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Email Limitations Prohibitive; Instant Messaging Not Helpful


LANMonkey

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Some feedback for the development & customer feedback team at Geocaching.com.

 

We just returned home from an 8 day roadtrip with very limited Internet access. We found well over 50 EarthCaches & Virtuals. Yay. However... now that we are trying to follow protocol/guidelines and email our answers to the C/Os before logging, we have run into the limitation of only being able to send ~20 emails "per session."

 

So our logging process has ground to an early halt this morning. While we certainly understand the desire to prevent the geocaching.com site being used for spam, this restriction is quite prohibitive to earnest cachers trying to get caught up after a long trip. As well, the option of using the Instant Messaging service (which also limits the number of messages one can send "per session") is not very useful for logging because the window for entering text is SO SMALL that one can't really compose a useful message in response to the multiple in-depth questions posed in an Earthcache.

 

Questions:

1. How long is a "session" and how do I "restart" my "session" so that I can continue my work? I've tried logging out of the site and back in and that didn't help.

2. Is there a way to scale the size of the text entry window for the Instant Messaging?

 

Considerations:

1. Can the development team find another way to prevent "spam" without limiting earnest cachers from trying to get caught up after a roadtrip?

 

If any others have feedback that might help us here we'd be very interested in hearing it.

 

Thank-you!

 

“Cache safely, and cache often!”

LANMonkey

Co-host of the Caching in the Northwest Podcast

Vlogger & Blogger at LANMonkey.Blogspot.ca

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Thanks for the feedback - sorry to hear this is hitting you right now.

 

I have brought up the spam throttling on email to our dev team and we will look at it. It is true that you are getting throttled, and I can't share our exact throttling thresholds (otherwise those that abuse the system will know EXACTLY how to skirt it); I will say that it is based off a number of emails in a specific rolling time frame. So if you simply wait a while, it will relieve up a bit and you'll be able to send emails again. If you approach that same number of emails within that rolling timeframe you will most likely get hit again.

 

The same would happen if you were trying to start new conversations on the Message Center - it actually uses the same limitations for starting a brand new conversation with a player you've never spoken with before (single messages are also throttled, but not nearly at the rate of starting a new conversation). Good news on your second question though, we are currently working on raising both the character limit on messages as well as fixing the text box entry field to expand while writing, so it shows more than 2 lines.

 

Sorry this has affected you - it sucks and I promise we'll take a look at the throttling limitations to be sure we are doing all we can to catch the evil-doers and not the legit cachers.

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Thanks for the feedback - sorry to hear this is hitting you right now.

 

I have brought up the spam throttling on email to our dev team and we will look at it. It is true that you are getting throttled, and I can't share our exact throttling thresholds (otherwise those that abuse the system will know EXACTLY how to skirt it); I will say that it is based off a number of emails in a specific rolling time frame. So if you simply wait a while, it will relieve up a bit and you'll be able to send emails again. If you approach that same number of emails within that rolling timeframe you will most likely get hit again.

 

The same would happen if you were trying to start new conversations on the Message Center - it actually uses the same limitations for starting a brand new conversation with a player you've never spoken with before (single messages are also throttled, but not nearly at the rate of starting a new conversation). Good news on your second question though, we are currently working on raising both the character limit on messages as well as fixing the text box entry field to expand while writing, so it shows more than 2 lines.

 

Sorry this has affected you - it sucks and I promise we'll take a look at the throttling limitations to be sure we are doing all we can to catch the evil-doers and not the legit cachers.

I just noticed another limitation in the messages -- it only shows the last 20. Is there a way to go back and see the older messages?

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Thanks for the feedback - sorry to hear this is hitting you right now.

 

I have brought up the spam throttling on email to our dev team and we will look at it. It is true that you are getting throttled, and I can't share our exact throttling thresholds (otherwise those that abuse the system will know EXACTLY how to skirt it); I will say that it is based off a number of emails in a specific rolling time frame. So if you simply wait a while, it will relieve up a bit and you'll be able to send emails again. If you approach that same number of emails within that rolling timeframe you will most likely get hit again.

 

The same would happen if you were trying to start new conversations on the Message Center - it actually uses the same limitations for starting a brand new conversation with a player you've never spoken with before (single messages are also throttled, but not nearly at the rate of starting a new conversation). Good news on your second question though, we are currently working on raising both the character limit on messages as well as fixing the text box entry field to expand while writing, so it shows more than 2 lines.

 

Sorry this has affected you - it sucks and I promise we'll take a look at the throttling limitations to be sure we are doing all we can to catch the evil-doers and not the legit cachers.

I just noticed another limitation in the messages -- it only shows the last 20. Is there a way to go back and see the older messages?

 

I have had this problem as an earthcache owner when I have had say 30 emails to reply , it does build up very quickly , and I have had to stop as i have sent more emails that I am allowed . However the system does seem to reset it self and I could send emails again.

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I would like to echo this statement. I just got back from a month long road trip, primarily camping, in the U.S. and Canada, and with very little internet service along the way. I haven't counted my caches yet, but I would estimate that I have found over 250 earthcaches and virtuals. This requires a lot of emails. I sent several emails, then got caught and couldn't email any more. So I logged some of those caches, then went back to emailing my cache answers. Then hit that magic number again and went back to logging. Then I tried to email again and it said "sorry, you have exceeded your email quota". So that suggests I am limited to about 20 emails a day. At this rate, it will take me over 10 days just to email all my answers, further slowing down my logging.

 

As previously mentioned, the window to type for messages is extremely small. Many earthcache responses are several lines of text. In addition, some COs specify to email them, not message.

 

I don't have reliable internet service at home and have to go to the library to log my caches. I thought I would speed things up by compiling all my answers already typed up and ready to go before I even got to the library. I wanted to send all my emails before I started logging because some COs say right on the page that you need to send your answers before/concurrently with your log or they might delete your finds. I am not looking forward to how many trips to the library I will need in the future just to log all my caches.

 

I don't really have any suggestions as to how you can improve this, but it is really frustrating for those honest cachers that are just trying to log a bunch of caches. Please try to resolve this problem so we can get back to logging and caching.

Edited by 4nhand
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I would like to echo this statement. I just got back from a month long road trip, primarily camping, in the U.S. and Canada, and with very little internet service along the way. I haven't counted my caches yet, but I would estimate that I have found over 250 earthcaches and virtuals. This requires a lot of emails. I sent several emails, then got caught and couldn't email any more. So I logged some of those caches, then went back to emailing my cache answers. Then hit that magic number again and went back to logging. Then I tried to email again and it said "sorry, you have exceeded your email quota". So that suggests I am limited to about 20 emails a day. At this rate, it will take me over 10 days just to email all my answers, further slowing down my logging.

 

As previously mentioned, the window to type for messages is extremely small. Many earthcache responses are several lines of text. In addition, some COs specify to email them, not message.

 

I don't have reliable internet service at home and have to go to the library to log my caches. I thought I would speed things up by compiling all my answers already typed up and ready to go before I even got to the library. I wanted to send all my emails before I started logging because some COs say right on the page that you need to send your answers before/concurrently with your log or they might delete your finds. I am not looking forward to how many trips to the library I will need in the future just to log all my caches.

 

I don't really have any suggestions as to how you can improve this, but it is really frustrating for those honest cachers that are just trying to log a bunch of caches. Please try to resolve this problem so we can get back to logging and caching.

 

...same here.

Hit that limit while working up a 4 week trip to the US, mainly collecting earthcaches and virtuals.

While in the message center the edit box is sizable now (thanks very much!), I will move to it now finding the limit of this one... ;-)

 

Cheers, bigchen.

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… and yet another unhappy customer over here. I rarely do send out emails via geocaching.com, and just came back to log the caches of a one-week-trip without access to email.

 

I don't know what the limit is, but the limit seems to be EXTREMELY low. I sent a total of 10 emails via geocacing.com this month, and 3 during the past week. Just when trying to send the first answers for an EC, I'm hit by the mail quota limit.

The message center seems to be unaffected for now, so I've just sent my first EC answers via message center, along with my email address for contacting me straight away if there's anything to clear… this simply feels so wrong.

 

It's frustrating to note that I'd like to apologize for using the message center and would like to point to the over-agressive mail quota, but this in turn would make me look like some spammer trying to couch-log some tons of virtuals or earthcaches.

 

Best,

knoepfchendruecker

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I just got this message today, is it a new feature or is the system getting abused somehow? I don't send a lot of emails, and haven't used the system to send any emails this week. And yet, when I try to send someone an email through their profile page for an earthcache I found yesterday, it is telling me my quota has been reached. What gives? Is it possible that somehow someone is using my account ID to send emails for spam purposes? That's the only plausible explanation I can come up with. The alternative, that me sending 5-10 emails a month is exceeding their spam threshold seems ridiculous. Please help!

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I would like to echo this statement. I just got back from a month long road trip, primarily camping, in the U.S. with very little internet service along the way. So I started logging my earth caches at home. But then I got this message. I used Chrome to log my caches, but when I open Fire Fox, I can send emails again. It is very strange. Is there someone from Groundspeak who reads this messages, so they can solve the problem?

 

Some feedback for the development & customer feedback team at Geocaching.com.

 

We just returned home from an 8 day roadtrip with very limited Internet access. We found well over 50 EarthCaches & Virtuals. Yay. However... now that we are trying to follow protocol/guidelines and email our answers to the C/Os before logging, we have run into the limitation of only being able to send ~20 emails "per session."

 

So our logging process has ground to an early halt this morning. While we certainly understand the desire to prevent the geocaching.com site being used for spam, this restriction is quite prohibitive to earnest cachers trying to get caught up after a long trip. As well, the option of using the Instant Messaging service (which also limits the number of messages one can send "per session") is not very useful for logging because the window for entering text is SO SMALL that one can't really compose a useful message in response to the multiple in-depth questions posed in an Earthcache.

 

Questions:

1. How long is a "session" and how do I "restart" my "session" so that I can continue my work? I've tried logging out of the site and back in and that didn't help.

2. Is there a way to scale the size of the text entry window for the Instant Messaging?

 

Considerations:

1. Can the development team find another way to prevent "spam" without limiting earnest cachers from trying to get caught up after a roadtrip?

 

If any others have feedback that might help us here we'd be very interested in hearing it.

 

Thank-you!

 

“Cache safely, and cache often!”

LANMonkey

Co-host of the Caching in the Northwest Podcast

Vlogger & Blogger at LANMonkey.Blogspot.ca

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Is there someone from Groundspeak who reads this messages, so they can solve the problem?

See post #2 from seandynamite, a Lackey at Geocaching HQ.

 

I contacted geocaching.com and this was the answer:

Thank you for writing in to Geocaching HQ, and sorry to hear you're having issues with our site.

You may need to log out of your Geocaching.com account then clear your browser's cookies and cache, then log back into your account. You may also want to try using another browser.

There's lots of great information about geocaching in our online Help Center.

Please let me know if this does't fix the issue so I can troubleshoot further on your behalf.

 

I had to clear all browser history and cache for 4 weeks to fix the issue.

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I haven't hit the email limitations myself, but was thinking that one solution might be to require a captcha-type entry when sending emails after a user has hit their quota. I'm not suggesting that this additional security step be added for every email send, just for sends after reaching the email limitation. Once a user falls out of the throttling status, then they'd be able to send emails without the captcha requirement.

 

That would be my suggestion.

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