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18 hours ago, lodgebarn said:

I search for caches found by me, number returned is a very bizarre 8200 which is way less than I have found.

 

Archived caches have been excluded from search results for some time, also before this latest iteration.

 

If you use the "Found by X" or "found by me" filters from the main search panel, the search results will by design be limited to active caches, aka it will show published & active and published & disabled, but not archived caches. This gives roughly 8200 results.

 

The links from the public profile are the only way to see finds including archived caches, similar to before the latest iteration. This returns 14500 results, which matches your find count minus Adventures.

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6 hours ago, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

 

Archived caches have been excluded from search results for some time, also before this latest iteration.

 

If you use the "Found by X" or "found by me" filters from the main search panel, the search results will by design be limited to active caches, aka it will show published & active and published & disabled, but not archived caches. This gives roughly 8200 results.

 

The links from the public profile are the only way to see finds including archived caches, similar to before the latest iteration. This returns 14500 results, which matches your find count minus Adventures.

 

That is not right.

 

Any response about Personal Notes?

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8 hours ago, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

 

Archived caches have been excluded from search results for some time, also before this latest iteration.

 

If you use the "Found by X" or "found by me" filters from the main search panel, the search results will by design be limited to active caches, aka it will show published & active and published & disabled, but not archived caches. This gives roughly 8200 results.

 

The links from the public profile are the only way to see finds including archived caches, similar to before the latest iteration. This returns 14500 results, which matches your find count minus Adventures.

Thanks very much for clarifying the reason and I had overlooked the archive caches issue, apologies for some of my comment now that I understand (down to 8197 now). What I would suggest is some wording to that effect on the screen would be very helpful as a reminder - smallish letters taking no extra screen space but visible somewhere. e.g. Archived and Labs Excluded.

 

It does however highlight what I think is an issue which is that search for new caches to find is a fundamentally different requirement from showing historical finds and they should be split into different functions rather than being shoehorned together. The old finds screen was absolutely perfect for that. 

Edited by lodgebarn
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2 hours ago, lodgebarn said:

It does however highlight what I think is an issue which is that search for new caches to find is a fundamentally different requirement from showing historical finds and they should be split into different functions rather than being shoehorned together.

Hear, hear.

 

10 hours ago, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

If you use the "Found by X" or "found by me" filters from the main search panel, the search results will by design be limited to active caches, aka it will show published & active and published & disabled, but not archived caches. [...]

 

The links from the public profile are the only way to see finds including archived caches, similar to before the latest iteration. [...]

I think it would be easier to get people to understand things if they made sense. Why are the search results for "found by me" by design limited to active caches, when exactly the same search reached via the link from the public profile is not?

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On 3/21/2022 at 5:56 PM, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

 

Archived caches have been excluded from search results for some time, also before this latest iteration.

 

If you use the "Found by X" or "found by me" filters from the main search panel, the search results will by design be limited to active caches, aka it will show published & active and published & disabled, but not archived caches. This gives roughly 8200 results.

 

The links from the public profile are the only way to see finds including archived caches, similar to before the latest iteration. This returns 14500 results, which matches your find count minus Adventures.

 

It wasn't very long ago I could click the profile of a player & then click the events they had attended to see a list of them, and see if I had attended the same event. That is not possible today. This is CRITICAL too me, as I have Friend Requests from cachers that I may have met at an event, but now do not have a way to confirm. Is this due to the cache lists now being a result of the failed new search function, instead of the way it was done before that change?

 

When things work for the users, why do developers change them?

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2 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

We haven't attended the same events. 😯

 

Screenshot_20220323-183417.png

 

I wouldn't know, because I can't even see any of your finds nor events attended. This functioned as recently for me as within the last couple of weeks. Why do they try to fix (and break) things that weren't broken?

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12 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

Sorry, I thought I was being helpful by letting you know that I can click on all the events you've attended to  see if I have any in common. I am able to see all the events you've attended to compare. 

It seems you can see my events attended, but I can't see yours. The cache types on your profile aren't even clickable to me. Something is amiss, somewhere.

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6 minutes ago, K13 said:

It seems you can see my events attended, but I can't see yours. The cache types on your profile aren't even clickable to me. Something is amiss, somewhere.

That's because I'm experimenting with the privacy settings and mine are currently listed as private. I think you mentioned this search worked for you until the past couple weeks which means the privacy settings may not explain the issue before today.

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Just now, Max and 99 said:

That's because I'm experimenting with the privacy settings and mine are currently listed as private. I think you mentioned this search worked for you until the past couple weeks which means the privacy settings may not explain the issue before today.

That would explain why I can't click your caches found.  When I click on any of the others above, including @Bl4ckH4wkGER , When I try to see the Mega Events they have attended, I always get the grey frog DNF, 0 Results found, even though their profile shows they have attended several Megas. There is something broken in this search.

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4 minutes ago, K13 said:

That would explain why I can't click your caches found.  When I click on any of the others above, including @Bl4ckH4wkGER , When I try to see the Mega Events they have attended, I always get the grey frog DNF, 0 Results found, even though their profile shows they have attended several Megas. There is something broken in this search.

When I click on the users above and click on "all events" that they found I get a complete list. But when I click on mega events only I get the signal dnf image.

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2 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

When I click on the users above and click on "all events" that they found I get a complete list. But when I click on mega events only I get the signal dnf image.

I'm sure there is something broken in the link to the search engine. They seem to activate things before it has been fully vetted.

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On 3/21/2022 at 12:52 AM, lodgebarn said:

It has all gone very quiet here. Is this an admission of total melt down? A quick example, I search for caches found by me, number returned is a very bizarre 8200 which is way less than I have found. It does almost span my caching lifetime in terms of dates and does include some caches very far away. Come on guys just admit failure, stop inventing new features and do some proper testing and fixing please.

An HQ lackey has replied twice on this thread that I have seen so far.  Once back in the end of Feb and once March 10th stating what has been fixed and what they are still working on.  But I agree, not happy at all with the update!

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4 minutes ago, blackdogsMT said:

An HQ lackey has replied twice on this thread that I have seen so far.

 

Occasions, HQ employees have chimed in on this thread:

 

We understand that change can be frustrating, especially if it does not meet your particular use cases, of which there are VERY many in the world of Geocaching. That is particularly because several experiences have been available for several main functions on the site for some time (something we are trying to change) and players have pieced together their own flows across the different offerings vs everyone using the same central features and flows.

 

Staying with the facts would still be appreciated.

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45 minutes ago, blackdogsMT said:

An HQ lackey has replied twice on this thread that I have seen so far.

 

32 minutes ago, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

Staying with the facts would still be appreciated.

It is probably a fact that blackdogsMT had only seen two replies so far. It is of course also a fact that there were several more, and at least I appreciate every single one of them.

 

But most of the feedback has been of the nature "yes, this is a bug, thanks for reporting, we're working on it". That's of course good, but what I would like to see more of is the reasoning behind deliberate changes that many find bad or hard to understand. And comments on what, if anything, could be reconsidered. We know already that what you acknowledge as bugs will be rectified in time.

 

Change is especially frustrating when it seems it is without reason. It wouldn't hurt you to motivate your decisions, even if not everyone will agree.

 

On 3/22/2022 at 10:49 AM, ChriBli said:

Why are the search results for "found by me" by design limited to active caches, when exactly the same search reached via the link from the public profile is not?

There are many examples, but one could start with this.

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6 hours ago, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

We understand that change can be frustrating, especially if it does not meet your particular use cases, of which there are VERY many in the world of Geocaching. That is particularly because several experiences have been available for several main functions on the site for some time (something we are trying to change) and players have pieced together their own flows across the different offerings vs everyone using the same central features and flows.

 

Most of the posts in this thread aren't about changes not meeting particular use cases or changed workflows, they're about things that simply don't work properly or produce results that aren't consistent with any reasonable expectation. Many of these have been addressed, thank you, but there are still quite a few outstanding that continue to be frustrating to anyone trying to get usable results out of the search engine. On top of this is functionality that has simply been removed, like the abilty to view all our finds once that count goes beyond 1000.

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14 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

On top of this is functionality that has simply been removed, like the abilty to view all our finds once that count goes beyond 1000.

See, there's another example. Why can we no longer view our finds beyond 1,000? It can not be because of the unpaged nature of the search result, because that is now paged (thanks for that). It can also not be to facilitate adding to list or mapping, because that is not allowed anyway. So why?

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13 hours ago, Team Canary said:

How many have I found in NSW? Can't tell now as you ruined the Search.

You should be able to tell by going to the search via the links "Geocaches" and "have found" from your profile, then going into the filters and selecting the region NSW. Does that not work for you?

 

The weird thing is that it does not work the same if you go to the search directly, not via your profile. Why is that?

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A lot of problems are caused by preventing searches for archived caches except for your own found ones (and own and others' hidden). So why are we not allowed to search for archived caches in general?

 

I don't know if this has been officially answered, but the only conceivable reason is that we're not supposed to go poking around where we should not be. A good reason, some archived caches may be so because they have been objected to by the landowner, or because they are in sensitive surroundings that cannot tolerate geocaching traffic. But is this really the typical case?

 

I would say that the vast majority of archived caches have been abandoned by their owners, then archived by a reviewer because the container has gone missing or damaged. Many of these containers may still be around, with or without a writable log. Some are also archived by their owner and left to rot. It would not matter if someone went out looking for this geolitter. In fact, some of it may get cleaned up if they did.

 

Some caches were archived by responsible owners that also went out and cleaned up any leftovers. It is usually clear from the archive log that this is the case, and then few geocachers would go there to see if it's still there. And again, it would not matter if they did.

 

So, we are left with the very rare case that the reviewer archived a cache because no one must go there and look for it. It is probably still there, unless a responsible owner went and picked it up. Should this rare case really be allowed to cause so much trouble?

 

I had a suggestion in another thread, it was pretty much shot down but I'm repeating it here. Lock the few caches belonging to the last category for new online logs. That would definitely dissuade everyone from going after them. This is already being done in some such cases, I've seen. Yes, some late-loggers and challenge-qualifiers that did not put in a write note or short "more later" log before this will not be able to make an online log for their find (gasp!) in this exceedingly rare situation. But then we could all enjoy unobstructed searching for archived caches, and no poor developer would have to struggle to implement this restriction.

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11 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

So why are we not allowed to search for archived caches in general?

The answer is simple: we can't search for archived caches because they don't want us to look for archived caches. The problem here is that we search for caches for two completely different reasons. The first reason, the one the updated search function is designed for, is to figure out what caches we're going to go out and find today. But the other reason to search is to look at the history, what caches we and others have found in the past. When we're searching for that information, the archived caches mean exactly as much to us as any other cache because they weren't archived at the time we're considering. That's where the search results aren't meeting our needs and expectations.

 

19 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

I had a suggestion in another thread, it was pretty much shot down but I'm repeating it here. Lock the few caches belonging to the last category for new online logs. That would definitely dissuade everyone from going after them.

I can't believe there's a serious problem with people looking for archived caches, since it's already hard enough to learn about them. I think the thinking here is more that it's pointless (and confusing) to show caches that aren't there to someone that's going out to geocache. I can't believe more than a handful of archived caches are logged in any given month -- and most of them are probably valid logs, anyway, like logging a find when one completes an archived challenge -- so I don't think prohibiting them from being logged would make one bit of difference to the decision about showing them in searches.

 

As it happens, I haven't had an opportunity to use the new search yet for looking at historical finds, so I don't really know exactly what this problem looks like in practice, but theoretically it seems like when I'm just searching for caches, suppressing archived caches makes sense, but whenever I'm looking for caches that a specific person has found in the past, archived caches should be presented. These used to be two different kinds of searches, but, as I understand it, the problem with this release is that they're now both done using the same search mechanism, but the fact that the two kinds of searches are looking for two different kinds of results hasn't been taken into account in how the search is performed.

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37 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

So why are we not allowed to search for archived caches in general?

I agree with a lot that you said here.
 

I sometimes go find archived caches where I know/suspect the container is present. I’m on a find streak so if a nearby cache I haven’t found is archived, of course I’m interested. I usually remove the container while I’m at it, and make it clear in my log if I did. 

Despite my use case, I think it’s probably overall a good thing that archived caches aren’t in the app, and that they require a certain amount of effort to locate otherwise. 
 

This way there’s less chance for newbies to get confused, and there’s less peer pressure to leave the abandoned containers in place for stat hunters. These caches aren’t meant to be findable (in the field) at all, and certainly not to continue to be findable. 

dprovan was spot on in their comment about two purposes of search. 

 

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34 minutes ago, dprovan said:

But the other reason to search is to look at the history, what caches we and others have found in the past. When we're searching for that information, the archived caches mean exactly as much to us as any other cache because they weren't archived at the time we're considering. That's where the search results aren't meeting our needs and expectations.

Precisely. And there can be no reason to disallow searching for archived caches with this intention. That is just a side effect of the need to prevent people from looking for the physical containers of archived caches. Something that could be instead be accomplished by locking the few caches that must not be visited for new logs.

 

I can think of many reasons for searching for archived cache listings, but I'll offer one: When I'm going out to find a bunch of (still active) caches that were published during an event, I frequently visit that event's (archived) listing to find parking coordinates and other useful information for my outing. Hiding archived event listings is even more unmotivated, that is clearly just done because of the implementation difficulties in making the distinction.

 

18 minutes ago, mustakorppi said:

I think it’s probably overall a good thing that archived caches aren’t in the app, and that they require a certain amount of effort to locate otherwise. 
 

This way there’s less chance for newbies to get confused, and there’s less peer pressure to leave the abandoned containers in place for stat hunters. These caches aren’t meant to be findable (in the field) at all, and certainly not to continue to be findable.

Including archived listings in the search would certainly be an option, one that is off by default. So the risk of confusing newbies should be small. But I agree that the app is probably not the best tool to go foraging through the archives.

 

Interesting point about the peer pressure. So you mean you think less geolitter would be cleaned up, because people would hesitate to remove something that others might consider a future target because they have found the archived listing in a search? Could be. But I'm seeing some people taking flak already today for logging found and then removing the archived container.

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47 minutes ago, ChriBli said:

And there can be no reason to disallow searching for archived caches with this intention. That is just a side effect of the need to prevent people from looking for the physical containers of archived caches. Something that could be instead be accomplished by locking the few caches that must not be visited for new logs.

 

I'm guessing the reason archived caches are invisible is, the Cons outweighed the Pros when HQ was deciding.  Those caches used to be on the map, too, if you went directly to an archived cache page.

 

But for reasons you and others mentioned, I need archived cache locations on my GPS when caching.  So at the very least, I make waypoints for them.  I wish they were searchable, but evidently they created too big of a problem to allow that.

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8 minutes ago, kunarion said:

I wish they were searchable, but evidently they created too big of a problem to allow that.

That is my point. What is the problem, and is it really a big problem? And could it be solved in another way with lesser impact?

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2 hours ago, ChriBli said:

That is just a side effect of the need to prevent people from looking for the physical containers of archived caches. Something that could be instead be accomplished by locking the few caches that must not be visited for new logs.

As I said, I think the intention is to stop people from seeing caches that are not important to them, not preventing them from seeking them. Newbies don't look for archived caches, so locking them would serve no purpose here.

 

2 hours ago, ChriBli said:

I can think of many reasons for searching for archived cache listings...

I don't think we need a specific reason to search for archived caches listings. We search for them because we want to see them. The fact that they are archived is immaterial in general. Having said that, I think your example of events is a particularly important one since they're probably the most important example of something with historical value even after they are archived. Obviously we don't want archived events when we're searching for events that will happen in the future, but it makes just as little sense to leave out archived events if we're searching for events that happened in the past.

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3 hours ago, mustakorppi said:

...and there’s less peer pressure to leave the abandoned containers in place for stat hunters.

For so many reasons, I can't believe this is a significant problem, but even if it is somewhere, it shouldn't be a consideration in deciding what searches should return.

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14 hours ago, ChriBli said:

You should be able to tell by going to the search via the links "Geocaches" and "have found" from your profile, then going into the filters and selecting the region NSW. Does that not work for you?

 

The weird thing is that it does not work the same if you go to the search directly, not via your profile. Why is that?

 

No, all the Archived caches are missing!?!

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10 hours ago, dprovan said:

For so many reasons, I can't believe this is a significant problem, but even if it is somewhere, it shouldn't be a consideration in deciding what searches should return.

It’s not now. I didn’t make my point particularly well there, what I meant to say is that if archived caches were presented differently, the culture around them would also change, e.g. by more people viewing them as fair game.
 

Considering that these caches by definition have no one to look after them, and that a lot of the cachers interested in archived caches are probably desperate for more finds, it seems reasonable to expect that all the ugliest parts of caching culture would soon flourish in that scene.

 

I could be wrong of course. Locally we do have an easy way to search for archived caches and there aren’t any significant problems.

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On 3/24/2022 at 5:44 PM, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

Staying with the facts would still be appreciated.

 

I think most of the frustration comes from the fact that there are no clear answers as to why certain things have to change.

 

Most answers were "political" at best (privacy concerns) or only given if they could be convenienty answered.

 

In my book, it is ok to admit that certain things do not work out just yet but that certain targets have to be met. But that would help us to understand why e.g. archived caches are such a mess.

 

You are keeping quite a distance from the community at this point which makes it very difficult for us to show understanding and patience.

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Search finds is broken as regards event types.  Viewing my own finds  on  GPS Adventure Exhibit  Search adds a parameter of "placed after yesterday's date".   There's a bug report on this, but I thought perhaps it belonged here. Apologies if this is simply an unnecessary duplication

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/371658-gps-adventures-exhibit-shown-in-profile-but-dnf-when-clicked/

 

When viewing another user's profile, and asking to see specific event types found, that same "date placed" filter is added to all EXCEPT Gps Maze ;-)  So Block Party attended by Moun10Bike is a DNF, because of 2022-03-25 filter. 
 

https://www.geocaching.com/play/results/?ct=4738&sa=1&pad=2022-03-25&fb=Moun10Bike&asc=false&sort=founddate

 

 

Different issue, not sure if this is bug or  intended behavior  - when I click individual event types found by me from profile, I get expected results on Mega Giga CCE and CITO, but what I'd call Meet and Greet returns all, including CITO GIGA Mega. I'd  expect that link to break out events types at least to the granularity  of  Search now,   ie exclude Giga Mega, CITO.  

 

Minor confusion, on public profile,   perhaps something for a future project,  All Event Cache Types   178   -> clicking that link now goes to a list of 179.  GPS Adventure Maze is broken out separately on profile.  But from Search, it's one of many event types referred to as Regular (regular?)

 

   

786789109_profileeventcount.jpg.0f5f3ffdefccfa0e8638c2bf2e433467.jpg

 

Edited by Isonzo Karst
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On 3/24/2022 at 5:44 PM, Bl4ckH4wkGER said:

 

Staying with the facts would still be appreciated.

 

Hi,

 

A fact is that some useful features were working and have just disapeared.

I may have missed it, but I did not read any answer about the filter of the Personal Notes...

 

For example with this link I was able to search all mysteries having "not modified" coordinates and that does not have a PN :

https://www.geocaching.com/play/results?sw=1&ct=8&hf=1&ho=1&cc=0&nfb=smashcfr

 

This has just been deactivated... Why, as it worked ? And why this does not have been repaired, as this should be very easy if you use GIT...

As I already said, it's great to try to produce new things, this can be very positive... But not when each time useful functionnalities disapear (I wrote here about PN, but I'd be able to talk about many more...).

So please, any news about those PN ? This should be very easy to put it back...

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23 hours ago, mustakorppi said:

It’s not now. I didn’t make my point particularly well there, what I meant to say is that if archived caches were presented differently, the culture around them would also change, e.g. by more people viewing them as fair game.

I can't say, but I thought we were discussing a change that made them *less* visible, basically impossible to find. I don't think anyone here is recommending they be made more visible than they have been until now.

 

23 hours ago, mustakorppi said:

Considering that these caches by definition have no one to look after them, and that a lot of the cachers interested in archived caches are probably desperate for more finds, it seems reasonable to expect that all the ugliest parts of caching culture would soon flourish in that scene.

If anyone anywhere is desperate for more finds, then it must be because no new caches at all are being planted in their area, and even with that, I'd expect them to just give up before they made it a habit to search for archived caches since archived caches are almost never there. But if such a person were that desperate, then I'd feel pity for them and wouldn't mind at all if they looked for all the archived caches they wanted. It's hard for me to imagine a culture of looking for archived caches would develop in a situation like that since, if there's any culture at all, it would be easier and more fun for it to turn into a culture of planting new caches.

 

Searching for archived caches is a specialized taste. There's no danger of it becoming popular, and it's certainly no way to pad your numbers. I wouldn't want the search to make it any easier, but not because of any fear of it causing ugliness.

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On 3/27/2022 at 8:14 AM, dprovan said:

I can't say, but I thought we were discussing a change that made them *less* visible, basically impossible to find. I don't think anyone here is recommending they be made more visible than they have been until now.

I was actually suggesting they be made more visible. I know they can be found in alternate ways, but I can't see why they should not be searchable also on the geocaching.com site. It feels strange that you should have to resort to other sites, and there is always the fear that GS would plug that hole.

 

I can live with not being able to search for archived caches in general on the site, as long as it can be done elsewhere. I was more interested in the reasoning behind various limitations, that would help in trying to anticipate what will hit you next.

 

Alas, accounting for their reasoning does not seem to be GS policy. Nor listening to suggestions beyond mere bug reports. I've seen users going on about missing features since the start of this thread without the slightest hint of a statement even saying "no, we are not going to do that because ...".

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2 hours ago, ChriBli said:

Alas, accounting for their reasoning does not seem to be GS policy. Nor listening to suggestions beyond mere bug reports. I've seen users going on about missing features since the start of this thread without the slightest hint of a statement even saying "no, we are not going to do that because ...".


or replying to emails, messages or any other form of communication. 

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11 hours ago, ChriBli said:

I was actually suggesting they be made more visible. I know they can be found in alternate ways, but I can't see why they should not be searchable also on the geocaching.com site. It feels strange that you should have to resort to other sites, and there is always the fear that GS would plug that hole.

Ah, I see. I wouldn't mind them being searchable, either, and have been bitten a few times because I really wanted to find a specific archived cache but didn't have the tools. Unfortunately, I think GS wouldn't do that for the reasons people are suggesting: primarily to avoid people being able to easily find archived caches that are still in place but were archived for good reasons and to avoid someone accidentally enabling the archived search and then being confused or frustrated by the results. To me, those reasons are good enough even if they might not convince me. It's conceivable there are other reasons involving implementation details, but I don't feel like I need to know about that.

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If it became too easy to search and then go and find or at least look for archived caches, it would almost defeat the purposes of archiving them altogether..... before long you'd have people dropping throwdowns on archived caches! At the moment its sort of a cool niche aspect to the game, we've only specifically found and logged maybe 2 or 3 archived caches, so wouldn't be phased what happened with them. Our caches, if they are archived, I can assure you there's nothing at GZ to log.... :)

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45 minutes ago, lee737 said:

Our caches, if they are archived, I can assure you there's nothing at GZ to log.... :)

 

One of my archived caches still probably has a container and logbook there, buried under what's likely to be several tonnes of rock. Anyone who wants to dig it out and sign the logbook is welcome to log it as a find! The rest I've either removed or they were archived because they went missing.

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Searching with a Find Date After filter isn't working. For example, if I search for finds on my caches after the 14th of April (to see which ones were found over the Easter holidays):

 

image.png.1dc0c9c6bcaaf17729d0be5e0fe38b68.png

 

it returns all of my caches even though only two were found after the 14th:

 

image.png.c1424a5c136846aa2bdaa390a4663fc0.png

 

The same thing happens when trying to use the Find Date After filter more generally, with it returning all caches regardless of their Last Found date.

 

Edit to add: The Find Date Before and Find Date Between filters don't work either, with all caches being returned regardless of their last find date.

Edited by barefootjeff
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I think the Find Date may be searching your find dates, thus if if you're searching for caches you own, it may be coded to include all (having no "Find date").

 

If it's programmed to sense you've chosen to search for your own caches, so treat "Find date" (your finds) as "Last found" (any finds) - just as the result table changes the table header - then it should return what you're expecting above. I think they may have just forgot to do that extra data switch.  I bet if you changed the Owned by to someone else, it would work as expected.

(in short, it's a bug likely because of a missed context, and I agree it should be a context that is considered as you explain) :)

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8 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

I think the Find Date may be searching your find dates, thus if if you're searching for caches you own, it may be coded to include all (having no "Find date").

 

If it's programmed to sense you've chosen to search for your own caches, so treat "Find date" (your finds) as "Last found" (any finds) - just as the result table changes the table header - then it should return what you're expecting above. I think they may have just forgot to do that extra data switch.  I bet if you changed the Owned by to someone else, it would work as expected.

(in short, it's a bug likely because of a missed context, and I agree it should be a context that is considered as you explain) :)

 

As I said, it doesn't just happen when searching for my own caches, it happens more generally too. I first noticed it when searching with the map to try to see how many caches in my area were found over the Easter holidays and it reckoned they all were. Here's a quick example, searching in a 4km radius around here with the Find Date After filter set to the 14th of April:

 

image.png.b2b4a4e2fe17fb14050db99183a0d9bb.png

 

It returns all the caches within that 4km radius, and with it sorted by Last Found date, scrolling to the bottom shows take a dive which was last found in December 2018. And it's not showing the dates I found those caches, either, as I found take a dive in 2015. Those dates really are the last date anyone found those caches.

Edited by barefootjeff
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Okay for general searches, that is odd.

 

35 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

As I said, it doesn't just happen when searching for my own caches, it happens more generally too.

 

Well I was responding to your example which appeared to be evidence of the first sentence though has a slight different functional context :) Your 2nd example above certainly demonstrates it seems to be a general search bug. 

 

Doing the search myself, with NO other filters except "Find date" After April 11, it is indeed returning geocaches I own or have found, but the most recent found dates may be long before April 11, 2022.  Setting it to Found Before that date produces the same result.

That's not expected behaviour.

 

Additionally, the find date setting of the search doesn't stick if you open the filter dialogue after performing the search in this way.

Now that may be because the "Find date" alone may not be a functional option. IF that field is intended to be your find dates, then it may only 'stick' if "Found by me" is also toggled.

...Sure enough, I added Found By Me, for find dates After April 11, 2022, and the results are as expected. The "Last Found" column is actually "MY Last Found", not more recent general find logs.

 

These search and result fields are not very clear in what they do, how they work, or what they represent in the result... I think this needs some developer TLC.

 

 

ETA: The reason your (jeff) results aren't as expected seems to be because "find date" as a filter alone is being ignored, and thus returning everything. "Last Found" I believe shows the most recent general find log only for caches you own, or haven't found, but it shows your own find date for caches you have found. Mixing these fields in the result list is confusing.

Edited by thebruce0
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4 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

ETA: The reason your (jeff) results aren't as expected seems to be because "find date" as a filter alone is being ignored, and thus returning everything. "Last Found" I believe shows the most recent general find log only for caches you own, or haven't found, but it shows your own find date for caches you have found. Mixing these fields in the result list is confusing.

 

Nup, in the example I posted above, I've found all the caches that aren't mine but the Last found date shown is the date the cache was last found by anyone, not just me. As far as I can tell, it only switches to the date I found it if I include the Found by me filter, or the date a particular cacher found it if I include them in the Found By filter. In both those cases, the column header still says Last found so I guess whatever platform they're using for the search engine doesn't allow them to dynamically change column headers based on filter settings.

 

Honestly, this whole "Enhanced search" thing is taking on the appearance of a heap of square pegs hammered into round holes.

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1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

Nup, in the example I posted above, I've found all the caches that aren't mine but the Last found date shown is the date the cache was last found by anyone, not just me.

Then it's even weirder because my search showed my find date on caches I'd found, not the most recent general find log.  The data used in that column does look to be based on the Found by me toggle, or something.

 

1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

Honestly, this whole "Enhanced search" thing is taking on the appearance of a heap of square pegs hammered into round holes.

Yes, it's trying to do WAY too much in one module, accommodating numerous contexts and use cases.

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Well, it's now been 3 months since this release. It looks like development has largely halted on this project, judging by the lack of further updates from Lackeys or changes to the search's behaviour. It could be that developers have been shifted off to start another project, which is what seemed to happen with many of the past projects that never reached completion.

 

The lack of movement on even the critical issues is very concerning. It would be one thing if the users just had to deal with functionality that had been removed or didn't look as good as it could, but users are also having to deal with broken functionality.

 

One wonders if the wider staffing issues have also hit HQ, and they're just scraping by with a few developers. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: if you don't have enough cash-flow to maintain the necessary staffing levels to support the product that is geocaching.com, it might be time to increase the membership price. Jeremy's promise was never realistic (and it had to have been around 20 years ago at this point), so I wouldn't worry about "breaking" it. With inflation these days, a price increase is inevitable and absolutely necessary.

 

...and by all means, if there's anything the community can do to help, please let us know. We all want this site to keep going.

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