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Maximum Waypoint Level?


MarcB

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First of all we all (may) know that the waypoints are made up of "GC" then four characters out of the below list....

 

0123456789ABCDEFGHJKMNPQRTVWXYZ

 

All the characters in italics cannot be used as the 3rd digit of the waypoint as the was before the big change last year. The H is highlighted as this is the set we are currently in...

GCH***

After "H" there are then 13 more sets that can be used.

The previous set (GC0000 to GCZZZZ) lasted roughly 5 months

 

The question is how long will the remaining sets last (taking into account the growth of the sport) and what is the plan for waypoints after them?

MarcB :D

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A quick look in About Geocaching will tell you this : "As of today, there are 86831 active caches in 199 countries."

 

This would suggest we have some breathing space.I'm sure people will be quick to point out that these are only "active" caches , but i'd say it's a fair indication.

 

Edit:put correct page and link in

Edited by fivegallon
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A quick look in About Geocaching will tell you this : "As of today, there are 86831 active caches in 199 countries."

Actually, that is, of course, the number of active caches out there. There are currently 121883 caches that have been submitted to geocaching.com, I think - which includes the ones currently in the admin queue.

 

The reason I say "I think" is because if you click on a cache page you get a bunch of code in the URL which looks like random letters and numbers (I'm sure someone a lot smarter than me can decode it, but I can't). :rolleyes: However, if you click on "log this cache" the url changes to something like - http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?ID=104271 where 104271 is the sequential number of the cache. At least that's the way I read it and it seems to work out for caches that I know were submitted right after one another.

 

In any case, 121883 is the last ID I could find in the admin queue, so we've got a bit to go.

 

I hope my deduction of the total number of caches is correct. Can anyone confirm this?

 

:bad:

 

Added:

What I posted above appears to be correct. ID #4 in the system is Mike's First.

Edited by SoCalAdmin
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A quick look in About Geocaching will tell you this : "As of today, there are 86831 active caches in 199 countries."

Actually, that is, of course, the number of active caches out there.

That be the exact reason i mentioned it in the original post:

 

This would suggest we have some breathing space.I'm sure people will be quick to point out that these are only "active" caches , but i'd say it's a fair indication.
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I hope my deduction of the total number of caches is correct. Can anyone confirm this?

On the front page of Geocaching.com it lists the most recently listed caches. As of this writing (Mar 10 2004 06:26 CST) the tope of that list is Vista of King Arthur. It looks like these links haven't been converted to the "guid=452kjjkedckjh31sndbkzxcv872" type of link as it still says ID=121635.

 

Yes, the ID=#s are the sequential entry number of the caches into the database. So we are currently at 121635.

 

Last year around this date, we were at 58000; around the same date in 2002, we were near 16500; 2001 we were at 1080. We are significantly more than doubling our cache numbers each year. If that rate of increase stays steady, we should be OK until March of 2006.

 

Man - a half a millions caches. That's a whole lot of finding.

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...but Jeremy himself has stated the the growth is exponential. :rolleyes:

When did I say that? We're at twice the traffic as last year at the same time, but I believe that it will continue to slow. At 500,000 cache listings we'll come up with a new idea for waypoint names, just as we did when hex reached its limit.

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IMHO, the six digit cache name is a bit of an anachronism. You could bump the waypoint name to 8 alpha-numeric digits without offending too many GPS users. I would imagine that people using those old units will find a way to map 8 character waypoint names to 6 characters, such as stripping off the 'GC' prefix.

 

Having said that, I think we will hit a saturation limit at some point. Granted, there will always be caches being retired/plundered and you don't want to reuse cache ID's, but I doubt we will ever have more than 200,000 active caches at any one time.

 

-E

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Earth has a surface area of 0.510 x 10^15 m^2

 

Assuming that 75% of the earth's surface is water, that's .128 x 10^15 m^2 of hidable space (not counting five star scuba or buoy caches). This converts to 49,400,000 square miles.

 

Due to the 0.1 mile rule, you can only hide (roughly) 130 caches in a 1.06 mile by 1.05 mile area (1.113 square miles).

 

That means we only have enough land area to hide about 5.77 billion caches.

 

Slackers.

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That means we only have enough land area to hide about 5.77 billion caches.

 

The goal in CT is to get 20% of the land to be preserved natural space...

 

Roughly using that as a figure of publicly available to hide caches in results in 1.154 billion.

 

I recently confirmed in CT we've been doubling the number annually...

 

For me the waypoint ID is irrelevant--don't know what it's used for and never use it myself. Worse comes to worse prefix it with GD instead of GC.

 

Enjoy,

 

Randy

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At 500,000 cache listings we'll come up with a new idea for waypoint names, just as we did when hex reached its limit.

At which point we make our letters ofr the alphabet? Anyways, I understand the 6 digit limitation, but most receivers can hold more than 6 nowadays. Rino can hold 8 or 10. I think the little yellow etrex can hold 8. But then again you would not want your database map over run with hundreds of waypoints with names this long "GCHZR4TI" either. But as the others said theres plenty of time to think about it.

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According to the most recent update of the Garmin Etrex firmware, there's no update to the firmware to allow anything greater than the base number of characters in the units waypoint system. The little yellow etrex only holds six characters.

 

I would bet that a great many first timers still use the basic unit, since it's usually the one that is talked about in articles ("GPS receivers are available for around $100").

 

Sure advanced users could spin the waypoint names to remove the "GC", but if you're advanced enough to be able to remove the GC and download the points using a combination of Pocket Queries, Watcher, GSAK, GPSBabel, EasyGPS, ExpertGPS, etc. - then you probably have more than the basic etrex.

 

I'd say keep it at 6 characters for as long as we can for those people just starting the sport.

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...

Having said that, I think we will hit a saturation limit at some point. Granted, there will always be caches being retired/plundered and you don't want to reuse cache ID's, but I doubt we will ever have more than 200,000 active caches at any one time.

 

-E

Why couldn't we reuse a cache ID? If the cache has been archived for long enough, I'm not seeing a reason that you shouldn't reuse a cache ID.

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Why couldn't we reuse a cache ID?  If the cache has been archived for long enough, I'm not seeing a reason that you shouldn't reuse a cache ID.

How would you handle the logs of those who found the cache, and people still looking at it to read the logs of people they've recently met, who found it? Even archived caches need some type of ID for the pages to be able to be found.

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All the characters in italics cannot be used as the 3rd digit of the waypoint as the was before the big change last year

They can be used if there's a non-hex letter in it. GCA4CZ.

We can also go back to three number if it has a non-hex letter in it. GC2AQ.

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Why couldn't we reuse a cache ID?  If the cache has been archived for long enough, I'm not seeing a reason that you shouldn't reuse a cache ID.

How would you handle the logs of those who found the cache, and people still looking at it to read the logs of people they've recently met, who found it? Even archived caches need some type of ID for the pages to be able to be found.

Hmmm... archived caches could be renamed from GC# to AC# (archived cache) when they are archived. The other various identifiers such as the GCID and the GUID numbers could remain the same, thus keeping all the logs and links intact. Of course, this would put a bigger load on the system, you would have to change the GC# in the database to AC# when archived, and then add the now free GC# to some sort of table of available waypoints.

Even with all that, it would still only slow the inevitable, since it seems obvious we are adding caches to the database faster then removing them.

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Just a thought for a few years down the road.

 

GTXXXX for Traditional Caches

GMXXXX for Multi-Caches

GVXXXX for Virtual Caches

GHXXXX for Letterbox Hybrids

GEXXXX for Event Caches

GWXXXX for Web Cam Caches

GPXXXX for Mystery or Puzzle Caches

GLXXXX for Locationless Caches

 

You can do that with gpxspinner right now anyway for the first character. Maybe the second character could be the variable? Wouldn't that open about 4 million additional caches?

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Why couldn't we reuse a cache ID?  If the cache has been archived for long enough, I'm not seeing a reason that you shouldn't reuse a cache ID.

How would you handle the logs of those who found the cache, and people still looking at it to read the logs of people they've recently met, who found it? Even archived caches need some type of ID for the pages to be able to be found.

I think the log is referencing the GUID or identifier than the cache waypoint ID. The logs would still be valid, they would be referring to a cache that no longer has a cache waypoint ID.

 

If they are archived, why should they still need to have a cache waypoint ID?

 

Hmmm... archived caches could be renamed from GC# to AC# (archived cache) when they are archived.

Very cool idea, but why would an archived cache need a waypoint at all?

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AC = "Archived Cache" not so hot of an idea, my friend.

 

What if the GCXYDT becomes archived. It becomes ACXYDT. Then another cache is labelled GCXYDT. What happens if the owner wants to unarchive ACXYDT? Do we change it to UCXYDT (unarchived cache?). The counter for that is to have the owner resubmit the cache as a new one - but of course that defeats the whole purpose of this discussion. We'd run out of waypoints faster then, as caches that could be unarchived would then be resubmitted as new caches, and therefore duplicated - blah, blah, blah.

 

Databasing Principle: Have some unique identifier for each record. It's a bad idea to include attributes in this unique identifier, because attributes change. Store the information about the record in another field other than the unique identifier (I learned this in the first hour of my first database class back in 1996).

 

Geocaching.com has a numeric identifier for each cache in the the background (see my post higher up in this thread). This number is translated into a unique identifier that fits into a six digit character. Again - it's nothing more than a unique identifier - it's not designed to hold information about the cache.

 

Also, keep in mind that I showed above: The base unit of the typical starting cacher still only holds 6 characters.

 

The best solution I've heard so far is to roll into another prefix letter: GD0001 or GE or GF. The only repercussion would be to make sure that you try not to step on another mainstream GPS activity that might use that prefix.

 

Geodashing uses GD only in its GPX download of the points. In the GPX version of the data, we use a full nine character identifier (GD33-AFUD). For those that use units that only display 6 characters, the abbreviation is 33AFUD (game #33 and the unique four character ID - we use ~31,000 points per month).

 

So after we use GCZZZZ why not use GF0001 or GE0001. If we continue with that schema, we'll definitely run out of unique IDs only after the planet is completely covered in caches. Starting over with GE0001 would give us close to a million new combinations. GF0001 would give us another million.

 

BTW - I still maintain that we're doubling the number of entered caches each year (that doesn't mean active or even approved). If we're at 121,000 right now, we won't hit GCZZZZ for another 2 years.

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I would bet that a great many first timers still use the basic unit...

I know a large number of users that are still using the little yellow etrex, many of them with hundreds, and some with thousands, of finds. It works for them, so there is no need to change.

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I was disappointed that the transition was to base 31, instead of base 32, because I thought we would need that extra factor of 2, but I think it will be a few years before we run out of waypoint names again. And then we can get more waypoints by simply changing the second character of the GC prefix.

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Just a thought for a few years down the road.

 

GTXXXX for Traditional Caches

GMXXXX for Multi-Caches

GVXXXX for Virtual Caches

GHXXXX for Letterbox Hybrids

GEXXXX for Event Caches

GWXXXX for Web Cam Caches

GPXXXX for Mystery or Puzzle Caches

GLXXXX for Locationless Caches

 

You can do that with gpxspinner right now anyway for the first character. Maybe the second character could be the variable? Wouldn't that open about 4 million additional caches?

So far, that idea makes the most sense to me. I like that it identifies the type of cache too!

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Just a thought for a few years down the road.

 

GTXXXX for Traditional Caches

GMXXXX for Multi-Caches

GVXXXX for Virtual Caches

GHXXXX for Letterbox Hybrids

GEXXXX for Event Caches

GWXXXX for Web Cam Caches

GPXXXX for Mystery or Puzzle Caches

GLXXXX for Locationless Caches

 

You can do that with gpxspinner right now anyway for the first character. Maybe the second character could be the variable? Wouldn't that open about 4 million additional caches?

Replace G with A for the archived ones and resue the numbers and that will double again.

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Replace G with A for the archived ones and resue the numbers and that will double again.

Someone aboved already pointed out that you can't reuse numbers like you outlined, because of the following:

 

G1234 is archived and becomes A1234.

 

new G1234 becomes available and is used.

 

How do you archive the 2nd G1234? You can't call it A1234 - you already have one.

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Replace G with A for the archived ones and resue the numbers and that will double again.

Someone aboved already pointed out that you can't reuse numbers like you outlined, because of the following:

 

G1234 is archived and becomes A1234.

 

new G1234 becomes available and is used.

 

How do you archive the 2nd G1234? You can't call it A1234 - you already have one.

You moved archived caches to an archived cache database. While just moving the waypoint to the different database would free up the number in the active database you will still need to rename it for when the next active cache with a pre-owned number becomes archived.

 

There will still be a problem to solve when the same active number is archived for the 3rd time though.

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If you're creating a new database for archived caches, this isn't a problem, you just need an extra identifier in the archived cache database. The first column would be the archived database number and the second would be its original GC# and a date or something to keep them in order if you want.

 

G123 -> archived to archive cache db.

Gets assigned as A123-1 and annotated with G123 in the data.

New G123 created.

New G123 -> archived to archive cache db.

Gets assigned as A123-2 and annotated with G123 in the data.

 

There's nothing in the archive cache db that would require the number to be anything like the original ones...or you could even make the extra digit its own field in the database and just index over both fields.

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G1234 is archived and becomes A1234.

 

new G1234 becomes available and is used.

Now what happens if it is discovered that the original G1234 (now A1234) is still in place and needs to be unarchived?

 

Or, say its a land manager that discovers the old G1234, with markings on it identifying it as such. He removes it and contacts Groundspeak, who thinks its the new G1234. They archive the 2nd one, even though it's still safe and sound in its hiding place.

 

No, I think re-using numbers is a bad idea.

 

The best idea I've heard is to increment the "GC" portion to "GE" or something (skip "GD" because its used by the GeoDashing folks).

 

Even that has its problems. Right now when communicating with a someone about a cache, it's easy to ask "what's the gee-see number?" It gets more complex to have to differentiate between "gee-see, gee-eee, or later, gee-eff."

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Even that has its problems. Right now when communicating with a someone about a cache, it's easy to ask "what's the gee-see number?" It gets more complex to have to differentiate between "gee-see, gee-eee, or later, gee-eff."

You could simply ask what the "gee number" is. Their response will start with a letter (C, E, F, so on) and continue with the hex code...

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Reusing numbers is a bad idea. I agree. It won't happen. As I have said numerous times in the past, when we get to the next milestone we'll address it far before it becomes a problem.

I would say that pretty much settles this thread.

Edited by CO Admin
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