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Release Notes (Website: Links now point to new search results) - April 20, 2021


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58 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

Don't like it, as one of my favourite features is not there. When I look at someone's found list I like to be able to see if I have found that cache.

 

This is still there. Just presented differently. When looking at your friends list of found caches there is a smiley over the type icon indicating if you've already found it. However, there is no indication you are looking at someone else's list unless you look in the URL. This should be displayed in the list header.

 

What I will miss is the column "Last Found". I like to look at my list of geocache finds and then see if anyone has found the cache since I've been there. This cannot be done on this new list view.  Can you please add this column to the "All Geocache Finds" list?  As mentioned previously, it would be great if the end user could choose which columns they would like displayed and in what order then save the view. Also, add a filter box for Found Date (similar to Placed Date filter) so you could jump to a section in the list. 

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How about a link to the old search on profile page. This search gave me all my unfound caches 50 miles from my home coordinates. Plus it didn't show my hides or my finds.

 

This is the link I clicked on that said (filter out finds). This is my used function. New search is a waste of my time.

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Oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth seen in the posts!    "W h y must you make the cross-platform-experience better Groundspeak? Why-hy-hy-hyyyyy???"

 

I have a simple post nykkole: Thank you, Groundspeak for providing improvements across the platforms. Thanks for bringing functionalities back when the furor becomes too much (it does happen, and sincere thanks). 

 

Off direct topic - can you bring back links in the Messages as we can do here in Forums??  ?

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Why sorted from nearest to farthest?
This only makes sense when searching for a particular location.

Now, in most cases, you have to create the result list three times:
- Default -> Nearest to farthest
- Click on 'Found on' -> Oldest to newest
- Another click on 'Found on' -> Newest to Oldest

Poor hamsters...

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6 hours ago, JimJinks said:

The old search is still available if you use a bookmarked link

 

https://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?ul=nykkole

 

Insert your own profile name at the end of the link

THANK YOU for this!  I wonder how long the link will work?  For now, it's perfect - gives me back the old format, and it;s simple enough to sub in another player's name to get their list.  Thank you, again, @JimJinks

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4 hours ago, IceColdUK said:

Generally, I don't have a problem with the switch - maybe I just don't use this functionality as much as some? - but one thing I do miss is the two 'Found On' dates: one for me, one for the filtered account.

heh, those values kept confusing me, trying to remember which was which :P But yes, seeing those was helpful.  GCLH's script that moves the green dates to a separate column is quite helpful.

 

 

Here are some essential links I'd recommend bookmarking relevant to this update (I have a folder of so many direct links for easy access it's not event funny =))

The "All" links are only useful as a reference since the table isn't sortable or filterable and the page is huge, and only available for your own listings. But at least it's still possible to see ALL matches (not just the first 1000, regardless of sorting). Those links aren't solutions, but they address some changes. At least for now.

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2 hours ago, brendan714 said:

There is a serious issue with white space in this new update. As a result, the pages now have significantly less efficiency and functionality.

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The result and side-by-side comparison is almost laughably bad to see the loss of features and information in the new search!

 

Phone.thumb.jpg.387c5833eff997d3159773f20a0b5caa.jpg

 


 

As someone who only has access to the internet via their phone this right here hits the nail on the head

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I'm not sure, maybe you're working on it right now, because clicking on "Found On" doesn't do anything (BM). Will it do anything? Or are all the accounts of other people from the families (for example - dad logs right away, his son according to his findings the next day) on the way among the unwanted players?

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43 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

That default sort order to match the old list really needs to be the first hotfix to assuage much of the reflex response here. And be fixed so it still works after scrolling...


And be fixed so it still works after scrolling... (!!)

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1 hour ago, jiggs11 said:

Just curious... do the folks who put together these "improvements" actually even geocache?

 

Not impressed to find my closest (archived) find from 10 years ago listed as #1.... 

 

Another example of trying to fix something that wasn't broken? Thought April Fools was three weeks ago.

 

Give your heads a collective shake.

 

I will reply to your question since I believe it was asked in good faith.  Yes, Lackeys are also geocachers - some more than others.  For example, nykkole is the Lackey monitoring this thread, and she has logged 3,855 finds.  I looked at her account along with six other Lackeys who have been active in the Forums lately.  These seven accounts have an average of 12,430 finds as of today.

 

Not *all* Lackeys have high find counts - many are hired for their technical or other specialized skills.  The culture at Geocaching HQ encourages all Lackeys to have fun geocaching, and it is even part of their employee benefit incentives.  And, it's part of the job description for certain Lackeys who are experienced geocachers to act as advocates for the geocaching community when working with developers.

 

Under the Forum Guidelines, posts which attack or criticize a person are not permitted - they are considered disrespectful.  Criticize ideas, not people.  For an example of a very critical post that is within the Forum Guidelines, please see terratin's post to this thread, a few posts up from this one.  Note that terratin's post has received six upvotes as of this moment.  In contrast, disrespectful posts can result in the post being hidden from view, as well as other consequences explained in the Forum Guidelines and the website Terms of Use.

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The search funktion are missing now We are more friends there normal can search for date of finds but this release gives only a search from my home base 
I do not see why this should be good 
Can we have the old search function back again or shall we upload this in a database out site GC.com to get the function back?

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Two functions I haven't seen in the thread that I would really like to have:

1. Numbering of the ordering.   I like to look at how many caches we have found with 100 or more favorite points - it's impossible to count the wall of text.   I would consider being able to easily see which find is the 100th furthest from home to be an interesting new feature.   

2. When ordering on a metric to maintain the previous ordering for ties.   For instance if I order by difficulty it would be nice if the 5 difficulty caches maintained the ordering based on the previous ordering rather than whatever tie breaker it is using now.  

Edited by schmittfamily
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Sorry , But I'm not happy with the latest up-dates 

 

esp when searching for ( NEW ) unfound cache's 

 

I used to be able to see very quickly ( NEW ) cache's as they were marked as NEW , and if older I could still see by clicking Last found twice ,

 

PLEASE reverse the up-date and return it to the old way of searching .

 

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On 4/21/2021 at 8:19 AM, nykkole said:

Thank you (and others who have mentioned it) for the feedback of the default sort by "Found On" date when viewing someone's finds. This is on our list of possible future improvements.

 

I find it curious that obvious deficiencies in the “upgraded” webpage that have been raised by numerous posters here are only considered as POSSIBLE future improvements. I would have thought that with the feedback raised so far that the new version would be pulled all together and only implemented once the necessary changes are able to be made (whenever that might be), rather than lumping us with a wholly deficient new version for goodness knows how long. 

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16 minutes ago, seffnjarah said:

I guess the question that seems to sum up the obvious frustration in these posts (and many others for any recent “upgrade” to the website) is: when GCHQ makes the conscious decision to take away existing functionality from its users or make pages harder to read/use with excess white space, poor default sorting etc:  what is the “gained advantage” metric that is being used to compare the obvious disadvantage (e.g. the loss of existing functionality / deterioration is usability) against? We keep seeing loss of functionality etc but never an explanation of why or what is being gained by the users in exchange for this loss. When people feel the advantages, if any, are outweighed by the loss of functionality, of course they will tend to react badly.

From this release note :

 

''Why did we make this update?
There are many different ways to search for geocaches on Geocaching.com. With this update, we are taking the first step towards retiring the old search, which has remained in place for six years since the current search was released in March 2015. The goal is to reduce the confusion from (and related cost of maintaining) multiple search experiences, but also to reduce website vulnerabilities. As a benefit, this update provides consistent filtering and sorting, the option to add caches to a List, and the increased option to map caches from the search results. ''

 

I am puzzled about which confusion they are writing about?

 

The good practice of Groundspeak to interact with the community before releasing update from that article from March 2015 they quoted yesterday has been sadly lost :

 

''We’re excited to announce the launch of the new geocache search tool. It’s faster, easier to use and helps you find the exact adventure you want—and it’s all thanks to the geocaching community. We started the upgrade by asking geocachers what they wanted, then gave Geocaching Premium members a Sneak Peek at the new tool before launch.''

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It was so easy to skip a couple pages when looking for caches within a certain mileage at "Search (filter all finds), which I mostly use.

Helpful if you're not sure that notification you just got is on a pmo cache too (I try not to click on pmo).  Now I have to scroll...and scroll... 

Progress I guess...

 

Edited by cerberus1
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Not to mention, the changes HQ felt necessary to make also make it harder to go back and see what we ourselves have found. I just can't find a justification for sorting things by distance versus found on date. It should be the other way around like it was before.

 

Here's a suggestion:

At the very least, allow us to set the sort by as default to what we choose. 

 

Say I want to pull up my finds and see what I found in the last however many days from newest to oldest. Give me back that option and let me choose to keep that default. 

 

I repeat what I said earlier: if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

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2 minutes ago, tbbiker said:

I still don't understand this:  If this was an update to the search feature, why has our Geocaches Found page been butchered?  Nothing that has changed on it is any good and that is the one link on geocaching.com that I use the most.  The way it is now, I have no use for it which means I will be logged onto the website less.  Is this what they want?

Yes this is another thing I find curious. The website is where they are able to make money from advertising sponsors, but not from the app, yet the constant loss-of-functionality changes to the website are driving people away from the website. You may as well just use the app. Less website traffic, less advertising $. Makes no sense to me. 

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I'd prefer no only to reverse the last update but also switch the "new" search results design to the good old view that was used to show players finds/hides list. Thats fine that we have the "new" search engine, so we are able to filter search by D/T rating, name, cache types, attributes (there is however still field to improvement, eg. add possibiliy to filter by found date or by negative attributes), but the search results page design and the way the results are loaded is not what we expect. Old (lets say "classic") view, was more readable and more informative.

 

If you want to improve the presentation page, I propose to enhance the old view's pagination by enabling to choose number of caches per page (e.g. 20, 50 or 100).

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11 hours ago, Twinklekitkat said:

This is still there. Just presented differently. When looking at your friends list of found caches there is a smiley over the type icon indicating if you've already found it. However, there is no indication you are looking at someone else's list unless you look in the URL. This should be displayed in the list header.

Thank you. The trouble was I was looking at someone else's list and not seeing any without that smiling face. I scrolled down some distance and finally found one without the face.

 

With no indication you are looking at someone else's list, caused me to write an entry here that was wrong. Suddenly realising it wasn't my list I was looking at, I rushed back here and deleted my comment.

 

I would also like to see when each cache was last found.

 

Not as practical or well laid out as the old one.

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On 4/20/2021 at 11:16 AM, Geocaching HQ said:

Release Notes (Website: Links now point to new search results) - April 20, 2021

The following links are updated:

 

Links to finds and hides from the player profile

 

I would like this to be changed so that "most recently found" is the automatic default to the top of the list when I go to a player profile. When I go to the profile of someone on my Favorites List, I want to see where they just went caching. I don't want to see the cache they found that is nearest me ... every time I look at their profile. 

 

This seems to be a change brought by folks who never use this site to see where their friends go caching. It's likely that they must be posting and looking at them all on other social media. Not all of us want to or have the time to do that.

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