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Release Notes (Geocaching® app: Filter by Favorite points) - June 21, 2021


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Release Notes (Geocaching® app: Filter by Favorite points) - June 21, 2021

 

With today’s release, Premium members using the Geocaching® app can filter for caches by Favorite points.
 
On the filter screen, enter the number of minimum Favorite points and apply the filter. If you choose 50, only caches with 50 or more Favorite points will show on the map.
 
nykkole is watching this thread to answer questions whenever possible.

 

Any posts in this thread should relate to features in this release. Comments unrelated to the release may be removed. Please direct unrelated comments to other appropriate threads. Thanks!

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1 hour ago, ardila.nl said:

For everyone asking for the FP ratio, you can use the project-gc user script: https://project-gc.com/Home/UserScript

Which adds the ratio on the website.

Screenshot_20210623_120353.thumb.png.01baf876820092f7d5c95dc7816f6ecb.png

 

You can also use the tool https://project-gc.com/Statistics/TopFavWilson to find caches based on that ratio

 

Don't you need a Premium Membership also at Project gc to have access to scripts?

 

Also this update is about the app not the website.

 

Like previous said the FP% makes so much more sense while looking for quality cache (if the cache didn't get changed since the FP awarded)

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19 minutes ago, Lynx Humble said:

Don't you need a Premium Membership also at Project gc to have access to scripts?

Yes and no - the script is open source so anyone can use it, and some of the features it enables are available to anyone while other features (such as th FP %) are only enabled for Project-GC PMs.

However as you say this is off topic for the App release notes discussion ;)

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1 minute ago, MartyBartfast said:

However as you say this is off topic for the App release notes discussion ;)

I agree but I wasn't sure if people knew and it will likely take a while before something FP% is implemented in the app so I thought I'd mention it to help people.

Just updated the app to 8.51.2 and as usual you have to logout and back in again to see the new feature.

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On 6/21/2021 at 1:44 PM, kamla said:

How about filtering by favorite ratio? 50 FPs on 500 founds is nothing, 50 on 50 is another thing. Absolute numbers don't mean much.

 

One complication of Fav % is that only premium members can award Fav points.  So if you list your cache as Premium-Only you will artificially have a higher fav % over somebody who lists their cache as open to everyone.  Doesn't mean it is a worse cache, but going strictly by % might lead you to think that. 

I found an amazing cache last month that has many logs from basic members. 

It has 61 fav points on 152 finds = 40%. 
Looking at the logs of premium vs basic, the premium fav % is closer to 75%

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12 minutes ago, HoochDog said:

 

One complication of Fav % is that only premium members can award Fav points.  So if you list your cache as Premium-Only you will artificially have a higher fav % over somebody who lists their cache as open to everyone.  Doesn't mean it is a worse cache, but going strictly by % might lead you to think that. 

I found an amazing cache last month that has many logs from basic members. 

It has 61 fav points on 152 finds = 40%. 
Looking at the logs of premium vs basic, the premium fav % is closer to 75%

Hum your statement is false. FP% already doesn't count found by basic member.

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3 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

Hum your statement is false. FP% already doesn't count found by basic member.

 

I was responding to a proposed feature (filtering by favorite %) in the official app that does not currently exist

And at no point did I make any statement saying the proposed feature (that doesn't exist) should work one way or the other, but would be something to consider if implemented.

I'm not sure how anything about that can be "false".

 

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4 hours ago, HoochDog said:

So if you list your cache as Premium-Only you will artificially have a higher fav % over somebody who lists their cache as open to everyone.  Doesn't mean it is a worse cache, but going strictly by % might lead you to think that.

 

3 minutes ago, HoochDog said:

I'm not sure how anything about that can be "false".

 

Please re-explain how a PMO cache can get an higher FP% than a non-PMO because like I said FP% doesn't include found by basic member.

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7 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

 

Please re-explain how a PMO cache can get an higher FP% than a non-PMO because like I said FP% doesn't include found by basic member.

 

First, you'll have to explain to me where in the official app you are currently seeing FP%

Edit: Thanks Keystone, I did not know it existed.  

 

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Favorite Point percentages are not currently available in the official Geocaching app.  They are available on the Geocaching.com website by clicking on the "down arrow" next to the favorite point count on any individual cache page.  The favorite point percentage only ever includes logs by Premium Members, as noted by Lynx Humble.

 

Historically Geocaching HQ has explained that this limitation on Favorite Point percentages (i.e., shown only on the cache page when the arrow is clicked) is because of the drain on server resources to calculate FP% in real time, especially for a search results list that includes many geocaches.

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22 minutes ago, Keystone said:

Historically Geocaching HQ has explained that this limitation on Favorite Point percentages (i.e., shown only on the cache page when the arrow is clicked) is because of the drain on server resources to calculate FP% in real time, especially for a search results list that includes many geocaches.

I am no expert in API but if Project-gc is able to do it while pulling info from the same server how it's seems impossible for Groundspeak?

 

Other data get updated in real time so not sure how FP% would drain that much extra ressource. But if its really the issue you could run the script once per day to save ressource.

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8 minutes ago, Keystone said:

Show me where I said that HQ considers the request to be "impossible."  Also, show me where I said that Project-GC updates favorite point percentages in real time.

You haven't said that it was ''impossible'', just that Groundspeak give historically a reason and I don't agree with their reason because 3rd party are able-to do it. I said ''seems impossible for Groundspeak'' because this features has been requested many times including from the 2018 Cache Quality Survey and still hasn't been implemented. So after all those years I would say HQ consider it impossible to implement.

 

You also haven't said that Project-GC updates favorite point percentages in real time. You wrote that Groundspeak would need to and I just pointed out that Project-gc does something close to that (I don't know the exact details) to be able to show up data.  

 

'' We also asked about possible tools and projects that Geocaching HQ might undertake to encourage higher cache quality. Keep in mind that these ideas were the ones most mentioned in the User Insights forum threads.

Tool ideas, ranked by how helpful they would be to improving cache quality:

  1. Add function to search by Favorite point percentage ''
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2 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

Other data get updated in real time so not sure how FP% would drain that much extra ressource. But if its really the issue you could run the script once per day to save ressource.

 

I suspect that favourite point percentage was an afterthought, and so there's no column specifically dedicated to it in the database. Every time you request it, it has to iterate through all the logs, count those posted by premium members, and then divide the number of favourite points by that quantity.

 

Project-GC, on the other hand, likely maintains a column specifically dedicated to storing favourite point percentage. Whenever they "update" their database by pulling from HQ's, they also update that column. This allows them to efficiently query for it.

 

Perhaps, for one reason or another, it's not reasonable for HQ to retroactively add a "premiumMemberFinds" (and therefore a "fpPercentage") column to their database? The first issue that comes to my mind are the race conditions (assuming that you're updating this quantity each time a log gets posted.)

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As a db developer, considering ways to optimize the data needed to calculate the %, you'd need the PM Find count and FP count. Sum totals are a dime a dozen when looking up cache details/searches/lists. If a list pulls Find count, and FP count, it could pull PM Find count as well. Then the % calculation is trivial - even if it's done on the front end, not on a server.  There's no reason to store a percentage value when the data used to calculate it is right next to it, and it's not a resource-intensive algorithm calculation (like a/b isn't); at least not unless every little nanosecond is worth an ounce of gold and a couple of bytes of data per row is no big thing...

 

A search result list can easily on the front end display a % value when displayed as long as it has the PM find count and FP count to work with. I'd guess that's how PGC does it.

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