Search Results now identify GeoTour caches!

[+MissJenn]

Cross-posted from today's Release Notes:

 

See which geocaches belong to a GeoTour with the new geocache search. You can click through via the yellow box from the search results to learn more about the GeoTour.

Try it for yourself! https://www.geocaching.com/play/search

 

In the example below, I used GC4HD1M in the Search box.

 

 

See the original Release Notes.

[+gpsfun]

By the way, MissJenn, Happy Birthday!

 

Make it a weekend party!

 

-Brad

[+Wet Pancake Touring Club]

Yeah, I saw that in the release notes. I think it is a great idea.

 

Skye.

[+MissJenn]

Ha ha. Will do.

Thank you so much, gpsfun!

[+Intrepid Dyad]

now do the same with geotrails and it's a great thing.

 

honestly i feel geotrails should get some sort of special icon...or maybe just border around the standard icon....and be nice to have a nice filter for them.

 

apply this to geotours as well of course (geotours having like a shiny gold border around them maybe signalling them being super special)

 

then we will have an actual user friendly geotour and geotrail experience once we get out there and need to filter out the rest of the geocaches from the map view of the app.

 

of course that's my suggestion, but I would love to hear how fellow geocachers feel about my ideas. (for and against)

[+Wet Pancake Touring Club]

now do the same with geotrails and it's a great thing.

 

honestly i feel geotrails should get some sort of special icon...or maybe just border around the standard icon....and be nice to have a nice filter for them.

 

apply this to geotours as well of course (geotours having like a shiny gold border around them maybe signalling them being super special)

 

then we will have an actual user friendly geotour and geotrail experience once we get out there and need to filter out the rest of the geocaches from the map view of the app.

 

of course that's my suggestion, but I would love to hear how fellow geocachers feel about my ideas. (for and against)

I keeps track of geotrails (and GeoTours) with GSAK. I have a number of caches that are of special interest to me, including GeoTours and geotrails. I alter the cache name and add special codes before loading up my GPS. That way I have a way of selecting these special interest caches while on the road. However, with some geotrails, I ran into a problem. In a few cases, the geotrail included finding a set of random nearby caches. For example, one geotrail listed around 10 specific caches. But you had to find 15 caches total. The remaining 5 caches were any five caches within 5 miles of the sponsoring town.

 

The other thing is that Groundspeak has no explicit knowledge of geotrails. They are not involved in the process like they are with GeoTours. It's only through the good graces of Rock Chalk (as a person, and not as a Groundspeak employee) that there is even a list of geotrails in a single location.

 

As for me, I am against the idea of treating geotrails similar to GeoTours for two reasons. The first reason is because of the problem illustrated above. Geotrails don't necessarily have a specific list of caches. And second, my own experience is that GeoTours are better maintained than geotrails. Now, that is just my experience, I know of others that have the exact opposite opinion.

[+Intrepid Dyad]

now do the same with geotrails and it's a great thing.

 

honestly i feel geotrails should get some sort of special icon...or maybe just border around the standard icon....and be nice to have a nice filter for them.

 

apply this to geotours as well of course (geotours having like a shiny gold border around them maybe signalling them being super special)

 

then we will have an actual user friendly geotour and geotrail experience once we get out there and need to filter out the rest of the geocaches from the map view of the app.

 

of course that's my suggestion, but I would love to hear how fellow geocachers feel about my ideas. (for and against)

I keeps track of geotrails (and GeoTours) with GSAK. I have a number of caches that are of special interest to me, including GeoTours and geotrails. I alter the cache name and add special codes before loading up my GPS. That way I have a way of selecting these special interest caches while on the road. However, with some geotrails, I ran into a problem. In a few cases, the geotrail included finding a set of random nearby caches. For example, one geotrail listed around 10 specific caches. But you had to find 15 caches total. The remaining 5 caches were any five caches within 5 miles of the sponsoring town.

 

The other thing is that Groundspeak has no explicit knowledge of geotrails. They are not involved in the process like they are with GeoTours. It's only through the good graces of Rock Chalk (as a person, and not as a Groundspeak employee) that there is even a list of geotrails in a single location.

 

As for me, I am against the idea of treating geotrails similar to GeoTours for two reasons. The first reason is because of the problem illustrated above. Geotrails don't necessarily have a specific list of caches. And second, my own experience is that GeoTours are better maintained than geotrails. Now, that is just my experience, I know of others that have the exact opposite opinion.

 

 

I don't think they need to be treated the exact same, just i do think they both should be more organized (geotours basically already are). have their own categories to better filter them.....simply put geotrails will now have some actual rules and easy filtering. It's become a part of the game, and they continue to accept them....but I don't see a good reason to not go the extra mile to officially support them. You mentioned geotrails aren't well maintained....well i think any cache is at risk to muggles and poor owner maintenance...however geotrails don't have a guideline for how to set up their cache page either. if Groundspeak made it a sub type of cache or something to officially recognize them, it would also come with some great guidelines to help make them run smoothly. They don't even need any special icons on the map.....just perhaps a filterable header in the title is required that other caches aren't allowed to have. perhaps something along the lines "GCGT" for geocache geotrail. if every geotrail cache name had to start with this, then it would be easy to filter them regardless of what software you like to use.

 

or even easier.....make it an attribute....and make attributes filterable on the app (and anywhere else still attribute filtering limited.....geotours is an attribute right? why not geotrails? I mean we got attributes for picnic tables....I don't see how anyone can argue that attribute is more important then a geotrail attribute, I see no harm in adding it)

Edited May 10, 2016 by Intrepid Dyad

[+dprovan]

Don't get me wrong: this is a cool feature, and it shows an integration of geotours into the system beyond what I knew about. Going to the geotour information page is certainly useful.

 

But I have to admit, I was disappointed: I was expecting it to turn the search into a search for the geotour. Add a filter, in other words. I want to see which I've found and which I haven't. I want to make sure the search includes the entire geotour rather than being accidentally limited to the area of my current search. I want to be able to click the "map it" button to put the geotour on the normal map. It looks like for now I have to continue doing that the old way by searching on the geotour's prefix string.

[+PathfinderMark]

now do the same with geotrails and it's a great thing.

 

honestly i feel geotrails should get some sort of special icon...or maybe just border around the standard icon....and be nice to have a nice filter for them.

 

apply this to geotours as well of course (geotours having like a shiny gold border around them maybe signalling them being super special)

 

then we will have an actual user friendly geotour and geotrail experience once we get out there and need to filter out the rest of the geocaches from the map view of the app.

 

of course that's my suggestion, but I would love to hear how fellow geocachers feel about my ideas. (for and against)

I keeps track of geotrails (and GeoTours) with GSAK. I have a number of caches that are of special interest to me, including GeoTours and geotrails. I alter the cache name and add special codes before loading up my GPS. That way I have a way of selecting these special interest caches while on the road. However, with some geotrails, I ran into a problem. In a few cases, the geotrail included finding a set of random nearby caches. For example, one geotrail listed around 10 specific caches. But you had to find 15 caches total. The remaining 5 caches were any five caches within 5 miles of the sponsoring town.

 

The other thing is that Groundspeak has no explicit knowledge of geotrails. They are not involved in the process like they are with GeoTours. It's only through the good graces of Rock Chalk (as a person, and not as a Groundspeak employee) that there is even a list of geotrails in a single location.

 

As for me, I am against the idea of treating geotrails similar to GeoTours for two reasons. The first reason is because of the problem illustrated above. Geotrails don't necessarily have a specific list of caches. And second, my own experience is that GeoTours are better maintained than geotrails. Now, that is just my experience, I know of others that have the exact opposite opinion.

 

 

I don't think they need to be treated the exact same, just i do think they both should be more organized (geotours basically already are). have their own categories to better filter them.....simply put geotrails will now have some actual rules and easy filtering. It's become a part of the game, and they continue to accept them....but I don't see a good reason to not go the extra mile to officially support them. You mentioned geotrails aren't well maintained....well i think any cache is at risk to muggles and poor owner maintenance...however geotrails don't have a guideline for how to set up their cache page either. if Groundspeak made it a sub type of cache or something to officially recognize them, it would also come with some great guidelines to help make them run smoothly. They don't even need any special icons on the map.....just perhaps a filterable header in the title is required that other caches aren't allowed to have. perhaps something along the lines "GCGT" for geocache geotrail. if every geotrail cache name had to start with this, then it would be easy to filter them regardless of what software you like to use.

 

or even easier.....make it an attribute....and make attributes filterable on the app (and anywhere else still attribute filtering limited.....geotours is an attribute right? why not geotrails? I mean we got attributes for picnic tables....I don't see how anyone can argue that attribute is more important then a geotrail attribute, I see no harm in adding it)

 

I like the attribute idea, but only if it is searchable/filterable from the app(s).

[+PathfinderMark]

I totally agree!

 

Don't get me wrong: this is a cool feature, and it shows an integration of geotours into the system beyond what I knew about. Going to the geotour information page is certainly useful.

 

But I have to admit, I was disappointed: I was expecting it to turn the search into a search for the geotour. Add a filter, in other words. I want to see which I've found and which I haven't. I want to make sure the search includes the entire geotour rather than being accidentally limited to the area of my current search. I want to be able to click the "map it" button to put the geotour on the normal map. It looks like for now I have to continue doing that the old way by searching on the geotour's prefix string.

[+Max and 99]

On 5/10/2016 at 11:20 AM, dprovan said:

Don't get me wrong: this is a cool feature, and it shows an integration of geotours into the system beyond what I knew about. Going to the geotour information page is certainly useful.

 

But I have to admit, I was disappointed: I was expecting it to turn the search into a search for the geotour. Add a filter, in other words. I want to see which I've found and which I haven't. I want to make sure the search includes the entire geotour rather than being accidentally limited to the area of my current search. I want to be able to click the "map it" button to put the geotour on the normal map. It looks like for now I have to continue doing that the old way by searching on the geotour's prefix string.

Can someone dumb it down for me, please? Can I or can I not do a search for Geotours? It looks like, from the first post, I enter a cache and scan for the word "Geotour" to show up. Did I miss something? Can I search for just Geotours? Thank you for your help.

[+hzoi]

16 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

Can someone dumb it down for me, please?

Sure.  If you'd rather look for geotours from the get go rather than search by other criteria and then find geotour caches, just go to the geotour page and check the map. 

[+Max and 99]

9 hours ago, hzoi said:

Sure.  If you'd rather look for geotours from the get go rather than search by other criteria and then find geotour caches, just go to the geotour page and check the map. 

Thank you!!

[+hzoi]

I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.