There should be a way to filter out all caches by one user

[+MarinaK_StephanK]

The thing is, we've started caching back in 2010, and while that seems not to long ago, at least in our neck of the woods many a things have changed since then. The surging of one dude in particular, who - despite some voices within the community openly questioning his methods and placements - basically plastered the entire area with hundreds of caches. Now, some, I admit, aren't all that bad. But many of those other ones, placed in grimy, filthy places such as below guard railings close to a train station, which, ordinarily wouldn't even have been such a terrible place, but as it so happens it just is for urinal reasons... :-( I could name a couple of these terrible placings, being in tick-infested bushes or in a water filled tree stump...

My point is: Filtering out these hundreds of nasty Caches made by this one being one by one takes eons. And, he still produces them by the dozens...so even if I manage to ignore the three-hundred-something he has today, maybe, this time tomorrow, he has forty more...

Therefore, my suggestion:

Add a filtering option while searching to exclude the caches owned by one person and/or the feature to ignore ALL of one individuals caches at once!

*sermonover* thanks for listening, I am awaiting your input.

greets from Austria,

Stephan K

[+cerberus1]

I'd love to see the same thing too.

It'd make my searching so much easier, to eliminate caches I won't do by simply ignoring hiders who put them out.

 

- But I'd bet "ignoring a hider" (who may be a premium, yearly dues member) is a negative thing that Groundspeak wouldn't be too keen on enabling.

[+niraD]

This has been suggested before:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=296606

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=311421

 

I think it would be useful to filter pocket queries both ways, both to include caches owned by a specific account, and to ignore caches owned by a specific account.

 

Since those who place numbers run trails generally use a single sock-puppet account for all the caches in the numbers run trail, the ability to filter based on cache owner would also take care of the need to filter caches in a numbers run trail.

[+Don_J]

The thing is, we've started caching back in 2010, and while that seems not to long ago, at least in our neck of the woods many a things have changed since then. The surging of one dude in particular, who - despite some voices within the community openly questioning his methods and placements - basically plastered the entire area with hundreds of caches. Now, some, I admit, aren't all that bad. But many of those other ones, placed in grimy, filthy places such as below guard railings close to a train station, which, ordinarily wouldn't even have been such a terrible place, but as it so happens it just is for urinal reasons... :-( I could name a couple of these terrible placings, being in tick-infested bushes or in a water filled tree stump...

My point is: Filtering out these hundreds of nasty Caches made by this one being one by one takes eons. And, he still produces them by the dozens...so even if I manage to ignore the three-hundred-something he has today, maybe, this time tomorrow, he has forty more...

Therefore, my suggestion:

Add a filtering option while searching to exclude the caches owned by one person and/or the feature to ignore ALL of one individuals caches at once!

*sermonover* thanks for listening, I am awaiting your input.

greets from Austria,

Stephan K

 

This is one of the more frequent and generally accepted requests on this forum. Despite that, I don't think that Groundspeak has ever commented on it.

 

Historically, Groundspeak has distanced themselves from ideas that can be considered negative in nature. Ignoring someone does not sound nice, but unfortunately, it has obviously become necessary. It seems that a lot of us have that same guy that you described in our area.

[+MarinaK_StephanK]

Well, actually,

they have - HAVE - commented on it, at least when I personally contacted them. It was their idea to put up this topic for discussion, as - quote - "it would be closely monitored". So...If one tends to believe in what people say (I know I do), then this, with enough feedback, may just be a thing that might be resolved soon ;-)

Thx for all comments, and please invite others to join and follow the conversation!

greetings from austria,

StephanK

[+Don_J]

Well, actually,

they have - HAVE - commented on it, at least when I personally contacted them. It was their idea to put up this topic for discussion, as - quote - "it would be closely monitored". So...If one tends to believe in what people say (I know I do), then this, with enough feedback, may just be a thing that might be resolved soon ;-)

Thx for all comments, and please invite others to join and follow the conversation!

greetings from austria,

StephanK

 

Sorry, this is their way of dismissing you. This topic has been discussed on several versions of this forum for almost four years and has always had overwhelming support from the community.

[+MarinaK_StephanK]

Well, actually,

they have - HAVE - commented on it, at least when I personally contacted them. It was their idea to put up this topic for discussion, as - quote - "it would be closely monitored". So...If one tends to believe in what people say (I know I do), then this, with enough feedback, may just be a thing that might be resolved soon ;-)

Thx for all comments, and please invite others to join and follow the conversation!

greetings from austria,

StephanK

 

Sorry, this is their way of dismissing you. This topic has been discussed on several versions of this forum for almost four years and has always had overwhelming support from the community.

Darn, this would be so rude if that were true... Well, then, I guess, we won't renew our premium membership after all...

It probably won't teach them, i suspect, since they may not care...but at least I do...

greetings from austria,

and thx for all comments

[+Delta68]

In the meantime, load your PQ into GSAK, filter on all caches by the one cacher you want to ignore and then add to the ignore list using the API tools.

 

Takes a matter of seconds and you can then ignore hundreds.

 

I do this all a lot for one reason or another.

 

The more 'positive' reason is to remove swathes of puzzle caches from the PQs. I don't want to exclude all puzzle caches as some might be 'bonus' caches or 'challenge' caches etc

[+Walts Hunting]

Hour use the API call to only grab his caches to GSAK and then add to bookmark ignore.

[+MarinaK_StephanK]

Now, this may sound surprising to most of you - btw, thanks for the suggestions in the first place - but I have NO IDEA whatsoever what you are talking about. GSK-wha...? API-who? I use a simple Garmin Venture GPS, I own NO smart phone, I own NO tablet, and I browse with Firefox and use the Garmin communicator plugin to transfer cache coordinates and waypoints to my device. It only recognizes .gpx and nothing else, at least not to my knowledge, which, I must admit, may be slim. But why - WHY(!?) - on god's green earth must I use stuff I don't even know existed when there would be a perfectely simple way (or so I've been told by friends who are programmers slash hackers slash mathematicians) to implement such a "exclude item from search" programming-thingy-method? I may be old, lame, dumb, whatever - but why defy logic and common sense and promote more complicated versions to not solve but circle around the problem? I don't get that.

Groundspeak, I'm dissapointed.

[+cheech gang]

It is my opinion that this is NOT an issue of whether the programming that is required would be difficult, it likely is not. I believe it is more likely that a corporate decision has been made for whatever reason that Groundspeak does not want to support such an option. We can speculate on that again, but is has been discussed ad infinitum in other threads.

 

The fact that others have discovered work around ways of accomplishing the same thing is a far cry from Groundspeak "PROMOTING more complicated versions to not solve but circle around the problem".

[+MarinaK_StephanK]

Hi there,

 

this is Marina speaking (writing). You can see by our nickname that we are two people, and up until now you only heard (read) my husband Stephan. I just found out yesterday that he opened this thread and I read it through from the beginning to the end. That also made me want to share my point of view.

If it is really true that Groundspeak knows about this problem and doesnt react to it on purpose, I have to say that this really disappoints me. The guy who plastered our area with meanlingless caches (I`m going to call him "X" here) literally almost made us stop caching by now. He owns nearly a thousand caches in the same area, and with him around it is nearly impossible to look for caches by our beloved "find nearest to your home"-function, because I get up to 10 pages full of caches by X, and on every 3rd page or so there is one cache by another guy. Filtering out his caches into the ignore-list takes longer than the caching-experience itself.

 

First of all, many of the X-caches shouldnt be published in the first place because they are absolutely meaningless. He also doesnt attend to them if they need fixing. How should he - he owns way too many. But they are published anyway, which is the first failiure of the system. But I can see that you cant ban him from doing this, as we are living in a free country and he doesnt break caching regulations in an extreme way. And there are also many people who like his caches because they are easy and you can find up to 50 a day which gives your stats a tremendous boost. So, basically he is only being annoying, which is not being forbidden in the caching rules. So we have to let him do what he does and have to try to regulate this problem in our own way that doesnt affect him or the people who support his caches.

Now, that Groundspeak doesnt offer a way to people who intend to practise caching like its meant to be (looking at beautiful places in nature or culture that you didnt know before etc.) and instead supports people who turn it into a mindless scorepointing sport is really, really disappointing to me. This will alter the nature of caching over the time. Maybe in a few years there are only people like X and his supporters left, who do each others caches, collecting thousands of meaningless finds and who dont care about the beauty around them but only about how many finds they have.

I on the other hand prefer one find a week, if thats a good, interesting and beautiful one. I dont need to have 50 finds a day, just scooping up containers along a road. Thats not caching, thats picking up litter. X prevents me from practising caching as its meant to be (because I cant see through his sea of caches any more) and Groundspeak prevents me from practising caching as its meant to be because it considers its something "negative" to block out someone.

 

Now, to Groundspeak (if you really monitor this thread as you said):

In my opinion, it is negative not to give me the opportunity to block X out. Blocking him out wouldnt hurt or bother him, Im sure this is doable without him seeing that I blocked him in my account. So its not negative. But it bothers me that i cant do it, and thats negative! Because caching is not sitting in front of the computer for hours and ignoring hundreds of caches one by one. If you dont filter out the bad eggs, at least give me a way do it privately without losing precious hours of my life over it. Otherwise i will have to decide to stop caching over the time (I almost stopped by now anyway). And what I already decided is that I am not going to pay for it any longer. What do I need a premium membership for if I am not even provided with a simple filtering function like that.

 

Thanks for reading (if you did). Think about it. Please.

Edited September 2, 2013 by MarinaK_StephanK

[jholly]

As has been mentioned, the answer is GSAK. Use the geocaching.com API interface to search for caches by "X", and then add them to your ignore list with the geocaching.com API interface. Fortunately GS did not place a limit on the ignore list. It would be nice if it was part of the website, but I don't see that ever happening.

[cezanne]

 

Now, that Groundspeak doesnt offer a way to people who intend to practise caching like its meant to be (looking at beautiful places in nature or culture that you didnt know before etc.) and instead supports people who turn it into a mindless scorepointing sport is really, really disappointing to me. This will alter the nature of caching over the time. Maybe in a few years there are only people like X and his supporters left, who do each others caches, collecting thousands of meaningless finds and who dont care about the beauty around them but only about how many finds they have.

I on the other hand prefer one find a week, if thats a good, interesting and beautiful one. I dont need to have 50 finds a day, just scooping up containers along a road. Thats not caching, thats picking up litter. X prevents me from practising caching as its meant to be (because I cant see through his sea of caches any more) and Groundspeak prevents me from practising caching as its meant to be because it considers its something "negative" to block out someone.

 

I can understand your frustration and I'm also concerned about the development that causes many old style cachers to leave geocaching.

My long experience with Groundspeak tells me that the chances that the feature you would like to have gets implemented are very small, almost neglectable.

 

If you use a Windows based PC, then you should really look into the program GSAK, see http://www.gsak.net/ - with the help of this program and your PM-ship which allows you access to PQs and the API you can solve your problem. Maybe there is an experienced GSAK user in your area who can help you.

 

I agree that it would be nice to have a ignore user function directly at the site, but this will probably never be implemented while with using GSAK provides you with a workable solution. As Groundspeak knows that GSAK exists, their motivation to invest work is even smaller.

 

PS: I'm not aware of an Austrian cacher with 500+ hides and you talk about 1000+ caches.

 

Cezanne

Edited September 2, 2013 by cezanne

[team tisri]

As has been mentioned, the answer is GSAK. Use the geocaching.com API interface to search for caches by "X", and then add them to your ignore list with the geocaching.com API interface. Fortunately GS did not place a limit on the ignore list. It would be nice if it was part of the website, but I don't see that ever happening.

 

It would be nice if Groundspeak would do a complete job instead of leaving so many rough edges where the answer seems to be little more than a shrug and a gesture towards GSAK.

[+Don_J]

As has been mentioned, the answer is GSAK. Use the geocaching.com API interface to search for caches by "X", and then add them to your ignore list with the geocaching.com API interface. Fortunately GS did not place a limit on the ignore list. It would be nice if it was part of the website, but I don't see that ever happening.

 

This still is not a perfect solution, especially since all we get on the ignore list is the cache names, no notes or owner names. This effectively pollutes the Ignore list, making it impossible to find other caches that you may wish to remove from it in the future.

 

As was mentioned in a previous feature request, a great solution would be the ability to designate any bookmark list as an ignore list, just like we designate them as shared or private. This would give us the ability to turn blocks of caches on or off.

[+MarinaK_StephanK]

Thank you for suggesting GSAK, but on this I completely agree with team tisri. Groundspeak doesn't do a complete job here, and that's a shame. If they don't make an effort to support "old school" cachers too, caching in general will turn into a completely different sport than it used to be. And I don't want to support that or be any part of it, as it is not appreciating culture and/or nature anymore but more like violating nature with cachers crashing through the undergrowth every 100 meters to retrieve a cache from a bush or a mouse hole or littering hiking trails with hundreds of plastic containers that are washed away by the next rain because they are not made properly.

 

@ cezanne: He doesn't have 1000+ caches, I said "nearly a thousand", and I meant it more figuratively as it feels so much to me. I think he has like 300 or 400 caches. I would have to check his profile to give you a concrete number, but, honestly, I don't care enough for him to look him up ;-)

Edited September 3, 2013 by MarinaK_StephanK