Jump to content

Release Notes (Website only, Dashboard) - June 20, 2017


Recommended Posts

Great news for those of you who have friends that dip dozens of trackables in every geocache that they log. Trackable visit logs will no longer be displayed when viewing your community activity (dropped and discovered are still displayed). Your own TB visits will be available when viewing just your activity. We may take another look at TB visit logs once we are able to collapse your friends logs together.

This is great news! Thank you

Link to comment

Great news for those of you who have friends that dip dozens of trackables in every geocache that they log. Trackable visit logs will no longer be displayed when viewing your community activity (dropped and discovered are still displayed).

Just noticed a bug with Trackable activity in the "Latest Activity" section of the new dashboard. 'Discovered' logs are not showing the cache

For example: "You [tb icon] Discovered Lackey Tag at" I'm seeing this in both 'Yours' and 'Community' views.

Link to comment

Despite the dramatic description of the situation this is actually both easily explained and (not quite as) easily fixed. Last week (and since launch) we were ordering the logs based on the date the log was created. When you post a log we tag it with a very precise UTC based date + time. This makes sorting logs by the date very easy because the time precision nearly guarantees a unique key for everything. Now however, we are using the date the log was "found" (regardless of when the log was created). I won't go into all of the minor details because it is something that we are still trying to unwind here, but the log date often does not have a time associated with it, only the date. That means that your logs are all listed on the same date. Without a secondary sort parameter they are all tied for "most recent" so which log gets returned first is dependent on how the hamsters are feeling at the moment.

 

In order to resolve the issue we'll simply add a secondary sort parameter that will act as a tie breaker in the case that the dates do not have enough precision to properly identify the order of the logs.

 

Thanks for letting us know that the hamsters were being mischievous again :)

My hope would be that logs in the sort method used in the old dashboard can be leveraged for determining the sort method for the new dashboard. The old dashboard shows TB logs in the correct order, then Cache logs in the correct order. It appears the log order was determined using Date (regardless of time) and Log-ID.

 

Also, I'm seeing logs sorted differently whether I'm looking at 'Yours' vs 'Community'. I hope the revised sorting will be consistent across the two views.

Link to comment

I would actually prefer the logs to be ordered by the date they were posted on. A log that my friend posted a minute ago should appear on the top of my dashboard so I reliably notice it and not on the bottom just because he is a few weeks delayed with logging. It is a dashboard after all, not a cache page. The aim of the community recent logs section is to notify me about logs my friends have posted (if they agreed so in their settings). If the logs are freshly written but get buried under older ones because of their date, that goes against this purpose. One would have to scan the entire feed to (maybe) catch what's new instead of convenient check of the top of the feed.

That makes sense, which leads to a sticky situation.

 

When someone is viewing just their own logs, they'll usually want to see them displayed on the dates for which they were logged (not the dates on which they were submitted). However, as you pointed out, it makes more sense to see them on the submitted date when viewing the Community logs. Having these different views behave differently would like be confusing for many people, and you'd have a disconnect between the dates shown for your own logs on the two different views (ie. on Yours: date logged, on Community: date submitted).

 

I'm not sure how to solve this while still keeping everything in one list.

My initial thought last month was to have the date included in the single line display, rather than have the date headers.

For example: instead of "You Found [CACHENAME]", then "You Found [CACHENAME] on [FIND DATE]"

 

If the find date is included in each line item, then I supposed I wouldn't mind if the "Latest Activity" section reverted to having the submitted date in the group headers (for both 'Yours' and 'Community'). I might actually prefer it. If there is only a date in the group header, then I'd want it to be the find date.

 

I agree that it would likely be confusing if 'Yours' and 'Community' used different date groupings.

Link to comment

I would actually prefer the logs to be ordered by the date they were posted on. A log that my friend posted a minute ago should appear on the top of my dashboard so I reliably notice it and not on the bottom just because he is a few weeks delayed with logging. It is a dashboard after all, not a cache page. The aim of the community recent logs section is to notify me about logs my friends have posted (if they agreed so in their settings). If the logs are freshly written but get buried under older ones because of their date, that goes against this purpose. One would have to scan the entire feed to (maybe) catch what's new instead of convenient check of the top of the feed.

That makes sense, which leads to a sticky situation.

 

When someone is viewing just their own logs, they'll usually want to see them displayed on the dates for which they were logged (not the dates on which they were submitted). However, as you pointed out, it makes more sense to see them on the submitted date when viewing the Community logs. Having these different views behave differently would like be confusing for many people, and you'd have a disconnect between the dates shown for your own logs on the two different views (ie. on Yours: date logged, on Community: date submitted).

 

I'm not sure how to solve this while still keeping everything in one list.

 

Hmm, even if I would like to see my friends' logs (what I don't ;) ) I would like to see them at the found date and not the logging date. This would put together all the logs for "our" trip which is the only situation i personally am interested in seeing these logs at all. And I'm simply doing this by checking the caches I visited and not via the dashboard IF I want to see the logs.

 

Putting the logs to the logging date would complete get me confused :D

Link to comment

Despite the dramatic description of the situation this is actually both easily explained and (not quite as) easily fixed. Last week (and since launch) we were ordering the logs based on the date the log was created. When you post a log we tag it with a very precise UTC based date + time. This makes sorting logs by the date very easy because the time precision nearly guarantees a unique key for everything. Now however, we are using the date the log was "found" (regardless of when the log was created). I won't go into all of the minor details because it is something that we are still trying to unwind here, but the log date often does not have a time associated with it, only the date. That means that your logs are all listed on the same date. Without a secondary sort parameter they are all tied for "most recent" so which log gets returned first is dependent on how the hamsters are feeling at the moment.

 

In order to resolve the issue we'll simply add a secondary sort parameter that will act as a tie breaker in the case that the dates do not have enough precision to properly identify the order of the logs.

 

Why don't you simply use the creation time stamp as secondary key? I guess this works for most of us as people usually log in order, don't you think so?

Link to comment

Why don't you simply use the creation time stamp as secondary key? I guess this works for most of us as people usually log in order, don't you think so?

 

Yes that would be the same as sorting with the LogID (as with the old dash), assigned incrementally as new logs are created (effectively the same as the datetime created, but without dealing with a date data type, and zero potential for duplicates (even by milliseconds a timestamp could be duplicated, not so with a unique incremental id)).

 

Sort by Log Date, Log Time, Log ID. Any log with no time would be null (or in case of duplicate log times) - the Log ID sort would take effect.Sort by Date Created is just a sort by Log ID.

 

Both sorts have practical application, depending on who you talk to. But the old dash, and cache listings, use the former.

Edited by thebruce0
Link to comment

Great news for those of you who have friends that dip dozens of trackables in every geocache that they log. Trackable visit logs will no longer be displayed when viewing your community activity (dropped and discovered are still displayed). Your own TB visits will be available when viewing just your activity. We may take another look at TB visit logs once we are able to collapse your friends logs together.

Good call. Thank you!

Link to comment

How about to add the D/T/size/FP info to the Community latest activity? Currently this info is displayed only in the "Recently viewed" section while it would be much more useful in the community feed as my friends usually log caches I encounter for the first time.

Link to comment

Please provide a way for us to customize our geocaching.com dashboard.

 

I would suggest the following design: create a rectangular area similar to the way you designed/placed "Recently Viewed" and "Recent Activity", but call this new one "Favorite Actions". Provide a drop-down list of possible items to put there. The following are items I would like to be able to select from such a list:

  • Show local map of geocaches near home
  • Show most recently viewed map view
  • Create a route for a route PQ
  • Show PQ results which are ready for download
  • Show my profile's "About" tab
  • Go to my most recent viewed Forum thread

Others would probably have other actions at geocaching.com that they would prefer streamlined.

Please also include all the links that you have across the top of the classic dashboard (quick links) so we can chose which we would want to have us staring in the face when we get to the dashboard.

Edited by Hynr
Link to comment

Hello! Sorry for the lack of updates lately. With the American holiday on July 4th we have been running with a limited team this last week so the focus has been on maintenance and cleanup tasks so we are in a good place when everyone returns to the office. Some of the changes that have been deployed for the Dashboard in the last week are:

 


  •  
  • Added a secondary sort parameter for recent activity so the logs will be ordered consistently. Because Geocaches and Trackables do not share the same IDs it is possible in some situations that trackable logs will be grouped together above the geocache logs that occur on the same day. We are still iterating on this as we add all of the necessary data to the new system.
  • Fixed a bug that was causing duplicate API requests when switching between 'Your' and 'Community' feeds
  • Fixed a rendering bug for trackables that are discovered
  • Removed 'You' when looking at your own activity
  • Updated the messaging that is displayed when you have no activity in the last 30 days
  • Added more information about the status of a geocache (disabled, archived, etc) and added new badges (solved coordinates, owned, etc) to the Recently Viewed section.
  • Fixed the rendering bug that showed Will Attend logs with the Archive icon
  • Updated the Trackable log icons in the activity feed

 

Have a wonderful weekend!

Link to comment

  • Added a secondary sort parameter for recent activity so the logs will be ordered consistently.

Thanks! I'm now seeing my logs in the order I'd expect.

 

  • Added more information about the status of a geocache (disabled, archived, etc) and added new badges (solved coordinates, owned, etc) to the Recently Viewed section.

It took about 5 minutes for a recently-browsed archived event to show up in the list, but I now see it greyed-out with an "ARCHIVED" label and a smiley badge, so this is working. I did realize, though, that disabled and archived status isn't being indicated in the Latest Activity list. Can this be added? I use this information to see if a cache I've recently visited has been disabled or archived so I can read what the owner said, especially if I logged a DNF or NM.

Link to comment

One thing:

Not sure if this is a bug or if it's intended behavior, but I'm still seeing deleted logs in the Recent Activity feed. 2 logs that I deleted (GLRD30VY, GLRB9QAK) show up in my feed, whether I'm looking at 'Yours' or 'Community'. This seems odd to me because another deleted log does not appear in the feed. I don't know the log-id of that one, but it was dated 6/26/2017 for this cache. I don't know if my Friends' deleted logs will show up in my 'Community' view, since I don't know if they have deleted any logs.

 

  • Added a secondary sort parameter for recent activity so the logs will be ordered consistently. Because Geocaches and Trackables do not share the same IDs it is possible in some situations that trackable logs will be grouped together above the geocache logs that occur on the same day. We are still iterating on this as we add all of the necessary data to the new system.

Personally, I don't mind having TB activity grouped and sorted separately from cache logs. The old format dashboard behaved the same way and it never bothered me there.

I do hope that the format of the Recently Viewed section is still under review. I attached my personal preference to post #18, but generally just looking to compress each entry to two lines and bring the GC Code back to this section.

 

  • Fixed a rendering bug for trackables that are discovered
  • Removed 'You' when looking at your own activity
  • Added more information about the status of a geocache (disabled, archived, etc) and added new badges (solved coordinates, owned, etc) to the Recently Viewed section.
  • Fixed the rendering bug that showed Will Attend logs with the Archive icon
  • Updated the Trackable log icons in the activity feed

This all looks much better. Is there a plan to incorporate cache type icons in the Recent Activity feed in the future?

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment

One thing:

Not sure if this is a bug or if it's intended behavior, but I'm still seeing deleted logs in the Recent Activity feed. 2 logs that I deleted (GLRD30VY, GLRB9QAK) show up in my feed, whether I'm looking at 'Yours' or 'Community'. This seems odd to me because another deleted log does not appear in the feed. I don't know the log-id of that one, but it was dated 6/26/2017 for this cache. I don't know if my Friends' deleted logs will show up in my 'Community' view, since I don't know if they have deleted any logs.

 

 

Thanks for reporting this, noncentric. We'll look into it. Can you please tell me which caches those two logs are for? We're trying to repro it here and need a bit more info.

Link to comment

One thing:

Not sure if this is a bug or if it's intended behavior, but I'm still seeing deleted logs in the Recent Activity feed. 2 logs that I deleted (GLRD30VY, GLRB9QAK) show up in my feed, whether I'm looking at 'Yours' or 'Community'. This seems odd to me because another deleted log does not appear in the feed. I don't know the log-id of that one, but it was dated 6/26/2017 for this cache. I don't know if my Friends' deleted logs will show up in my 'Community' view, since I don't know if they have deleted any logs.

Thanks for reporting this, noncentric. We'll look into it. Can you please tell me which caches those two logs are for? We're trying to repro it here and need a bit more info.

The deleted log GLRD30VY was for GC6JC67.

The deleted log GLRB9QAK was for cache GC301TF.

On the same day as the latter, I had posted and deleted a log for GC752GT - and that log does not appear in my feed.

Link to comment

Just want to chime in and tell that I'm missing the cache type in the "latest activity" frame. 

The friend league is even more cryptic! Am i supposed to learn by heart the cache names and types by their GC-code? But this might be a temporary MaryHyde thing?

Link to comment
On 2017-07-24 at 4:29 AM, TheVoytekBear said:

Can we PLEASE have an option to filter out all trackable entries in the activity of our friends? Looking at the dashboard after someone visits an event and discovers 100+ trackables is a nightmare, but at eh same time I'm still interested what caches they visited...

Yes please! I'm enjoying seeing what my friends are doing, but that enjoyment is quickly lost when I have to weed through dozens of "discovered TBs".

EDIT: This might be happening now. I turned the Community feature back on, and I'm only seeing Retrievals and Drops. No Discoveries. Thank you!

Edited by geoBirder
New info.
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment

It's been a few weeks since the sorting of the Community latest activity list was changed to a log date. I use GC little helper II on the Friends page so I realiably know who has new finds (it shows e.g. +1 or +3 next to a nickname). A couple of times I was surprised to realize that a friend of mine had new finds I had not seen in the Community feed. I found out that it was always due to their logging delay. These logs either got mixed with older ones I had already read (I overlooked them) or they were completely omitted from the feed because they were older than 7 days. :(

 

Such a feed does do not do what it is supposed to do: to keep me informed about my friends recent activity.

 

So how about to add a "Sort by" dropdown for the "Community" activity feed and make it sticky, defaulting to the current "Log date"? I would revert to the log entry written date immediately. :)

 

sort_by.png

Link to comment

I really miss one feature in the new dashboard - which let me choose the old one :-(

Maybe you can enhance the new dashboard with this feature again.

It is the "Search for geocaches", especially the search over map icon!

I've seen several post in other forums, but could't find something here.

 

So if some officials see this - please think about bringing this feature back to the new dashboard!

 

Thank you!!!

 

Mambomania

 

2017-08-04 08_00_34-Geocaching _ Your Profile.jpg

Link to comment

Someone might have already mentioned this, but, if so, I didn't understand because I've only recently seen it for myself: if I log a TB visit in a find log, then I immediately go to the the dashboard, the find log is always in the latest activity list, but there's a lag before the TB visit log shows. (I didn't investigate how long the delay is, but I didn't feel like I was rushing over to the dashboard for those times I saw it happen.) Before I recognized what I was seeing, a couple times I thought I'd forgotten to log the TB visit and went back to add it only to discover it had already been logged.

Also, although this has been mentioned a few times before, it seems to have been forgotten or overlooked: I almost never want to see my log when I follow the link on the recent activity list. I wrote the log, I know what it says. Most of the time I want to look at the cache itself. The main link should take me there, not to the log. (The old page had a little "show log" link if I wanted to go to the log itself, but I never used it since I can easily get to my log from the cache page for the rare times that that's what I wanted.)

By the way, this underscores for me this false similarity between my recent logs and my friends' recent activity. When I'm looking at a list of my friends activity, then I more often would want to look at the log since I don't know what it says and that's normally what I'm interested in. While these two lists look similar from a developer's point of view, for a user, they're really two different things. I think looking at my friends' recent activity is an interesting feature that I'd use from time to time if it was in its own tab. But I can only see it by changing my preference for what's shown on the dashboard, and that's not worth the trouble.

Link to comment

I just noticed something odd about the profile page. (This release note thread is about the dashboard, but the release note thread about the change that added the e-mail link to the profile page is now locked.)

Again, maybe someone mentioned this, but I couldn't understand it until I saw it. Sometimes, I click on the "send e-mail" link in a user's profile page, and I get the old geocaching.com page to enter and send e-mail. Life is good. But other times, I click on the link, and my web browser tries to open an e-mail application. I don't let my browser open e-mail, so I have to go back and copy the e-mail address and send the e-mail manually.

I think this boils down to users that do not let anyone see their e-mail address, so there's no choice but to use the geocaching.com e-mail page, vs. users that do publish their e-mail address, so the profile page's "send e-mail" link is a mailto: URL to the published e-mail address, in other words, telling the browser to send e-mail its own way.

I admit there's some logic to this, but I don't really care whether they're publishing their e-mail address, I just want it to always open the geocaching.com e-mail page. I'm actually a little worried because when I have to send the e-mail myself, I'm the one that defines the e-mail's subject, so I'm afraid the EarthCache owners I'm sending e-mail to will lose the e-mail to a spam filter or otherwise ignore it because it doesn't start with the official "[GEO] dprovan contacting..." text.

Link to comment
52 minutes ago, dprovan said:

Also, although this has been mentioned a few times before, it seems to have been forgotten or overlooked: I almost never want to see my log when I follow the link on the recent activity list. I wrote the log, I know what it says. Most of the time I want to look at the cache itself. The main link should take me there, not to the log. (The old page had a little "show log" link if I wanted to go to the log itself, but I never used it since I can easily get to my log from the cache page for the rare times that that's what I wanted.)

Agreed. I've been caught by this a few times when I've clicked on the cache name because I wanted to view the cache listing, but forgot that it doesn't work that way and got the log instead.

If there could be two links, then this would partially solve the dual-purpose problem you mentioned too. For example, the log type could link to the log, and the cache name could link to the cache. Then you have the option of getting directly to either, and this would work the same on either view.

  • Upvote 2
Link to comment

Yes, separating the cache link from the link to the log was one of the first things mentioned with the new dashboard layout. It was somewhat adjusted in the Recently Viewed list, but the thought never carried down to the recetn activity list.

Indeed, please offer a link to open the cache listing directly.  Whether it's providing specific labeled buttons, or using natural text links ("Found/Did Not Find" links to the log, cache name links to the cache -- and distinctly separate the two, unlike the log a cache page which still makes the owner, cache name, and joining plaintext appear with exactly the same styling).

Quote

Username
Did Not Find: Cache Name

or

Quote

Username
Did Not Find Cache Name (View log)

or float the log link to the right like the recently viewed list, or something like that.

Also, User thumbnail -> user profile. Log type icon -> View log.  Cache name/type icon -> View cache.  Easy visual connection.

Edited by thebruce0
  • Upvote 2
Link to comment

Oh, one more thing about the recent logs list that was mentioned before but has been ignored: the last couple weeks, I've been doing a lot of virtuals and EarthCahces in among the other caches, and I've been desperately needing to see the cache type in that list as I try to catch up on what I've logged and what I haven't. Until now, I've been able to put up with the new list to see how it goes, but I have to switch back to the old page now to keep things straight.

I try not to complain, but until I switched back to the old dashboard, I'd forgotten how complete the old page was. The new page has no improvements at all. It's just a desert of missing information that's all right there on the old page. Now I can't figure out how I put up with the new page for so long. (And that's not even taking into account how new, untested code completely broke the recent logs list yesterday.)

Link to comment
1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

LIkewise, I haven't been using the new dashboard at all. When there's a significant update I'll check, but honestly the old page is still far more practical and usable, IMO.

After learning my personal profile is now   a "dashboard"  (I opted out too),  decided to ask around at an event yesterday.

All but one I asked opted out for the old one as well.   Weird.

Link to comment
5 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

LIkewise, I haven't been using the new dashboard at all. When there's a significant update I'll check, but honestly the old page is still far more practical and usable, IMO.

Yeah, man, I can't get over how long I stuck with the new one. Now that I'm back to the old one, I realize how much it makes the new one look like a tinkertoy. The old one even has the key links across the top where I don't have to scroll down to them. Bliss!

Link to comment

I have tried opting in to the new dashboard.  I keep opting back out.

 

I'm not entirely a curmudgeon on the site redesigns; I like the new logging experience just fine.  But after ten years, I've just gotten used to the old "Your Profile" page.

Link to comment
On 8/10/2017 at 4:31 PM, dprovan said:

I just noticed something odd about the profile page. (This release note thread is about the dashboard, but the release note thread about the change that added the e-mail link to the profile page is now locked.)

Again, maybe someone mentioned this, but I couldn't understand it until I saw it. Sometimes, I click on the "send e-mail" link in a user's profile page, and I get the old geocaching.com page to enter and send e-mail. Life is good. But other times, I click on the link, and my web browser tries to open an e-mail application. I don't let my browser open e-mail, so I have to go back and copy the e-mail address and send the e-mail manually.

I think this boils down to users that do not let anyone see their e-mail address, so there's no choice but to use the geocaching.com e-mail page, vs. users that do publish their e-mail address, so the profile page's "send e-mail" link is a mailto: URL to the published e-mail address, in other words, telling the browser to send e-mail its own way.

I admit there's some logic to this, but I don't really care whether they're publishing their e-mail address, I just want it to always open the geocaching.com e-mail page. I'm actually a little worried because when I have to send the e-mail myself, I'm the one that defines the e-mail's subject, so I'm afraid the EarthCache owners I'm sending e-mail to will lose the e-mail to a spam filter or otherwise ignore it because it doesn't start with the official "[GEO] dprovan contacting..." text.

Yes, I noticed this a little while ago.  I ended up creating a new topic about it  HERE, but didn't get any GS feedback.  There is a workaround, which is to opt out of the new Profile format, but I'm concerned that workaround will disappear whenever the opt out option is removed.

I don't see any benefit in using a "mailto:" - if I want to send email to someone with a published email address, then I'll go to my email program myself. If I'm choosing to send email via their geocaching.com profile page, then that means I want them to get the email from geocaching.com (with the standardized subject line and email message format).

Link to comment
22 minutes ago, noncentric said:

Yes, I noticed this a little while ago.  I ended up creating a new topic about it  HERE, but didn't get any GS feedback.

Ah, yes, thanks. I thought someone had mentioned it, but I only looked for it in the release threads.

23 minutes ago, noncentric said:

There is a workaround, which is to opt out of the new Profile format, but I'm concerned that workaround will disappear whenever the opt out option is removed.

I hate to say it, but I now see opting out as more a fix than a workaround. But I agree, all indications are that at some point, the old page that does e-mail uniformly will someday be removed.

1 hour ago, hzoi said:

I'm not entirely a curmudgeon on the site redesigns; I like the new logging experience just fine.  But after ten years, I've just gotten used to the old "Your Profile" page.

I like new things and was happy to see these new pages and try them out. There's always room for improvement, especially when there's new technology at your disposal. So it's with all due consideration and fairness that I can now say the new pages are distinctly worse than the originals. Being new isn't useful unless the new is better. This new isn't even half as good. For the first month or so, I kept expecting the scaffolding to be filled in with all the missing features, but I've come to understand that eliminating features in the name of simplification is a primary goal. There's just no other way to explain the new "latest activity" list that removes the old line that had all the key information about the activity and replaces it with a line that only lists the cache name and the log type.

Link to comment
On 8/10/2017 at 3:41 PM, dprovan said:

If I log a TB visit in a find log, then I immediately go to the the dashboard, the find log is always in the latest activity list, but there's a lag before the TB visit log shows.

I'm pretty sure this was an accurate report of what I was seeing when I posted it a few days ago, but since then things have changed. Now no TB visits in August are listed in the "latest activities" list on my dashboard, but TB visits from July are listed! I can't begin to explain this. All the TB visits are listed in the old dashboard's "your logs" list.

In addition, when I first reported this, at least my cache logs immediately showed up in the latest activity list, but now they seemed to be delayed like the TB logs were delayed when I first saw this. If I go from logging the cache directly to viewing the dashboard, even with a page refresh, the cache I just logged is often not in the list. Is there something wrong, or are these kind of delays just to be expected now?

Link to comment
7 hours ago, dprovan said:

I'm pretty sure this was an accurate report of what I was seeing when I posted it a few days ago, but since then things have changed. Now no TB visits in August are listed in the "latest activities" list on my dashboard, but TB visits from July are listed! I can't begin to explain this. All the TB visits are listed in the old dashboard's "your logs" list.

In addition, when I first reported this, at least my cache logs immediately showed up in the latest activity list, but now they seemed to be delayed like the TB logs were delayed when I first saw this. If I go from logging the cache directly to viewing the dashboard, even with a page refresh, the cache I just logged is often not in the list. Is there something wrong, or are these kind of delays just to be expected now?

The system that is tracking the activity that is displayed on the dashboard was initially tracking TB visits, but we decided to remove TB visits from the dashboard. TB visits that had already been collected will continue to show up in your dashboard for a short time longer because they were grandfathered in, but no new TB visits are included. The TB visits will continue to be available on "your logs" page.

There is a short delay between posting a log and when it shows up on the dashboard. As the amount of data coming into the website goes up we need to look at ways to improve performance without requiring increasingly larger and more expensive servers. One common approach to this is what we call eventually consistent data. The data is now being ingested by one system, processed and stored by another system and eventually read back out by another system all together. This denormalized mechanism allows us to more easily scale the systems when and where we need additional resources without devoting time and money to the parts of the system that are running smoothly. When the system is under heavy load, as it especially is during the summer months, you might see a slightly longer delay because there are a lot of requests in the pipeline. However, this delay is typically quite short.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
9 hours ago, noncentric said:

I don't see any benefit in using a "mailto:" - if I want to send email to someone with a published email address, then I'll go to my email program myself. If I'm choosing to send email via their geocaching.com profile page, then that means I want them to get the email from geocaching.com (with the standardized subject line and email message format).

Having the option to click a link to auto-fill an email form using whatever your default program is isn't a bad thing - however it is bad when the same link is a hard mailto link in some cases and a from submission in others or a chat messenger in others... If it's a link to use an external email program, it should always be that, and clearly indicated as much. "Send email" shouldn't be used as a mailto and and form emailer. Not without distinction.  I'd imagine that if people have the privacy turned to the point that they'll allow visibility of their email address, then there would be two links, if not one clearly stating what method the email will use. "Send email via geocaching.com" going to the form and "Compose new email to person@website.com" as the mailto would be one reasonable point of clarity for these methods.

 

9 hours ago, dprovan said:

I like new things and was happy to see these new pages and try them out. There's always room for improvement, especially when there's new technology at your disposal. So it's with all due consideration and fairness that I can now say the new pages are distinctly worse than the originals. Being new isn't useful unless the new is better. This new isn't even half as good.

Firmly agree with this. I like new stuff, and when new stuff comes out and there's interaction and movement towards improvement based on feedback, then it's very encouraging. In the dashboard case, while there have been some smaller rollouts and updates, it feels like the vast majority of actually good feedback regarding design choices and adjustments have largely gone undealtwith or simply ignored. And I hate to say that.  Some of us actually do understand the need to make things simplified for the sake of non-techies, or flexible for the sake of a variety of devices - but it still feels like development is heavily favoring a specific style, esthetic, platform, philosophy, and shrugging off other professional (in many cases) input.

So like above, until more of this functionality is brought in to the new dashboard, I still feel the old is MUCH more practical and usable. And as many suggestions have already been made (often re-proposed after each update until it almost feels futile), such feedback is going to slow down likely until there's no feedback, and then no reason to make the changes... it's the nature of the beast.

And I hate to say that. I keep saying "feels like" because I don't want it to be true :) We want updates and changes to our home website to be good, useful, positive, additive, for the greater community - vet and new, old and young, savvy and layman. We're still hoping for the best, but it's discouraging when offering suggestions starts to feel futile. :(

Link to comment
12 hours ago, dprovan said:

I like new things and was happy to see these new pages and try them out. There's always room for improvement, especially when there's new technology at your disposal. So it's with all due consideration and fairness that I can now say the new pages are distinctly worse than the originals. Being new isn't useful unless the new is better...

+1

BTW speed matters as well.

An average time the old dashboard loads here: 2,2 s
An average time the new dashboard loads here: 3,5 s

 

Edited by Pontiac_CZ
times
Link to comment
6 hours ago, HiddenGnome said:

The system that is tracking the activity that is displayed on the dashboard was initially tracking TB visits, but we decided to remove TB visits from the dashboard.

I thought that was only for when I was looking at my friends' logs. I'm seeing the TB logs when I've selected to see only my own logs. I need to see all my last logs, not just the ones you think I should see. I've started using the old dashboard just because I think it's better, but if the new dashboard's not going to show me my all my recent logs, then using the new dashboard isn't an option at all anymore.

6 hours ago, HiddenGnome said:

There is a short delay between posting a log and when it shows up on the dashboard. As the amount of data coming into the website goes up we need to look at ways to improve performance without requiring increasingly larger and more expensive servers. One common approach to this is what we call eventually consistent data. The data is now being ingested by one system, processed and stored by another system and eventually read back out by another system all together. This denormalized mechanism allows us to more easily scale the systems when and where we need additional resources without devoting time and money to the parts of the system that are running smoothly. When the system is under heavy load, as it especially is during the summer months, you might see a slightly longer delay because there are a lot of requests in the pipeline. However, this delay is typically quite short.

OK, thanks for the information. That's what I guessed. The old dashboard doesn't seem to have this problem. Should I expect it to start having it?

Link to comment
9 hours ago, dprovan said:

I thought that was only for when I was looking at my friends' logs. I'm seeing the TB logs when I've selected to see only my own logs. I need to see all my last logs, not just the ones you think I should see. I've started using the old dashboard just because I think it's better, but if the new dashboard's not going to show me my all my recent logs, then using the new dashboard isn't an option at all anymore.

We are currently dealing with some performance issues that occur when tracking the TB visit logs because people will log hundreds and in come cases 1000+ TB visits everytime they log a geocache (and in many cases they are logging multiple geocaches at a time). This large spike has an impact that can ripple through the system so it was decided that we would stop tracking the TB visits in our activity system until we can deal with the issue of hundreds of TB logs on every geocache.

Link to comment
13 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

So like above, until more of this functionality is brought in to the new dashboard, I still feel the old is MUCH more practical and usable. And as many suggestions have already been made (often re-proposed after each update until it almost feels futile), such feedback is going to slow down likely until there's no feedback, and then no reason to make the changes... it's the nature of the beast.

It has been awhile since we had any meaningful updates to dashboard and we have been pretty quiet about what we are working on. This has been more of a factor of vacation schedules and house keeping efforts to shore up ancillary systems, but we are working on some new updates that I believe the community is going to like. We have some changes coming to the activity feeds to update the layout and provide more information with the logs (including a link directly to the geocache!), a new feature that will help discover and track upcoming events in your area and a way to view the activity on geocaches that you own.

 

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
1 hour ago, HiddenGnome said:

We are currently dealing with some performance issues that occur when tracking the TB visit logs because people will log hundreds and in come cases 1000+ TB visits everytime they log a geocache (and in many cases they are logging multiple geocaches at a time). This large spike has an impact that can ripple through the system so it was decided that we would stop tracking the TB visits in our activity system until we can deal with the issue of hundreds of TB logs on every geocache.

As long as you don't switch the old dashboard to this new approach, I'm fine.

I'm sure no one logging 1000+ TBs per find wants to see any of the visits ever, so I hope you can find a way to deal with them while still serving those of us that only log TBs when the visit is interesting. Perhaps suppressing visits for TB that the person owns? At least, I hope those 1000+ TBs aren't because these people are packing a thousand TBs that aren't theirs around with them.

Link to comment

Under "Latest Activity," when I have it set to "Community," it's telling me I haven't logged anything in the last 30 days. When it's set to "Yours," it correctly shows the 9 caches I've found in the last 30 days.

Possibly useful info: I only have one friend and they haven't found any caches in over a month.

Link to comment
19 minutes ago, Windstorm+ said:

Under "Latest Activity," when I have it set to "Community," it's telling me I haven't logged anything in the last 30 days. When it's set to "Yours," it correctly shows the 9 caches I've found in the last 30 days.

Possibly useful info: I only have one friend and they haven't found any caches in over a month.

Thank you for the report @Windstorm+! I will make a note to check into that issue.

Link to comment
7 hours ago, HiddenGnome said:
8 hours ago, Windstorm+ said:

Under "Latest Activity," when I have it set to "Community," it's telling me I haven't logged anything in the last 30 days. When it's set to "Yours," it correctly shows the 9 caches I've found in the last 30 days.

Possibly useful info: I only have one friend and they haven't found any caches in over a month.

Thank you for the report @Windstorm+! I will make a note to check into that issue.

Is this an issue?  I thought it was expected that "Community" would only show the past 7 days, while "Yours" would show the past 30 days.  If that's still the case, then it sounds like what Windstorm+ is seeing is expected behavior.

  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
10 hours ago, noncentric said:

Is this an issue?  I thought it was expected that "Community" would only show the past 7 days, while "Yours" would show the past 30 days.  If that's still the case, then it sounds like what Windstorm+ is seeing is expected behavior.

You make a great point! I focused in on the wrong piece of information and had not yet had a chance to look closer, but you are correct that the Community feed only shows the last 7 days. 

However, the confusion comes from the fact that in this scenario we are showing a message that says "You haven't logged anything in the last 30 days." I will make sure that gets updated to "7 days" when viewing the community version of the feed so it is aligned with the functionality.

Link to comment
Guest
This topic is now closed to further replies.
×
×
  • Create New...