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Planetary Pursuit cutoff extension


The A-Team

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It was recently pointed out to me that the cutoff for the Planetary Pursuit is at an unreasonable time for some of us. According to the Friend League page:

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On Monday April 9, at noon UTC, your score will reset to zero and the Friend League will return to its original state.

Noon UTC translates to Monday at 5 am Pacific time, effectively making the cutoff Sunday night for those of us in the same time zone as HQ. Considering the significant site performance issues on the last two Sundays, and a strong likelihood that the issues will be exacerbated on the last day or two of the promotion, it's reasonable to expect that members may not be able to log all of their weekend finds before the cutoff. Even if the site works normally and members can submit logs, there's still very little time in which to log any finds from Sunday. Members may be forced to log their finds with minimal log content and then later go back and write a proper log (if they're able to submit the logs at all). I hope it goes without saying that this would not be an ideal situation, especially for the COs who wouldn't get email notifications once the full log has been written.

If any Lackeys read this, please consider extending the log submission cutoff by at least a day, if not several, in order to give members a reasonable timeframe in which to submit their logs and to spread out the load on the servers.

Thank you

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I agree, issues earlier aren't the fault of cachers who wanted to participate in this promotion, and can see that being fair to all involved.

But I'd appreciate it though, that souvenirs weren't added to profiles of those not participating after that Monday cut-off date.  Back-dated, or a link as other promotions with logging problems maybe.  We're one of a bunch who just hit that "friends" thing out of curiosity, now "entered" after the tease in notifications. 

I'm holding trackables, and still haven't cached during this promotion (changing my behavior ) so I don't get a souvenir we're not interested in, and would like to drop them soon.   "Several" more days isn't good for me.  Thanks.  :)

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15 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

But I'd appreciate it though, that souvenirs weren't added to profiles of those not participating after that Monday cut-off date.  Back-dated, or a link as other promotions with logging problems maybe.  We're one of a bunch who just hit that "friends" thing out of curiosity, now "entered" after the tease in notifications.

Yeah, I thought about that. Ideally, the cutoff wouldn't be a specific time, but rather a day like Sunday April 8. That way, only logs dated on or before that date would be included as part of the promotion. Any logs dated April 9 wouldn't. Unfortunately, this would probably require more tweaking than would be possible in the time remaining on this Friday. I suspect there probably won't be any changes at all and there will be lots of unhappy members on Monday, but I felt I needed to request an extension anyway on behalf of those who will likely be prevented from logging their finds before the cutoff time due to circumstances beyond their control. It may even turn out that the site runs perfectly over the weekend and my concern was misplaced, at which point I'll happily eat the gold chains around B.A.'s neck in my avatar.

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12 minutes ago, Team DEMP said:

The "event" now shows as:
Collect points individually by finding different geocache types on the Friend League between March 19 and April 15 and earn up to 10 new souvenirs to become an Official Space Explorer.

Will I still be credited with points for the caches I found today thinking the promotion was ending tonight? It still shows as 442 even though I found 4 mystery caches today meaning my point count should be moved up to 502! 

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1 hour ago, Pond Bird said:

Will I still be credited with points for the caches I found today thinking the promotion was ending tonight? It still shows as 442 even though I found 4 mystery caches today meaning my point count should be moved up to 502! 

From what has been reported here by the Geocaching.com staff, points associated with the contest are delayed but will catch up. 

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On 4/8/2018 at 8:14 PM, cerberus1 said:

Well poop...

For what it's worth, you can still go out and find caches during these Friend League promotions. Just don't submit your logs for them until after the promotion ends. These Friend League promotions have a deadline for the logs to be counted, so if you enter the logs after the deadline, then you won't get the souvenirs.

In a way, these Friend League promotions are 'better' at providing the option to not get the souvenir than the earlier summer promotions that did award souvenirs based on Find date, regardless of when the log was submitted.

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14 hours ago, noncentric said:

For what it's worth, you can still go out and find caches during these Friend League promotions. Just don't submit your logs for them until after the promotion ends. These Friend League promotions have a deadline for the logs to be counted, so if you enter the logs after the deadline, then you won't get the souvenirs.

In a way, these Friend League promotions are 'better' at providing the option to not get the souvenir than the earlier summer promotions that did award souvenirs based on Find date, regardless of when the log was submitted.

Well, sorta...  I have trackables to drop.  If I place them in a cache, I prefer they're logged into it. 

I have found (by another who tried) how to log a find without getting more "points" or a souvenir from this promotion (the other 2/3rds isn't interested in). Not sure the same method would work for trackables though.

When a promotion is started, there really should be an opt in/out for it.  I got a lot of emails from others who also aren't happy they have to change their behavior because of a marketing thing.  :)

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44 minutes ago, cerberus1 said:

When a promotion is started, there really should be an opt in/out for it.  I got a lot of emails from others who also aren't happy they have to change their behavior because of a marketing thing.  :)

Perhaps it's just not widely understood that cachers would object to getting souvenirs.  Perhaps if you, and the 'others' you mentioned, followed your regular behavior during the promotions and then requested (after the promo ended) that the promo souvenirs be removed from your account - then maybe GS would see that cachers don't want souvenirs and that having an opt in/out option would be appreciated.

 

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48 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

Groundspeak could simply query their database to count the hidden souvenirs.

A great feature they added a while ago.

It lets me opt out of a game they're playing.

Not sure that's the same objection. I'm pretty sure cerberus1 and the 'other' cachers mentioned already know that they can "hide" souvenirs, but those are only hidden from other cachers that view their profile. The hidden souvenirs still 'clutter' their souvenir page when they look at it themselves. They are greyed out, but still present. And in the app, the hidden souvenirs are not even greyed out.  Hidden is very different from Removed.

Also, I doubt that the reason for the 'hide' feature was to opt out of promotions. My guess would be that the primary reason was privacy concerns. Similar to how there's an option to hide statistics from other cachers. So, just counting how many souvenirs are hidden doesn't give much insight into why cachers don't want to receive souvenirs at all, it only suggests that cachers don't want particular souvenirs displayed on their profile (for whatever reason).

 

Edited by noncentric
typo
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I’ll be Mr Unpopular and say…

  1. I went to a lot of effort to collect the required points during the advertised window, and now those who didn’t make the effort have an extra week.
  2. This and the UTC confusion could have been prevented by GS basing the promotion on Found Date rather than the bizarre log-submitted date.
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4 hours ago, barefootguru said:

I’ll be Mr Unpopular and say…

  1. I went to a lot of effort to collect the required points during the advertised window, and now those who didn’t make the effort have an extra week

It's not a competition against others. It is at most a personal challenge. Congrats on achieving that personal goal.

I grew up in the age of winning gets an award and everyone else loses. Souvenirs are like the more recent concept of a participation award - every gets one.

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18 hours ago, noncentric said:

Perhaps it's just not widely understood that cachers would object to getting souvenirs.  Perhaps if you, and the 'others' you mentioned, followed your regular behavior during the promotions and then requested (after the promo ended) that the promo souvenirs be removed from your account - then maybe GS would see that cachers don't want souvenirs and that having an opt in/out option would be appreciated.

I don't know about your experiences, but so far most replies from the site aren't even on the same topic I asked about.  I personally don't think "just do it", then hope it can be fixed a good idea.    :)

Most we know who don't wanna play do the same as us ... just don't cache.  Started during that "souvis every day of the month" (in '13) thing on.

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18 hours ago, Viajero Perdido said:

Groundspeak could simply query their database to count the hidden souvenirs.

A great feature they added a while ago.

It lets me opt out of a game they're playing.

We don't hide anything on our profile, since "stats" mean nada to me and souvis are an other 2/3rds of this team thing.  But if I knew that they'd go by hidden souvis and would remove 'em, then I'd be game.  :)

"Hidden" only hides it from others.  Doesn't hide it at all for us, the ones things like that mean most to, and just lightens a bit.

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15 minutes ago, Mineral2 said:

I don't know why people are so persnickety about souvenirs. If you don't like them, just ignore them.

FWIW, some people like some Souvenirs (e.g., location-based country and state/province Souvenirs) but not others (e.g., date-based or promotion-based Souvenirs). They don't want to ignore all Souvenirs, and the ones they don't like get in the way of viewing the ones that they do like.

Or so I hear anyway.

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39 minutes ago, Mineral2 said:

I don't know why people are so persnickety about souvenirs. If you don't like them, just ignore them. No reason to actively avoid playing the game during a promotional period just to avoid earning a virtual piece of art that has no other impact on the game.

Some folks are into numbers. Some people like easy hides to get them, while others enjoy tough-to-access hides.  Many are into stats, while others could care less. 

Some have more trackables out than they have hides or finds, and that's the part of the hobby they enjoy.

My other 2/3rds likes certain souvenirs.  To her they mean something. The fact that she does has nothing to do with you...     :)

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7 minutes ago, hzoi said:

I'm not following the math.  Are you only 50% of a person?  If so, what's the other half?  :anibad:

The math?  Okay, wanna get personal...  Are you and your wife (the other half...)  a team, or are you the only cacher?  

We're a team, and there is no "half" for a team three-headed dog.  

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6 hours ago, cerberus1 said:

"Hidden" only hides it from others.  Doesn't hide it at all for us, the ones things like that mean most to, and just lightens a bit.

I don't know whether you realise this, and I know it doesn't fundamentally deal with your issue, but if you look at  the souvenirs via your own public profile here then you see the souvenirs as other see them, and those hidden ones not displayed, so your other 2/3rds could just see the ones she's interested in.

 

Edited by MartyBartfast
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1 hour ago, cerberus1 said:
1 hour ago, hzoi said:

I'm not following the math.  Are you only 50% of a person?  If so, what's the other half?  :anibad:

The math?  Okay, wanna get personal...  Are you and your wife (the other half...)  a team, or are you the only cacher?  

We're a team, and there is no "half" for a team three-headed dog.  

I thought y'all might have joint custody of the third head.  :anicute:

As for our three headed team hzoi, each head is counted as one third for population purposes, but I think the electoral college has watered down my vote - during the last few family votes, I don't believe I was accorded 33% of the tally.

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On 4/11/2018 at 1:37 PM, cerberus1 said:

Some folks are into numbers. Some people like easy hides to get them, while others enjoy tough-to-access hides.  Many are into stats, while others could care less. 

Some have more trackables out than they have hides or finds, and that's the part of the hobby they enjoy.

My other 2/3rds likes certain souvenirs.  To her they mean something. The fact that she does has nothing to do with you...     :)

I also like certain souvenirs.  Since digital souvenirs have no monetary value, the only "value" in them is whether they're meaningful to a specific person.  I seem them like family photographs one has put on a side table.  They may be very meaningful to the person that has collected them but have no value whatsoever to almost anyone else.

I also see souvenirs as someone that a specific person *chooses* to collect.  I have a wool hat that I bought while visiting the great wall in China.  It was something that I chose to buy as a token of remembrance (it also keeps my head warm) from my visit.  Some of the GS souvenirs are put into our profiles whether we choose to collect them or not.   It's as if I parked my in a Walmart parking lot and came out to find a Walmart bumper sticker on it.  

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8 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

  I seem them like family photographs one has put on a side table.  They may be very meaningful to the person that has collected them but have no value whatsoever to almost anyone else.

That's sorta how she sees it as well.    Folks collecting countries maybe more so.

On a different note...  After an email to HQ, the Community Manager did zap it from our profile dashboard.  Many thanks.  :)

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4 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

It's always active, not just when there's a promotion on, and resets every Monday.

 

There were multiple topics about the scoring chart, how much a cache is worth, what the max points are at any given Find.  Stuff like that. There was much confusion. I wonder why nobody mentioned the scoring system that was already in common use.  I guess it's just something nobody even notices most of the time.  The More Ya Know. 

 

 

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10 minutes ago, Harry Dolphin said:

Wow!  I got eleven points for an FTF on an PNG on the way to get the Dolphinmobile services!  And what does this mean?  Absolutely nothing!!  So why bother?!?

 

I know, right?  It seems so... arbitrary.  I really think nobody but me looked at it this week.  Nor all of last year. :cute:

But that brings up the why bother part of it.  In case anyone thinks I have no idea about the Friends League Scoring System on any given day, you're right.  And the same goes for the whole promotion.  So... if there's a free Tracking Number to decode for getting all the souvenirs, go ahead and let me know how to do that.  Because I have no idea if there is or not.  I might not even suspect such a thing if not for this.

 

 

Edited by kunarion
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8 hours ago, kunarion said:

But that brings up the why bother part of it.  In case anyone thinks I have no idea about the Friends League Scoring System on any given day, you're right. 

 

The friends league  is a think in it's own right and the scoring is described when you click the "About Scoring" button on the friends league page, the numbers reset every week in order that a group of friends can run their own friendly competition whenever they want, or just keep track of how they're doing in relation to their friends. Every now and then GS runs a promotion which uses the friends league as the mechanism for keeping track of the scoring, and during those promotions they will change the scoring system.

 

 

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