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Feature request: Tag system


reybr

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When planning holidays and different trips, I try to find geocaches that show interesting places around different themes. Like historic sites from WW2, caves, waterfalls etc. As it is now, those geocaches can be hard to find when planning a trip. The attributes aren't really helpful because of the limited attributes available  and neither is search for name.

 

What I would like to see is a feature where COs can tag their caches with custom, not predefined as that would be to limited, tags describing the theme of the cache. That way it's possible to search for caches with different themes.

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This isn't a social media site so I'm pretty sure this wouldn't be able to be done as you desire. Although I don't Waymark much, there's plenty of specified groupings of waymarks organized as you want over there.  I don't even know how GS would even begin to create "tags", much less if they even could.

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1 hour ago, reybr said:

When planning holidays and different trips, I try to find geocaches that show interesting places around different themes. Like historic sites from WW2, caves, waterfalls etc. As it is now, those geocaches can be hard to find when planning a trip. The attributes aren't really helpful because of the limited attributes available  and neither is search for name.

 

What I would like to see is a feature where COs can tag their caches with custom, not predefined as that would be to limited, tags describing the theme of the cache. That way it's possible to search for caches with different themes.

Waymarking can help you with this! On every geocache page you can click on Nearest Waymarks to see what's nearby. There are categories for WWII memorials, caves, waterfalls, etc, just some of the over 1,000 categories. Same username and password as Geocaching. 

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Just now, Max and 99 said:

Waymarking can help you with this! On every geocache page you can click on Nearest Waymarks to see what's nearby. There are categories for WWII memorials, caves, waterfalls, etc, just some of the over 1,000 categories. Same username and password as Geocaching. 


Sorry, but that doesn't help at all since there are almost no waymarks in Scandinavia.

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3 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

Waymarking can help you with this! On every geocache page you can click on Nearest Waymarks to see what's nearby. There are categories for WWII memorials, caves, waterfalls, etc, just some of the over 1,000 categories. Same username and password as Geocaching. 

 

I sorta agree, but would do it in reverse order.     :)

I'd go on the Waymarking site, look for, oh let's see... U.S. National Registry of Historic Places,  WWII sites, Caves, or Waterfalls, and simply scroll down to "all nearest geocaches."  

We don't see attributes accurate or even on many cache pages, so if the site could do this,  once the novelty wore off maybe it'd be the same.

I remember that at one time a few people asked about a cache description word search at that project gc site.  Didn't keep track.

I thought you could on gsak, like a [FTF] search to keep track of their FTFs.  Why couldn't folks have [cave] on a gsak search ?

 

 

Edited by cerberus1
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8 hours ago, reybr said:

What I would like to see is a feature where COs can tag their caches with custom, not predefined as that would be to limited, tags describing the theme of the cache. That way it's possible to search for caches with different themes.

 

If such a scheme existed, I'd be struggling to think of what I could tag most of my caches as. My Chasing Waterfalls series is pretty obvious, but it already has Waterfalls in the title of each cache so the tag wouldn't be adding anything there. But what of something like GC62WZJ (Quest for the Middle Sea Diamond)? There's waterways, wetlands, hiking, a native woodland arboretum, rock-hopping, a trig marker, a wind-eroded cave and plenty of scenic views, all woven into a bushranging story set in mid 1800s colonial Australia. The list of tags would almost be as long as the description!

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14 hours ago, TriciaG said:

Are there any public bookmark lists of the types of caches you're looking for?


Sure, there are some, but most are not maintained and all rely on the owner of the list having discovered the cache listing. With a tag system the categorisation is moved from a single user list to the cache owner, the person most qualified to categorise it correctly. The important thing is to let the tags be user defined as the current set of attributes are much to limited for searching.

 

There is also a possibility to allow all users the option to add tags to a cache. (Can be misused in numerous ways though)

Edited by reybr
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11 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

If such a scheme existed, I'd be struggling to think of what I could tag most of my caches as. My Chasing Waterfalls series is pretty obvious, but it already has Waterfalls in the title of each cache so the tag wouldn't be adding anything there. But what of something like GC62WZJ (Quest for the Middle Sea Diamond)? There's waterways, wetlands, hiking, a native woodland arboretum, rock-hopping, a trig marker, a wind-eroded cave and plenty of scenic views, all woven into a bushranging story set in mid 1800s colonial Australia. The list of tags would almost be as long as the description!

 

Adding a 'Waterfall' tag to your Chasing Waterfalls series would add searchability. Sure, I can search for titles including Waterfall, but not all caches related to waterfalls have that word in the title. That's where tags / metadata can help. Regarding your example with GC62WZJ, I don't see why a long list of tags is a problem. It's not something you are supposed to read. It's metadata to help you search. It can be hidden away as a collapsable list.

 

There are of course some possible problems with a tag system as well.

First there is the language problem where you can have two words for the same thing: Waterfall / foss (The Norwegian translation of Waterfall), but also other synonyms or even spelling errors.

There is also a possibility that mystery creators would use such a tag system to hide the coordinates so that the tags are no longer representative.

And as with the attribute system, some people could add a tag to boost statistics.

 

In my opinion, tags would be very helpful for finding the caches I really want to visit.

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On 5/24/2020 at 6:56 AM, reybr said:

In my opinion, tags would be very helpful for finding the caches I really want to visit.

 

Of course that would be helpful but I don't think it's feasible on this site.

 

You're basically asking a a non-social media platform to adopt social media practices.

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On ‎5‎/‎25‎/‎2020 at 6:25 PM, coachstahly said:

 

Of course that would be helpful but I don't think it's feasible on this site.

 

You're basically asking a a non-social media platform to adopt social media practices.

 

I don't see why it's not feasible for this site. Basically, add a tag field to the database entry for the geocache and you're done.

 

Using tags / metadata for searching has nothing to do with  social media. It's used by many other services, like news sites, webstores (like Steam), EXIF-information in pictures, to categorize a personal library of images. Basically for all kinds of databases. I don't see any difference between those examples and this site

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You can leverage Google to a degree using additional parameters.  I sometimes do that to discover relevant listings. For example, searching for:

 

site:geocaching.com intitle:"created by" intitle:ontario waterfall

 

That will match all listings

1. on geocaching.com,

2. with "created by" in the page title (existing on all cache listings) - quoted for exact match because of the space,

3. filtered to those posted in Ontario (the region and country are in all cache listing titles),

4. plus a generic search for waterfall matches (maybe matched via the body content, title, themes, etc; google magic)

 

Now, the results will all depend on public visibility and how updated google's cache is, but a google search provides a very flexible worldwide search engine.

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17 hours ago, TmdAndGG said:

It's a fine idea, I just think that it would eventually end up like attributes, and people just adding whatever tags they want whether relevant or not...

 

True, that is a potensial problem (dadgum statistics). It can however be made less of a problem by upvoting/downvoting the tags. Several of the sites i use sets a base value for a tag to a number. Users can then upvote/downvote the tag and if that value falls to zero the tag is removed.

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16 minutes ago, reybr said:

 

True, that is a potensial problem (dadgum statistics). It can however be made less of a problem by upvoting/downvoting the tags. Several of the sites i use sets a base value for a tag to a number. Users can then upvote/downvote the tag and if that value falls to zero the tag is removed.

No no no no no no no. 

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5 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

No no no no no no no. 

 

Why? Upvoting/downvoting tags works great at other sites. Remember that I am talking about metadata. Ideally this should be excluded from any statistical use, but I don't see how that can be prevented

Edited by reybr
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Just now, reybr said:

 

Why? Upvoting/downvoting tags works great at other sites. Remember that I am talking about metadata

I don't know what that means. But what I'm reading seems to be venturing too close to social media. I don't like it at all. I'm really sorry. Just my take on it. 

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12 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

I don't know what that means. But what I'm reading seems to be venturing too close to social media. I don't like it at all. I'm really sorry. Just my take on it. 

 

While I can understand that that you don't want geocaching to get to close to social media, this has nothing to do with social media.

If you want to, you can have a look at the Wikipedia article about metadata tags: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_(metadata)

 

Quote

In information systems, a tag is a keyword or term assigned to a piece of information (such as an Internet bookmark, digital image, database record, or computer file). This kind of metadata helps describe an item and allows it to be found again by browsing or searching. Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system, although they may also be chosen from a controlled vocabulary.

 

Edited by reybr
Added wiki quote
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41 minutes ago, reybr said:

 

True, that is a potensial problem (dadgum statistics). It can however be made less of a problem by upvoting/downvoting the tags. Several of the sites i use sets a base value for a tag to a number. Users can then upvote/downvote the tag and if that value falls to zero the tag is removed.

 

This site already has moderated user tags a.k.a. bookmarks. Cache owners could add social media style tags to cache descriptions and titles if they wish.

Edited by arisoft
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