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BigOpe

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Remembered This post that might give an idea close to what you might be looking for...

But as colleda says, "involved" has a lotta meanings.  I'm ill again, but I keep track of the hobby almost daily.  I'd consider myself involved.

I have friends that have many trackables out.  They haven't cached in years, but they're involved...

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I'd suggest a usable stat for the incidental purposes implied by the OP would be something like,

 

"How many accounts have had activity in the last __________ years; 'activity' being defined as filing any kind of log, attending any event, hiding, making a forum post (HA!), visiting the website, re-upping a Premium Membership or responding to a MC message."

 

No, of course it wouldn't catch everyone, and Sock Puppet accounts, and Team Accounts, and Finder/Seeker account separation, and app-only users who never log, etc, but this is a rough definition that could be (tweaked and) adopted as THE statistic, since people wonder about this here in the fora all the time, and it WOULD be nice to have a number, comparable over time.

 

The inaccuracies would be trivial; for these purposes is there really a significant difference between, for example, 4,000,000 and 4,000,999?

 

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6 hours ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

I'd suggest a usable stat for the incidental purposes implied by the OP would be something like,

 

"How many accounts have had activity in the last __________ years; 'activity' being defined as filing any kind of log, attending any event, hiding, making a forum post (HA!), visiting the website, re-upping a Premium Membership or responding to a MC message."

Really? I think "now involved" would just mean found a cache in the last month. The OP said "involved", not "interested", so I don't think forum activity or website visits are what they're thinking about. And while some cachers cache regularly but infrequently, I think it would be fair to say they the ones that haven't found a cache in the last month are not *now* involved even though they might be involved against next week. So that's just my logical thought before I think of the practical issue that cachers with finds in the last month would be a simple number, where the other things you mention seem a lot harder to define and track down...and my guess is that the difference of leaving those other things out would be well within your margin of error, anyway.

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24 minutes ago, dprovan said:

Really? I think "now involved" would just mean found a cache in the last month. The OP said "involved", not "interested", so I don't think forum activity or website visits are what they're thinking about. And while some cachers cache regularly but infrequently, I think it would be fair to say they the ones that haven't found a cache in the last month are not *now* involved even though they might be involved against next week. So that's just my logical thought before I think of the practical issue that cachers with finds in the last month would be a simple number, where the other things you mention seem a lot harder to define and track down...and my guess is that the difference of leaving those other things out would be well within your margin of error, anyway.

Statistics based on the last month would be very seasonal. The number of geocachers "now involved in the game" would vary depending on the weather, vacation schedules, etc.

 

That's fine if you want a "right now" number that varies in a seasonal pattern, but it sounded to me like the OP wanted a more general number, similar to the 3M geocaches statistic. For that, I would expect everyone active in the past year to be a more useful number. You'll still miss a few folks who never log online, or who are more than a year behind logging their field notes drafts, and there will still be "seasonal" variations from 2020 (e.g., lots of parks being closed at various times in 2020). But I think the number would be better than the "one month" number.

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3 minutes ago, niraD said:

Statistics based on the last month would be very seasonal. The number of geocachers "now involved in the game" would vary depending on the weather, vacation schedules, etc.

 

That's fine if you want a "right now" number that varies in a seasonal pattern, but it sounded to me like the OP wanted a more general number, similar to the 3M geocaches statistic. For that, I would expect everyone active in the past year to be a more useful number. You'll still miss a few folks who never log online, or who are more than a year behind logging their field notes drafts, and there will still be "seasonal" variations from 2020 (e.g., lots of parks being closed at various times in 2020). But I think the number would be better than the "one month" number.

According to the links from cerberus the answer would be 2.1M with 50% of them finding a cache every 3 months or more often

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9 hours ago, dprovan said:

Really? I think "now involved" would just mean found a cache in the last month. The OP said "involved", not "interested", so I don't think forum activity or website visits are what they're thinking about. And while some cachers cache regularly but infrequently, I think it would be fair to say they the ones that haven't found a cache in the last month are not *now* involved even though they might be involved against next week. So that's just my logical thought before I think of the practical issue that cachers with finds in the last month would be a simple number, where the other things you mention seem a lot harder to define and track down...and my guess is that the difference of leaving those other things out would be well within your margin of error, anyway.

 

That seems a bit harsh, particularly for those who can't just duck out and find a cache whenever they have a free moment. During the lockdown here last year, I went 61 days without any finds but was still involved in the game, doing routine checks on my caches that were within the permitted exercise area, making sure to disable any caches that were within areas that were closed off and, in the course of doing my permitted exercise, discovering locations that turned into new hides after the lockdown lifted. But even now without any restrictions in force, I'm likely to go several weeks between finds as nowadays any caching involves a substantial amount of travel and will typically take the best part of a day even if I only make one find (or none if it ends up being a DNF). Most of my involvement in the game now is routine maintenance runs on my hides, planning new ones, joining in any group outings that come along and making a nuisance of myself on the forums.

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19 hours ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

I'd suggest a usable stat for the incidental purposes implied by the OP would be something like,

 

"How many accounts have had activity in the last __________ years; 'activity' being defined as filing any kind of log, attending any event, hiding, making a forum post (HA!), visiting the website, re-upping a Premium Membership or responding to a MC message."

 

No, of course it wouldn't catch everyone, and Sock Puppet accounts, and Team Accounts, and Finder/Seeker account separation, and app-only users who never log, etc, but this is a rough definition that could be (tweaked and) adopted as THE statistic, since people wonder about this here in the fora all the time, and it WOULD be nice to have a number, comparable over time.

 

The inaccuracies would be trivial; for these purposes is there really a significant difference between, for example, 4,000,000 and 4,000,999?

 

 

13 hours ago, dprovan said:

Really? I think "now involved" would just mean found a cache in the last month. The OP said "involved", not "interested", so I don't think forum activity or website visits are what they're thinking about. And while some cachers cache regularly but infrequently, I think it would be fair to say they the ones that haven't found a cache in the last month are not *now* involved even though they might be involved against next week. So that's just my logical thought before I think of the practical issue that cachers with finds in the last month would be a simple number, where the other things you mention seem a lot harder to define and track down...and my guess is that the difference of leaving those other things out would be well within your margin of error, anyway.

 

Well, I can see some of what you said, but overall I think I agree with me. It's all a question of what you're trying to count - that'll set your definition.

As a low-volume cacher, there are PLENTY of months when I don't get out, and under your definition I wouldn't be considered active in the hobby.

Nope.

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8 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

That seems a bit harsh, particularly for those who can't just duck out and find a cache whenever they have a free moment.

What do you mean by harsh? I'm just discussing what the OP wanted to know, not expressing some kind of value judgment about the people I think should be counted to answer his question. The current plague is a great example: I understand completely that lots of people haven't been caching because of the plague, and I have no doubts many of them will become active again someday, but that doesn't change the fact that they are not "now involved in the game".

 

5 hours ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

Well, I can see some of what you said, but overall I think I agree with me. It's all a question of what you're trying to count - that'll set your definition.

As a low-volume cacher, there are PLENTY of months when I don't get out, and under your definition I wouldn't be considered active in the hobby.

Nope.

Well, of course, I understood you defined it differently. I don't define it at all, I just consider what the OP wants to know. I don't think he's looking for some kind of measure of who calls themselves a cacher, who feels akin to caching, or who *wants* to be involved. I think the basic metric he wants is something along the lines of how many people are likely to be out today looking for caches. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing, I'm not saying you're not a good cacher, tried and true, doing good service geocaching. I'm just saying I don't think that counting you during a month when you haven't gone cache would be contrary to what I think of when someone asks me how many cachers are "now involved". Naturally, I could be wrong, but my guess is the OP is asking how many cachers are normal, run of the mill, day by day seekers.

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40 minutes ago, dprovan said:

I think the basic metric he wants is something along the lines of how many people are likely to be out today looking for caches.

I didn't get that sense of "out today" from the OP that you seem to have gotten.

 

To me, it came across as similar to the 3M geocaches worldwide, where we count all the active caches, not just the ones that have been found today, or this week, or even this month. So we don't count the archived caches, and likewise we shouldn't count the geocachers who never go geocaching anymore. But that doesn't mean they aren't geocachers if they haven't found a cache today, or this week, or even this month.

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40 minutes ago, dprovan said:

What do you mean by harsh? I'm just discussing what the OP wanted to know, not expressing some kind of value judgment about the people I think should be counted to answer his question. The current plague is a great example: I understand completely that lots of people haven't been caching because of the plague, and I have no doubts many of them will become active again someday, but that doesn't change the fact that they are not "now involved in the game".

 

Well, of course, I understood you defined it differently. I don't define it at all, I just consider what the OP wants to know. I don't think he's looking for some kind of measure of who calls themselves a cacher, who feels akin to caching, or who *wants* to be involved. I think the basic metric he wants is something along the lines of how many people are likely to be out today looking for caches. There's nothing wrong with what you're doing, I'm not saying you're not a good cacher, tried and true, doing good service geocaching. I'm just saying I don't think that counting you during a month when you haven't gone cache would be contrary to what I think of when someone asks me how many cachers are "now involved". Naturally, I could be wrong, but my guess is the OP is asking how many cachers are normal, run of the mill, day by day seekers.

 

Actually, I suspect the OP (are you still there) was asking a much simpler question, without regard for the nuances that we've been batting about.

 

So, we're both right, we're just defining different questions.

 

Sometimes, at work when I'm tasked with with helping someone pull data from a database and turn it into information, I don't ask them "What do you want to know?", I ask them "What do you want to prove?"

 

It always gets a chuckle, but an unfortunate number of clients take it as a serious question.

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5 hours ago, dprovan said:

What do you mean by harsh? I'm just discussing what the OP wanted to know, not expressing some kind of value judgment about the people I think should be counted to answer his question. The current plague is a great example: I understand completely that lots of people haven't been caching because of the plague, and I have no doubts many of them will become active again someday, but that doesn't change the fact that they are not "now involved in the game".

 

I'm just saying there are other ways to still be "involved in the game" even if you're not going out finding caches every other day or even every month. For many who live away from the big cities, it's by necessity as they soon run out of unfound local caches and finds are confined to trips away, but they can still be involved in other ways through creating and maintaining hides, participating in groups or even just solving bunches of puzzle caches to be eventually found on those rare trips away. I've recently gone on five group caching hikes where we visited a bunch of caches over the course of half a day but they were all either caches I'd previously found or caches I owned. No smileys for me on those days but I'd still like to think I was involved.

Edited by barefootjeff
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5 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I'm just saying there are other ways to still be "involved in the game" even if you're not going out finding caches every other day or even every month.

I don't deny that, I just question whether that's what the OP was interested in. To me, it's like the difference between how many caches are active versus how many caches might be active next week assuming everyone thinking vaguely about possibly planting a cache actually plants all of them right now.

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32 minutes ago, dprovan said:

I don't deny that, I just question whether that's what the OP was interested in. To me, it's like the difference between how many caches are active versus how many caches might be active next week assuming everyone thinking vaguely about possibly planting a cache actually plants all of them right now.

The OP didn't mention how many geocaches there might be next week. The OP mentioned how many geocachers there are now.

 

The analogy would be how many geocachers there are, not how many people might go geocaching this week.

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2 hours ago, niraD said:

The OP didn't mention how many geocaches there might be next week. The OP mentioned how many geocachers there are now.

 

The analogy would be how many geocachers there are, not how many people might go geocaching this week.

Exactly my point. "How many cachers there are" strikes me as asking about the number of the boots on the ground *now*, not how many might be there next week based on the fact that they were there a year ago and we know that some cachers cache regularly but infrequently. How many cached last month seems like the obvious measure since it's the only one that both concrete and meaningful.

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5 hours ago, dprovan said:

Exactly my point. "How many cachers there are" strikes me as asking about the number of the boots on the ground *now*, not how many might be there next week based on the fact that they were there a year ago and we know that some cachers cache regularly but infrequently. How many cached last month seems like the obvious measure since it's the only one that both concrete and meaningful.

 

And there's the difference. I don't agree with the highlighted statement.

Again, we're asking different questions.

 

Don, you're right.

Jeff, you're right

Darin, you're right.

And me: I'm just an old country doctor.

Who's right.

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3 hours ago, TeamRabbitRun said:
9 hours ago, dprovan said:

...since it's the only one that both concrete and meaningful.

 

And there's the difference. I don't agree with the highlighted statement.

Again, we're asking different questions.

I agree we're discussing our opinions. I don't pretend to be presenting the only correct answer. But I'm justifying my position, I'm not just pushing one answer. So, for example, please explain why the number you think is better is concrete and meaningful. I think we all agree that all registered geocachers isn't meaningful. I'm using the time period of the last month because it excludes people that have already quit, particularly the fly-by-night phone cachers that everyone loves to complain about. The complaint against that is it cuts out the ardent but occasional geocachers, which I don't deny is a valid concern, but I see absolutely no way to count them concretely.

 

I've also explained why I think I'm interpreting the OP's question as more about boots on the ground and why it seems unlikely they're thinking about people that talk about geocaching without actually looking for geocaches.

 

In other words, I'm discussing our opinions to flesh out what numbers we could actually count and what meaning they'd really have. The observation that we all have different opinions is as obvious as it is unhelpful. What I'd be more interested in are actual ways to count something that would produce a more interesting result, not just people complaining that I'm not including this or that group that they hold close to their hearts.

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13 minutes ago, dprovan said:

What I'd be more interested in are actual ways to count something that would produce a more interesting result, not just people complaining that I'm not including this or that group that they hold close to their hearts.

If we're having that discussion, then we could consider that we have other variables besides "time since a Find was logged by this account".

 

It sounds like you don't want to count forum participation, and I'm inclined to agree with you. So let's consider activity on the main site, or perhaps via the API or via Groundspeak's apps.

 

Are cache owners who monitor logs posted to their caches considered geocachers?

Are members who upload field notes drafts considered geocachers?

Are members who download PQ data or API data considered geocachers?

Are members who find caches but don't log them online (e.g., due to privacy/stalking concerns) considered geocachers?

Are members who view the cache map of the location for their next vacation or business trip considered geocachers?

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9 hours ago, niraD said:

Are cache owners who monitor logs posted to their caches considered geocachers?

You must be originally from the SF bay area to ask such coherent questions!

 

No, I would say COs are not interesting to the OP because, the way I see it, they're asking about seekers, not hiders. Having said that, I wouldn't be against counting both hiders and seekers in the last month. As long as you're not suggesting counting people that hid a cache 8 years ago as automatically "active".

 

9 hours ago, niraD said:

Are members who upload field notes drafts considered geocachers?

Yes, logging a find via drafts sounds reasonable. Wouldn't they be counted in my suggestion of anyone posting a find?

 

9 hours ago, niraD said:

Are members who download PQ data or API data considered geocachers?

I would say, "no". The question is how many people are finding caches, not how many are thinking they might find caches. And, frankly, from everything I've see here in the forums, *many* people are downloading PQs and API downloads automatically long after they actually use that data to find a cache.

 

9 hours ago, niraD said:

Are members who find caches but don't log them online (e.g., due to privacy/stalking concerns) considered geocachers?

I would like to account for for people not actually logging finds, and it's logical to account for them, but I see no way whatsoever that we can actually account for them. And, in the end, it the OP really asking for a count of people finding caches whether we can ever detect them or ratioanally account for them or not?

 

9 hours ago, niraD said:

Are members who view the cache map of the location for their next vacation or business trip considered geocachers?

I don't think so. I see no reason to count consideration. I think the OP is interested only people that actually did geocache regardless of how often and comprehensively they considered...but then didn't end up geocaching. To me, this is the pivotal example: I think the OP wants actual performance numbers, not "might have" or "maybe thought about it", but, in the end, didn't do a dang thing to geocache numbers.

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1 hour ago, dprovan said:

No, I would say COs are not interesting to the OP because, the way I see it, they're asking about seekers, not hiders. Having said that, I wouldn't be against counting both hiders and seekers in the last month.

 

What the OP asked was "how many players are now involved in the game?" To me, hiding and maintaining caches is as much playing the game as going out and finding them, since you can only find them if someone else has hidden them. With new caches in my region now a rare treat, most of my caching time is doing routine visits to my own caches and occasional day trips to Sydney or Newcastle to try to find a few. In the past month, I've gone seeking caches on three occasions, a couple of finds in North Sydney when I had other business to attend to there, a day's hiking to and from a 1.5/4 traditional in the Watagan Mountains (a 120km drive north of here), and a day on Sydney Harbour on Tuesday to do an AL/bonus plus another traditional in the area. The rest of my caching time has been maintenance runs, particularly after the heavy rain and flooding in late March when I was eager to check on any vulnerable hides that might have been damaged (two needed attention). I would think all of those things are "involvement in the game", particularly if you consider "players" to mean participants rather than just seekers.

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3 hours ago, dprovan said:

As long as you're not suggesting counting people that hid a cache 8 years ago as automatically "active".

At what point does your cache become old enough that maintaining it is no longer considered "geocaching"?

 

3 hours ago, dprovan said:
12 hours ago, niraD said:

Are members who upload field notes drafts considered geocachers?

Yes, logging a find via drafts sounds reasonable. Wouldn't they be counted in my suggestion of anyone posting a find?

I mentioned uploading field notes drafts. I didn't say anything about using those field notes drafts to post Find logs.

 

3 hours ago, dprovan said:

I would like to account for for people not actually logging finds, and it's logical to account for them, but I see no way whatsoever that we can actually account for them.

That's why I'm trying to explore activity other than logging Finds that would qualify one to be "involved in the game". If I use Groundspeak's app to navigate to a cache, and sign the physical log, but don't log a Find online (logging nothing online or logging only a Note, for example), then am I "involved in the game"? Is there a way for Groundspeak to account for such members in this statistic for people "involved in the game"?

 

3 hours ago, dprovan said:

And, in the end, it the OP really asking for a count of people finding caches whether we can ever detect them or ratioanally account for them or not?

Is logging a Find the only measure of whether one is "involved in the game"? My point is to consider alternatives beyond that (especially if you're going to limit the timeframe for Find logs to only the last month).

 

3 hours ago, dprovan said:

I don't think so. I see no reason to count consideration. I think the OP is interested only people that actually did geocache regardless of how often and comprehensively they considered...but then didn't end up geocaching. To me, this is the pivotal example: I think the OP wants actual performance numbers, not "might have" or "maybe thought about it", but, in the end, didn't do a dang thing to geocache numbers.

Is one not "involved in" geocaching if one plans a geocaching trip? Is one not "involved in" backpacking if one plans a backpacking trip? Is one not "involved in" boardgaming if one plans a boardgaming night with friends?

 

You may not be geocaching, backpacking, or boardgaming at the time, but you are doing things that are very much involved with the activity, very much related to being able to do it at some time planned in the future. I think that makes you a geocacher, backpacker, or boardgamer, even if you aren't geocaching, backpacking, or boardgaming at that very instant.

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1 hour ago, niraD said:

Is logging a Find the only measure of whether one is "involved in the game"?

I won't bother to repeat myself to respond to your other comments because I think it comes down to this: I have proposed a count that is both simple and easy, has a well defined meaning, and, as far as I can see, satisfies the OP's question. If you want to count some other factors, explain what they are, explain how you'd count them, explain how significantly they would change the count from what I've proposed, and make your case for why that significantly different count would be any better than mine. I'm tired of hearing people complain about my suggestion without giving even the slightest hint about what they would count, how they would count it, and what makes them think it would be more useful to the OP.

 

3 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

To me, hiding and maintaining caches is as much playing the game as going out and finding them, since you can only find them if someone else has hidden them.

As I said, feel free to add in geocachers who haven't found any caches in the last month but have hidden caches in the last month or filed an OM on a cache in the last month. I think that number would be insignificant, but if you think it would be oh so much more meaningful, I won't object.

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7 hours ago, dprovan said:

I'm tired of hearing people complain about my suggestion without giving even the slightest hint about what they would count, how they would count it, and what makes them think it would be more useful to the OP.

If you want a simple answer, then extending the time period to 1 year would probably do it. There are a lot of geocachers who don't go geocaching every month. There will still be a few outliers who don't get counted, but you'll get the people who find geocaches during summer vacation, or on occasional trips.

 

The rest is just discussion about who might be considered "involved in the game" in addition to those who log a Find every month. I think most of them could be counted by tracking which users accessed the geocaching.com servers (PQs, maps, API, PM renewal, etc.). But if you don't want to discuss what makes one "involved in the game", that's fine too.

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3 hours ago, niraD said:

If you want a simple answer, then extending the time period to 1 year would probably do it. There are a lot of geocachers who don't go geocaching every month. There will still be a few outliers who don't get counted, but you'll get the people who find geocaches during summer vacation, or on occasional trips.

Obviously your point is reasonable, but I think expanding the time frame would include mostly people that flew in, found a cache, and never cached again and very few of the occasional cachers you're talking about. I also conceded there might be a seasonal variation in my number, but I'm not convinced that makes it less suitable to the purpose. Doesn't it make sense that the number of people "involved in the game" varies from season to season?

 

3 hours ago, niraD said:

The rest is just discussion about who might be considered "involved in the game" in addition to those who log a Find every month. I think most of them could be counted by tracking which users accessed the geocaching.com servers (PQs, maps, API, PM renewal, etc.). But if you don't want to discuss what makes one "involved in the game", that's fine too

Let's consider another example. Let's say someone wants to know how many people are "involved in tennis". I would take that as meaning they're curious in a number that reflects how many people will be out on the tennis courts on any given day. I don't think they'd mean to include everyone that reads "tennis fun" magazine. The people merely interested in tennis or even just like to remember when they were involved with tennis don't, to my mind, address what the question posed is. I also don't think they'd care about people working for companies manufacturing tennis balls or running resorts with tennis courts or watching tennis on TV or any of the other things similar to what you're talking about that are beyond finding a cache. I admit, that's just my opinion about what anyone saying "involved with geocache" or "involved with tennis" wants to know, but I think I'm giving good reasons to guess that it is closer to what they're thinking than the broader counts until they give a more precise explanation of what they're looking for.

 

Besides, counting users accessing any of the geocaching resources is something GS would have to do. The number of cachers that found a cache in the last month is available from information we all have access to.

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I feel terribly guilt about this particular dead horse.

 

"D", you keep telling us what the OP meant, and saying in several ways what the obvious interpretation MUST be, but I (at least) still disagree with you.

 

My suggestion proposed a statistic that reflected what I'd find interesting (with, if you recall, an unspecified timeline open for discussion) and you've suggested a statistic that YOU would find interesting. THEY ARE DIFFERENT. 

 

Please stop telling us that no other statistic but yours is valid or meaningful. Only the OP can come in and tell us what his point was.

 

Then, beyond that, both of our opinions and suggested metrics are still equally valid, and I wouldn't mind seeing them both.

 

Picture a page on the website that lists ALL of the factors that we've all suggested to count as a valid indicator of 'Activity'. Then, you could change the selected criteria by clicking or unclicking each one of the factors and change the time period and design your own metric.

 

OOP-A!

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3 hours ago, dprovan said:

Let's consider another example. Let's say someone wants to know how many people are "involved in tennis". I would take that as meaning they're curious in a number that reflects how many people will be out on the tennis courts on any given day. I don't think they'd mean to include everyone that reads "tennis fun" magazine.

Sure. We'll exclude people who just read about it (whether in forums, blogs, magazines, etc.).

 

Quote

The people merely interested in tennis or even just like to remember when they were involved with tennis don't, to my mind, address what the question posed is.

Sure. We'll exclude people who don't play any more.

 

Quote

I also don't think they'd care about people working for companies manufacturing tennis balls or running resorts with tennis courts or watching tennis on TV or any of the other things similar to what you're talking about that are beyond finding a cache.

Sure. We'll exclude people who make stuff for the game, but who don't play themselves.

 

Quote

I admit, that's just my opinion about what anyone saying "involved with geocache" or "involved with tennis" wants to know, but I think I'm giving good reasons to guess that it is closer to what they're thinking than the broader counts until they give a more precise explanation of what they're looking for.

What about people who don't play tennis (go geocaching) when their local tennis courts (geocaches) are covered with snow? Are they still players in the winter months?

 

Was I a football player in high school? I played football only during football season. Practices started in August, and games ran through sometime in November, as I recall. But the rest of the year, I did other things. But if we apply the standard that you have to do it every month or it doesn't count...

Edited by niraD
typo
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3 hours ago, hzoi said:

I imagine @Moun10Bike could have an easy answer as far as how many accounts have been created on geocaching.com. I imagine he'd also have a reasonable definition for what makes an active account and could supply that number as well.

 

Oh sure, drag me into this! :) As you can surely glean from this thread, people will argue forever on how to define "active." We even have this argument internally when it comes to determining the "one true" number.

Overall, there have been 35.2 million accounts created. 2.2 million have logged a find in the past year, and 889K have logged a find in the past 3 months.

 

As an aside, did you know that only 3K accounts have posted in the forums in the past year? :) 

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On 4/15/2021 at 1:54 PM, niraD said:

What about people who don't play tennis (go geocaching) when their local tennis courts (geocaches) are covered with snow? Are they still players in the winter months?

So first off, yes, someone asking about "involved now" might very well be interested in numbers that fluctuate seasonally. In fact, I'd go so far as to contend that if they didn't want that, they should have just said "involved", not "involved now", since, to my mind, "now" opens up the possibility that they actually mean right now.

 

But I agree that, for some purposes, that might be an argument against the month time frame.

 

So since you and the others seem to only be interested in complaining, I'll suggest a solution myself to reflect the concept you want, this idea of strategically involved even if not involved right now. How about we count everyone that's cached in the last year -- that's what you want -- except we require a minimum number of finds during the period, since I'm trying not to count people that only played a little and then left without becoming in any sense "involved". How many finds in a year is that? I'm going to say 30. Yes, on the one hand, 30 per year might rule out some of you, but I ask myself whether the person asking about involvement really wants to know about about the tennis equivalent of people that go out once a year to practice by hitting 29 serves. On the other hand, 30 seems like enough to rule out most people that tried geocaching for a day and then never did it again.

 

All square? Now we have two concepts: involved NOW and involved IN GENERAL. Any other variations people want to count?

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On 4/15/2021 at 10:36 AM, TeamRabbitRun said:

Then, beyond that, both of our opinions and suggested metrics are still equally valid, and I wouldn't mind seeing them both.

By the other suggested metric, are you talking about the vague one about number of people accessing GS resources? I think I'd use the term "floated" instead of "suggested" for that one, since it wasn't really clear how that would be done and what it would mean. In particular, once you get vague about what all is included as "use", it gets really hard for me to understand how you count people as opposed to clicks.

 

Assuming that's what you're talking about, I don't have a problem with it, although I'm a little vague about what it means. The way I look at it, that's more counting "seats" in the sense of marketing geocaching. I guess that would be interesting to someone considering "involved in geocaching" as a measure of market size. Is that what we're talking about?

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23 hours ago, Moun10Bike said:

As you can surely glean from this thread, people will argue forever on how to define "active." We even have this argument internally when it comes to determining the "one true" number.

Confusing issues by arguing over definitions does seem to be the standard of "debate" these days, not merely in geocaching but in the world at large. Pick a word -- technically the word we picked was "involved", not "active", but no big deal -- and then pretend there's only one definition -- mine -- that all discussion not agreeing with my definition can be dismissed as wrong. So, as you say, the discussion is, from the beginning, mostly about the on true meaning of a word that any casual observer can see has multiple meanings. That's why I try to jump past the title and ask what we want to know. That seems to have worked. At least, I think niraD and I are coming to an agreement that sometimes we want to know how many people are involved right now, including seasonal fluctuations, and sometimes we want to know how many people are involved in geocaching in a year to year sense, something that reflects long term trends.

 

Too bad this no longer can happen in political discussions where nearly everyone seems to be dividing the world up into two groups: people that accept my definitions of my terms, and people that can be dismissed as "not getting it". In the US, at least, progressives have taken this to a whole new level by just flat out redefining terms and then dismissing anyone that tries to use the original English definition or, for that matter, the very concept that the original English terms accurately identified.

 

23 hours ago, Moun10Bike said:

Overall, there have been 35.2 million accounts created. 2.2 million have logged a find in the past year, and 889K have logged a find in the past 3 months.

What?! How dare you try to make the discussion practical! No, really, thanks for making it real. It sounds to me like a million is about the right answer and seems to agree with your 889K number when we take into account winter and hemispheres and stuff. Now we need to see the difference between found in the past 1 month and found in the past 12 months to see if we really should worry about the difference to begin with. Although what fun is that?

 

23 hours ago, Moun10Bike said:

As an aside, did you know that only 3K accounts have posted in the forums in the past year?

Thanks for confirming we can rule out forum users out because we're statistically insignificant even before we consider how many of those 3K accounts are also counted in "found caches in the last N months".

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59 minutes ago, dprovan said:

How about we count everyone that's cached in the last year -- that's what you want -- except we require a minimum number of finds during the period, since I'm trying not to count people that only played a little and then left without becoming in any sense "involved". How many finds in a year is that? I'm going to say 30. Yes, on the one hand, 30 per year might rule out some of you, but I ask myself whether the person asking about involvement really wants to know about about the tennis equivalent of people that go out once a year to practice by hitting 29 serves. On the other hand, 30 seems like enough to rule out most people that tried geocaching for a day and then never did it again.

I don't like measuring when someone is ready to hide a cache based on find count. And I don't like measuring when a member is "involved" based on find count.

 

If you're concerned about the "one and done" folk who try geocaching one weekend and then vanish, perhaps the measure can be based on how long the person has geocached. So someone who logs finds one weekend no longer counts as "involved" after a month with no more logs, but someone who has logged geocaches every year for 10 years still counts as "involved" even if they go months without logging a cache.

 

We'll still miss folk who are way behind in logging their field notes drafts, but I'm not sure what to do with such members unless we start counting other activity besides logging Finds, and you don't seem to want to do that.

 

 

47 minutes ago, dprovan said:

In particular, once you get vague about what all is included as "use", it gets really hard for me to understand how you count people as opposed to clicks.

You count people by tracking accounts that have had clicks, rather than tracking clicks themselves.

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Quite a bit of hot debate over something the OP considered trivial.  Guessing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, trying to define if 'active' is equal to 'involved' - I think Moun10Bike (thanks, Jon) gave all the answer needed.  Come on, really, you guys need to get outside and do something active - geocaching related or not.

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1 hour ago, The Jester said:

Quite a bit of hot debate over something the OP considered trivial.  Guessing exactly what he wanted, when he wanted, trying to define if 'active' is equal to 'involved' - I think Moun10Bike (thanks, Jon) gave all the answer needed.  Come on, really, you guys need to get outside and do something active - geocaching related or not.

What's hot about the debate?

 

I'd call it suggesting various possibilities for what he wanted rather than guessing since "guessing" implies there's a correct answer and that it is important. No matter what the OP wanted, I'm more interested in discussing what information might be interesting.

 

I certainly appreciated Moun10Bike's input and considered it an important addition to the conversation, but I was assuming we were looking for a number that we can reliably measure over time rather than the single current count, since, to me at least, the specific number is far less interesting than its trend.

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47 minutes ago, dprovan said:

What's hot about the debate?

 

I'd call it suggesting various possibilities for what he wanted rather than guessing since "guessing" implies there's a correct answer and that it is important. No matter what the OP wanted, I'm more interested in discussing what information might be interesting.

 

I certainly appreciated Moun10Bike's input and considered it an important addition to the conversation, but I was assuming we were looking for a number that we can reliably measure over time rather than the single current count, since, to me at least, the specific number is far less interesting than its trend.

Um, "suggesting various possibilities" is guessing.  And there is a correct answer, but only OP can say what that is, the rest is all guessing.

 

In all you posts you kept insisting on "found logs within the last month" - doesn't sound like a 'trend' to me, but a "single count".  

 

Whatever, you'll keep doing what you are doing.

 

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9 hours ago, The Jester said:

Um, "suggesting various possibilities" is guessing.  And there is a correct answer, but only OP can say what that is, the rest is all guessing.

OK. I was careful to explain why none of that is true, but if you're gong to ignore what I said, there's not much I can do.

 

9 hours ago, The Jester said:

In all you posts you kept insisting on "found logs within the last month" - doesn't sound like a 'trend' to me, but a "single count".  

I don't know how to respond to that. Moun10Bike gave a single, static number. I'm proposing a number that you could look at whenever you wanted, hence would be able to see trends as it changes over time.

 

9 hours ago, The Jester said:

Whatever, you'll keep doing what you are doing.

That is correct. I'll continue to discuss the subject and listen to other people's ideas to see where we can take this.

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11 hours ago, dprovan said:
23 hours ago, niraD said:

You count people by tracking accounts that have had clicks, rather than tracking clicks themselves.

If you can tell which account to associate the click with.

Well, sure. Clicks that aren't associated with an account won't get credited to an account. If you aren't logged in, then nothing you do counts as your activity for the purposes of determining whether you're active.

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