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Add "mark Bug Missing" Button To Tbs


Otter and Lemur

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A suggestion: change "Mark Bug Missing" from the second entry in the drop-down menu on a bug's page to a button. It seems non-intuitive to a lot of the people I've talked to to have "Mark Bug Missing" be hidden below "Recalculate Distance". Since most people never "recalculate distance", they don't know about the other two options lurking down below.

 

Since people don't know how to mark a bug missing, bugs often stay listed in caches months if not years after they got muggled.

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Thank you for the link to the previous discussion, but as my comment beginning this thread said, I am well aware of the option to go to a bug's page and use the drop-down menu to 'mark bug missing'.

 

My point is that bug owners don't know that that option is IN the menu. And if you try to help out, by sending them instructions, you often get back a lot of confusion. I tried saying "to mark your bug missing, and thereby keep it from forever showing up in the listing for that cache that it's actually no longer in, go to your bug's page, click on the drop-down menu (which will say 'recalculate distance' when you first get to the page), choose 'mark bug missing', then click 'go'."

 

That usually fried people's brains. They couldn't comprehend why they needed to do something relating to recalculating distance when all they wanted to do was mark a bug dead. It didn't intuitively click for people, given that some options relating to bug maintenance were buttons and three other things were stuck in a drop-down menu.

 

It's mildly frustrating to know that if you're going to a medium-sized city, like, say, Omaha, Nebraska, 9/10 of the bugs listed as being in caches are not, in fact, there. If it were easier for owners to mark their bugs missing we might have fewer such situations.

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My point is that bug owners don't know that that option is IN the menu.  And if you try to help out, by sending them instructions, you often get back a lot of confusion.  I tried saying "to mark your bug missing, and thereby keep it from forever showing up in the listing for that cache that it's actually no longer in, go to your bug's page, click on the drop-down menu (which will say 'recalculate distance' when you first get to the page), choose 'mark bug missing', then click 'go'."

I did that recently and got the problem of the person who's bug it was AND the cache owner haven't logged into GC.com for a long time so the bug will just have to sit in there...

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If both the cache owner and the bug owner are unresponsive, write to your usually friendly Groundspeak volunteer who covers the region where the cache is located. They will be glad to move the missing bug to an "unknown location" for you. Now, that isn't what's being requested in this thread, but it may be helpful in the interim.

 

The option to mark a bug missing has been around since mid-December 2003. (See the the travel bug page upgrade announcement.) I think it's fair to say that the availability of the option is not well-known, or easy to find.

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If both the cache owner and the bug owner are unresponsive, write to your usually friendly Groundspeak volunteer who covers the region where the cache is located. They will be glad to move the missing bug to an "unknown location" for you. Now, that isn't what's being requested in this thread, but it may be helpful in the interim.

Thanks KA. How does one find the name/e-mail of the "friendly Groundspeak volunteer who covers the region where the cache is located". (I quoted it as I liked it, no offense intended. I looked at the knowledge base and searched here. Is there a general way or do we just post that we're looking for the approver of area x?)

 

TIA

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I think it's fair to say that the availability of the option is not well-known, or easy to find.

I'd agree with that.

 

It's very strange, but I've been politely sending mail to folks who've had these ghost bugs in their caches and told them how to clean up, should they desire to do so. I often get back responses saying "sure, thanks, glad to do it, all set." Then I glance at the cache page later and the bug is still listed there. I write back and they say "hmmm, don't know what happened." One guy had me checking and rechecking *for* him until we finally worked out that he was clicking on the bug, clicking the "go" button next to "mark bug missing", and then just going on his merry way, never saying "yes" when it asked him "are you sure?"

 

I truly don't know how you design an interface that no one can misunderstand, and I'll be honest, I don't know how people look right at a "are you sure y/n" prompt and just go on to some other page without answering it, but there you have it. People are strange. :lol:

 

The reason I posted here in the first place was because I'm going to Omaha, NE next week, and out of the 20 or so bugs listed as being in caches within 15 miles of the Old Market section of town, about 18 of them are missing and long gone. There're logs recently from other recent visitors saying things like "what IS it with Omaha caches? None of these bugs are actually here!" I often see ghost bugs in caches, but can't recall seeing it to quite this degree in a concentrated area before.

 

I guess the fact that I post about these things demonstrates that for me, one of my favorite aspects of geocaching is helping travel bugs reach their goals. Sometimes I get a teeeeeeeny bit frustrated when they disappear or "stay" in caches long after they've actually been taken. :D

 

-- Lemur

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I truly don't know how you design an interface that no one can misunderstand, and I'll be honest, I don't know how people look right at a "are you sure y/n" prompt and just go on to some other page without answering it, but there you have it.  People are strange.  :lol:

I must fall into the "strange" category :D

 

The first time I tried to mark a bug as missing, I was sure it wasn't working. I selected "Mark bug as missing", and clicked "Go", and when the page refreshed, what I was focusing on was the "Recently spotted" part of the page. I wanted to be sure that it said "In Unknown Location", and it didn't. So I tried it again, thinking maybe it was just a server-busy issue. Only after I don't know how many attempts did I notice the "Are you sure" prompt sitting quietly at the top of the page, where I hadn't been focusing.

 

Aren't "Are you sure?" prompts usually in a separate pop-up? I think that that might alleviate a lot of the problems people have marking bugs as missing. (At least the "strange" people, anyway.) Having the mark-missing option as a separate button (rather than in the "recalculate distance" dropdown) would certainly help, too; I agree with that.

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I'll admit that I often miss the "are you sure" (both in TBs and in pocket query deletion) question. Don't know why and I am slowly training myself out of missing the question but for some reason it is easy thing to miss.

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Aren't "Are you sure?" prompts usually in a separate pop-up?  I think that that might alleviate a lot of the problems people have marking bugs as missing.  (At least the "strange" people, anyway.)  Having the mark-missing option as a separate button (rather than in the "recalculate distance" dropdown) would certainly help, too; I agree with that.

I apologize if "strange" was the wrong word. No offense was meant.

 

It's just interesting to me from a human-interface design perspective. No matter how reasonable a GUI may be from one person's view, the next person may find it completely confusing.

 

Based on what you and some others have told me recently, I'm thinking that "mark bug missing" needs to be easier to find for bug owners and cache owners, but furthermore, the "are you sure" really needs to be more obvious.

 

-- Lemur

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As a solution that I'm guessing wouldn't take very much time, what about simply switching the order of the three items in the dropdown list on the travel bug page, so that "Mark Bug Missing" shows up first, making it the visible item when someone looks at the dropdown menu? I would guess that the "Missing" option is used (or should be used) more often than "recalculate distance" or "move to last location."

 

The "Are you sure?" prompt behaves a lot like the prompt for removing an item from a watchlist. The prompt for the newer-designed feature, bookmark lists, is a lot more obvious.

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Aren't "Are you sure?" prompts usually in a separate pop-up?  I think that that might alleviate a lot of the problems people have marking bugs as missing.  (At least the "strange" people, anyway.)  Having the mark-missing option as a separate button (rather than in the "recalculate distance" dropdown) would certainly help, too; I agree with that.

I apologize if "strange" was the wrong word. No offense was meant.

 

None taken at all. (I did use a smiley after the first time I quoted the word "strange", hoping to indicate that I wasn't offended, but I neglected to put one after the second instance.)

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