Jump to content

Is it possible to delete the Cache Lab caches?


Heplercache

Recommended Posts

If the Cache Lab caches are ONLY going to count towards your total finds and not to your milestone finds then I would like the option to delete them.....I really enjoyed doing the 5 that I did recently....BUT...If they are not going to count towards milestones then are they really a find? It would be nice if just maybe goecaching.com could address this as I am sure I am not the only one that feels this is a mistake....

 

Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

Link to comment

May I ask you something? If you mean your Geocaching.com statistics, you have not reached any milestone of late (ie 5000) so those are not affecting and those should count when you reach the next one.

 

If you are referring to GSAK, which I think you are after looking at your profile, you can manually create the waypoints and then put them in there, like I did with mine. Just add 5 waypoints with a found date and the normal fields for a cache and voila, they are in there. Use what icon you want in the meantime, I used "other".

 

They are new and hopefully Groundspeak will incorporate them better. If not, well, you can leave them in your GSAK finds forever if you like.

 

You might regret later if you deleted them and to answer your question, no, I do not believe so at this time.

Link to comment

May I ask you something? If you mean your Geocaching.com statistics, you have not reached any milestone of late (ie 5000) so those are not affecting and those should count when you reach the next one.

 

If you are referring to GSAK, which I think you are after looking at your profile, you can manually create the waypoints and then put them in there, like I did with mine. Just add 5 waypoints with a found date and the normal fields for a cache and voila, they are in there. Use what icon you want in the meantime, I used "other".

 

They are new and hopefully Groundspeak will incorporate them better. If not, well, you can leave them in your GSAK finds forever if you like.

 

You might regret later if you deleted them and to answer your question, no, I do not believe so at this time.

 

Thanks for the advice... That seems like a viable workaround for the time being... Hopefully they will incorporate them....

Link to comment

If the Cache Lab caches are ONLY going to count towards your total finds and not to your milestone finds then I would like the option to delete them.....I really enjoyed doing the 5 that I did recently....BUT...If they are not going to count towards milestones then are they really a find? It would be nice if just maybe goecaching.com could address this as I am sure I am not the only one that feels this is a mistake....

 

Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

 

Lacky Larry is the one to contact about these. As I understand it this is his baby. His screen name is grillography.

Link to comment
Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

Really?

They were talked about in a number of threads and Groundspeak even wrote info on it in their blog as early as August 14th.

It was well publicized that they would count as a find, but not show on stats.

I suspect that most people didn't read about them in the forum or in the geocaching.com blog. They just showed up at a mega-event, were handed a GPX file or a printout, told that these were a new cache type with a special way to log them and they they would count as finds. I don't think it crossed their mind that these would not count in other statistics or not be included in the My Finds query.

 

Frankly, it just shows that the "find count" means different things to different individuals.

 

For many people is is just a statistic like any other. It counts the numbers of geocaches they found and doesn't count things like waymarks, benchmarks, or the defunct geocaching challenges. It isn't a score. It's not something to be used a reward for doing an ALR on a cache.

 

Other people view the find count to something where each smiley has a value. They may believe that lack of the smiley makes the activity less worthwhile and give this as a reason that Waymarking is not popular or why challenges failed. Some believe the smiley is the reason why people will attempt a challenge cache. Some cache owners use smileys as rewards, allowing multiple find or attended logs for doing some extra activity. The decision to "count" lab caches almost certainly derives from the practice in some areas of logging multiple Attended for finding temporary caches at events.

 

I suspect counting lab caches this way will be popular for some people. But plenty of people found temporary event caches without logging the extra Attended logs, and they should be allowed to do the same with lab caches (and be able to delete these from their count if they decide later to go that route).

 

However the complaints I see aren't from people who are concerned much about what should be a find or not, but rather from those who use GSAK or some other 3rd party tool to keep track of their geocaching. Already the GSAK community is finding ways to track lab caches in GSAK even if they aren't going to be supported in the My Finds PQ. I suspect that the number of complaints will go down.

Edited by tozainamboku
Link to comment

I suspect that most people didn't read about them in the forum or in the geocaching.com blog. They just showed up at a mega-event, were handed a GPX file or a printout, told that these were a new cache type with a special way to log them and they they would count as finds. I don't think it crossed their mind that these would not count in other statistics or not be included in the My Finds query.

But that is not how the lab cache experience was presented. At Block Party, we received an information sheet and a link to labs.geocaching.com -- you can go to that page right now and see the same thing. On that page there was and is a link that took me right to the blog post. I followed the link to see what I was getting into. On the linked page, the effect on statistics was summarized. After reading this, I had a question, asked an organizer, and got an immediate answer.

 

I then decided that trying the new lab caches was more important to me than keeping every statistic measurement in synch. Others might decide differently after reading the FAQ's. But the opportunity was provided on the first landing page, before I even opened up the adventure's details. If they didn't click the link to read more, that's on the user, IMHO.

 

Since that time, I passed a major milestone (5000 finds). I took advantage of the ability in the account details page to manually adjust my milestone cache, and everything's fine for me.

Link to comment

I guess I just don't understand why, if the lab caches were going to count as a find, they don't count in all the other ways, as well. Often, I find that things are implemented that somebody has to figure out some way to work around them to make them work. I don't have that much computer knowledge, so most of it goes over my head. I am one who is way more interested in my find count being accurate (which I update frequently with MyFindsPQ) than I am with getting a new icon. I would love to have done a lab cache to check them out and get the new icon (which would have been a possibility at the upcoming GeoCoinfest), but I don't want to screw up my stats.

 

Please don't yell at me. I just wish that, if GS was going to introduce a new icon, it would either fully count, or not at all (like benchmarks). That's just how I roll in caching. To each his/her own. Happy Caching!

Link to comment

Please don't yell at me. I just wish that, if GS was going to introduce a new icon, it would either fully count, or not at all (like benchmarks). That's just how I roll in caching. To each his/her own. Happy Caching!

I agree. My milestones are a product of my number of Finds. If something counts as a Find it should affect my milestones.

 

If I have found 4999 caches and I find a Lab cache my Find count now shows 5000 but it isn't a milestone? :blink:

 

What I don't understand is the members of Groundspeak are cachers themselves so how do they keep coming up with these ideas? No one on the team stopped when this was being brainstormed during a meeting and said "Wait...huh?"

Link to comment

I guess I just don't understand why, if the lab caches were going to count as a find, they don't count in all the other ways, as well.

Because they are Lab Caches -- an experiment. The functionality would be fully built out if and when the lab experiment changes into a fully baked cache type. The current experiment might be called "Event Adventures" if it turns into a cache type.

 

What I don't understand is the members of Groundspeak are cachers themselves so how do they keep coming up with these ideas? No one on the team stopped when this was being brainstormed during a meeting and said "Wait...huh?"

Lab Caches are a response to past experiences where nobody stopped and said "Wait...huh?" While new ideas are in the Laboratory, there is plenty of time to stop and ask questions.

Link to comment

I guess I just don't understand why, if the lab caches were going to count as a find, they don't count in all the other ways, as well.

Because they are Lab Caches -- an experiment. The functionality would be fully built out if and when the lab experiment changes into a fully baked cache type. The current experiment might be called "Event Adventures" if it turns into a cache type.

Time will tell if there really is a Geocaching Laboratory incubating new ideas or not. Personally, I think this is just another "better mistake" that hasn't been thought through entirely. The name "Lab Cache" doesn't convince me there is really a group at Groundspeak HQ that is going to be commited to "testing" new idea. To me it sounds more like some lackeys got an extra dose of Chemical X from Keystone and are just doing silly things with their new super powers.

 

IMO, The reasons that Lab Caches get different treatment has little to with them being experimental. I think the real reason is that they are not in the regular Geocache database. Statistics (including find count - prior to this change) are a generated off the the Logs table in the database. A query is run to get all the Found/Attended/Photo Taken logs for a given user and these are JOINED to the Cache table. From this result, it is straight forward to compute all the statistics people are used to. With Lab Caches in a different database, and not having Found Logs in the same sense as other caches, the code to compute statistics would need to be completely rewritten to include them. It will take a lot more Chemical X if you really expect the lackeys to make these changes.

Link to comment

I guess I just don't understand why, if the lab caches were going to count as a find, they don't count in all the other ways, as well.

Because they are Lab Caches -- an experiment. The functionality would be fully built out if and when the lab experiment changes into a fully baked cache type. The current experiment might be called "Event Adventures" if it turns into a cache type.

 

The issue then it that GS is using our "production" find count for their experiment but not our production statistics (i.e. milestones). If it's just an experiment then it shouldn't be adding lab cache finds to our find counts unless they'll have some way of removing those "experimental" finds if the decide not to change it to a fully baked cache type.

 

 

 

Link to comment

Wait, what? Keystone has a fun chemical that gives super powers?!? Aw, man! I didn't get any while he was here. :P LOL!

 

Just as The Leprechauns pointed out: We are wanting to develop new, fun ideas for the caching community but we realize that we have made some big mistakes about releasing things too fast (not thought out) in the past. So this is our attempt to do it right - which means figuring it out and asking questions from those who participate, along the way. The reason that they are only available at Mega Events is so we can take stock in what is working and where there is room for improvement.

 

We realize that the community is vast and not everybody is going to like every choice made, but we are making an effort to listen to the community while developing these ideas. Because we are cachers at HQ, our intent is to better the game for everyone, please know this.

 

That being said, there are some great answers from some super helpful, knowledgeable folks posted in this thread of how to incorporate these caches into your GSAK database - my husband and I had to do that for our find count, as well. If you aren't finding the answers you are looking for, please ask - if we don't know it right off the bat, we're happy to find the people who may have more insight and grill them for a bit.

 

Thanks for being active, informed members of the community. We appreciate you! :)

Link to comment

Here's what I know. I wasn't on the boards, and I rarely read the Groundspeak Blog. The FACTS surrounding the Lab Caches were NEVER posted in the newsletter. I read every newsletter. I "stumbled" into the Lab Caches while attending my FIRST mega ever, was (exactly like another person said) handed coords and told "go find this! New kind of cache! It'll be fun!" Well, actually it was rather lame. Every cache was just sitting out in the open - there was no hunt involved at all - but a find is a find... no worse than a LPC! So I go along with it. I then log the caches when I get home, having been told that I would get a new icon on my "stats". When the icon didn't show up on my "stats", I also noticed that the FINDS didn't show up. THAT's when I started asking questions and learned that Lab Caches would ONLY count on your "finds", but NOT in your stats! Now, I don't use GSAK or any other handy dandy outside source to keep track of my stuff. I use Geocaching.com to keep track! Right now Geocaching.com says I have 1518 FINDS... but my "stats" say I only have 1513. This is not a big deal right NOW, only because my 1500th find ISN'T a milestone cache. But when 2000 rolls around, my count is STILL going to be off -- because after 2 letters to Groundspeak, they have still refused to remove the 5 smileys from my "finds" -- which means that my "smileys" and my "actual finds" will NEVER match up again. So to me it sounds like Groundspeak is sort of saying "too bad OhMelli... suck it up... or go use GSAK!" They don't care, because 1)they know people aren't going to "quit" geocaching... and 2)we've already been their little "Lab Gerbils" for this experiment. I can tell you for sure, I won't be their Lab Gerbil again! It's one thing to release these things without thinking it completely through. It's a whole different issue when a "customer" (a PAYing customer) requests to have it removed from their account - and to be told NO. NOT sitting well with me.

Link to comment

In response to ohmelli, you are concerned about the caches not showing up in your stats. You have 1518 finds by looking at your profile. Your statistics tab has 1518 finds. Am curious what stats you do not think your lab caches are not showing up in?

 

Many of us are doing workarounds in the fact that the lab finds do not show up in your finds when you download them and use third party stat organizers (as for GSAK, there is a manual workaround for the moment), but your stats themselves seem fine at least to me.

 

There are obviously some spots in the stats they do not show up in the totals, in the fact they add up to 1513 not 1518.

Cache Types ohmelli Has Found

Container Types ohmelli Has Found

Difficulty and Terrain of Caches ohmelli Has Found

Caches Found by ohmelli in the World

 

However, your totals are showing them, it seems a few sections do not classify them is all yet, at least to me though. Thus, your milestones and many other stats are showing them just fine. Frustrating I can understand, but they are counting.

Edited by lamoracke
Link to comment

I like simple caches. Give me the coords and I go there. If I find it I log a "found it" and if I don't it's a "DNF". I don't bother with puzzle caches because they make my brain hurt. When GS released these "lab caches" I stopped reading about them halfway through because it made my brain hurt.

 

So as I now understand it, a find of one of these lab caches is logged as a find...but it only sort of counts? Maybe I'm just not getting the point but it sounds just plain weird to me.

Link to comment

It's the half-way bit that is so bad. I would be perfectly happy to do lab caches with no smiley and no find: give me an icon, put it on my profile page, but count it like benchmarks. Or make it a real find that counts towards my milestones. How can it be a find but it doesn't count towards my milestones. This makes no sense whatsoever. Why didn't they either 1) count it the way they count benchmarks, or 2) count it as a real find, like everything other than benchmarks.

Edited by Dame Deco
Link to comment

If the Cache Lab caches are ONLY going to count towards your total finds and not to your milestone finds then I would like the option to delete them.....I really enjoyed doing the 5 that I did recently....BUT...If they are not going to count towards milestones then are they really a find? It would be nice if just maybe goecaching.com could address this as I am sure I am not the only one that feels this is a mistake....

 

Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

 

Lacky Larry is the one to contact about these. As I understand it this is his baby. His screen name is grillography.

Did you notice that the coordinates were off to one of the Lab caches in Matewan near the flood wall? :laughing:

Link to comment

Apparently Groundspeak has gone into my account and "fixed" things -- but rather than taking away the 5 smileys for the Lab Caches, they ADDED 5 finds to my "stats"... NOW the only discrepancy lies between my "stats" and my "fizzy chart" -- but I don't really care what shows up on my fizzy chart, so I'm not going to complain about that. It WOULD have been nice if Groundspeak had mentioned to me that they WERE going to "solve" my finds issue... then I might not have spouted off -- so much! :laughing:

Link to comment

If I find a mouldy film pot (whatever a film pot is... :anitongue: ) in a guard rail, and log it, I can change my mind, and delete my find. That removes it from my official records. The same should be true for these 'lab caches'. Seems poorly designed and inconsistent.

Now: As to these 'lab caches'... Obviously what they are is 'temporary event caches'. Pure and simple. If GS can hide temporary event caches which count for a find, why cannot the event owner?

Any lab caches going to be available for my visit to GS HQ???

Link to comment

If I find a mouldy film pot (whatever a film pot is... :anitongue: ) in a guard rail, and log it, I can change my mind, and delete my find. That removes it from my official records. The same should be true for these 'lab caches'. Seems poorly designed and inconsistent.

I would agree with you IF "temporary event caches" ever became a new cache type. Right now, they're a laboratory experiment called "Geocaching Adventures." A laboratory prototype will not have all the features of a production model, whether we're talking about coffee makers, cars or geocache types.
Now: As to these 'lab caches'... Obviously what they are is 'temporary event caches'. Pure and simple. If GS can hide temporary event caches which count for a find, why cannot the event owner?
They can be hidden by event owners (initially, by mega-event owners). It's true that the very first two experiments were designed by Groundspeak (the Brew Pub tour with caches that could be logged in a logbook, and the Fremont neighborhood tour that included fun activities and solely codeword logging). But, other mega-events had (and will have in the future) Geocaching Adventures designed by the organizers in cooperation with the Lackeys back at the "laboratory."
Any lab caches going to be available for my visit to GS HQ???
No, because they are time-limited. In the case of Geocaching HQ's Geocaching Adventures, the experiment was time-limited to the long weekend of Block Party last month. As an alternative, I highly recommend trying the Geocaching HQ GeoTour when you visit! Edited by The Leprechauns
Link to comment

Apparently Groundspeak has gone into my account and "fixed" things -- but rather than taking away the 5 smileys for the Lab Caches, they ADDED 5 finds to my "stats"... NOW the only discrepancy lies between my "stats" and my "fizzy chart" -- but I don't really care what shows up on my fizzy chart, so I'm not going to complain about that. It WOULD have been nice if Groundspeak had mentioned to me that they WERE going to "solve" my finds issue... then I might not have spouted off -- so much! :laughing:

 

For the record, there has been no change in the way lab cache finds are counted (on *any* profile) since they were released last month.

Link to comment

If the Cache Lab caches are ONLY going to count towards your total finds and not to your milestone finds then I would like the option to delete them.....I really enjoyed doing the 5 that I did recently....BUT...If they are not going to count towards milestones then are they really a find? It would be nice if just maybe goecaching.com could address this as I am sure I am not the only one that feels this is a mistake....

 

Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

 

Lacky Larry is the one to contact about these. As I understand it this is his baby. His screen name is grillography.

Did you notice that the coordinates were off to one of the Lab caches in Matewan near the flood wall? :laughing:

 

Yeah, they put fix coordinates in the Depot one for that cache by the time we got there. Not everyone did them in the same order so we had a nice laugh as we pulled the cache out and watched others keep walking down the trail.

Link to comment

I use Mygeocachingprofile for statistics. There is a line for Lab Caches in "Cache Types I've Found", but no way that I know of to get them in there since Lab Caches do not show up in the MyFinds PQ. Is there a workaround? I know there is one for GSAK, but Mygeocachingprofile does not appear to have any flexibility.

Link to comment

If the Cache Lab caches are ONLY going to count towards your total finds and not to your milestone finds then I would like the option to delete them.....I really enjoyed doing the 5 that I did recently....BUT...If they are not going to count towards milestones then are they really a find? It would be nice if just maybe goecaching.com could address this as I am sure I am not the only one that feels this is a mistake....

 

Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

Seems no one really answered the original post.

 

It appears as though you can delete your Lab caches.

 

Go to: labs.geocaching.com

Log in using your Geocaching Lab credentials.

There is an innocent looking down arrow on the upper right of the screen. Click on it.

Click on ">> View Your Logs"

Your logs will appear with a trash can icon on the right side.

 

I'm assuming the trash can icon allows you to delete your log but I haven't tried it since I figure you won't be able to get your find/log back (at least if the time for logging them has expired).

Link to comment

If the Cache Lab caches are ONLY going to count towards your total finds and not to your milestone finds then I would like the option to delete them.....I really enjoyed doing the 5 that I did recently....BUT...If they are not going to count towards milestones then are they really a find? It would be nice if just maybe goecaching.com could address this as I am sure I am not the only one that feels this is a mistake....

 

Kinda feel like I have been hoodwinked.....This should have been publicized better...If is was at all.

Seems no one really answered the original post.

 

It appears as though you can delete your Lab caches.

 

Go to: labs.geocaching.com

Log in using your Geocaching Lab credentials.

There is an innocent looking down arrow on the upper right of the screen. Click on it.

Click on ">> View Your Logs"

Your logs will appear with a trash can icon on the right side.

 

I'm assuming the trash can icon allows you to delete your log but I haven't tried it since I figure you won't be able to get your find/log back (at least if the time for logging them has expired).

 

This is correct. As of yesterday you may now delete your Lab Cache finds. Bear in mind that this action cannot be undone, and since Lab Caches are temporary in nature you will not have the opportunity to re-log later.

Link to comment

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...