caches, we did! Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

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I'm glad Geocaching is "commercialized" as I have a vast variety of caches to choose from to satisfy my needs.

 

Do you really think that this is mainly due to Groundspeak or to your fellow geocachers?

 

That is a simple, yet excellent point. Groundspeak HQ didn't place 2,000,000 caches, we did! Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

 

I think you answered the question, it is largely due to Groundspeak.

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I'm glad Geocaching is "commercialized" as I have a vast variety of caches to choose from to satisfy my needs.

 

Do you really think that this is mainly due to Groundspeak or to your fellow geocachers?

 

That is a simple, yet excellent point. Groundspeak HQ didn't place 2,000,000 caches, we did! Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

 

I daresay that if this game had not been "commercialized" so that more servers, programmers, and more had not been put into it; the game probably would have died off as a fun little fad quite some time ago. Maybe not. Who knows? In any case, I think there is room enough to give both sides of that arguement plenty of credit.

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Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

I'm sure you remember the Sunday afternoons when everyone logging their finds brought the servers to their knees. If not for the Premium Members donating money to buy more powerful servers, we'd still be in that situation, only worse with 2 million caches. The database has long ago outgrown Usenet or a personal website.

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Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

I'm sure you remember the Sunday afternoons when everyone logging their finds brought the servers to their knees. If not for the Premium Members donating money to buy more powerful servers, we'd still be in that situation, only worse with 2 million caches. The database has long ago outgrown Usenet or a personal website.

 

Wait: When I talk about commercialization I do not question the existence of PM-ship fees. What I talk about is the active engagement into getting geocaching more and more known and into expanding the company and doing whatever could be done to foster growth of geocaching as an activity instead of having tried to slow down that process back when this still was possible, Aiming at records of how many logs can be achieved on one day, how many events, how many geocaches overall, all this is not at all related to offering a good infrastructure to those who are already there, but to trying to expand at all expenses.

 

Cezanne

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Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

I'm sure you remember the Sunday afternoons when everyone logging their finds brought the servers to their knees. If not for the Premium Members donating money to buy more powerful servers, we'd still be in that situation, only worse with 2 million caches. The database has long ago outgrown Usenet or a personal website.

 

Wait: When I talk about commercialization I do not question the existence of PM-ship fees. What I talk about is the active engagement into getting geocaching more and more known and into expanding the company and doing whatever could be done to foster growth of geocaching as an activity instead of having tried to slow down that process back when this still was possible, Aiming at records of how many logs can be achieved on one day, how many events, how many geocaches overall, all this is not at all related to offering a good infrastructure to those who are already there, but to trying to expand at all expenses.

 

Cezanne

 

I'd really like to understand how if I enjoy caches that involve long, hard hikes are in any way affected by more and more people finding and placing caches?

 

How do LPCs and guard rail caches have any effect?

Edited by Roman!
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Do you really think that this is mainly due to Groundspeak or to your fellow geocachers?

 

Wait: When I talk about commercialization I do not question the existence of PM-ship fees. What I talk about is the active engagement into getting geocaching more and more known and into expanding the company and doing whatever could be done to foster growth of geocaching as an activity instead of having tried to slow down that process back when this still was possible, Aiming at records of how many logs can be achieved on one day, how many events, how many geocaches overall, all this is not at all related to offering a good infrastructure to those who are already there, but to trying to expand at all expenses.

 

Cezanne

So...the placement of a huge variety (and a huge number) of caches is due to geocachers but Groundspeak is the cause of geocaching expanding at any expense and commercialization? Those two thoughts contradict each other. Without geocachers placing caches, geocaching wouldn't be where it is today. Without Groundspeak listing caches, geocaching wouldn't be where it is today. Whether "where it is today" is good or bad is up to the individual but the union between geocachers and Groundspeak is a marriage that has worked out exceptionally well. As cache owners, we get more eyeballs on our caches than we could get anywhere else and Groundspeak gets to promote itself as THE place to go if you want to experience geocaching in all its forms.

 

Plus, I see a difference between promoting something and allowing it. Groundspeak allows power trails but I don't see them actively promoting them. The same with providing statistics on how many logs were written. They give the raw numbers but aren't pushing for those numbers to be increased. It's a tally on how popular the activity/hobby/sport is at the moment.

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Who's to say we couldn't have 2,000,000 caches listed on Usenet, or Mike Teague's web page, or a free extension of his? Probably not, but who's to say? :)

I'm sure you remember the Sunday afternoons when everyone logging their finds brought the servers to their knees. If not for the Premium Members donating money to buy more powerful servers, we'd still be in that situation, only worse with 2 million caches. The database has long ago outgrown Usenet or a personal website.

 

OK, I'm going to go ahead and concede defeat on that one. :laughing: For some odd reason, I specifically remembered a 1.5 mile hike ammo box I found and commented on the "Sunday Slowdowns" making logging it extremely difficult. The date of that log was Sunday, March 28th, 2004. :blink:

 

However, there is a site that sells premium memberships, that is a one man operation and lists over 150,000 letterboxes. Never mind, I should give it up, right? :P

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So...the placement of a huge variety (and a huge number) of caches is due to geocachers but Groundspeak is the cause of geocaching expanding at any expense and commercialization?

 

Groundspeak is not the only cause, but it plays a big role in that process, Moreover, Groundspeak is too much focused in the situation in North America and has difficulties (that are understandable to some extent) to even understand the problems caused by their approach in some other countries.

 

Those two thoughts contradict each other.

 

No, they don't in the way I mean them.

 

Without geocachers placing caches, geocaching wouldn't be where it is today. Without Groundspeak listing caches, geocaching wouldn't be where it is today.

 

I agree. What I meant is that at least I could enjoy geocaching also without Groundspeak, but not without cachers hiding caches.

 

Whether "where it is today" is good or bad is up to the individual but the union between geocachers and Groundspeak is a marriage that has worked out exceptionally well. As cache owners, we get more eyeballs on our caches than we could get anywhere else and Groundspeak gets to promote itself as THE place to go if you want to experience geocaching in all its forms.

 

I agree, but this gets us probably off-topic as it concerns my personal preferences and not so much my concerns about the future of geocaching. I guess you would answer good and I would answer bad to the first question. Moreover, in the last years whenever I have a cache idea, I wonder how to implement it without getting too many visitors - something I did not have to deal with years ago. I do want to have visitors, but not too many. As your last statement is regarded, personally, I'm not interested into experiencing geocaching in all its forms and what I observe is that many of my colleagues from the early ways are driven away from geocaching completely as a result of this diversification. They simply lost the interest and I'm missing them and their caches (all of a certain type) and I'm not getting anything in return by getting variety.

 

Take e.g. night caches. For quite some time they could exist and could be enjoyed in countries like Germany and Austria. Now the times are close where such caches will be published only with explicit permission which is almost impossible to get in most areas where a night cache could be of interest. As long as maybe 20 people visited a night cache per year, no troubles showed up and there have been no real concerns and back then it might even have been possible to convince someone to allow a night cache simply due to the small number of visits. With today's situation there seems to be no way out of the dilemma. There are many other examples of a similar flavour.

 

I simply doubt that without Groundspeak or a comparable platform in the background geocaching would have grown that dramatically.

 

Cezanne

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How do LPCs and guard rail caches have any effect?

 

Actually those are not causing my concerns about the future of geocaching apart from the fact that no LPCs exist in my country (cachers there would understand that as lost place caches where lost place is used for abadoned structure).

 

What has an effect is however if nowadays 200 people show up at a cache site where formerly at most 10 showed up in the same period typically allowing it that no one except the cachers realized that a cache must exist there.

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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I agree. What I meant is that at least I could enjoy geocaching also without Groundspeak, but not without cachers hiding caches.

Yup...as my me and a friend (FarFetch) did caching/GPS hunts on our own prior to signing up for geocaching. I think they were more in the style of the way boyscotts did the compass stuff, but we did use early GPSs (I had bought one because APRS [ham radio] used them). Heck, before that we did 'fox hunting' with ham radios (Radio Frequency direction finding). Groundspeak has no strong hold on hunting games or caching. I think they probably only have a trademark on the name geocaching (for business purposes) and the logo.
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I wonder how to implement it without getting too many visitors - something I did not have to deal with years ago. I do want to have visitors, but not too many.

 

back then it might even have been possible to convince someone to allow a night cache simply due to the small number of visits.

 

Although we are relative noobs, I get what you are saying. We discovered this phenomenon after hiding our first, a multi. The second was a tree climb multi. I remember telling the land owner that we anticipated just a handful of seekers a year.

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At least that hindrance has provided you this nice sandbox to fling poo in. :rolleyes:

I didn't say they were completely inept. Just think poorly focused and are greedy. Of course, for as much as Groudspeak makes, I believe all the mods on the forum are unpaid!

 

This^^^ is well said, I touched on it earlier in this thread. Ultimately a cache is approved by a fellow member of the community of geocachers and not by a paid lackey. I understand that it would be impractical to pay any sort of wage for all the reviewers out there. but it adds to the whole topic of this thread.

 

Poorly focused also, as in challenges and Waymarking?

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Hmm... I guess my ad blockers are working well then. I don't see them on the cache search page.

The whole advertising thing seems odd to me. Where there is advertising, I ignore it. Advertising has conditioned me to ignore advertising.

 

Back to OT: I, personally, like how Groundspeak is balancing their service with their commerce.

From my limited experience and perspective, they provide extensive free cache databasing service while their commercial services are inexpensive and, for me, very worthwhile.

GSAK extends those services even further and is also commercial, and relies heavily on Groundspeak's resources.

 

No, I would say that neither Groundspeak nor GSAK is entirely about the money.

I don't begrudge their profits because they offer enhancements to the game that I feel are well worth the fees that they ask for.

Groundspeak also offers remarkable free service to those who do not wish to pay premium membership fees.

I believe that their free-for-use geocache database is a major part of the hobby.

 

I've only been around since last August so I lack historical experience, but these are my impressions up to now.

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...

 

last post be The Weather Warrior is TOTALLY OFF TOPIC

 

I did some monitoring of my router logs and blocked all the IP's leading to Google Analytics and adleads. Stopped most tracking but i have to double-check every month as Google tryes to get in with a new Ip...

 

Anyway, back to topic.

 

IDC about GC making money. Someone's got to make a living, and servers aren't free, right? Sure not having descriptions in your GPS when you download the location is annoying when you forget your description paper, but what really bugs me is ppl who put a cache in and lock it out to premium members only. what is that saying, that they only want 'good' cachers to find it and not the street rabble?? In my area there's at least 5 caches, if not more, created by 'Adventure Tours' that are locked out. This just gets on my nerve. Geocaching should be open to everyone!

 

How about hiding some yourself?

 

You've contributed zero dollars and zero caches to the hobby and you are complaining that other people aren't catering to you enough?

 

Hay, man, there's 8 inches of snow on the ground, and where it's not snow its mucky-mud! It's not good hiding weather. Besides, i've got at least 3 or 4 good hide ideas...

 

Oh, and I did find one (a PMO) under a local bridge when I was looking for my hat that blew off, but the GC number wasn't readable....

Edited by Saddle Mountain Man
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No, I would say that neither Groundspeak nor GSAK is entirely about the money.

 

I can fully agree with this statement.

 

However, while I do not have any concerns about the negative effects of GSAK on the future of geocaching, this is not true for all aspects of Groundspeak's philosophy.

 

I'm not a user of GSAK, but I'm aware of what this piece of software is offering and I think that it is worth what needs to be paid to get the full version.

I'm also not against the Groundspeak PM-ship fee. Commercialization is not the antidote for me to being for free.

 

I do not think, however, that activities like introducing souvenirs for days like 10/10/10, 12/12/12 etc and openly encouraging a new record for the total number of logs per day, the introduction of megaevents, the change of position with respect to power trails and many other decisions are in any sense related to providing infrastructure to the cachers.

In my opinion (which noone has to share) behind this is an explicit will to grow.

 

Cezanne

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Instead of saying one way or the other, I'll provide a comparison.

 

If it was about the cash for cache, here's what you could expect:

  • Pocket queries to cost 99₵ per run.
  • 1₵ per geocache notification sent or $5 for 1000.
  • Premium membership fees to increase every other year.
  • No free swag for your big event when you ask.
  • Fees for individual services on the site (there would be more services and features on the site, but everything would have a cost).
  • Your usage data collected, cataloged, and sold or loaned to third parties. Same with your email address.
  • Additional fees for hosting more than 100 photos of you holding a film can.
  • Extensive metrics kept on their volunteers to make sure they're producing and very little thanks directed their way.
  • Higher fees for tracking numbers.
  • Integration with anything that will pay: pathtags, etc.
  • A fee for using their API (I have access and don't pay, yet I could commercialize what I create).
  • Admission to their block party. Want to dunk a lackey? That'll be $1 for three balls.
  • Cost-cutting measures on trips and appearances. When employees appeared at events, it might be to show off something they'll soon be selling.
  • Geo-celebrity endorsements. (Well, I'm comfortably in the world's top fifty finders and I haven't been asked to endorse anything.) You need this Groundspeak-branded GPSr because it's what the productive cachers use! Also, check out this Signal-branded footwear.

 

If it wasn't about the money, here's what you could expect:

  • Fees to remain the same regardless of the economy.
  • Free swag for big events.
  • Minimal advertising on the site (and easy to get around).
  • Usage data and email addresses not sold or loaned to third parties.
  • The site won't nickel and dime you for services.
  • The company would ignore business opportunities and would be slow to respond to anything. Why bother hurrying to reply if they're not aiming for a profit?
  • Employees visible and sent to events with free handouts without advertising anything.
  • Revenue would cover the cost of servers and everyone's salaries; enough of a profit margin left to continue expanding and growing.

 

The sites geocaching.com, Waymarking.com, and Wherigo.com belong to Groundspeak, Inc. The business can do whatever it wants with them, including monetize the mess out of the sites. If you don't like the products and services being offered by a company, do what any consumer would do: switch to a competitor. Go scan QR codes, visit Garmin, create a competing service, or just gripe and complain while still continuing to pay.

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Way to give them some ideas there big guy! :laughing:

If you're going to be evil, you need to go all the way and have fun with it.

 

Aside from that, though, the big idea for Groundspeak is to think of positive features to add that would encourage basic members to purchase premium memberships. From the conversations I've had and heard, they're quite against the idea of raising the premium member price.

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Way to give them some ideas there big guy! :laughing:

If you're going to be evil, you need to go all the way and have fun with it.

 

Aside from that, though, the big idea for Groundspeak is to think of positive features to add that would encourage basic members to purchase premium memberships. From the conversations I've had and heard, they're quite against the idea of raising the premium member price.

 

That's funny, back when I was a premium member Groundspeak sent me a survey that, among other things, asked if I would pay something like 35 dollars/year for premium membership.

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Instead of saying one way or the other, I'll provide a comparison.

 

If it was about the cash for cache, here's what you could expect:

  • Pocket queries to cost 99₵ per run.
  • 1₵ per geocache notification sent or $5 for 1000.
  • Premium membership fees to increase every other year.
  • No free swag for your big event when you ask.
  • Fees for individual services on the site (there would be more services and features on the site, but everything would have a cost).
  • Your usage data collected, cataloged, and sold or loaned to third parties. Same with your email address.
  • Additional fees for hosting more than 100 photos of you holding a film can.
  • Extensive metrics kept on their volunteers to make sure they're producing and very little thanks directed their way.
  • Higher fees for tracking numbers.
  • Integration with anything that will pay: pathtags, etc.
  • A fee for using their API (I have access and don't pay, yet I could commercialize what I create).
  • Admission to their block party. Want to dunk a lackey? That'll be $1 for three balls.
  • Cost-cutting measures on trips and appearances. When employees appeared at events, it might be to show off something they'll soon be selling.
  • Geo-celebrity endorsements. (Well, I'm comfortably in the world's top fifty finders and I haven't been asked to endorse anything.) You need this Groundspeak-branded GPSr because it's what the productive cachers use! Also, check out this Signal-branded footwear.

 

If it wasn't about the money, here's what you could expect:

  • Fees to remain the same regardless of the economy.
  • Free swag for big events.
  • Minimal advertising on the site (and easy to get around).
  • Usage data and email addresses not sold or loaned to third parties.
  • The site won't nickel and dime you for services.
  • The company would ignore business opportunities and would be slow to respond to anything. Why bother hurrying to reply if they're not aiming for a profit?
  • Employees visible and sent to events with free handouts without advertising anything.
  • Revenue would cover the cost of servers and everyone's salaries; enough of a profit margin left to continue expanding and growing.

 

The sites geocaching.com, Waymarking.com, and Wherigo.com belong to Groundspeak, Inc. The business can do whatever it wants with them, including monetize the mess out of the sites. If you don't like the products and services being offered by a company, do what any consumer would do: switch to a competitor. Go scan QR codes, visit Garmin, create a competing service, or just gripe and complain while still continuing to pay.

 

+1 well said

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Way to give them some ideas there big guy! :laughing:

If you're going to be evil, you need to go all the way and have fun with it.

 

Aside from that, though, the big idea for Groundspeak is to think of positive features to add that would encourage basic members to purchase premium memberships. From the conversations I've had and heard, they're quite against the idea of raising the premium member price.

 

That's funny, back when I was a premium member Groundspeak sent me a survey that, among other things, asked if I would pay something like 35 dollars/year for premium membership.

 

I have been chosen for two premium member surveys, and I think that's all they had. I've been hanging around these forums way too much since 2005, and I think I would have heard if there were any more, but I could have missed another one. The 2nd one did indeed have a question if you would be willing to pay more than $30 for a Premium Membership. Whether or not the question said $35, I cannot say. But hey, that was at least 2-3 years ago, and nothing happened. :)

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BTW, we own several hundred acres, with zero caches on any of it, and we are less than hospitable to tresspassers.

 

Interesting. What do you specifically mean by "less than hospitable" and, save from the fact that you might have signs posted, what if someone is lost?

 

I own property in a couple of other states, nothing in the several hundred acres range, and there are actually geocaches placed on some of my property and I was never asked for permission, but I don't care. It's not hurting me. I actually find it amusing to read the logs of these geocaches.

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So was this post more about ads being on search pages rather than ground speak being all about the $$$ ?

 

Why don't people grind their axes against what they are actually annoyed about? Jeesh!

 

Shaun

Paying members don't like ads on their pages. Groundspeak added ads on the pages to make money. Ergo GS is all about the $$$. It's not complicated.

 

I agree that GS is about the money, but don't they have to be to a point...maybe to a fault? I'm sure GS employees, like any employee I've ever known or employed, enjoys raises, increased benefits, 401(k) matching, etc., while the company is possibly incurring higher vendor, maintenance or general overhead costs.

 

IMHO, it's the corporate speak and the perception that (some) GS employees, volunteers and owners are arrogant, rude and apply a more brittle harsh condescedning approach to customer service and complaint resolution. Of course, I could just be completely off track with that opinion as I've never spoken to the ownership but I do remember reading, perhaps on these forums, that Jeremy once advised a customer, and I'm paraphrasing, that if s/he didn't like it they could buy their own domain name and start a listing site. I just have to believe you'd never hear the CEO of Coca-Cola tell an unhappy customer to bug off and go drink Pepsi.

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or just gripe and complain while still continuing to pay.

 

This seems to be the most popular option...and the most fun. I believe Benjamin Franklin, while walking this planet, espoused that nothing in this world can be said to be certain other than death, taxes and whiny geocachers. Hmmm, that doesn't seem correct. Maybe he didn't mention death.

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BTW, we own several hundred acres, with zero caches on any of it, and we are less than hospitable to tresspassers.

 

Interesting. What do you specifically mean by "less than hospitable" and, save from the fact that you might have signs posted, what if someone is lost?

 

I own property in a couple of other states, nothing in the several hundred acres range, and there are actually geocaches placed on some of my property and I was never asked for permission, but I don't care. It's not hurting me. I actually find it amusing to read the logs of these geocaches.

 

In so many words, told to get off and never come back. We've been robbed once(by turkey hunters), and the area has seen more than it's fair share of crime. It may be an unfair comparison, but I view geocachers(including me) very similarly as I view hunters, people who are notorious for pushing the envolope on how far they can go. If someone is walking our property, we automatically assume the worst because, well, that's the experience we've had with people(and haven't been wrong yet).

 

Your second part is interesting, in this day and age, how could one be 'lost' wondering private property? If your car broke down on a country road, why would you leave the road and wander aimlessly in the woods?

 

This is off topic though, my point is Groundspeak should focus on investing into educating reviewers on state laws in order to ensure geocaching lives a long life, and not ordinanced out of existence.

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Your second part is interesting, in this day and age, how could one be 'lost' wondering private property? If your car broke down on a country road, why would you leave the road and wander aimlessly in the woods?

 

What if the people started on public land (say a Management Area, State or Federal PArk, etc) and then became lost in the woods? AS the negotiated their way out, they wind up on someone's private property?

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Your second part is interesting, in this day and age, how could one be 'lost' wondering private property? If your car broke down on a country road, why would you leave the road and wander aimlessly in the woods?

 

What if the people started on public land (say a Management Area, State or Federal PArk, etc) and then became lost in the woods? AS the negotiated their way out, they wind up on someone's private property?

 

I'll concede that point, however every Missouri State Park I've been to has been very well marked(same with STL county parks), but can't say anything about other states. The National Forests aren't very well marked though, and property owners near public areas concerned about this will probably mark/paint there property anyway.

 

I guess they could use that fancy GPSr they were using to get themselves back to civilization, otherwise probably shouldn't have left that trail in the first place. :)

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Open caching isn't that great, i've tried it. It's complicated and I find GC alot easier to use, just giving my two cents.

 

And yeah if you think a certain multi million dollar company made such a site just for the good of the community and not to sell their products, which come preloaded with Opencaching software...who would guess..I have a beach front property to sell you in Nebraska.

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It wouldn't be so offending except that Grounspeak originally said they would NOT do that. That it would ALWAYS be fully open!

To be clear, Groundspeak, nor it's founders, never said that. What Jeremy said was "traditional geocaching itself will never be a pay to play service."

 

You can come to this website today, and still do the same things for free, that you could do when the site was first created. You can still find caches without paying a cent. There has even been much improvement in the site for non-paying users.

 

However, if you have the means, sure, you can pay a modest fee and get a bunch of perks that may make your experience better. But that doesn't mean that you have to.

I seriously doubt Geocaching.com was founded with profit as the intent.

I was here ten years ago, and it was not nearly as commercial in feel.

The "modest fee" has gotten a lot less modest while I've been away.

Advertising would have more than covered the costs of Geocaching.com, with a healthy profit.

I have a geocache that dates back quite a while - and still gets found regularly.

People have been logging finds recently, which made me think about finding a few caches again.

I figured I might even return to the hobby, so I looked for the android phone app.

$10... you have got to be kidding.

$30 per year to be a premium member - and more and more content is becoming available only to premium members?

Making a profit is fine, but the spirit of Geocaching has been lost at Groundspeak.

It really makes me sad to see this. It was so much better when it was focused on the hobby

more than business profits.

I doubt I will return to the hobby other than an occasional find here and there, and my one remaining geocache hide.

If that one ever gets plundered, I doubt I would replace it. It seems absurd to me that the work I put

into hiding geocaches would go to a company that would also charge me to use their services.

But I will say "kudos to Groundspeak" for leaving this message thread and allowing the discussion.

There are other companies which would delete negative comments from their forums.

 

This post (below) says almost exactly what I was trying to say, but far better than I could ever say it:

Actually, my sincere thanks primarily go to the cache hiders in my area and not to Groundspeak. GS provides some infrastructure, but the heart and the soul of geocaching is the community. I do not care at all about PQs, improved cache maps, bookmark lists and many other features that have added to the site over the years. On the other hand, there have been many changes like allowing powertrails and opening up geocaching.com to many languages that changed geocaching to the worse for me. So the level of thankfullness I feel towards Groundspeak is rather limited. I do not take it for granted, but it is clear to me that their wish to focus on growth is against what I personally welcome.

The issue of commercialism is for me not about whether Jeremy and others earn a lot and not about whether the 30$ PM-ship is cheap or expensive (I regard it as cheap), but about the dangers of turning something into a business that should not be a business from my point of view.

Cezanne

Edited by Mark 42
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