Can no longer filter by "Has Personal Cache Note."

[+The Snowdog]

It has long been known that if you use the "new" map you couldn't filter by Personal Cache Note. This is pretty important to me and is indeed the reason that I opted out of the new map; I note when I've signed a challenge cache for which I'm not yet qualified, and can thus filter it out of subsequent searches. Now that we're stuck with the new maps, this option is gone. A huge leap backwards and a real blow to the way I use filtered searching.

 

EDIT FOR CLARITY: In the past, you could filter by "Has Personal Geocache Note" if you opted out of the new map. If you're using the new map, that option does not appear on the "Search With Filters" screen. For that reason, and that reason alone, I've stuck with the old map until now. But now that the new map is required, that filter option no longer appears.

Edited April 26, 2019 by The Snowdog

[+noncentric]

There were reports of problems with the Personal Cache Note search functionality.  I don't recall that the bug ever got fixed, so I wonder if that plays a role in eliminating the option from the new Search.

[+Team Canary]

Very disappointed with this change. 

 

I search the the local area for Puzzles and Multis I’ve solved, corrected coordinates, and halfway through, personal notes. 

 

Then I’m left with new ones. 

[+noncentric]

Yes, I did find the option useful as well, mostly to find puzzles that I've worked on but hadn't solved yet.

 

(Cache type = Mystery)  +  (Corrected coords = No)  +  (Personal Cache note = Yes) => puzzles that I started on, but hadn't solved completely

[+KaTi aus DD]

How do I find caches that have a personal note? If necessary, I also use another page (such as project.gc).

[+smashcfr]

It was very useful to quickly find mysteries that I had to solve at home... It is a step backward for me...

I tried to modify the web adress but did not find the setting (for example &pn=0)...

How to have this filter back ?

[+MartyBartfast]

1 hour ago, smashcfr said:

It was very useful to quickly find mysteries that I had to solve at home... It is a step backward for me...

Me too.

[+The Snowdog]

I use it to note challenge caches that I've signed but not yet qualified / "found" to filter them out of subsequent searches. I hate to think that this very useful functionality is gone, but it looks like they are not going to keep it.

[+thebruce0]

23 hours ago, noncentric said:

There were reports of problems with the Personal Cache Note search functionality.  I don't recall that the bug ever got fixed, so I wonder if that plays a role in eliminating the option from the new Search.

Which I suppose makes sense if it was available on old advanced search options up to a day before the link-change rollout, which they'd be essentially skipping over if they disabled that filter option for technical reasons on the new form which popped in with this week's updates.  I never used it myself, but I hope it comes back.  Removing filter options (especially without a transparent reason) is never a good idea, even if they may not get used much as others. It only hurts the people who do use it.

[+HHL]

Use this (bookmark for future reference):

Search for Caches with PCN

 

Hans

Edited April 28, 2019 by HHL

[+HHL]

You may put a trailing &note=1 to any resulting search-url like this:

https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?ot=4&types=2,9,3773&t=1-2&d=1-3&nfb[0]=HHL&f=2&note=1

Hans

[+searcherdog]

Thank you Hans!

[+smashcfr]

Thank you !

Use "&note=2" to remove results having a personal note

[+Paws 4 a Cache]

29 minutes ago, smashcfr said:

Thank you !

Use "&note=2" to remove results having a personal note

That's really handy. Are there any other fields that you can add in a similar way so I could filter on attributes or date placed before a particular year etc. ? Is there a list of field names somewhere so I can experiment?

[+HHL]

1 hour ago, Paws 4 a Cache said:

Is there a list of field names

I don't know of an existing list. We'll have to experiment by ourselves. ;-)

"#Content" at the very end of the URL suppresses the top bar of the page. Not a big achievement but useful on small laptop screens.

&kw=xyz -> adds keyword "xyz" to the search

&r=221,222,223,213,212,219 -> search in all states in entire England. Caution: The new mapping does only show the first listed country (the old search did list all regions). Mapping could be achieved by putting the result to a Bookmark List and map from there. (tedious, but it works)

$c=10,147,57,72,272 -> search in entire Scandinavia.

... and so forth.

Getting the region and country numbers: Open the source code of any search page. They are listed there:

<option value="region:362">Sweden: Gävleborg</option>
<option value="region:360">Sweden: Dalarna</option>
<option value="region:359">Sweden: Blekinge</option>
<option value="country:10">Sweden</option>
<option value="country:190">Swaziland</option>

Hans

Hans

Edited April 28, 2019 by HHL

[+The Snowdog]

5 hours ago, HHL said:

You may put a trailing &note=1 to any resulting search-url like this:

https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?ot=4&types=2,9,3773&t=1-2&d=1-3&nfb[0]=HHL&f=2&note=1

Hans

 

I was going to check that very thing when I got back to work on Monday, where I was sure to still have a few of the old search pages still open. With any luck they'll leave the back end alone and this will still work for us. THANKS!

 

Hmmm... now everyone on the forums knows what I'm actually doing at "work" ...

Edited April 28, 2019 by The Snowdog

[+The Snowdog]

9 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Which I suppose makes sense if it was available on old advanced search options up to a day before the link-change rollout, which they'd be essentially skipping over if they disabled that filter option for technical reasons on the new form which popped in with this week's updates.  I never used it myself, but I hope it comes back.  Removing filter options (especially without a transparent reason) is never a good idea, even if they may not get used much as others. It only hurts the people who do use it.

 

I teach computer science (and write code on the side as a contractor) and wish I could give this a thousand upvotes. If the HQ crew had only taken my graduate user interface design course, they'd know that one of the iron rules of UI design is do not take features away from users. 

[+KaTi aus DD]

 

Is there now a variant, how can I show the faded caches on the map? That was possible so far.

[+noncentric]

On 4/27/2019 at 9:07 PM, thebruce0 said:

Which I suppose makes sense if it was available on old advanced search options up to a day before the link-change rollout, which they'd be essentially skipping over if they disabled that filter option for technical reasons on the new form which popped in with this week's updates.  I never used it myself, but I hope it comes back.  Removing filter options (especially without a transparent reason) is never a good idea, even if they may not get used much as others. It only hurts the people who do use it.

IIRC, the issue was that Search results returned caches that didn't actually have a personal cache note, but had a personal cache note in the past that the cacher had later deleted. I wondered if the issue was simply null vs blank, with deletion by users leaving a blank value instead of reverting to null.  I hadn't noticed the issue myself and didn't pay attention to whether it got fixed or not. I used the feature regularly to take a second look at puzzles that I worked on, but hadn't yet solved:  (Cache type = Mystery)  +  (Corrected coords = No)  +  (Personal Cache note = Yes)

 

I've now bookmarked these settings, using HHL's helpful info.

[+thebruce0]

7 hours ago, noncentric said:

IIRC, the issue was that Search results returned caches that didn't actually have a personal cache note, but had a personal cache note in the past that the cacher had later deleted.

 

Yeah, so in that case, some people would have sometimes had some incorrect matches. But they took the option away for everyone. Would anyone have been more happy without the option entirely? It wasn't a bug that caused problems on the server, it was a bug that provided slight mis-information to the end users; who probably even by that time knew there was an issue. So if they chose to stop using that filter, that's one group resolved; but if they kept using it, then they found it useful along with all the people who used it and never saw the issue. But then the feature was removed. Removing it just seems like a generally Bad Idea for the end user as a whole.  *shrug*

[+noncentric]

On 4/29/2019 at 6:32 AM, thebruce0 said:

Removing it just seems like a generally Bad Idea for the end user as a whole.  *shrug*

Agreed.

 

Instead of users posting about bad search results using the PCN filter, there are users posting about the lack of the PCN filter.  Of course, the latter will fade away as users who didn't know it was an option come online, whereas the former will continue indefinitely if the issue isn't fixed.  Ideally, the issue would be fixed, and then the filter option brought back.

[+The Snowdog]

Well, it looks like they're on to us. For a while you could still slip &note=x into the URL and still filter by cache note but now they strip that one out.

[+HHL]

10 minutes ago, The Snowdog said:

Well, it looks like they're on to us. For a while you could still slip &note=x into the URL and still filter by cache note but now they strip that one out.

It still works for me as expected.

 

 

Hans

[+The Snowdog]

1 hour ago, HHL said:

It still works for me as expected.

 

 

 

Hans

 

But as soon as you go to the map it strips out the note field. You can see them in the list, but you can't map them.

[+HHL]

7 hours ago, The Snowdog said:

You can see them in the list, but you can't map them

Ah, ok. Haven't checked that. At least we can filter for and put them to a BM list or grab them otherwise.

Hans

Edited May 7, 2019 by HHL

[+The Snowdog]

It's just so annoying to not be able to filter on cache note.  When I sign a challenge cache for which I'm not yet qualified, I put in a cache note - signed log this date - so that I can filter them out of subsequent searches. I have dozens of such caches in the Dallas / Ft Worth area and as I plan my week in DFW for Geo Woodstock those caches keep showing up in all of my searches. Highly annoying. 

[+Isonzo Karst]

2 hours ago, The Snowdog said:

It's just so annoying to not be able to filter on cache note.  When I sign a challenge cache for which I'm not yet qualified, I put in a cache note - signed log this date - so that I can filter them out of subsequent searches. I have dozens of such caches in the Dallas / Ft Worth area and as I plan my week in DFW for Geo Woodstock those caches keep showing up in all of my searches. Highly annoying. 

 

filter for them around Dallas Ft Worth, using the &note=1 technique.  Add to list. copy to IGNORE LIST.

Keep the original list,  because at some point, you're going to want to take them OFF Ignore.

 

Or maybe not. But KEEP the list that says, "signed logs challenges, don't hunt again" or whatever.

[+niraD]

On 4/27/2019 at 1:40 AM, noncentric said:

Yes, I did find the option useful as well, mostly to find puzzles that I've worked on but hadn't solved yet.

Same here.

[+The Snowdog]

20 hours ago, Isonzo Karst said:

 

filter for them around Dallas Ft Worth, using the &note=1 technique.  Add to list. copy to IGNORE LIST.

Keep the original list,  because at some point, you're going to want to take them OFF Ignore.

 

Or maybe not. But KEEP the list that says, "signed logs challenges, don't hunt again" or whatever.

 

That sounds like a good work around, I have never used the "ignore" list but I will give it a try. But it would be nice if they would just give us back the ability to filter on personal notes. The only reason I started to use them in the first place was because I could filter on them.

[+thebruce0]

3 hours ago, The Snowdog said:

I have never used the "ignore" list but I will give it a try. But it would be nice if they would just give us back the ability to filter on personal notes.

 

Yeah, I basically have the same strategy in Geosphere. Once I've signed a challenge cache I don't yet qualify for, I write a note for it, add it to a 'found not qualified' list, then set it to ignore in the app (though in my case not online as I still want to see it on the map). But I do most of my cache organizing and notes in teh app.

Ignore is a nice additional feature to make use of if you can make it work for you

[+speedy-1702]

Thank you Hans, ?

[+mrcanoehead224]

On 5/7/2019 at 12:37 AM, HHL said:

Ah, ok. Haven't checked that. At least we can filter for and put them to a BM list or grab them otherwise.

Hans

I've been meaning to search for this topic for a while. With the &note=1 solution, I was able to get them then created a new bookmark list with the results. Was going to mention that but's it's already been covered. Thanks for the help!