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Release Notes (Website: New Search) - March 11, 2015


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Can you tell me how to look for caches placed in a certain month? I was looking for caches placed in July and August of 2000????

 

On the old page and format... I was going state by state AND finding the caches I was looking for..

NOW I am having a great deal of problems climbing around this new setup and the &*! limits of number of caches that come up..

 

Goto search

click change filters

enter your state in the "search only in..." box.

click search

click "placed on".

Click it again.

 

and what was wrong with clicking the search by state then clicking date placed? it was much easier

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So they didn't even add the ability to run a PQ using the mapped results?

Does Groundspeak understand what beta testing is? You give people a sneak peek at what you're developing, they give you feedback about some of the problems or limitations and you use that information to make the finished product better. It doesn't look they changed a thing from the "test" version, despite plenty of members offering up useful advice on ways to improve it. Pretty disappointing.

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How do I get back to "Classic Search"???

I am planning an out of state trip and need to quickly find the GC code and location of the oldest and search a few other parameters that used to be very straightforward with a simple click or two on the column headers.

I must also protest the large format design of the completed search - the page only displays a few caches and you must scroll down the page to view more search results rather than see the entire page without scrolling.

These new and unnecessary changes are not intuitive, not user friendly, and quite frankly I do not have the time right now to re-educate myself to use your website.

At this point in time I am greatly disappointed. It looks like two little geo-pups won't be able to plan any cache finds on this roadtrip :-(

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Please go back to the old Hide and Seek which worked well. Where is the Hidden by, Found by easy category. These will often not be in the map area that comes uo.Where is the toggle bar on te side of te map which saved a lot of time changing your filters. The map is not easy to read. When I am away from home, I dont want or need te map of that area coming up.Please consider all the feedback and act accordingly.

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Don't worry about changing it. As people will be leaving the site in droves it won't really be needed.

 

The search assumes that people have some knowledge before using it. They will just take one look, be completely puzzled and leave in disgust.

 

You presume that people will make the same assumptions you have, you have expertise that they don't.

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The new search is a step back in defining searches and in usability.

I can't search caches by their name. Searching for caches hidden by a specific user can't searched for.

I have to click on the search-button, pressing the enter-key does not start the search. There is a filter-button but on clicking it nothing happens.

 

If I enter a GC-code to search for a cache I get 2002 results although this GC-code is unique!

 

The result is hard to read. Its two wide and it makes it hard to see one line of the result. Compare this with the 'old' design where each row can be easily identified.

 

I can't believe that the people who had a preview on this search commented on these bugs. I just needed 5 minutes to find them.

 

Please make the search useable bevor You bring it in production.

 

THX

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What a bunch of crap. The one thing G$ is good at is making it impossible for basic members to do that one little thing. G$ is making it firmly clear that they only want premium memberships.

Before this horrible search update even a basic member could search on a geocache title, geocache user name, etc. Now that's all gone!!! signalmad.gif It's a shame that everything has to go for the big money!!!

Edited by RHCV
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In an attempt to add some new features you have taken away some of the features I find most useful. I can no longer search by State and see all the newest caches. I also used the State search to see all upcoming Events. Now I can't find all the events in my State. Bring back the old search capability and make the new stuff an additional option. It has made everything much worse for me. I don't like it at all!

 

The types of searches you mention are possible if you omit an origin and instead add a filter for the region you want to search on. For example, use this query for the newest caches in Massachusetts:

 

https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?r=22&sort=PlaceDate&asc=False

 

PLEASE read the two posts above, then consider that MOST of us who geocache do NOT want to make this our primary technological field of study and research.

 

When you are dealing, for the most part, with HOBBY geocachers ... you obviously bypassed one basic rule: K I S S ...

 

There are far more important things in my life than remembering to add this, delete that, leave that other field empty, don't enter a region, unless you mean a country, then enter something else unless you change the field to another choice, omit the filter unless you enter a different cache type ... then it works ... :blink::blink:

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Before this horrible search update even a basic member could search on a geocache title, geocache user name, etc. Now that's all gone!!!

 

Actually it is not yet really gone, but one needs to know the commands calling the old routines.

 

Maybe someone can write a Greasemonkey tool - that would help also PMs who want to use the old search and want the results in the old form.

Most of the things are doable via such workarounds (not all).

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Before this horrible search update even a basic member could search on a geocache title, geocache user name, etc. Now that's all gone!!!

 

Actually it is not yet really gone, but one needs to know the commands calling the old routines.

 

Maybe someone can write a Greasemonkey tool - that would help also PMs who want to use the old search and want the results in the old form.

Most of the things are doable via such workarounds (not all).

 

Where are we going to if one has to use external scripts to reach something that should be there standard in the first place???

The only thing that G$ is interested in is their Premium members. The don't care about those basic members. At least that is what it looks like.

 

Also this whole thing is looking just the same as in the testing phase (for premium members). We could give feedback and information to G$. A lot of users gave very usable information, but did G$ listen? did they change anything? Nope they didn't. Just like many times (all of the time) they gave us the feeling that our input matters, but it doesn't!

 

Sometimes I really don't understand their policy and their way of doing things for the website and the geocaching community.

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In live in a small country and i when a search geocaches i do it for all the country, but now with this new type of search i cannot do this and as so i'm not aware of events that could take place outside the 30 mi radius, that's important for me because if i see an interesting event i plan my geocaching tour accordingly.

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So they didn't even add the ability to run a PQ using the mapped results?

Does Groundspeak understand what beta testing is? You give people a sneak peek at what you're developing, they give you feedback about some of the problems or limitations and you use that information to make the finished product better. It doesn't look they changed a thing from the "test" version, despite plenty of members offering up useful advice on ways to improve it. Pretty disappointing.

 

Actually, they did make a fairly significant changed based on feedback. Several people, including me, had ask for the results to be sorted by distance to ones home location when a locationless search was performed. That was something that I had asked for in the old search and although the new search initially didn't have it, it was added after the additional feedback.

 

I think it's still a work in progress and there are some things I don't like but, overall, I think it's an improvement and just throwing away all the work they've put into it would be as waste. There have been a lot of harsh comments so far. I don't think there is anything wrong with criticism but it would be nice if people tried to be more constructive and didn't just say "I hate the new search. Change it back or I'm going to archive all my caches."

 

Since I'm not a basic member I don't know how it works for a basic member but it would be nice to see some constructive criticism on how it could better for basic members.

 

 

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So they didn't even add the ability to run a PQ using the mapped results?

Does Groundspeak understand what beta testing is? You give people a sneak peek at what you're developing, they give you feedback about some of the problems or limitations and you use that information to make the finished product better. It doesn't look they changed a thing from the "test" version, despite plenty of members offering up useful advice on ways to improve it. Pretty disappointing.

 

Actually, they did make a fairly significant changed based on feedback. Several people, including me, had ask for the results to be sorted by distance to ones home location when a locationless search was performed. That was something that I had asked for in the old search and although the new search initially didn't have it, it was added after the additional feedback.

 

I think it's still a work in progress and there are some things I don't like but, overall, I think it's an improvement and just throwing away all the work they've put into it would be as waste. There have been a lot of harsh comments so far. I don't think there is anything wrong with criticism but it would be nice if people tried to be more constructive and didn't just say "I hate the new search. Change it back or I'm going to archive all my caches."

 

Since I'm not a basic member I don't know how it works for a basic member but it would be nice to see some constructive criticism on how it could better for basic members.

 

 

 

Constructive criticism? It's not that hard for GS to know what they have done. Again maybe this was the whole point of all of this. Everybody has to get a premium membership or get lost.

Normally I'm a premium member. For temporarily reasons I'm not for about two weeks. Now I really know what I'm missing. As for the new search GS took away almost everything that was possible in the old search feature for basic members. For instance a basic member could search on a geocacher nickname "Hidden by". Now that's gone. And that's just one of the things they made premium member only.

 

In the past there was a very good leverage between basic and premium members. Now the most leverage is on premium members. For short: get a premium membership or get lost. No problem ... there are a lot of other geocaching websites that provide useful stuff without paying and maybe they will rise in numbers from now of on.

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The new search-features are terrible, horribly! How can a normal human understand it? I don´t. Filter here and Filter there, why has it to be so much complicated, it was self-explaining in the past. Please bring it back, the new version may be an option for "profis". Like above written:"Bring back the old search capability and make the new stuff an additional option. It has made everything much worse for me. I don't like it at all!" So my opinion, too

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The 30 mile limit makes this nearly useless for me. I have found everything within 30 miles of my home. I would previously a couple of times a week look at all caches within 100 miles of my home and sort by date hidden to see what new caches had been hidden. Then, I would plan caching trips based on areas with new caches. The new format makes this impossible. I also dislike the new layout. The old list showed many more on a page and was quicker to sort through.

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Since I'm not a basic member I don't know how it works for a basic member but it would be nice to see some constructive criticism on how it could better for basic members.

 

Nothing works. You can not even search for caches in a country as all this is based on filters and no filtering is possible.

So when a basic member e.g. clicks on the links provided by Mountain10Bike the result will be nothing, just the suggestion to become a PM.

 

You can only do searches based on coordinates within 30 miles and again without filtering. So I cannot even exclude the caches I have found with the new tool.

Of course right now I can use the old command with &f=1.

 

That's all what one could do. Pretty much worthless and all what was available has been taken away from the new function (right now it is still there, but one needs to know the old commands).

 

It's a bit hard to stay constructive when they take away very basic functionality without mentioning it and while celebrating what great job they did.

 

So you know all what a basic member can do with the new tool. COnstructive suggestions from your side?

 

Every PM who wonders what it is about, also can create a basic member account and then check out the new search tool and tell us here whether they think that the new tool still provides the basic functionality which has been promised to stay free of charge many years ago.

 

I can perfectly understand that they do not want to offer extra functionality to basic members. The most constructive suggestion I could make is to keep offering the old search in parallel. That also would help those PMs do not like the change.

If I understand the design behind the new system correctly, it would not be that easy to allow certain filters for basic members and others not.

So the old system is probably pretty much the only chance.

 

For example, even as PM I would not like the change - the search result lists are too colourful and do not appeal to me at all and what could be done with one command previously now needs a lot of clicking.

 

 

Some of the most prolific cache hiders in my area are basic members (many of them have been PMs previously but hardly go caching any longer or not at all).

They still maintain some very nice caches and they thus provide a great service to the community and thus to Groundspeak (who is dependent on cache hiders).

I'm not sure whether the decision to switch over to the new search tool was such a great decision.

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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I was quite disappointed after trying the release candidate a few weeks ago and submitted some feedback detailing the problems. All of the same problems seem to exist in the production release. Specifically, keyword searches do not work at all. No matter what parameters I try, it always yields the very useless "DNF" message. The distance box is totally inoperative. Sometimes it defaults to "10" and sometimes to blank. Regardless, I can't even get a cursor in that box in any browser I have tried.

 

I have heard from other users as well and all are frustrated.

 

The old search was extremely limited, but at least it worked!

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It was all fine and great that premium members were asked for their input on the new search beta application. Now, all of a sudden, here's this new search tool (or whatever you want to call it) thrown in our laps without even asking premium members to test drive it. The Powers that be decided this was a good thing for all and then it appeared....BAM! From comments I'm seeing here and on social media, most DO NOT like this new search tool. Why change from something so simple and easy to a convoluted hot mess? I'm seriously re-thinking continuing as a paid Premium member after my current membership runs out. The old search tool worked, was simple and efficient. It wasn't broke so who & why decided it needed fixing?

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I also dislike the new format. I haven't really had a chance to familiarize myself with it in great detail, but, my initial thoughts on it aren't good. One of the things I enjoyed doing was opening up the map and just scrolling around…looking for geo-art, or huge clusters/concentrations of caches that I could perhaps plan a day trip to visit. Whether that be near my home location, or just somewhere random. With this 30 mile radius limit…this is impossible to do (I think). Bleh...

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I also dislike the new format. I haven't really had a chance to familiarize myself with it in great detail, but, my initial thoughts on it aren't good. One of the things I enjoyed doing was opening up the map and just scrolling around…looking for geo-art, or huge clusters/concentrations of caches that I could perhaps plan a day trip to visit. Whether that be near my home location, or just somewhere random. With this 30 mile radius limit…this is impossible to do (I think). Bleh...

 

You can still do that. Just find a cache in the area you want to search in (or even go from your private profile, although that can take longer if you're searching farther away), and click on the geocaching maps from the cache page or your profile page.

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I also dislike the new format. I haven't really had a chance to familiarize myself with it in great detail, but, my initial thoughts on it aren't good. One of the things I enjoyed doing was opening up the map and just scrolling around…looking for geo-art, or huge clusters/concentrations of caches that I could perhaps plan a day trip to visit. Whether that be near my home location, or just somewhere random. With this 30 mile radius limit…this is impossible to do (I think). Bleh...

 

You can still do that. Just find a cache in the area you want to search in (or even go from your private profile, although that can take longer if you're searching farther away), and click on the geocaching maps from the cache page or your profile page.

 

Why does everything has to be so complicated when we had something easy to use before??? laughing.gif

There are a lot of workarounds for issues like this but I hope that it isn't GS's goal to drive everybody nuts with workarounds, external scripts, etc. The old search option was doing great!!! If GS wanted to give premium members an extra set of filter options they could have done that running next to the old search option not instead of it!!!

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Since I'm not a basic member I don't know how it works for a basic member but it would be nice to see some constructive criticism on how it could better for basic members.

 

Nothing works. You can not even search for caches in a country as all this is based on filters and no filtering is possible.

 

 

I have sympathy for basic members that lost functionality (I really do) with the new implementation but rather than seeing "I hate the new search, change it back or I'll quit" it might be more productive if the responses suggested how it could be sufficiently useful for basic members but not give away everything that a PM is paying for free.

 

 

So when a basic member e.g. clicks on the links provided by Mountain10Bike the result will be nothing, just the suggestion to become a PM.

 

You can only do searches based on coordinates within 30 miles and again without filtering. So I cannot even exclude the caches I have found with the new tool.

Of course right now I can use the old command with &f=1

 

 

I agree with you that providing URL rewriting suggestions is not going to be helpful for those not technically inclined. I'd rather see something like "we've acknowldeged your suggestion and will look at how to address it". The user of a web site shouldn't have to modify urls (even though I recently posted an example of how personally do it) in order to get the functionality that they want.

 

 

That's all what one could do. Pretty much worthless and all what was available has been taken away from the new function (right now it is still there, but one needs to know the old commands).

 

It's a bit hard to stay constructive when they take away very basic functionality without mentioning it and while celebrating what great job they did.

 

 

I don't think it's that difficult to be constructive. You can state, specifically, what is missing and suggest how to get it back. Completely throwing away work that has been done that *does* include a lot of functionality that PMs did not previously have isn't the only solution.

 

 

Every PM who wonders what it is about, also can create a basic member account and then check out the new search tool and tell us here whether they think that the new tool still provides the basic functionality which has been promised to stay free of charge many years ago.

 

 

I don't think I've ever seen a claim from GS that specific functionality will always be available for free. Although I don't condone taking away functionality for basic members, I won't hold them to a promise that they didn't make.

 

I can perfectly understand that they do not want to offer extra functionality to basic members. The most constructive suggestion I could make is to keep offering the old search in parallel. That also would help those PMs do not like the change.

 

The problem with that approach is that then they'd be supporting two parallel implementations. That requires more resources, or without them would likely mean that neither implementation would ever get improvements or bug fixes. As a software developer myself I understand that sometimes trying to support legacy code constrains what you can do with the system overall. It's happened to me more than a few times.

 

.

If I understand the design behind the new system correctly, it would not be that easy to allow certain filters for basic members and others not.

So the old system is probably pretty much the only chance.

 

I've done that sort of thing on numerous projects using role based permissions. I'm not going to speculate on how difficult it would be for GS to do that to allow specific filters because without access to their code I can't truly understand the design. I can speculate on the design but it's only going to be a guess.

 

 

For example, even as PM I would not like the change - the search result lists are too colourful and do not appeal to me at all and what could be done with one command previously now needs a lot of clicking.

 

As I wrote elsewhere, how the site "looks" is purely subjective. Some might find it too colorful, other might think that highlight content with different colors helps. Some might think the layout is too sparse while others might think it's tool cluttered. Being a PM has nothing to do with it. I agree that there are some usability issues (too much clicking), but some times an extra click means that you can click on something that you couldn't previously click on. For example, in the old search when searching by caches by name, we could not click on the "distance" column header. Now that we can do a location-less search that returns proximity data we can. Perhaps the default sort order of the results should be "placed on" when a location-less search is done, and that would still allows us make an extra click to sort by distance.

Edited by NYPaddleCacher
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I have sympathy for basic members that lost functionality (I really do) with the new implementation but rather than seeing "I hate the new search, change it back or I'll quit" it might be more productive if the responses suggested how it could be sufficiently useful for basic members but not give away everything that a PM is paying for free.

 

Most comments "I hate the new search" come from PMs.

 

I do not even have a use for the fancy filters they added.

 

What they offer right now in the new search tool for BMs is however completely useless.

 

The only thing I can do is a search around given coordinates within 30 km

- e.g.

https://www.geocaching.com/play/search/@47.0333,15.491667?origin=N%2047%C2%B0%2001.998%E2%80%B2%20E%2015%C2%B0%2029.5%E2%80%B2

this then gives me 812 caches most of which I have found or own.

 

That's all I can do with the tool.

 

No way to look at the new caches in the area. No way to look for those I have not found and do not own.

No way for say all Earthcaches, events etc.

 

So how this should be useful at all?

 

All what the new tool offers works apparently via filters and when one clicks on filters as basic member all are disfunctional and one gets the

suggested to upgrade.

 

 

 

 

 

That's all what one could do. Pretty much worthless and all what was available has been taken away from the new function (right now it is still there, but one needs to know the old commands).

 

It's a bit hard to stay constructive when they take away very basic functionality without mentioning it and while celebrating what great job they did.

 

 

I don't think it's that difficult to be constructive. You can state, specifically, what is missing and suggest how to get it back. Completely throwing away work that has been done that *does* include a lot of functionality that PMs did not previously have isn't the only solution.

 

Nearly everything what was possible with the old tool is missing as I explained above.

 

I have not coded the new tool, but I fear that they have no reasonable way of allowing certain filters to basic members and all other to premium members.

They would have needed a different design for doing e.g. country searches in my opionion to easily allow for this distinction.

 

I can hardly believe that they did not make the change on purpose and then it becomes even harder to make a constructive suggestion.

What happened and how it happened makes me think that they wanted to take away almost all useful functionality from basic members.

 

 

I don't think I've ever seen a claim from GS that specific functionality will always be available for free.

 

No, but the basic game. The current search cannot be called search at all and it is unusable for e.g. seeing which caches around ones home's coordinates one has not found.

Of course there are workarounds and I know how to use them. Many will not.

 

Many great caches come from basic members. Why should they be motivated to hide further caches if they cannot even make the most basic search commands?

 

The problem with that approach is that then they'd be supporting two parallel implementations. That requires more resources, or without them would likely mean that neither implementation would ever get improvements or bug fixes. As a software developer myself I understand that sometimes trying to support legacy code constrains what you can do with the system overall. It's happened to me more than a few times.

 

At least for the moment the old system exists and even if it some time it would be buggy, it were much better than nothing.

 

I've done that sort of thing on numerous projects using role based permissions. I'm not going to speculate on how difficult it would be for GS to do that to allow specific filters because without access to their code I can't truly understand the design. I can speculate on the design but it's only going to be a guess.

 

I somehow fear that the way they designed their code this would not be an easy thing to do.

You have proven also with respect to a lot of other issues that you have solutions for something which Groundspeak does not want/cannot address.

 

As I wrote elsewhere, how the site "looks" is purely subjective.

 

Yes, of course. To me it's horrible from every aspect, but it does not matter as the tool is useless for me anyway.

Edited by cezanne
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I'm wondering how this software was developed. Did you bring "real" geocachers in a room and discuss what they would like? Did you sit novice geocachers and experienced geocachers down in front of the new interface and count the keystrokes to accomplish a task. Then again, we all know what software comes out of the Seattle area (Click the Start button to shut down the computer).

 

I'm looking for novelty filters - like caches that haven't yet been found (have First Finder potential). Or caches that haven't been found in X number of months (or years). Both results sorted on distance from my location.

 

The problem I had was initially choosing, of the three choices, a Best Rated category. It wasn't clear that that main filter was influencing all my other choices, resulting in no hits. Once I hit the back button - again and again and again - I finally returned to that initial screen and was able to switch to "from my location" as the overriding umbrella. Then the search results made more sense.

 

Note that in the right middle panel of filters, at the top, you say Geocache Name contains .... But in the field to fill in, you have the suggestion Keyword. I'm assuming that means the cache author can assign keywords to a cache. But a keyword and a word contained in the name are two different things.

 

Also - and this may be the influence of "city" programmers. The issue of slowed down performance is one of too many selected hits. So why not make THAT the filter and not distance from a set location. Amazing but true, some of us live in areas where there is not the "cache every 0.1 mi." density. From some locations you can go much further than 30 miles before resulting in a long list of caches. Why not filter on number of hits - that's the issue - like give me up to 50 (sorted by distance) hits. The you can report the result like 50/78 - "I'm returning 50 of the closest hits out of 78 that matched the criteria."

 

Now if the actual finding of those hits causes a slow down, rather than reporting them on the page, you could do a First X (were X equals the limit) in you SQL query - assuming the record set is already sorted on distance.

 

Remember, because you have given this to the Premium members, you are most likely getting a bias of experienced geocachers, not novices.

 

If I were your programmer - who understands "humans" - I'd suggest that as choices and filters were added, a text "script" of what was selected could be built and displayed. So at the end (and while building) the user could see something like. "From my location, go out 20 miles, and look for all caches I haven't found, that are level 3 (or greater) in difficulty, and are mulitcaches.

 

Also, it seemed I have to completely reset some filters each time I visited the page. I'm guessing, as the finished version gets near, you may save those filters as preferences so they don't have to be reselected each time.

 

When I search, I am either searching for a cache I found long ago - what to see how it's doing and maybe review my original post - or I search for a cache in a area I'm about to visit - a different city or country. And then there is the meat and potatoes search for caches near home.

I really don't care about difficulty or type of cache so much. Single and Multi-caches have such a majority that eliminating other types makes little difference.

 

But it would be nice to select or remove Premium Members only status caches from the search results. Because I go out with non-premium geocachers and it hurts for them to find a cache with me an not be able to log it. I know the cache says Premium members only in the description, but sometimes that is missed.

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Mark me down as another PM who is not liking the new search function. Personally, I like the filters (for the most part) but I find the actual results very hard to look at and view. The previous listings page showed me when I had found a cache right under when it had been most recently found. This was really nice for checking on caches in my area, which I like to do. The new listins page seems intentionally stretched out and not very readable. I also do not see how to download a cache onto my gps without going into the cache page itself, something I could do on the older results page.

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Man oh man. The search function has to be one of the worst case scenarios one could imagine. When I plan an out of town trip I like to see caches along the route I'm taking by scrolling the map down what ever road I want to travel. Now that is impossible unless I put in a point every 30 miles out. Crazy and wrong. Things must be pretty slow at HQ to dream up this kind of stuff. Please , Please change it back or at least give an option to go to the old way. Horrible.

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I am a geocacher from Sweden, visiting Norway now and then. I have earlier used the option to seek for caches hidden in "country" and "province", e.g. Sweden+Stockholm or Norway+Telemark. The result used to be a list, starting with the newest caches in the "province" and ending with the oldest. Is this possible now for a basic member or even for a premium member? I would like to have this option back!

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I am a geocacher from Sweden, visiting Norway now and then. I have earlier used the option to seek for caches hidden in "country" and "province", e.g. Sweden+Stockholm or Norway+Telemark. The result used to be a list, starting with the newest caches in the "province" and ending with the oldest. Is this possible now for a basic member or even for a premium member? I would like to have this option back!

 

Using the old search commands it is at the moment still possible. You need to know the state code.

E.g.

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?State_id=263

works for my province.

With the country code you can search for the whole country (but not for the US).

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I am a geocacher from Sweden, visiting Norway now and then. I have earlier used the option to seek for caches hidden in "country" and "province", e.g. Sweden+Stockholm or Norway+Telemark. The result used to be a list, starting with the newest caches in the "province" and ending with the oldest. Is this possible now for a basic member or even for a premium member? I would like to have this option back!

 

When doing a country/state/province search the results are now ordered by proximity to your home locations. Just click on the "placed by" column header and you'll see newest to oldest.

 

 

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Although I see many negative aspects that seem regressive in the new search options, I do like one aspect. After you have done a search and then map it, the maps shows puzzles with corrected at the corrected position, rather than the original posted coords. This is an improvement in the new search function.

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I am a geocacher from Sweden, visiting Norway now and then. I have earlier used the option to seek for caches hidden in "country" and "province", e.g. Sweden+Stockholm or Norway+Telemark. The result used to be a list, starting with the newest caches in the "province" and ending with the oldest. Is this possible now for a basic member or even for a premium member? I would like to have this option back!

 

When doing a country/state/province search the results are now ordered by proximity to your home locations. Just click on the "placed by" column header and you'll see newest to oldest.

 

Memme can't do such searches. He is a basic member.

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I am a geocacher from Sweden, visiting Norway now and then. I have earlier used the option to seek for caches hidden in "country" and "province", e.g. Sweden+Stockholm or Norway+Telemark. The result used to be a list, starting with the newest caches in the "province" and ending with the oldest. Is this possible now for a basic member or even for a premium member? I would like to have this option back!

 

Using the old search commands it is at the moment still possible. You need to know the state code.

E.g.

http://www.geocachin...px?State_id=263

works for my province.

With the country code you can search for the whole country (but not for the US).

 

When I try that link I get 6193 results. Which event/cache is the closest? You can't tell without going to a map view, than zooming/panning the map until you find the icon closest to your location. With the new search you can just click on the "Distance" column header and the closest caches/events will pop to the top of the list.

 

 

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I am a geocacher from Sweden, visiting Norway now and then. I have earlier used the option to seek for caches hidden in "country" and "province", e.g. Sweden+Stockholm or Norway+Telemark. The result used to be a list, starting with the newest caches in the "province" and ending with the oldest. Is this possible now for a basic member or even for a premium member? I would like to have this option back!

 

Using the old search commands it is at the moment still possible. You need to know the state code.

E.g.

http://www.geocachin...px?State_id=263

works for my province.

With the country code you can search for the whole country (but not for the US).

 

When I try that link I get 6193 results. Which event/cache is the closest? You can't tell without going to a map view, than zooming/panning the map until you find the icon closest to your location. With the new search you can just click on the "Distance" column header and the closest caches/events will pop to the top of the list.

 

As the search command does not include coordinates, there is no closest cache. It just gives all caches in the province of Styria and the same can be done for Stockholm and Telemark.

I use this regularly to see which new caches have been published in Styria. I prefer to see a Styrian caches 120km away from me to seeing Slovenian caches much closer to me. I do not care

about how caching in Slovenia at all.

 

There is no doubt that the new search offers additional functionality to PMs (even though it is much harder to use for those who are not computer literate), but the new search

does not allow for any meaningful search at all for basic members and Memme is not a PM. Moreover, he asked for a result list where the newest cache comes first and that is exactly obtained

by what I posted. The bad thing is just that most probably those links will not work forever.

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No posts from any Lackey's since post #24, now we are at 80+.

Hopefully they are taking all the negative posts to heart, and do something to fix this problem.

Why would you take something that was functional and put something that doesn't quite work properly in its place?

I do like some of the aspects of the new search engine, but it definitely needs some attention.

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No posts from any Lackey's since post #24, now we are at 80+.

Hopefully they are taking all the negative posts to heart, and do something to fix this problem.

Why would you take something that was functional and put something that doesn't quite work properly in its place?

I do like some of the aspects of the new search engine, but it definitely needs some attention.

 

 

^^

THIS

 

 

the map search results and only show that search results great idea but why not just apply that to the existing search system ???

 

why try to reinvent the wheel?

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Why can't you people stop fixing things that are not broken?
Maybe because people keep asking for changes, changes that they cannot simply add to the existing system, changes that require the entire system to be redesigned. For example:

 

Improved Search function

Combining Finds with Friends

More features connected with friends

Additional Search Features Requested

[FEATURE] Allow filtering/searching on favorite points

 

But that's just a hunch...

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OK I tried to do a search for event, but it for only 30 miles from the location. Is there a way to get more distance. I know there more events near me but greater then 30 miles. And trying to look through the event page will take way too long.

 

Don't enter a location in the search bar on the Search page. Then click "Change Filters," deselect everything but Events, Add your state to "Search Only In..." and "Click Update Search."

 

You can bookmark the resulting URL for easy future reference.

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Why would you take something that was functional and put something that doesn't quite work properly in its place?

It actually does work very well. The biggest problem is that there isn't enough information provided so that users can know how to use it effectively. Once you know how to use it, it's much more powerful than the old search functions and can do most of the same things, albeit with a few more clicks.

 

...as long as you're a Premium member, of course...

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I'm wondering how this software was developed. Did you bring "real" geocachers in a room and discuss what they would like? Did you sit novice geocachers and experienced geocachers down in front of the new interface and count the keystrokes to accomplish a task. Then again, we all know what software comes out of the Seattle area (Click the Start button to shut down the computer).

 

 

Ooh, I know! Amazon? Yes, they're HQ is in Seattle and their use of filters/facets is extremely common mechanism for shopping sites. If they weren't to the first to use filters/facets they have been an industry leader in the use that technology.

 

Seriously. You're not honestly trying to argue that because Groundspeak is from the same general as Microsoft that their software development practice are comparable. If so, I have one word for you: iTunes

 

 

I'm looking for novelty filters - like caches that haven't yet been found (have First Finder potential). Or caches that haven't been found in X number of months (or years). Both results sorted on distance from my location.

 

 

Frankly, I hope that GS never factors "how will this help our users do challenge caches" into their design decisions.

 

The problem I had was initially choosing, of the three choices, a Best Rated category. It wasn't clear that that main filter was influencing all my other choices, resulting in no hits. Once I hit the back button - again and again and again - I finally returned to that initial screen and was able to switch to "from my location" as the overriding umbrella. Then the search results made more sense.

 

I was very actively engaged in the sneak/peak discussions and found that the more I used it, the more sense it made. There was a learning curve. There's a lot that GS could do to reduce the learning curve.

 

Note that in the right middle panel of filters, at the top, you say Geocache Name contains .... But in the field to fill in, you have the suggestion Keyword. I'm assuming that means the cache author can assign keywords to a cache. But a keyword and a word contained in the name are two different things.

 

Agreed. That's a minor change to a text string but wouldn't it be cool if cache owners *could* assign keywords that we could search on? Along the same lines, I think that "City, State, coordinates, GC code..." in the main search box might be confusing. Some see GC code and expect that they're just going to go directly to that cache page, when it actually just geocodes from the GC code to establish a set of lat/long coordinates for a proximity search. During the sneak peak someone suggested adding "Enter your location" above the search box to give a better clue to user for what the form was expecting, but guess that the suggestion didn't take.

 

They could also add a "I feel Lucky" button next to the form element but they only do that in Mountain View.

 

Also - and this may be the influence of "city" programmers. The issue of slowed down performance is one of too many selected hits. So why not make THAT the filter and not distance from a set location. Amazing but true, some of us live in areas where there is not the "cache every 0.1 mi." density. From some locations you can go much further than 30 miles before resulting in a long list of caches. Why not filter on number of hits - that's the issue - like give me up to 50 (sorted by distance) hits. The you can report the result like 50/78 - "I'm returning 50 of the closest hits out of 78 that matched the criteria."

 

I definitely agree with this and it's something that I mentioned on the first day we got to see the sneak peak. I live in a relatively cache sparse area but by no means is it a geocache wasteland. However, I've been to a place where there wasn't a single cache within 250 miles. For what it's worth, when executing SQL the number of results is specified as a limit after the results have met the specified criteria. I suggested a different approach. If you'll notice, when entering something into the search form, then selecting the Add Filters button, in the upper left hand corner it has "Searching near [some location]" is specified and the default proximity (10 miles for me) is set. Suppose that whenever the center point for the search changes (by typing something into the search form) that it executes a "show me the number for caches that this users (you must be logged in) has not found within 30 miles" and uses that value to set a maximum search radius. A select count(*) query is relatively fast as the result set only consists of a single integer. So, for example, if I type in San Jose, California which apparently has 1931 caches within 10 miles the maximum proximity would remain as 30 miles. However, if I put in San Jose, Costa Rica which only has 30 caches (and I've found 3 of them) it could apply a multipler that might, for example, allow me to see caches within 100 miles.

 

 

Now if the actual finding of those hits causes a slow down, rather than reporting them on the page, you could do a First X (were X equals the limit) in you SQL query - assuming the record set is already sorted on distance.

 

Remember, because you have given this to the Premium members, you are most likely getting a bias of experienced geocachers, not novices.

 

In hindsight, the sneak peak should have been shown to basic as well as premium members as the implementation is so vastly different for the different member types. When I was evaluating the new search during the sneak peak/feedback period I never once considered the possibility that basic members would see something different than what I was seeing. I was also under the assumption that when it went live that it would be more fully integrated into the system (see the "Map these results" fail).

 

 

If I were your programmer - who understands "humans" - I'd suggest that as choices and filters were added, a text "script" of what was selected could be built and displayed. So at the end (and while building) the user could see something like. "From my location, go out 20 miles, and look for all caches I haven't found, that are level 3 (or greater) in difficulty, and are mulitcaches.

 

That sort of filter chaining mechanism is pretty common and is something I've done with a couple of projects. One of them was on project for systems that have been installed in a couple dozen developing countries (mostly in Africa). The feedback that we've received on the usability of the system has been extremely positive (BTW, the funding for that project comes from a we'll known philanthropist from the Seattle area...)

 

Also, it seemed I have to completely reset some filters each time I visited the page. I'm guessing, as the finished version gets near, you may save those filters as preferences so they don't have to be reselected each time.

 

When I search, I am either searching for a cache I found long ago - what to see how it's doing and maybe review my original post - or I search for a cache in a area I'm about to visit - a different city or country. And then there is the meat and potatoes search for caches near home.

I really don't care about difficulty or type of cache so much. Single and Multi-caches have such a majority that eliminating other types makes little difference.

 

But it would be nice to select or remove Premium Members only status caches from the search results. Because I go out with non-premium geocachers and it hurts for them to find a cache with me an not be able to log it. I know the cache says Premium members only in the description, but sometimes that is missed.

 

That must be something that *you* missed. There *is* a filter that allows to select on "Premium"...."all"..."Basic". It even works how I would hope it would work. Selecting "Premium" only shows caches available to premium members. Selecting "Basic" only shows caches which are available to basic members (which is probably what you want for your scenario) and selecting all returns everything.

 

I am surprised that nobody has mentioned this so far but there is not filtering by attribute. Although this is something one can do with pocket queries, my concern is that once they add the ability to download the results in bulk from the search results, they'll remove pocket queries entirely and there are a lot of things we can do with a PQ that we can't do with the new search form.

 

 

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In hindsight, the sneak peak should have been shown to basic as well as premium members as the implementation is so vastly different for the different member types.

 

I happen to disagree. I do not think that in this case testing and sneak peak for basic members would have helped.

 

What can be done by basic members is a search that also can be done by PMs - so that will not have led to different comments.

 

As all the lost functionality is regarded, I mentioned already that I think that I did away with it on purpose and the silence reconfirms that.

When something happened unintentionally, they are typically quick in responding.

 

It's perfectly ok for me that the new functions and those functions that have been available only via PQs are reserved for PMs.

I do not expect to see the same as a PM, but I do expect that they do not pull the legs for basic members by announcing the new tool in such an enthusiastic

manner and not mentioning that the new tool is unusable for basic members with a single word.

I wasted 10 minutes yesterday night before I realized why the links for country searches produced a result for me saying about DNFs. At least this could have been avoided by a transparent communication policy.

Edited by cezanne
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Sad that new cachers will not know about events in their state

That's the biggest minus I see right now.

New basic cachers (that could/may become pm in the future...) aren't able to get the guidance that I always thought events provided.

With "Newest In..." no longer an option even from the dropdown any longer, I thought it odd (to say the least).

- That was the work-around folks were told to use, when they asked for it to be brought back onto the profile page.

 

Still got (so far) "Near Location - filter out finds" on the profile page to scroll forever with... :)

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I love the idea behind the new search; it's just like querying a database, which is what I've always wanted. It's getting closer to what I can do with GSAK on my own database.

 

Would like a more low-res-friendly format for the output and I'm eagerly awaiting the export-to-file functionality.

 

Maybe some "onboarding" videos and helpful hints to help people get the hang of it?

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