Are the flags Great Story and Helpful required?

[+Cachy]

Since a longer time you can flag a log entry of another Geocacher as Great Story and/or Helpful and above the logs you can sort by these flags.

 

I was unable to find a Geocache where these flags are useful. Is there anyone out there?

 

If you sort by these flags you will often find one or two "Found quick. TFTFC" as helpful. And in many cases it seems to be set by buddies ("like my log and I like yours").

 

In the last weeks I found some well hidden caches with many logs with "Found it after reading the logs" - but NO log was flagged as helpful, so currently it seems that this feature is wasting screen space and produces traffic. Removing these feature should result in a better performance.

 

In my opinion it was a nice idea, but if you think how Geocaching is mostly used, you should know that not much Geocachers are using a browser to study older logs.

[+arisoft]

3 hours ago, Cachy said:

I was unable to find a Geocache where these flags are useful. Is there anyone out there?

 

When someone's log is very spoiling and the CO encrypts the content, the log may collect multiple "useful" flags. It helps a lot to find the most spoiling log entry.

 

"Great story" is mostly used sarcastically to flag logs that are not great at all. I have also seen some kind of bullying with them.

 

Here is an example

 

I think that this experiment is not giving enough value to the game.

 

[+Luke Short]

My personal opinion:

 

The most unnecessary feature that gc com has implemented. (I have seen a lot of new things at gc in my 20.5 years!)

 

Do they want to show that gc com is "modern", innovative and customer-oriented? No, it's not! 
Do they think that many users really want to have something like this? Probably not.

 

I have not yet seen a log where these options were used. In my opinion they are neither helpful nor necessary nor useful.

 

Who knows, there may be other countries where users might want such "innovations".

 

I am not interested in it and I will not use it myself. I won't miss it if it is removed.

(translated from german with deepL)

 

[+Max and 99]

1 hour ago, Luke Short said:

The most unnecessary feature that gc com has implemented

I agree!

[+CAVinoGal]

7 hours ago, Luke Short said:

I am not interested in it and I will not use it myself. I won't miss it if it is removed.

(translated from german with deepL)

 

 

I feel the same - I haven't used it yet, though I have seen a couple of the Great Story marked on some logs that I have written.  I will not miss it if it disappears, as i pretty much ignore it now.

[+thebruce0]

It's a relatively innocuous feature that goes ignored likely by the vast majority, abused by a very small minority, and can also be useful to a small minority. Anecdotal feedback about it not being useful to a few people doesn't mean it's not useful at all. I have seen beneficial use of the flags, in very rare occasions. I've also seen sarcastic and unhelpful use of the flags. But given how little it affects, it doesn't bother me one iota that such a simple feature exists and can be helpful on rare occasions. Not gonna flail my arms about it to get it removed.

[+the Seagnoid]

At the time it came out I thought it was a good idea, but in practice it hasn't realized it's potential. If these flags were made available in the geocaching app they get more use.

[+barefootjeff]

It's perhaps fitting that, when this feature was announced in March 2021, the example log they gave, with 9 Great Story upvotes and 10 Helpful upvotes, is all about their tour of Europe and says virtually nothing about the cache they're logging or their experience doing it:

 

 

[+Goldenwattle]

10 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

is all about their tour of Europe and says virtually nothing about the cache they're logging or their experience doing it

Often that's cut and paste too. The same for each log. Nothing at all helpful. 

[+Hügh]

My last post here seems to have vanished. While I stand by the belief I posted, the way I presented it was antagonistic and disrespectful. Let’s try something different:

 

On 6/21/2023 at 6:13 AM, Luke Short said:

The most unnecessary feature that gc com has implemented.

 

I do not think the feature was "most unnecessary": I keep an eye on a Virtual that a (half-muggle) family member owns. I'll log into their account and use the "Great Story" reaction to mark logs as "checked" so that my family member and I do not trip over each other's log audits.

 

I suppose we are misusing the feature, but then again every log ultimately ends up with a "Great Story" so it doesn't end up affecting the sort (plus, the highest "Great Story" count on any one log is... 1, so the sort falls back to "visit date" so is completely useless.)

[+Cachy]

My try of a short conclusion

Both flags [Great Story] and [Helpful] are not being used for what they were intended for.

 

Groundspeak could drop both features to reduce data traffic and/or gain screen space.

 

Additional they should think about an owner-flag for virtuals and or earthcaches to mark logs as checked.