A few ideas

[Hemux]

Hi everyone,

 

it is my first and only thread, and although I looked carefully I am still not sure where to post this. If I misplaced it please excuse me! I wish there was some THINK BOX section where I could post that.

 

It's just that after many hours of using the app I gathered in my mind a few ideas that I think could help improve the user and overall experience. Please note that I am mainly talking about the smartphone app, because I must admit I know very few about the website since I only use my smartphone while geocaching (ie: outside). So if these features are on the website, please excuse me for that, although I think the smartphone app could then benefit from these features. Furthermore, sure I am not the first one to suggest ideas and lots of my thoughts have probably already been exposed here, I apologize for that. And sure I am like light years away from real geocachers, and use very few time from my free time to play geocaching, so these ideas will probably look like rookie ideas, but somehow I feel that some other users may find interesting stuff in here.

 

1) The main idea I wish was implemented is a rating option! Geocaching is such a community thing, very modern, and when I see stuff like tripadvisor and such, somehow I wish we could rate the caches, like a on 5 stars scale, and get rating averages that would be automatically calculated. In this manner, when we look at the caches around us, we would be like "hmm this one is very close but has like only 23% of positive ratings while this one is a bit further but has 76% positive reviews, lets go look for that one!". I wish it was not seen as a discriminative option but more as a tool to help users, and to help raise a bit higher the overall quality of caches. A cache in a very sad and dirty spot, honestly not interesting, would soon fall in the ratings anad would eventually disappear or lead its owner to improve its location... I don't know, I think it can lead to a great idea.

 

2) More detailed cache markers:

* instead of just a color code (mainly green, and blue, red...), if we did NOT find a cache, a sad smiley? like the good smiley when we found it, but the other way around.

* if the cache has a tracker, put a little bug into the round part of the marker?

* if the cache has a very nice point of view/panorama, an EYE icon in it, if the cache has more than 90% of positive reviews (see my first idea), a STAR icon in it, and such other icons like that with a map legend, to give more identities to each cache

 

3) A link to external map software such as Gmaps? it would help, I am affraid to say but the geocaching app map is not particularly great... sorry!

 

4) Right now there is a difficulty icon, right? But that is the estimated difficulty. I wish there was a difficulty parameter calculated on the FOUND/DIDNOTFOUND, with an average. Like that, a Difficulty 1/5 cache with a F/D ratio of only 25% would show that the owner estimated but too nicely his cache and that the FIND difficulty is much higher!

 

5) I wish when we open a cache details that we could click on the owner, see his profile and such.

 

6) is linked to 5), but like there is playlists in music or on youtube, I wish we could browse playlists made by cache owners we particularly like. Caches with titles such as "Canal Promenade #7" means there are many of them in the same idea, so if we could browse them in a playlist...

 

I have many other ideas but I think this thread is already much too long! Thank you to every one who read it, to the geocaching community and to its moderators/team! Bye!

[+T.D.M.22]

The eis a rating system. Premium members can award favourite points for caches they like.

 

What do you mean by gmaps? Google? I have Google maps on my app. Either way the maps award re a third party product, not a product from geocaching.com.

 

What's a sad smiley? That seems like an oxymoron. Do you mean frown? Thats been suggested before. I disagree as out the Playlist. Too much extra work, and how would that work on a gps unit?

 

Real difficulty and terrain ratings? Either way it's all relative, so it really doesn't reflect the true ratings.

 

Be able to click and go to the cache owners profile? Thats available in the website, and something I would like to see on the app.

[+cerberus1]

Some believe favorite points allotted to premium members do "rate" caches, though we see favorites placed on nondescript hides simply because it's a friend's cache, and even some just for being FTF.

 

- A quick scan through logs should give a good idea of what you're in for.

Edited December 25, 2015 by cerberus1

[+niraD]

1) The main idea I wish was implemented is a rating option!

As others have mentioned, Groundspeak's Favorites system can help identify better caches that might be more interesting, assuming that your preferences match the general consensus of the local community. See the Help Center article:

http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=287

 

A third-party rating system is GC Vote: http://gcvote.com/

 

With any rating system, it helps if your preferences match the general consensus of those who are rating the caches. I find the Favorites system useful for identifying caches that I should at least consider. A better system would correlated my preferences with those of others, and show me caches that were enjoyed by people with preferences similar to my own.

 

2) More detailed cache markers:

* instead of just a color code (mainly green, and blue, red...), if we did NOT find a cache, a sad smiley? like the good smiley when we found it, but the other way around.

* if the cache has a tracker, put a little bug into the round part of the marker?

* if the cache has a very nice point of view/panorama, an EYE icon in it, if the cache has more than 90% of positive reviews (see my first idea), a STAR icon in it, and such other icons like that with a map legend, to give more identities to each cache

As long as these icons are optional, or can be configured so they don't obscure more useful information, sure. But if the blue DNF icon or some other new icon obscures useful information like the cache type or whether the cache has the Needs Maintenance attribute set, then some of us won't be happy.

 

4) Right now there is a difficulty icon, right? But that is the estimated difficulty. I wish there was a difficulty parameter calculated on the FOUND/DIDNOTFOUND, with an average. Like that, a Difficulty 1/5 cache with a F/D ratio of only 25% would show that the owner estimated but too nicely his cache and that the FIND difficulty is much higher!

I think using the DNF count to automatically override the difficulty rating would be problematic. For example, many puzzle caches have high difficulty because the puzzle itself is hard, but they have very few DNFs because finding the cache is easy once you solve the puzzle. Overriding these caches to have low difficulty ratings would be misleading.

 

6) is linked to 5), but like there is playlists in music or on youtube, I wish we could browse playlists made by cache owners we particularly like.

Bookmark lists are already available to premium members. See the Help Center article:

http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=283