[FEATURE] Achievement Souvenirs

1.1k · May 30, 2014

Everyone likes to show what they have achieved or like to receive something when they have achieved something. How about creating souvenir achievements. They can look like the Achievement coins and be awarded according to the statistic milestones. What are your thoughts about this idea.

6.8k · May 30, 2014

Everyone likes to show what they have achieved or like to receive something when they have achieved something. How about creating souvenir achievements.

No, not everyone.

What are your thoughts about this idea.

Personally, I do not care. As any other type of souvenir/icon etc it might however motivate some to cheat and will push others to change their caching behaviour just in order to obtain the souvenirs. This happens already with the badge and other awards systems around. Cachers that are for example out to find as many cache types per day and visit also several events per day, write typically lousy logs and spend only a few minutes at events.

I do not think that achievement souvenirs would have more positive effects on the community level (that excludes the personal enjoyment from the discussion) than negative ones.

Cezanne

May 30, 2014

The danger is that anything like this leads to manipulation for the sake of gaining the souvenir.

So, last August's 31 days set, for example, seems to have got people out geocaching on more days. That's probably a good thing overall. But there's clear evidence from logs that it was also leading people to manipulate their caching trips to, for example, simply "do" one cache on certain days for the sake of the souvenir - perhaps ending up driving far further over the month than they might have done if they had spent seven of the days walking and finding caches.

There's also some evidence that in some areas it led to the deliberate creation of the sort of cache that might be described as "lower quality" by some of us - in order to provide the opportunity for people to find their 31 days worth of caches. Again, I'm not sure that was the intention.

So I don't know. I think there are probably enough badges out there anyway. Those have, as cezanne says, led to me changing my behaviour I know - although in my case to find less micros and to write more detailed logs, so perhaps that's not always a bad thing.

15.3k · May 30, 2014

Something like this has been suggested before:

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=306936

Personally, I think a system of online badges for statistical challenges/milestones makes more sense than the current system of challenge caches with geocaching-related Additional Logging Requirements. But clearly, not everyone agrees.

1.1k · June 1, 2014

Im not sure if it is possible to manipulate the amount of finds you have. I didnt think about it as a challenge I thought of it more as a "Milestone thank you" that can only be awarded by Groundspeak.

6.8k · June 1, 2014

Im not sure if it is possible to manipulate the amount of finds you have.

Of course, by logging caches you have never visited/found.

Not many cache owners check the log books regularly (I don't either) and moreover caches and log books can

get lost and it's particularly common to log caches after they disappeared with a date before they disappeared.

Powertrails are also good candidates and there it became common to log the whoile trail anyway even of caches of the trail are clearly missing. Many powertrail owners do not pay any attention at all.

Another example which is not find count related: I know of several cachers who logged the Block Party and have not even been in the US. It was just the icon that they wished to get and got without any problems.

If there were no special icon, the temptation for someone far from the US who did not attend the block party would be very small to non existant.

During the 31 days of August period last year, many cachers faked the dates and distributed their finds arbitrarily over the whole month.

Given the way souvenirs work, one even could first log a lot of caches and then delete the logs and keep the souvenirs. Keeping the logs, too, will work however in almost all cases anyway.

Even under the assumption that all cachers are perfectly honest, I do not think that achievement badges are a good idea. It puts too much value on find counts and other numbers. The trend towards splitting up caches which have been one cache ten years ago into 30 or more will be strengthened even more.

Cachers can have their individual achievements, but any form of official recognition (or thank you as you put it), is something I'm not in favor of.

June 1, 2014

Everyone likes to show what they have achieved or like to receive something when they have achieved something. How about creating souvenir achievements. They can look like the Achievement coins and be awarded according to the statistic milestones. What are your thoughts about this idea.

Really?

I'm obviously not included in "everyone"!

The only "something" I ask from having achieved something is the fact that I've done it.

Isn't that enough?

6k · June 1, 2014

WOW this column made me notice the souvenir page which I looked at for the first time and probably the last as they seem like part of a campaign to appeal to the narcissistic side of people. For me caching is about the joy of being outside doing something enjoyable and seeing new places I might not have.

Once method of cheating not listed is to log a cache you need for a souvenir, wait about an hour and then delete it. Once the State, date or whatever souvenir you qualified for is added you can delete it and the souvenir stays. I've done a lot of states. Might add Hawaii this am just for kicks.

14k · June 1, 2014

WOW this column made me notice the souvenir page which I looked at for the first time and probably the last as they seem like part of a campaign to appeal to the narcissistic side of people. For me caching is about the joy of being outside doing something enjoyable and seeing new places I might not have.

When I travel to some new place I often like to bring back a shirt, or hat, even a fridge magnet as a token of remembrance (i.e. the definition of a souvenir) of visiting that place. I see geocaching souvenirs the same way. They're nothing more than a digital token of remembrance that can be acquired when visiting a location or attending an event.

Unfortunately, they've become more of a reward for participating in one of GS marketing campaigns (31 days in August, Geocaching in Space, etc) and have diverged from the "real world" notion of a souvenir.

Once method of cheating not listed is to log a cache you need for a souvenir, wait about an hour and then delete it. Once the State, date or whatever souvenir you qualified for is added you can delete it and the souvenir stays. I've done a lot of states. Might add Hawaii this am just for kicks.

You could, but why would you? All of the souvenirs on my page accurately reflect places I've visited (though there are a lot of places where I've found caches that are now shown) or events I've attended.

I'm also glad that GS has given us the option of not collecting a souvenir, even though we may qualify for it. In the "real world" I don't buy a souvenir in every place that sells them. I may want a souvenir sweat shirt (which I have) from visiting the Great Wall in China but have no interest in a bumper sticker from the Super Walmart of Ithaca.

June 5, 2014

I am not a fan of souvenirs, mainly because they are nothing more than a different way to view what is already available. Did I cache in August? That info is already available. Have I been to HQ, again that can be checked. What countries and states have I cached in? Already available.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing souvenirs for completing a set of caches. I like to do GeoTours. (I really like what the Lane County Oregon folks have done, four different GeoTours, all regular sized caches, and well maintained.) Having a souvenir for completing a GeoTour (or any set of caches for that matter) would be nice.

The GeoTours I have done have a minimum number of caches to be logged before qualifying for a GeoCoin. They require that you prove you actually went to the caches (code word, stamp, etc.), and send in marketing info (how long did you stay, where did you stay, etc.). For each Lane County GeoTour, you must log a minimum of 24 caches, out of 36. This is something that could be scripted. Or, maybe the GeoTour owner could have a web page where they could add the souvenir. The latter method may be better, because there may be many people who logged the proper caches to qualify, but they never sent in the paperwork to qualify for the GeoCoin. This info may be useful to the geocaching.com GeoTour marketing group as they try to sign up more GeoTours.

Thanks, Skye.

June 6, 2014

Seems to be a problem with Souvenirs anyway - none showing on my account - maybe they will return.

14k · June 7, 2014

I am not a fan of souvenirs, mainly because they are nothing more than a different way to view what is already available. Did I cache in August? That info is already available. Have I been to HQ, again that can be checked. What countries and states have I cached in? Already available.

Not exactly. I have found caches in 8 countries where a souvenir is *not* available. Actually only a small percentage of all countries have a souvenir available. I'd rather see GS add souvenirs for more countries then create achievement souvenirs.

I see souvenirs sort of like collecting coins. I have a shoe box full of coins that I acquire as loose change from day to day purchases. When my pocket starts to get full I just dump all those coins in the box. Each coin in the box might be equated to a found it log on a cache. FInding a specific coin in that box would't be that easy. I don't really consider myself a coin collector but when I travel to different countries I like to bring back coins from that country. If I just dumped those coins in the shoe box it would be quite tedious to look through all the coins to find a Tanzanian shilling or Malaysian 20 sen coin (about the size of a nickel). Instead, I have a separate box that has all "interesting" coins I've collected. Most of those coins have little monetary value, but are just tokens of remembrance (i.e. the very definition of a souvenir) of my visits to those places. The souvenirs page on my profile, and the digital souvenirs I've acquired for that page, is like my foreign coin box. It's a place I can go to view my tokens of rememberance.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing souvenirs for completing a set of caches. I like to do GeoTours. (I really like what the Lane County Oregon folks have done, four different GeoTours, all regular sized caches, and well maintained.) Having a souvenir for completing a GeoTour (or any set of caches for that matter) would be nice.

Who decides whether or not a series of cache is worthy of a souvenir? A Geotour is not a specific cache type, nor is any other series of caches. I have three caches based on a common theme and have a similar name. Should I be able to award a souvenir to someone that has found all three? What you're proposing would not only require some new software development but some curation by "someone" to determine which sets of caches qualify as an achievement and which do not. Who is going to do that?

Edited June 7, 2014 by NYPaddleCacher

June 10, 2014

I am not a fan of souvenirs, mainly because they are nothing more than a different way to view what is already available. Did I cache in August? That info is already available. Have I been to HQ, again that can be checked. What countries and states have I cached in? Already available.

Not exactly. I have found caches in 8 countries where a souvenir is *not* available. Actually only a small percentage of all countries have a souvenir available. I'd rather see GS add souvenirs for more countries then create achievement souvenirs.

I agree, if GS is going to do country souvenirs, they should do them for all countries.

However, I can see all of the countries on the maps on my statistics page.

I see souvenirs sort of like collecting coins. I have a shoe box full of coins that I acquire as loose change from day to day purchases. When my pocket starts to get full I just dump all those coins in the box. Each coin in the box might be equated to a found it log on a cache. FInding a specific coin in that box would't be that easy. I don't really consider myself a coin collector but when I travel to different countries I like to bring back coins from that country. If I just dumped those coins in the shoe box it would be quite tedious to look through all the coins to find a Tanzanian shilling or Malaysian 20 sen coin (about the size of a nickel). Instead, I have a separate box that has all "interesting" coins I've collected. Most of those coins have little monetary value, but are just tokens of remembrance (i.e. the very definition of a souvenir) of my visits to those places. The souvenirs page on my profile, and the digital souvenirs I've acquired for that page, is like my foreign coin box. It's a place I can go to view my tokens of rememberance.

That being said, I wouldn't mind seeing souvenirs for completing a set of caches. I like to do GeoTours. (I really like what the Lane County Oregon folks have done, four different GeoTours, all regular sized caches, and well maintained.) Having a souvenir for completing a GeoTour (or any set of caches for that matter) would be nice.

Who decides whether or not a series of cache is worthy of a souvenir? A Geotour is not a specific cache type, nor is any other series of caches. I have three caches based on a common theme and have a similar name. Should I be able to award a souvenir to someone that has found all three? What you're proposing would not only require some new software development but some curation by "someone" to determine which sets of caches qualify as an achievement and which do not. Who is going to do that?

If you wish to award someone an achievement souvenir for completing a series of caches, I don't see why you shouldn't be allowed to do so. It may involve a lot more work on your part, and possibly require a new web page for entry. At the least you would be required to create the souvenir for approval, and enter the list of caches that must be found.

That said, I really don't see individuals doing this, but there may be some organizations would. I use GeoTours as an example, because there are groups behind them. For a number of these, they are already collecting this data, and in some cases they are publishing it. They may be willing to take the time to apply an achievement souvenir. Anyhow, my point is that they are already doing the curating. And, GS may find the development time worthwhile, they can help with gathering the statistics, and can turn around and use those statistics to help market more GeoTours. (Boy, that Wet Pancake Touring Club group is a sucker for GeoTours. You can get them to spend lots of money in your town by creating a GeoTour.)

And, why limit these achievement souvenirs to just GeoTours. If any person or group wants to invest the time and energy into this, why not let them? In my neck of the woods, the WSGA is very active. Maybe they want to develop an achievement souvenir. Why not let them? However, your point is well taken, it will take time and energy. I just hate to see limitations in code that don't need to be there. GS can procedurally limit who they allow setup achievement souvenirs, but they should avoid hard coding that limitation.

Also, on the point of curating, in some cases this may be as simple as awarding the achievement souvenir if a person has completed more than x number of the caches from a list. As you well know, that can be scripted, by GS preferably. Outside of the initial setup in this case, the only other work is a mechanism to archive the achievement souvenir when it can no longer be achieved.

1.1k · June 10, 2014

My thoughts were really on the lines that when you have reached 100, 200, 300, 500 etc. Caches you get a souvernir not for doing a series of Caches.

14k · June 10, 2014

I am not a fan of souvenirs, mainly because they are nothing more than a different way to view what is already available. Did I cache in August? That info is already available. Have I been to HQ, again that can be checked. What countries and states have I cached in? Already available.

Not exactly. I have found caches in 8 countries where a souvenir is *not* available. Actually only a small percentage of all countries have a souvenir available. I'd rather see GS add souvenirs for more countries then create achievement souvenirs.

I agree, if GS is going to do country souvenirs, they should do them for all countries.

However, I can see all of the countries on the maps on my statistics page.

I can't on mine. I've found three caches in Singapore and a few in Malaysia. Since GS uses the same basemap for Asia as they do for the world map. Maybe if I had a much bigger monitor I could see it, or if I had not found caches in Malaysia, but I can't tell from just looking at the map that I found caches in Singapore (although it does appear in the text list). The Europe map isn't much better. I barely tell that I haven't found any caches in Luxembourg, only because I've found caches in surrounding countries. I can't make out the boundaries of Liechtenstein, Andorra, or Monaco though.

Also, on the point of curating, in some cases this may be as simple as awarding the achievement souvenir if a person has completed more than x number of the caches from a list. As you well know, that can be scripted, by GS preferably. Outside of the initial setup in this case, the only other work is a mechanism to archive the achievement souvenir when it can no longer be achieved.

There would have to be two levels of curation. One would be whether or not someone has qualified for the achievement, the other would be whether or not the achievement should even be recognized. Someone at GS would have to be tasked with taking on that second role. I don't think we can assume that GS has the resources to add the amount workload this might require to someones plate, which mean's they'd have to hire someone to take on that role. I also don't think we can accurately speculate how difficult it would be to integrate achievement souvenirs into an existing system without a good understanding of their code base. Creating a form on web page is easy. It's the backend process that could get really complicated.

I'm really not against the idea of achievement based souvenirs, but I'm also trying to be realistic on what it would take to do it. As you may know there are quite a few geotours promotions caches on the site, and many caches the are clearly commercial in nature. Those exist only because some entity *paid* GS for the right to have them listed. If some organization want's to create an achievement based souvenir, they're probably going to have to come up with enough money to convince GS to allocate resources to make it happen.

13.7k · June 10, 2014

My thoughts were really on the lines that when you have reached 100, 200, 300, 500 etc. Caches you get a souvernir not for doing a series of Caches.

"Rack-up the points to go to the next level. We'll award a souvi so you can show everyone you did it".

- No thanks.

Games get points.

- And yeah, I realize that caching has been steering that way for some time.

This is a hobby for me.

1.1k · June 10, 2014

My thoughts were really on the lines that when you have reached 100, 200, 300, 500 etc. Caches you get a souvernir not for doing a series of Caches.

"Rack-up the points to go to the next level. We'll award a souvi so you can show everyone you did it".

- No thanks.

Games get points.

- And yeah, I realize that caching has been steering that way for some time.

This is a hobby for me.

To be truthful, I wasnt thinking about myself. I just go out and find Caches. It was just a thought I had. If there are achievement coins that you can buy why not have an achievement Souvenir that could be an official award. It seems to be a thought that shouldnt have been spoken written.

8k · June 10, 2014

[double post]

Edited June 10, 2014 by tozainamboku

8k · June 10, 2014

My thoughts were really on the lines that when you have reached 100, 200, 300, 500 etc. Caches you get a souvernir not for doing a series of Caches.

"Rack-up the points to go to the next level. We'll award a souvi so you can show everyone you did it".

- No thanks.

Games get points.

- And yeah, I realize that caching has been steering that way for some time.

This is a hobby for me.

The site already awards milestones. If you find 100, 200, 300, etc. caches you see your milestones. You can even alter the cache that is displayed for your milestone to account for caches logged out of order, etc.

I wouldn't think a souvi for milestones is any more or less than a souvi for finding a cache on some "special" date, or finding a cache in some "special" country. If you're like me, and find the souvis are utterly without value, you wouldn't even look at the souvi page. If someone wants to look at their souvies that's their choice.

What some people do is save a special cache to find for their milestones. Even I used to do it. This lets them commemorate a milestone with an experience. This is much more valuable to some people than an inane pixel badge displayed in the profile. For those who need a memento to remind them of the experience, they can go to their milestones list and see the cache they found. Then can even go back to the log and read what they wrote about it at the time.

Edited June 10, 2014 by tozainamboku

June 12, 2014

I've read some negative tones to the suggestion, which sheds light on the complexity of our competitiveness or entitled reasons for geocaching. :blink: Obviously, we all have our own reasons for the hunt which sheds light on our character. Geocaching.com uses these badges as marketing tools to be honest. Souvenirs are directly meant to change or influence a persons geocaching nature/objectives. Whether that brings excitement or manipulation to achieve these badges, once again reflects the person.

I see the virtual pictures as just what they are called "souvenirs". Like girl/boy scout badges you have on your profile. Personally, I find them rewarding and visually appealing. Little snapshots of where, when, and what cache a person/friend had discovered intentionally or by chance. The art attached to each state is wonderful. I appreciate the effort geocache.com put into these trivial trinkets.

Despite many grumbles from grumpy cachers, it was a great idea speakers-corner. Don't let them get you down. :laughing:

June 14, 2014

I agree and I would also like to know how I can get more souvenirs besides going to another state or province.

I love getting souvenirs

FireGirl75

4.8k · June 15, 2014

I agree and I would also like to know how I can get more souvenirs besides going to another state or province.

I love getting souvenirs

FireGirl75

Link for reference:

Souvenirs

Most of the available souvenirs are geographically based, or Event/Date based (which are no longer available due to the time limitation). The first category of souvenir requires some traveling, and the second just depends if you're alert and keep an eye/ear out for new additions. I guess that's the *marketing* aspect of souvenirs that WanderingKoda was referring to

7.8k · June 16, 2014

I agree and I would also like to know how I can get more souvenirs besides going to another state or province.

I love getting souvenirs

FireGirl75

Link for reference:

Souvenirs

Most of the available souvenirs are geographically based, or Event/Date based (which are no longer available due to the time limitation). The first category of souvenir requires some traveling, and the second just depends if you're alert and keep an eye/ear out for new additions. I guess that's the *marketing* aspect of souvenirs that WanderingKoda was referring to

That Help Center page is neither up-to-date nor complete.

This one, to the best of my knowledge and ability, is: Souvenirs

</shameless plug>

:lol:

[FEATURE] Achievement Souvenirs

Recommended Posts

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Link to comment

Join the conversation