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Please read the Release Notes of May 5, 2015

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AustinMN

+AustinMN

Posted
Posted

As a software developer with over 35 years of experience, I think I understand what is happening here.

 

Developers, especially lead developers, are incapable of imagining that their ideas can be terrible. So when they fall flat, it must be the stupid user's fault, and the stupid user needs to be forced to use my wonderful idea, and if they still don't like it, well, that's too bad, because they are going to have to like it.

 

It's my idea, after all, and so how could it be terrible?

 

I have seen one case where I knew the project was going in that direction, and it nearly brought down the company. A word of warning, however, when you see this happening. If you speak up, you will be blamed for the failure.

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GeoBain

+GeoBain

Posted
Posted

As a software developer with over 35 years of experience, I think I understand what is happening here.

 

Developers, especially lead developers, are incapable of imagining that their ideas can be terrible. So when they fall flat, it must be the stupid user's fault, and the stupid user needs to be forced to use my wonderful idea, and if they still don't like it, well, that's too bad, because they are going to have to like it.

 

It's my idea, after all, and so how could it be terrible?

 

I have seen one case where I knew the project was going in that direction, and it nearly brought down the company. A word of warning, however, when you see this happening. If you speak up, you will be blamed for the failure.

 

I think you could be right. I've experienced it myself. It is hard to moth ball something you've put a lot of work into.

 

But I like to think that they are linking to all cache pages in hopes of forcing more people to try it out and provide feedback so it can be improved.

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niraD

+niraD

Posted
Posted

I don't hate it, but I think it seems a bit premature. After all, the Message Center still claims to be a beta test.

 

Perhaps something like this would be better:

 

A cache by AnyCacheOwner     Contact owner via email or via Message Center (Beta)     Hidden : 2011-01-23

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Seaglass Pirates

+Seaglass Pirates

Posted
Posted

I love it how can you not -

 

Can see a problem with a cache - take smartphone photo and drop it into message centre message. Can't do that with the email facility. You have to wait till they reply and hope they include email. Also it makes earth cache evidence easy.

 

Some non varified scu ... person ... has your TB ... no longer can they hide behind non varified. You can message them. Or message them if they have another problem you could help with.

 

No requirement to have two windows open with email facility. All happens with one log in via geocaching. Easier.

 

I would say a read receiept would be good. Like (and this hurts to say it) iMessage.

 

One down side is that it's linked live. Lose your signal and it all goes away. So if that's the case is it eating into data. It happened to us mid message writing over the weekend.

 

But I hope it stays because it works the way we use geocaching.

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cezanne

cezanne

Posted
Posted

Not sure if I "don't" like it because in a cachers profile it seems redundant since there is already a way to contact them. And I keep hitting the message center instead of the email when I want to only email them.

 

I guess that happens to many due to the design of the profile and it is part of the problem caused.

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cezanne

cezanne

Posted
Posted

Well, as long as I get notifications through email, I'll get back to them eventually.

 

If I receive a message I want to reply at my earliest convenience. I do not want to be bothered by sometimes annoyingly slow reponse times and having to try to reach

the Groundspeak server for 30 minutes or longer (this for example just happened and it happens much more frequently than with any other site I know).

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cezanne

cezanne

Posted
Posted

Some of the people do a heck of an imitation of a petulant child, hands over your ears screaming "I don't want to! You can't make me!"

 

There is not a single reasonable argument why someone in my situation should welcome the message center.

For example, today the site gc.com is incredibly slow for me and it takes a lot of patience to load specific pages of the site or the forum.

Making people wait and forcing them to make many attempts to be able to see whether a message they got and have been informed about contains something

of importance is not how I expect a responsible parent to behave (to stay within the realm of the language picture you are using above).

 

Most people here are willing to listen. It rather seems that Groundspeak does not listen to the many arguments against the current state of the message center they received.

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JL_HSTRE

+JL_HSTRE

Posted
Posted

There are legitimate criticisms of the message center and room for improvement. There are also numerous benefits to the message center.

 

The attitude of "I refuse to use it, even if someone else attempts to contact me through it, because I don't think it benefits me!" is not the least bit helpful either, dude.

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Team Microdot

+Team Microdot

Posted
Posted

There are legitimate criticisms of the message center and room for improvement. There are also numerous benefits to the message center.

 

The attitude of "I refuse to use it, even if someone else attempts to contact me through it, because I don't think it benefits me!" is not the least bit helpful either, dude.

 

Are you suggesting therefore that people who choose to exercise and express personal preferences deserve to be labelled a petulant child, hands over your ears screaming "I don't want to! You can't make me!"

 

I do hope not.

 

I expect you'd find that level of immaturity somewhat distasteful, as well as not the least bit helpful.

 

Hopefully this minor blip won't unduly affect the ongoing discussion.

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dprovan

+dprovan

Posted
Posted

Some of the people do a heck of an imitation of a petulant child, hands over your ears screaming "I don't want to! You can't make me!"

I get the feeling that this is exactly the reaction GS is having: you can safely ignore pages and pages of legitimate discussion about why a change makes no sense because opposition to change is always irrational.

 

There are legitimate criticisms of the message center and room for improvement. There are also numerous benefits to the message center.

If there are advantages to the message center, I don't understand them. But, of course, I'm ignoring the features they have added or have promised to add to the message center that they could just as easily add to the existing e-mail system, instead.

 

The attitude of "I refuse to use it, even if someone else attempts to contact me through it, because I don't think it benefits me!" is not the least bit helpful either, dude.

On the contrary, I think it's very important to remind everyone that people don't use things that they don't find useful, so it's a mistake to design the system with the assumption that a useless feature will be used. Yeah, it's a little over the top to threaten to ignore it out of spite, but the fact is that many people will never notice they have messages and won't care, so there's reason to think many messages will never be seen, read, or answered by people without any ax to grind.

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kunarion

+kunarion

Posted
Posted (edited)
If there are advantages to the message center, I don't understand them.

It doesn't require email. This is valuable due to the numerous problems with PM, such as whitelists, blacklists, and replies being killed at "“noreply@geocaching.com", unknown the sender. One important technical issue is, the MC requires the web site to be “up”. But so does PM, which additionally requires the site to process and send your email.

 

It doesn't require the member to first be “validated”. Well, I hope it doesn't, because that's a great advantage over the email system... a way to contact a member who just now set up the App, even if he has no idea what he's doing. So the MC fills a gap, but it's just a baby step for the new members.

 

MC displays what both parties wrote, for both to plainly see. No more “I sent them a bunch of emails, and still no reply!”, you both see the messages and replies, and it will help settle disputes over who didn't send what.

 

Continue to send messages using PM, and if that's working fine for you, keep using PM. But in most cases don't use PM nor MC as your only communication platform. Send people your actual email address upon the first message, and the web site messaging issues are vanish. Send exactly one MC Message including your email address, and that's one less member to mess with MC. Yes, ask people to send to your email instead of PM or MC.

 

The MC also needs to work. There seem to be a lot of problems with it, such as “send message” being blocked in some cases, such as the fake MC “web link” in unverified Profiles. The MC is just a plain scrolling roll of text, like Facebook (yuk), like an old-fashioned chat room. And text gets hidden or scrolls away. If you like email that can be organized and searched, it's bad as a database of info. So it's just another way to communicate, with the bonus of being a great way to allow GS to settle disputes, and to allow two members to settle it themselves before it even gets to GS.

 

But it's painfully obvious that the same people complaining that “there's no way to contact Geocachers” are also in here refusing to use a way to contact other Geocachers. I'm starting to think Joshism has a point. :anibad:

Edited by kunarion
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Team Microdot

+Team Microdot

Posted
Posted

But it's painfully obvious that the same people complaining that “there's no way to contact Geocachers” are also in here refusing to use a way to contact other Geocachers. I'm starting to think Joshism has a point. :anibad:

 

There is a fair point in there but if Joshism was making it, the way he chose to convey it was rather unfortunate.

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cezanne

cezanne

Posted
Posted

One important technical issue is, the MC requires the web site to be “up”. But so does PM, which additionally requires the site to process and send your email.

 

The site could be up and users in the US or in the UK might have a fast connection while many users in continental Europe can hardly use the site even if they are already logged in.

Mails are sent via other channels and reach these people quickly and even if they don't under special circumstances then it at least you are not in the annoying situation to

receive the notification that someone sent you a message and having no chance to decide whether it's something very urgent (e.g. someone needs help at a cache and will leave in 15 minutes)

or something harmless like "thank you for your nice photos you uploaded to your log".

 

It doesn't require the member to first be “validated”. Well, I hope it doesn't, because that's a great advantage over the email system... a way to contact a member who just now set up the App, even if he has no idea what he's doing. So the MC fills a gap, but it's just a baby step for the new members.

 

That still would be possible if there existed the choice to opt out of the MC. Those new members will not do that.

 

MC displays what both parties wrote, for both to plainly see. No more “I sent them a bunch of emails, and still no reply!”, you both see the messages and replies, and it will help settle disputes over who didn't send what.

 

That's also a big weakness. I do not want that people at Groundspeak can see what gets sent to me and what I sent, not even for a single message per user.

 

But it's painfully obvious that the same people complaining that “there's no way to contact Geocachers” are also in here refusing to use a way to contact other Geocachers. I'm starting to think Joshism has a point. :anibad:

 

In all the >12 years I'm into caching noone could complain that I could not be contacted and did not react quickly. There exists no reason to impose a hated way of being contacted on me.

They could offer the MC for those who want to be contacted that way and add the option to add images to the old system.

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kunarion

+kunarion

Posted
Posted (edited)

The site could be up and users in the US or in the UK might have a fast connection while many users in continental Europe can hardly use the site even if they are already logged in.

Mails are sent via other channels and reach these people quickly and even if they don't under special circumstances then it at least you are not in the annoying situation to

receive the notification that someone sent you a message and having no chance to decide whether it's something very urgent (e.g. someone needs help at a cache and will leave in 15 minutes)

or something harmless like "thank you for your nice photos you uploaded to your log".

Whatever server difficulty affects MC also affects PM, only more so. Once the "MC" thing gets implemented, GS must ensure the site is not "down" (especially no more "the site will be down for maintenance"). So that will be interesting to see. :anicute:

 

And I also would like something in that email "from the MC". That's a great idea! There are at least 6 lines of text in the "notification", and I wouldn't mind if at least 4 of those lines contained text from the MC Message. Or, sure, some indication of the urgency. But just like PM, everyone must be careful to not send a reply directly, since that goes straight to the "noreply" trashbin.

 

But people also won't want a lot of identical messages. If I use the App to contact people using MC, both an email with message and a site MC Message will begin to confuse people. The message is there, I reply, and the email appears on the same phone about that time, containing the message again. I kind of think the MC was more of an "App" plan than an email plan. But both App and site are mixed together in MC, and there will need to be a balance.

 

That still would be possible if there existed the choice to opt out of the MC. Those new members will not do that.

Contact them upon the first message and send your real email address. Many can't send nor receive email thru PM. They're new.

 

That's also a big weakness. I do not want that people at Groundspeak can see what gets sent to me and what I sent, not even for a single message per user.

Then you're pretty much out of luck. That capability is in the PM system.

Edited by kunarion
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cezanne

cezanne

Posted
Posted

Whatever server difficulty affects MC also affects PM, only more so. Once the "MC" thing gets implemented, GS must ensure the site is not "down" (especially no more "the site will be down for maintenance"). So that will be interesting to see. :anicute:

 

The big problems that many users from continental Europe experience are neither problems with the servers at Groundspeak nor the servers on which they receive their e-mails.

The problem is the routing and e-mails are not treated in the same manner.

 

And I also would like something in that email "from the MC". That's a great idea! There are at least 6 lines of text in the "notification", and I wouldn't mind if at least 4 of those lines contained text from the MC Message. Or, sure, some indication of the urgency. But just like PM, everyone must be careful to not send a reply directly, since that goes straight to the "noreply" trashbin.

 

The issue is that the current system is not capable of sending the message or parts of it.

Moreover, I never ever sent something to the trash bin. I do know how to use e-mail.

 

Contact them upon the first message and send your real email address.

 

That's a whole lot of work and still some will accidentally click on the wrong link in the system when they are in a hurry.

I often get messages and not only with respect to the caches I own. There are for example also some people living in my area who do not know much German

and ask me for help with some caches or ask me something about my logs (I log in English).

 

Then you're pretty much out of luck. That capability is in the PM system.

 

Not systematically - I do not think that right now they keep all the messages until infinity (e.g. I do not think that they still have the messages that have been sent to me ten years ago).

I rather guess that right now they have a sort of log file only where only some IT experts can work with while with the new system it just suffices to spoof log-in or have the right to see everything.

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narcissa

+narcissa

Posted
Posted

MC displays what both parties wrote, for both to plainly see. No more “I sent them a bunch of emails, and still no reply!”, you both see the messages and replies, and it will help settle disputes over who didn't send what.

 

This pre-supposes that people will check the messages in the first place. I don't use the app. I only visit the site to download and log caches. It's not Facebook or Twitter - I'm not checking it with any regularity. There's a good chance I'll inadvertently ignore or forget about messages even though that isn't my intention.

 

There are actually THREE different ways that geocachers might reach me - the old email method through the site, the forum message system, and the new message centre. That's a little silly.

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kunarion

+kunarion

Posted
Posted (edited)
There are actually THREE different ways that geocachers might reach me - the old email method through the site, the forum message system, and the new message centre. That's a little silly.

Of the three, an Unverified Member can use only the new Message Center. I tested that just now. There may be work-arounds, and previous Unverified may be grandfathered, not sure. But if people can't even figure out how to "Verify", they'll definitely have trouble getting to the Forum.

 

As to why they can't manage to "verify", that's reasonable to ask. The web site now blocks Unverified Members from access to caches. Strangely, they can still use the Intro App. I'm guessing the web site thing is more of a Spam prevention thing. Once at the MC, they can use that in any system, although MC is definitely made for the App. Yeah, and for Facebook people who like to type and have it immediately scroll away into who knows where. I've heard that Facebook is popular, although it's practically impossible to communicate using it. Whatever "MC" GS settles upon, I still would like it to be not like Facebook. But ya can't have everything.

 

Wait a minute. Facebook is completely unnecessary, or it was since there were tons of very active specialized "Forums" when it came along. Twitter allows you to type a sentence of like five whole words at once. A little silly indeed. I don't get it. Maybe it's because it's available "on the smartphone". But now that the "Message Center" has that sort of thing, we know it will garner world-wide popularity. Whoo-hoo.

Edited by kunarion
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narcissa

+narcissa

Posted
Posted
There are actually THREE different ways that geocachers might reach me - the old email method through the site, the forum message system, and the new message centre. That's a little silly.

Of the three, an Unverified Member can use only the new Message Center. I tested that just now. There may be work-arounds, and previous Unverified may be grandfathered, not sure. But if people can't even figure out how to "Verify", they'll definitely have trouble getting to the Forum.

 

As to why they can't manage to "verify", that's reasonable to ask. The web site now blocks Unverified Members from access to caches. Strangely, they can still use the Intro App. I'm guessing the web site thing is more of a Spam prevention thing. Once at the MC, they can use that in any system, although MC is definitely made for the App. Yeah, and for Facebook people who like to type and have it immediately scroll away into who knows where. I've heard that Facebook is popular, although it's practically impossible to communicate using it. Whatever "MC" GS settles upon, I still would like it to be not like Facebook. But ya can't have everything.

 

Wait a minute. Facebook is completely unnecessary, or it was since there were tons of very active specialized "Forums" when it came along. Twitter allows you to type a sentence of like five whole words at once. A little silly indeed. I don't get it. But now that the "Message Center" has that sort of thing, we know it will garner world-wide popularity. Whoo-hoo.

 

The comparison was more about the way I use the sites, not the relative usefulness of those sites. They are all useful to me in different ways. The key point is that I'll peruse Twitter or Facebook a few times a day, so I see notifications when they pop up. I don't go to Geocaching.com several times a day. I go there to get caches, and I go there to log caches. That's it. I'm not just there clicking around aimlessly, and I won't notice notifications very quickly if at all.

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kunarion

+kunarion

Posted
Posted (edited)
I go there to get caches, and I go there to log caches. That's it. I'm not just there clicking around aimlessly, and I won't notice notifications very quickly if at all.

The info pops right up on your smartphone, no aimlessness needed. It's definitely more of a chore on the web site, especially since using the web site means you're not using a smartphone, and because you aren't, you can do email, PM, Forums, everything with ease, much of which is in no way optimized for a tiny phone screen. The MC is custom-made for the App-happy populous.

 

I've been switching to the Android tablet for the MC testing. MC is kinda pointless the way I use it... sitting at a desktop PC for everything else Geocaching, then starting the App to view a message. But for people who are surgically attached to their phone (most everybody), it's perfect. OK, in theory it would be perfect. There's a lot wrong with MC now, and not just its Facebookness. But If GS changes even one tiny thing, they must update everything all at once to match. So I don't exactly know how they could fix it, if they wanted to.

Edited by kunarion
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narcissa

+narcissa

Posted
Posted
I go there to get caches, and I go there to log caches. That's it. I'm not just there clicking around aimlessly, and I won't notice notifications very quickly if at all.

The info pops right up on your smartphone, no aimlessness needed. It's definitely more of a chore on the web site, especially since using the web site means you're not using a smartphone, and because you aren't, you can do email, PM, Forums, everything with ease, much of which is in no way optimized for a tiny phone screen. The MC is custom-made for the App-happy populous.

 

I've been switching to the Android tablet for the MC testing. MC is kinda pointless the way I use it... sitting at a desktop PC for everything else Geocaching, then starting the App to view a message. But for people who are surgically attached to their phone (most everybody), it's perfect. OK, in theory it would be perfect. There's a lot wrong with MC now, and not just its Facebookness. But If GS changes even one tiny thing, they must update everything all at once to match. So I don't exactly know how they could fix it, if they wanted to.

 

I don't use my smartphone for geocaching unless I'm really in a pinch. I don't have the app on my phone.

 

If I'm looking at other things on my smartphone it's still kind of aimless because my phone is always silent and I have push notifications shut off to save battery life. The only notifications I get on my phone without retrieving them on purpose are text messages and phone calls. I'm not going to get the app or start visiting the site to check messages.

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fbingha

+fbingha

Posted
Posted

I have no problem with it as long as I get an email when I have received a new message.

 

It isn't the popular choice here but I would prefer to keep all of my geocaching correspondence in one place on this website.

 

I have no issue with Groundspeak wishing to drive more traffic through their site.

 

All that said, you really need to figure out the site performance issue. This is the only website that takes several seconds for a response, only site that frequently has broken images.

 

Your database design is broken. Either throw more hardware at it or fix the design.

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kunarion

+kunarion

Posted
Posted (edited)
I go there to get caches, and I go there to log caches. That's it. I'm not just there clicking around aimlessly, and I won't notice notifications very quickly if at all.

The info pops right up on your smartphone,

No it doesn't. I don't use one.

:rolleyes: Nevermind.

Edited by kunarion
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