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Suggestion : Auto archiving events


jellis

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I have seen some events showing up on maps up to 6 months after the event was over. I believe some COs forget to archive them and some believe cachers won't be able to log them if they are archived or remove Trackables. I have asked some of our local ones to archive theirs so it doesn't confuse cachers looking for events to attend. They just delete my logs and keep the events up. To me there is no reason to keep an event listed more then 2 weeks after it has passed. My suggestion is if there is a way to have events auto archive after a certain length of time.

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In some areas there are recurring monthly events where the tradition is to update the cache listing with the new details rather than creating a new page each month. So, these would either need to be discontinued -- making those communities sad -- or grandfathered in through a programming exception similar to the exception that allows the owners of moving caches to update their own coordinates.

 

Many Community Volunteer Reviewers regularly scan their review territories for "stale" events, and archive those which occurred a month or more earlier.

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In some areas there are recurring monthly events where the tradition is to update the cache listing with the new details rather than creating a new page each month. So, these would either need to be discontinued -- making those communities sad -- or grandfathered in through a programming exception similar to the exception that allows the owners of moving caches to update their own coordinates.

 

Many Community Volunteer Reviewers regularly scan their review territories for "stale" events, and archive those which occurred a month or more earlier.

 

I'm firmly of the belief that recurring events should be listed as separate event caches both for us users to be able to log each instance as a separate find, and on the back end for gathering accurate usage data.

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I'm firmly of the belief that recurring events should be listed as separate event caches both for us users to be able to log each instance as a separate find, and on the back end for gathering accurate usage data.
There's nothing preventing users from posting a separate Attended log fore each instance of a recurring event.
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Like this one

http://coord.info/GC5YZTJ

 

I can't remember if I did a NA on it just a note but was deleted and she only disabled she says for two weeks which was two months ago.

You can go to your personal profile page (click your user name and find count on the upper right of the main page)and Geocaches on the navigation on the top of the page and then needs archived and you will see a list of caches you logged NA on. It does not matter if the CO deletes the NA log or not, the email is on the way to the reviewers as soon as you hit submit. Just make the NA log factual and a reasonable reason, like the event was over two months ago and it is cluttering up the map to find new events.

 

Edit: some folks don't really know the difference between archived and disabled.

Edited by jholly
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I wouldn't mind an auto archive in a couple of weeks.

 

You can go to your personal profile page (click your user name and find count on the upper right of the main page)and Geocaches on the navigation on the top of the page and then needs archived and you will see a list of caches you logged NA on.

 

If the log was archived, it will not show up there. It is true that NA logs go to reviewers, whether they're archived or not.

 

I can't remember if I did a NA on it just a note but was deleted

 

There is no deleted log by you on that event. Only your current note of Oct 30.

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In some areas there are recurring monthly events where the tradition is to update the cache listing with the new details rather than creating a new page each month. So, these would either need to be discontinued -- making those communities sad -- or grandfathered

 

 

Or make the "after some time" suggested in the OP 4 weeks, and tell the COs of such events that they must change the date to the new event date within 4 weeks of the last event, in which case such recurring events would never get hit.

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Many Community Volunteer Reviewers regularly scan their review territories for "stale" events, and archive those which occurred a month or more earlier.

This does happen over here, but implementing a system to automatically archive the events would also help reviewers not having to worry about this.

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I am definitely in favor of auto-archiving events 2 weeks after the event's posted date. As jellis mentioned, these old events clutter up the pocket queries. I just received a nastygram from an event host who said I must be bored if I'm requesting a Needs Archived for an event 2 hours away from my home that had been held in December. I've traveled much farther than 2 hours to attend an event. If Geocaching.com auto-archived old events, then event hosts can't get bent out of shape. I guarantee that I will NOT attend a future event hosted by that rude cacher.

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At least the status "Past" (as seen in the NewSearch) should be selectable in PQs and Api downloads.

In Germany we have (as per today) 347 past events. 307 of them are still listed as available. No chance to get rid of them when loading an event PQ.

I'm pretty p...ed from this ignorant event owner behaviour.

 

Hans

Edited by HHL
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At least the status "Past" (as seen in the NewSearch) should be selectable in PQs and Api downloads.

Having the system differentiate between past and future events is a brilliant idea. Now that you mention it, why isn't there a tradition of the event owner disabling the event as soon as it's over? That would flag them as being past without making them significantly harder to find for people trying to log them. It seems obvious now that I think about it, but I don't recall ever seeing anyone do it. That has all the benefits of the "Past" status without having to wait for a new system feature.

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In some areas there are recurring monthly events where the tradition is to update the cache listing with the new details rather than creating a new page each month. So, these would either need to be discontinued -- making those communities sad -- or grandfathered in through a programming exception similar to the exception that allows the owners of moving caches to update their own coordinates.

 

Many Community Volunteer Reviewers regularly scan their review territories for "stale" events, and archive those which occurred a month or more earlier.

Why can't they update the event right after its done? That way it won't show as an old event.

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If Geocaching.com auto-archived old events, then event hosts can't get bent out of shape.
Well, I'm sure they could get bent out of shape. But they'd be getting bent out of shape because of Groundspeak, not because of individual geocachers trying to get their past events disabled or archived.
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Like this one

http://coord.info/GC5YZTJ

 

I can't remember if I did a NA on it just a note but was deleted and she only disabled she says for two weeks which was two months ago.

You can go to your personal profile page (click your user name and find count on the upper right of the main page)and Geocaches on the navigation on the top of the page and then needs archived and you will see a list of caches you logged NA on. It does not matter if the CO deletes the NA log or not, the email is on the way to the reviewers as soon as you hit submit. Just make the NA log factual and a reasonable reason, like the event was over two months ago and it is cluttering up the map to find new events.

 

Edit: some folks don't really know the difference between archived and disabled.

One of the events I put a NA on it got mad at me and deleted my log and basically said stay out of it.

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It would make perfect sense to me if the status of an event were to change from Available to Temporarily Unavailable the day after the event, preferably at midnight in the time zone where the event is being held. It is after-all exactly that.

 

+1

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That wouldn't be fair to multi-day events, like a weekend camping event.
Well, maybe when Groundspeak implements the feature of automatically disabling and automatically archiving event caches, they can also implement the feature of separate start dates and end dates for event caches. That way, a multi-day event listing can remain active as long as the event lasts, but after it ends, it can be automatically disabled. And a couple weeks after that, it can be automatically archived.
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Okay. I will admit to putting NA on two events. One I noted NA after three months. It kept popping up on my maps. It was EarthCache based. The CO has six semi-interesting EarthCaches (one of which he found!). But the CO is not very interactive. Asks not to send him the answers to the EarthCaches, but rather to post them in the Found It log. He did archive the event after three more weeks.

The other was nearby, and was still active after six weeks. It was archived he same day. The CO's account is only to have the events. The series event is now new each month, rather than revived from the old event.

So, Yeah. I think auto-archiving is a good idea.

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I have no problem with auto-archiving events, but I can foresee some people complaining that auto-disabled events won't show up in the smartphone apps (the Groundspeak apps won't show disabled caches). Personally, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to this. Too often I see people logging their attendance at an event from a smartphone app after the day of the event and the log shows the wrong day. Maybe this would force them to go onto the website to log and then they can set the right date?

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That wouldn't be fair to multi-day events, like a weekend camping event.

I have never heard of a geocaching event that spanned more than one day. Officially at geocaching.com only one date is provided as the event date, not a range of dates.

 

Of the 159 events that I have attended there were a few that involved several days, but the actual event to be logged was one particular date not several. I have, in fact attended geocaching camping event but, again, only one date was on the cache page.

 

I would argue that your very obscure case would actually benefit from my suggestion. If every event is automatically set to disabled the day after the event, then when you look at event icons that are greyed out, you know they are in the past. Then the organizer of a multi-day event could change the placed date on each subsequent day to highlight that it is actually still going on. The way it is now, there is no way to accentuate such an obscure situation.

Edited by Hynr
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I like the idea of auto-disabling an event quickly, and auto-archiving it a bit later. As for when to do these, I would suggest auto-disable after 6 days, and auto-archive after 5 weeks. This will handle events up to a week in length, but still gets the event off the map in a reasonable amount of time.

 

In my area, events don't clutter up the landscape. I have three areas that I routinely search for events. The largest one is centered on Salem, OR, and has a radius of around 100 miles. The others are much smaller, and in significantly less populated areas. I might find a dozen or so events in my search area, however I would estimate that 80% of the ones on the map were in the past. And the majority of those were several weeks past. So for me, the above criteria would work fairly well. It would greatly reduce the chance that I would find a active, past event.

 

Skye.

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Too often I see people logging their attendance at an event from a smartphone app after the day of the event and the log shows the wrong day. Maybe this would force them to go onto the website to log and then they can set the right date?

Like this one: http://coord.info/GC5TBX0

 

Why can't the app set the date to the event date automatically when creating the Attended log? That should be a quick fix...

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