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Dan Miller's server


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Uh oh, I think I am in trouble. I replied to Marcus's post and I got this response:

 

Thank you for contributing to this forum. Your message has been put into a message queue due to one or more trigger words in your post.

If the moderators approve your post, then it will appear in the forum.

 

I really don't want to get banned from geocaching. Sometimes I just don't know when to keep my mouth shut.

 

7047_200.gif

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Well said. If there was another site that had awesome stats, I'd take my premium membership over there in a heartbeat.

 

quote:
Originally posted by MarcusArelius:

I sure hope the GC folks are monitoring this tread.

 

This is kind of thing that rings the death bell for a supplier. Not listening to your customers leaves the door open for a compeditor to step in and give the consumer what they want.

 

The user is ALWAYS right!

 

Mark


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quote:
Originally posted by hammack:

Good point. Everybody in this topic is praising Dan for his hard work because they like stats. <<SNIP>>


 

NO! I stated that I used his pages to see what caches had logs on them in my local area.

 

I never wrote that I liked stats. Neither did half the people the posted to this thread.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own.

Sydney J. Harris

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There has been a lot of duscussion about someone either taking over or providing some sort of replacement for Dan Miller's site, with the consensus that GC.com won't allow other sites to use their data.

 

But how do you explain Buxley's Geocaching Waypoint? Seems pretty real-time to me. I placed my first cache yesterday, and as soon as I saw it had been approved by TPTB, it showed up on Buxley. They've gotta be using GC.com's data, and if they can use it for location stats, surely someone would be able to use data for user stats.

 

At least it would seem that way to me, a peon.

 

DadONine

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quote:
Originally posted by ventura_kids:

... Then Dan's page went toast and I decided to quit... hey, maybe it is about the numbers.

 

Ventura Kid and Spider Dude


 

Don't quit..... someone, somewhere, will make it happen again.

 

I have been following this thread, and I actually did e-mail Dan requesting details about his site.... didn't get a response from him....

 

Maybe we should be bugging the father of gc - ask, pester,... I mean demand the Jeremy include this as a premium function. I have to agree with others about the fact that "new" features would be forth-comming. I don't mind supporting a worthy cause, but this is a feature that I would even be will to kick an extra couple of bucks a year to have.

 

--------------------------------------------------

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

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Question for Dan......

 

Will stats take care of itself or do you have a lot of work involuved???

 

I am too busy to take maintain a program that takes a lot fo work...but I have space available to me that I could host it as part of my site

 

Give me a Tall ship, and a Star to steer her bye...

 

The White Fleet....

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I will miss Dan's work for sure, I love the stats page and would check it as much as The Geocaching page! I remember the first time I heard about his site, which was thru here, and then working hard to move myself up! Heck, I was 5th in my state making a move to 4th when it went down! Everyone at our local Geo meetings would talk about it and kid how everyone was going out to cache to get their names up higher! It may not be the main reason I geocache but it sure was fun and competitive!

 

Look at all sports, there are people who don not play baseball or hockey or football but they sure can rattttle of there favorite players stats! Stats are a part of all sports, even I kept a riding log of all my milage I put on my bicycles just to compare to my other friendly riders! What would it take to get Jeremy to trust another outside source to do a Stats page? We need the stats and for those not into them, just ignore them! Thanks for allowing me to put in my 3 cents!

 

Darkmoon

 

All you have to do to fly is throw yourself at the ground and miss!

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"Logs in your local area" ARE stats. That's what I checked too. Along with the log list for different cachers, cachers with most number of finds (leaderboard), and cachers with most number of finds by state, etc...they're all stats.

 

quote:
Originally posted by Harrald:

quote:
Originally posted by hammack:

Good point. Everybody in this topic is praising Dan for his hard work because they like stats. <<SNIP>>


 

NO! I stated that I used his pages to see what caches had logs on them in my local area.

 

I never wrote that I liked stats. Neither did half the people the posted to this thread.

 

_________________________________________________________________________

_Nobody can be so amusingly arrogant as a young man who has just discovered an old idea and thinks it is his own. _

_Sydney J. Harris_

 


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Dan rocks!!! Thanx for the hard work for SOOO Long!

 

I also would love to see gc.com pick up stats (even for pay) If people are against stats....dont look. The site is about competition. I challenge myself to find one more all the time. If it wasnt a challenge, few of us would participate. Descrimination against newbies? If thats the kind of person you are...you'll be a jerk with or without a stats page. I'm competitive, but I also encourage people who have never heard of the site to try it out. Geocaching has been an obsession for me for a couple of years now, and will continue to be with or without stats, but its gonna be tougher not knowing where I stand compared to Mt Wanderer...lol

 

Chris

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A big thanks to Dan for all the work he's put into the stats page for so long. I also think that Jeremy should look into putting the stats page on GC.com, just because it seems so popular! I know it's hard work and time consuming, but if it's possible it would be fun to have. Geocaching is just a game right? But now who's keeping score? The people have spoken!

 

Sign me: paying member!

 

Cache you later,

Planet

 

So many caches, so little time.

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Jeremy is strangely absent from this thread.

 

Let's talk about premium memberships.

 

I don't have one and I don't need one. I buy my TB's and other garb that supports the site.

 

I have noticed that the promise of ...

quote:
We admit there are currently only a few new features that will be available to you. We will be adding more features for premium users every month, and your subscription will be locked in at a lower price.

has been greatly over stated.

 

If Groundspeak implemented STATS and made it part of the package I would sign up for a premium membership in a heart beat.

 

The kind of data that a stats page would need is very limited and would not compromise the underlying base of data that the gc.com site uses. Even if it did, it's our data!

 

What's your issue Groundspeak?

 

As it sits now I'd jump ship if there was another boat in port with STATS. GC.com, being the only game in town, makes it hard to switch to a competitor.

 

Maybe it's time GC.com experienced some competition...

 

Learn from the mistakes of others as you won't live long enough to make them all yourself.

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quote:
Originally posted by balloonatic:

Jeremy is strangely absent from this thread.

 

If Groundspeak implemented STATS and made it part of the package I would sign up for a _premium membership_ in a heart beat.

 

As it sits now I'd jump ship if there was another boat in port with STATS. GC.com, being the only game in town, makes it hard to switch to a competitor.


 

I agree wholeheartedly on all of the above. This site is sooo stats and it doesn't even know it.

 

--RuffRidr

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quote:
Let's talk about premium memberships.

 

I don't have one and I don't need one. I buy my TB's and other garb that supports the site.

 

I have noticed that the promise of ...

 

quote:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

We admit there are currently only a few new features that will be available to you. We will be adding more features for premium users every month, and your subscription will be locked in at a lower price.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

has been greatly over stated.

 

If Groundspeak implemented STATS and made it part of the package I would sign up for a premium membership in a heart beat.

 

The kind of data that a stats page would need is very limited and would not compromise the underlying base of data that the gc.com site uses. Even if it did, it's our data!

 

What's your issue Groundspeak?

 

As it sits now I'd jump ship if there was another boat in port with STATS. GC.com, being the only game in town, makes it hard to switch to a competitor.

 

Maybe it's time GC.com experienced some competition...

 

Learn from the mistakes of others as you won't live long enough to make them all yourself.


 

I think that Balloonatic is correct....if another service came along with a better offer of a premium membership I would move over as well. I check stats every weekend to see what everyone had done in my area. It was easier on Dan's sight than GC.COM. Dan----Great Job!!! Wish you were still at it!!!!

 

Earthling TF

 

Earthling

Team Hide & Seek

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Jeremy has said over and over that this is not a competition, and to post stats would encourage competition and all the general BS that goes along with it (i.e. cheating).

 

I personally enjoyed Dan's site, more for the feeling of community that went along with knowing what other cachers were up to and who's who in a particular area.

 

It was also the source of some *friendly* competition between myself and some others, which rather than detracting from my geocaching experience certainly enhanced it.

 

At one point I was willing to take over Dan's site, but I could never find out what the traffic / server load was from him, and didn't want to commit to something that was going to run up my bandwidth bill and not pay it's way.

 

http://www.tampabaygeocaching.com

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We really miss the "stats" site. We weren't really concerned with the competition aspect of it, but it really made it easier to keep up with what was going on locally. On the GC website, it takes an hour or more to wade through all the caches and find the recent logs. We found it much easier to keep track with Dan's site. We think Groundspeak should address this issue as soon as possible. It seems to us that most users of the website agree.

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quote:
Originally posted by fizzymagic:

quote:
Originally posted by Frolickin:

Search the fora. Jeremy has addressed this.


Really, Fro? Maybe I'm just stupid, but I cannot find a direct reference to this by Jeremy anywhere. Could you please help and Markwell me in the proper direction?


 

Here's One

 

Fro.

 

________________________________________

Geocaching . . . hiking with a purpose

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Just got around to checking this thread after a few attempts at his site. First off Dan - excellent work. I liked the stats aspect, but more than that I enjoyed some of the unique caches that were represented on his sites. Anyone who has attempted 'Mario's Tower' or 'The Rainbow Connection' (local to Cincinnati) know that the site was an intregal part of them. I hope if nothing else that these portions can be brought back. I certainly don't have the know-how to bring it back but would certainly support a financial effort to bring it back. icon_wink.gif Cache on!

 

-Mike from Team Mixster

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I've posted this about three times now.

 

If all you care about from the Stats site are the logs (i.e., following fellow geocachers' activities in your local area), order up a pocket query or two for your home area in GPX format. Open the GPX file in Watcher, and have it display the column for most recent find date. Then sort on that column so that the most recently logged caches appear at the top of the list. Click on each cache to read the recent logs. Hit the <esc> key when you're done. It's fast, too, as there's no waiting for web pages to load!

 

x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

Next time, instead of getting married, I think I'll just find a woman I don't like and buy her a house.

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I'm not demanding, but I am requesting nicely: I need stats!

 

quote:
Originally posted by GeoManhattan:

It's crazy the GC.com is not even addressing this issue. Dan's "not for profit" effort will really be missed.

 

GC.com needs to get a stat page up and running now. We are their customer and from the looks of this forum we are demanding service.

 

http://www.GeoManhattan.com<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

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quote:
Originally posted by Frolickin:

Here's one.


Sorry, Fro, not what I asked for, You said that Jeremy had directly addressed the issue of having a third party aggregate statistics from this site. Please provide a pointer to that. We all know what J thinks of competition, but that is not the subject of this thread.

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I responded to balloonatic. He stated that if there were stats available from GC.com he would immediately sign up. He then stated:

quote:
The kind of data that a stats page would need is very limited and would not compromise the underlying base of data that the gc.com site uses. Even if it did, it's our data!

 

It was at this point of his post that he then asked What's your issue Groundspeak?

 

I quoted that and replied Search the fora. Jeremy has addressed this.

 

The reason I did so is that Jeremy has spoken about why there are not stats here.

 

quote:
Originally posted by fizzymagic:

You said that Jeremy had directly addressed the issue of having a third party aggregate statistics from this site.


I never made such a claim. I indicated that Jeremy has spoken about why there are not stats here and provided a link.

 

Fro.

 

________________________________________

Geocaching . . . hiking with a purpose

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We need to get the stats up one wya or another. I for one am a numbers guy and would be willing to pay a few more dollars a year to help support that feature. It was fun monitoring the top cachers in my area and elsewhere. Good news out of this is that the next stats page should be totally up to speed with regard to totals...I was off by 35 or so on Dan's page. Mostly do to archived caches and registering under a different username when I just started.

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quote:
Sorry, Fro, not what I asked for, You said that Jeremy had directly addressed the issue of having a third party aggregate statistics from this site. Please provide a pointer to that. We all know what J thinks of competition, but that is not the subject of this thread.

 

A quick search of the forums came up with these quotes from Jeremy:

 

"I want to stress that you can't just suck the data from the site and post it elsewhere. That's copyright infringement."

 

"We do not support it, endorse it, or approve of it. Search the archives." (regarding outside websites using GC.COM for stats)

 

"Part of the disclaimer protects Grounded, Inc (Geocaching.com) from content theft. What is content theft? Creating a program that downloads the contents of the Geocaching.com database and creating your own web

site with this data."

 

"So basically, you can't go to the geocaching.com web site and suck down via a program or type in the information on to another web site, publication, etc..."

 

"...And Florian, yes - I believe providing a graphic of caches for display on your web site is technically a violation of the copyright since you display it on your own web site. It would be considered a derivitive from the information collected on the web site."

 

This was all found in 10 minutes of searching. If I gave it a half hour, I probably could have found a lot more.

 

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day" - Dave Barry

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Grounded Inc.,

 

Listen up dude cause I'm only going to do this ONCE!

Tell your lawyers to take a hike... icon_razz.gif

 

Without us you'd ALL BE WITHOUT WORK!

 

You forget who buys the cache container, cache contents, finds the location, plants the cache, loads the coordinates and descriptions into your SITE, loads the pics, formats the HTML, finds the caches, reports the finds and buys your STUFF.

 

Who's data is it?

 

Listen to your DATA providers dude or you'll be turning around to see a new SITE breathing down your neck.

 

All in favour of Dan Miller's NEW cache.com web site terminate your PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS now and send that $30 to Dan.

 

WE NEED ANOTHER WAY TO CACHE!

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quote:
Originally posted by balloonatic:

Grounded Inc.,

 

Listen up dude cause I'm only going to do this ONCE!

Tell your lawyers to take a hike... icon_razz.gif

 

Without us you'd ALL BE WITHOUT WORK!

 

You forget who buys the cache container, cache contents, finds the location, plants the cache, loads the coordinates and descriptions into your SITE, loads the pics, formats the HTML, finds the caches, reports the finds and buys your STUFF.

 

Who's data is it?

 

Listen to your DATA providers dude or you'll be turning around to see a new SITE breathing down your neck.

 

All in favour of Dan Miller's NEW _cache.com _ web site terminate your PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS now and send that $30 to Dan.

 

WE NEED ANOTHER WAY TO CACHE!


 

Don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out!

 

_________________________________________________________________________

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quote:
All in favour of Dan Miller's NEW cache.com web site terminate your PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS now and send that $30 to Dan.

 

And what you gonna do when that website acts to protect its own interests?

 

Edit: Duh, it was a joke icon_rolleyes.gif

 

"Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll sit in a boat and drink beer all day" - Dave Barry

 

[This message was edited by BrianSnat on August 19, 2003 at 08:47 PM.]

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quote:
Originally posted by balloonatic:

All in favour of Dan Miller's NEW _cache.com _ web site terminate your PREMIUM MEMBERSHIPS now and send that $30 to Dan.


 

WHOA!! The women on cache.com are hot, how do I sign up?? frog.gif Free your mind and the rest will follow frog.gif

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quote:
Originally posted by balloonatic:

Grounded Inc.,

 

Without us you'd ALL BE WITHOUT WORK!


 

Well, without supporting members I wouldn't necessarily be without work. I'd just be working somewhere else. Obviously I enjoy the rewarding work of running a free web site that started as a hobby and now struggles to be self-supporting. The friendly comments in the forums always make the work all worth it.

 

FYI, We changed our name to Groundspeak, Inc. to make it simpler. We're not Grounded, Inc. anymore.

 

frog.gif Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location™

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I just looked at cache.comand I'm not too interested in what they have. Dresses are not water proof so can't be used as a cache container, and they are too expensive for trade items.

 

I do have to agree about the women being hot though. Theys even gots a full set of teeth.

 

If you get lost while geocaching, don't worry. Someone else will get lost while geocaching and find you. icon_wink.gif

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It seems there is a great itch to be scratched here. I believe there are many that want stats, and many that can contribute to a solution. Start an open-source project to create a client program that scrapes data from geocaching.com in bits and pieces and shares it with others in a P2P manner.

 

sourceforge.net is a natural place to do it, so someone who is able and has the energy, go start it. I will contribute an off-the-cuff algorithm here to get started with.

 

It's a recursive algorithm that creates a list of other cachers, L, who have posted logs to caches on cacher A's log list. Start with your own, and kill branches that become non-interesting.

 

loop on L  if L[i] already up-to-date    skip it  if L[i] hosts this program(marked on profile page)    contact it and exchange info, updating each other    only update interesting info (in-state only?)    cacher records always timestamped when updated  else    scrape geo for stats    if info not interesting (no in-state caches)      kill this branch of the recursion    else      update record, timestamp      recurse on this cachers list...

 

Comments? I know it's a crude beginning, but before the technical discussion begins, what about the general concept? If the client program is crunching the numbers for itself and thereby creating the content, it's not a violation, right? Users are uploading info from geocaching.com all the time anyway, it's just sharing amongst itself. Passing data on can't be bad, because that would make proxy servers illegal.

 

The program would grow and modify over time to compensate for people's changing interests and changes in geocaching.com's format.

 

Some more technical detailish thoughts on the above code. "interesting" can be computed as a function of the number of caches the cacher has found, the localness of the cacher, and of course the timestamp. "localness" can be defined by the number of caches found in the same state, or even as some kind of average of the caches listed coordinates. If someone from a far away state logs a vacation find in your area, their branch of the graph of data will be of very low interest to you, whereas a prolific, local cacher will be of high interest. "up-to-date" can also be flexible/dynamic, based on proximity: the more local to you, the more up-to-date you need the info? not quite sure about that one.

 

Broadband/DSL users would be most useful for such a program, but dialup users would/could contribute their share as well. A polished program should naturally balance the workload.

 

OK, I know that "state" might be a USA-bias on my part, but that's where the community kicks in and helps.

 

[This message was edited by Pluckers on August 19, 2003 at 09:32 AM.]

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quote:
Originally posted by Pluckers:

It seems there is a great itch to be scratched here. I believe there are many that want stats, and many that can contribute to a solution. Start an open-source project to create a client program that scrapes data from geocaching.com in bits and pieces and shares it with others in a P2P manner.


 

Are you going to get permission from every cache owner to list their data elsewhere? Or do you care.

 

Why don't you come up with the software and have people submit their cache data to your solution, instead of stealing it from them.

 

This horse has been kicked to death and buried. A large enough number of folks have stressed that they don't want their data shared across sites, and I do my best to protect their right to own and manage their own data.

 

Your concept is ill-conceived, though I'm sure you have the best intentions in mind.

 

frog.gif Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location™

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I haven't seen anyone come up with this idea yet. This would seem to satisfy the majority on both sides.

 

Whey dosn't someone creat a web site that will show stats. The data can be entered by the person who found it. Only those interested in stats would be on the stats page.

 

It means that the cacher would have to take an extra step and add the information themselves, but I did that anyway with Dan's missing logs feature so that my stats were up to date.

 

If you get lost while geocaching, don't worry. Someone else will get lost while geocaching and find you. icon_wink.gif

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quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin):

 

Are you going to get permission from every cache owner to list their data elsewhere? Or do you care.

 

Why don't you come up with the software and have people submit their cache data to your solution, instead of stealing it from them.

 

This horse has been kicked to death and buried. A large enough number of folks have stressed that they don't want their data shared across sites, and I do my best to protect their right to own and manage their own data.

 

Your concept is ill-conceived, though I'm sure you have the best intentions in mind.

 

frog.gif Jeremy Irish

Groundspeak - The Language of Location


 

Who said anything about listing their cache data? The site could just list raw numbers of finds without listing detailed cache data.

 

BTW I emailed Elias a few days ago about the idea of an open-source solution that didn't require scraping the data, but never heard back from him.

 

- Dekaner of Team KKF2A

 

[This message was edited by Dekaner of Team KKF2A on August 19, 2003 at 09:43 AM.]

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quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin):

A large enough number of folks have stressed that they don't want their data shared across sites, and I do my best to protect their right to own and manage their own data.


You know, I have not been fighting these wars for it matters not a hoot for me. Yes, I liked looking at the stats, but I am not lost without them. I understand that you/Groundspeak are not interested in providing the kinds of stats that these folks want. I respect your decision and support it.

 

But Jeremy, to say that the reason stats cannot be housed on another site is because you are protecting cachers' data at their request is a big stretch. What I see proposed is not listing cache pages, coordinates, etc., but merely who found what, when, etc. That is a totally different kind of data than a cacher's cache page. If you don't want to give up that data, fine. But that you are protecting that data for me is illogical.

 

Fro.

 

________________________________________

Geocaching . . . hiking with a purpose

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quote:
Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin):

Are you going to get permission from every cache owner to list their data elsewhere? Or do you care.


 

I do care, at least now that you've pointed that aspect of things out to me, thanks. Let's see, what is the data we're talking about here for each cache: 1) the list of cachers who have posted logs. Is that really the cache owners data, or does it belong to the community? You're the expert, I'll believe whatever you tell me here. 2) I talked about possibly using the coords for the cache, which is most obviously their data.

 

quote:

Why don't you come up with the software and have people submit their cache data to your solution, instead of stealing it from them.


 

I've obviously hit a sore spot here, sorry. I am no thief and didn't regard what I was doing as "stealing". Am I stealing the data when I browse the site?

 

quote:
This horse has been kicked to death and buried.


 

As WVDan points out, and I know from searching, this particular solution has not been discussed before. Sure sounds like you'd like it buried though, sorry!

 

quote:

A large enough number of folks have stressed that they don't want their data shared across sites, and I do my best to protect their right to own and manage their own data.


 

I admit to negligence in doing my homework here. This part of the issue honestly didn't occur to me before. Can you provide references to forum topics? I'll try some searches. What data specifically are we referring to here, coords, descriptions, logs, profiles?

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To try and put things into perspective...

 

A few days ago I realized that another Geocaching state organization had syndicated the news from my organization. At first I was upset that I hadn't been asked for permission first. Then it hit me, the news was posted on our front page and available to the public. Further, I wanted people to visit our site and read the news. Having it syndicated on their website just increased the demographic that was visiting our site.

 

The same theory applies to Geocaches. They were placed for people to find. Personally, the more people who find my cache the better!

 

Now if I made it a Members Only cache and listed it only on GC.com for GC.com members, that would be a different story.

 

- Dekaner of Team KKF2A

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quote:
And what you gonna do when that website acts to protect its own interests?

 

I'm not suggesting that gc.com share their data just create a simple STATS page that will satisfy the masses. If you ask me this would protect their own interests.

 

quote:
WHOA!! The women on cache.com are hot, how do I sign up??

 

No kidding! I wasn't sure if I should click the link and risk getting logged for BAD content at work. They even have a See, Touch or Try page that allows you check her out before you buy.

THIS SITE ROCKS...must be responding to the needs of it's customers.

 

quote:
It seems there is a great itch to be scratched here. I believe there are many that want stats, and many that can contribute to a solution. Start an open-source project to create a client program that scrapes data from geocaching.com in bits and pieces and shares it with others in a P2P manner.

Scraping is a neet way to get STUFF but it always seems to have pit falls and takes a lot of work to keep running. We do it at work but I'm not a huge fan. There's always a better way.

 

quote:
Obviously I enjoy the rewarding work of running a free web site that started as a hobby and now struggles to be self-supporting. The friendly comments in the forums always make the work all worth it.


It's a thankless job I know the feeling. IT is the nessessary evil of the universe.

 

quote:
Are you going to get permission from every cache owner to list their data elsewhere? Or do you care.


Sure I care. How about a check box on your Profile that says...

Send number of finds, state/province and country to STATS Page.

The user can click it if thay want this data made public.

 

That's all I want. This info is public all ready! Just not complied in a list.

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