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Geocaching.com site update April 30th 2013


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Read the last update's Release Notes

 

Release Notes

Most of the work has been under the covers this time around, so you are not going to see much from an end-user perspective at this stage of the game. Some of the highlights:

  • EMAIL
    • Work continues on updating the weekly mailer
      • New templates were created to help the teams design and create the weekly mailer
      • UI validation implemented to check for empty data sections in the mailer
      • We now have the ability to suspend the process of sending out the mailer without affecting other site emails
      • A new throttle mechanism has been implemented (so we can slow things down if Google, et al. react negatively to the flood of weekly mailers)

      [*]Bugs:

      • Corrected default behavior for recipients lacking home coordinates
      • Corrected issue with megaevents and recent caches failing to appear in weekly mailer
      • Fixed issue in which direction from home coordinates were flipped in the mailer
      • Mailer now originates from Geocaching rather than from Groundspeak

  • WEB SITE
    • Moved session state from SQL Server to memory (part of our ongoing work to solve the recent site slow-downs)
    • Localized the /freetrial page
    • Extended GeoTours attribute to all cache types
    • Updated API to support CITO souvenir
    • Bugs:
      • Corrected issue with Leaflet map failing to load PQ layer
      • Corrected issue with PQ preview continuing to display on map after switching to search tab

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Hello,

I received the weekly mailer just about 20min ago.

It was very short comparing with those I got before the update.

The Eventlist is very short and new caches are only listed within abot 40km form my home coordinates.

Is this an error in generating the mailer or were those parameters configured new?

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Those changes were intentional in order to make the mailer shorter and more relevant for the recipient.

Sorry, which changes? Many different changes have been noted in this discussion, some apparently intentional, some apparently unintentional, and some that could be either.

 

FWIW, I just received it, and the list of events seems completely random. There are only 5 events listed, with the closest being 87 km away, and no apparent sorting order. My own event, which is happening this weekend about 10 km from home, isn't listed, nor are many other events happening soon in this region. I also noticed the list of Mega events no longer shows all Megas from around the world, and they're now sorted by distance from home rather than date.

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I was responding to Homer_J_Simpson's post above mine regarding mailer length.

Sorry, I was pretty sure you were responding to that post, but for some reason when I first read his post, I thought he was reporting a bug. After re-reading it, I see he was just noting what was intentionally changed. The same goes for my comment regarding the Megas. I was just noting what appears to be an intentional change, not reporting a bug. I did like seeing all of the Megas in there, but cutting it down to just the ones closest to home does make sense.

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It appears the only events listed are CITO events.

After you mentioned that, I went back and looked again at the email. Of the 5 events listed, 4 are CITOs, but the 5th is the Groundspeak Block Party which is 123 km away.

As a side note, all 5 are correctly sorted by their event dates.

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Those changes were intentional in order to make the mailer shorter and more relevant for the recipient.

 

But why is there only a short list in the weekly mailer containing only new caches within a distance of a few miles?

I use notifications to get new caches nearby and used the weekly mailer with a list of the new caches within 70 to 80 km around to find new potentially interesting caches for planning tours.

With the new "short" list you have to search manually and for this you spend a lot of time reading listings.

Until now, the "long" list of new caches gave me a quick look for interesting new caches around.

 

Will there be a way to set up a parameter for the mailer to get a list f. e. of new caches within 100km around?

Events more than 100km away from my home coordinates are not interesting for me, but the event list showed a lot of them.

 

Regards Thomas

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It appears the only events listed are CITO events. In mine there are two such, one on May 4 and one on June 1, each a little over 120 miles away. Missing is a WWFM event on May 4 about 15 miles away.

 

Similar experience here in Montgomery, AL. Four events listed on the email, all are CITO. Meanwhile, Saturday's WWFM, 7.6 miles from our home coordinates, is a no-show.

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Those changes were intentional in order to make the mailer shorter and more relevant for the recipient.

 

But why is there only a short list in the weekly mailer containing only new caches within a distance of a few miles?

I use notifications to get new caches nearby and used the weekly mailer with a list of the new caches within 70 to 80 km around to find new potentially interesting caches for planning tours.

With the new "short" list you have to search manually and for this you spend a lot of time reading listings.

Until now, the "long" list of new caches gave me a quick look for interesting new caches around.

 

Will there be a way to set up a parameter for the mailer to get a list f. e. of new caches within 100km around?

Events more than 100km away from my home coordinates are not interesting for me, but the event list showed a lot of them.

 

Regards Thomas

 

I agree with Thomas (Homer_J_Simpson). What use is the newsletter if it only lists new caches near my home coordinates? I use email notifications for those. I don't want to expand my notification range because I don't want to get an email for every guardrail cache placed within 100 miles. I do want to see new groups of caches or power trails in other states, however, and the newsletter was the perfect way to find them without having to endlessly scan the map. Please bring this back to its original design!

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Hello

Hello,

I received the weekly mailer just about 20min ago.

It was very short comparing with those I got before the update.

The Eventlist is very short and new caches are only listed within abot 40km form my home coordinates.

Is this an error in generating the mailer or were those parameters configured new?

It seems you have had a little more luck than myself. I only got notfications about new caches in the 20km area and the events listed seems to be CITOs only but these are everywehre in Europe :-(

 

Regards

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My very short weekly mailer arrived on Wednesday. The only events listed were 2 CITOs happening in July - one at 127 miles away and the other at 131 miles away. Gone are all of the WWFM events going on tomorrow and one of those is 2 miles from me, as well as all of the other local (closer than 127 miles) events. Only 20 "recent caches" were listed and ranged from 14 to 46 miles away. There are no international MEGA events listed and I enjoy seeing all the MEGAs listed, not just the ones in the USA.

 

I would prefer the weekly mailer to return to the way it was before. The mailer from April 24 had all the right stuff, in my opinion. I'm glad I hung on to the Apr. 24 email!

 

Perhaps Groundspeak could set up a customizable mailer? Let the recipients decide what they want, similar to a pocket query. Thanks!

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It seems that from a lot of user points of view, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the weekly newsletter. Perhaps there were problems behind the scenes, but from our point of view, Groundspeak has once again fixed something that was not broken with the result being that it now is.

 

Luckily, I have already downloaded all of the WWFM events to GSAK. They are not in the newsletter and some of then do not start with WWFM, so it is impossible to search for them because of the fix for the advanced search feature.

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It seems that from a lot of user points of view, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the weekly newsletter. Perhaps there were problems behind the scenes, but from our point of view, Groundspeak has once again fixed something that was not broken with the result being that it now is.

 

Luckily, I have already downloaded all of the WWFM events to GSAK. They are not in the newsletter and some of then do not start with WWFM, so it is impossible to search for them because of the fix for the advanced search feature.

 

Making better mistakes.....seems to be a part of the Corporate Culture.

In retail, 'The customer is right', and the company tries to meet the customers' needs. Here they seem to give us less and tell us it's more.

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Luckily, I have already downloaded all of the WWFM events to GSAK. They are not in the newsletter and some of then do not start with WWFM, so it is impossible to search for them because of the fix for the advanced search feature.

Just in case you weren't aware, there's a bookmark list of all WWFM X events globally.

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I too am very disappointed in the new format. I love to travel to events all over and used the weekly newsletter to investigate possible events to go to. As far as I am concerned, the newsletter in its present format is completely useless to me. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

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I agree with the two posts just prior to me, I believe the MEGA events need to return in full to the newsletter.

 

My main reasoning is, many geocachers look for International MEGA events as a means to choose their next travel destination. Speaking with my event organizer hat on, Groundspeak promotes MEGA events as part of their sponsorship. By not including all of the MEGAs in the newsletter, is this against that agreement?

 

Please put all the MEGAs back on the newsletter -- or allow geocachers to include International MEGAs in their own newsletter preferences.

Edited by SEMIK
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Speaking with my event organizer hat on, Groundspeak promotes MEGA events as part of their sponsorship. By not including all of the MEGAs in the newsletter, is this against that agreement?

 

2. E-Newsletter Publication. Groundspeak will publish your Mega-Event in our weekly e-newsletter, which is sent to more than two million registered geocaching.com account holders who have opted-in to receive the e-newsletter.

 

Yes, it does break that agreement.

Edited by funkymunkyzone
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Taking off the organiser hat, and putting on the Geocacher traveller, this is the way we have found out about International Events,and managed to fit those into travel plans in the past, if it were not for the Mega information in the mailers, we'd not have gone to the Groundspeak Block Party in 2011 - a case for Groundspeak to make note of, the International Events listed give people time to plan travel dates.

Now to put back on the Oz Mega 2014 hat, this "presence" on the mailers is part of our drive to get the next Mega in Oz noticed by people travelling/making plans, to attend the event in South Australia, so the original format needs to be returned.

regards

Gayle & Mark

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I got my Weekly Email this afternoon.

 

The "Recent Geocaches" section is including nearby events. Not only is this redundant to the "Upcoming Events" section, it also includes events which have already passed (such as all the nearby WWFM events that were "placed" on Saturday).

 

The farthest away listing in the "Recent Geocaches" section is 71 miles. I am wondering what the cutoff distance is now; I think it used to be 100 miles?

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I sure hope the list of international Mega events will be returned as the complete list. We have a mega event planned in New Zealand later this year and the only way some of our international attendees find out about it is by noticing it on the weekly mailer.

When I first saw that the Mega list had been reduced and sorted by distance from home, I didn't really have a problem with it. I figured if I wanted to bring up a list of all Megas worldwide, I'd just do a search with the PQ form.

 

...then I tried it.

 

The thing is, you can't do a PQ for Mega events. You can only do a PQ for "Event Cache*". The "*" says "includes: Cache In Trash Out Event, Groundspeak Block Party, Mega-Event Cache, Lost and Found Event Cache, Groundspeak Lost and Found Celebration". Well that's pretty useless. If I want to see what Megas are happening in other parts of the world, I have to weed through every event? Sorry, that won't cut it.

 

With the removal of the complete Mega list from the Weekly Mailer, there's now no convenient method of finding Megas that aren't close to home. You'd think Groundspeak would want to advertise these things at least a little bit...

 

The farthest away listing in the "Recent Geocaches" section is 71 miles. I am wondering what the cutoff distance is now; I think it used to be 100 miles?

I don't think there's a cutoff distance at all. Mine lists 20 caches (and events <_< ), and I bet yours does too. I think the limit is simply the 20 most recent caches, then they get sorted by distance.

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Hmmm. I thought it strange that the list of caches, events and mega-events seemed short but just thought it was a coincidence. I didn't realize that it was a plan to keep us all less informed and that the really important thing is to reduce the mail volume.

 

Please go back to listing all events and caches within 100 miles of our home coordinates. That would be useful. What you've got now is not useful.

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I too am very disappointed in the new format. I love to travel to events all over and used the weekly newsletter to investigate possible events to go to. As far as I am concerned, the newsletter in its present format is completely useless to me. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

 

I received the new format newsletter this morning and it is now completely useless. The top part is posted on the blog on Monday and I already get new cache notifications for a larger area than the now diminutive list at the bottom of the letter. I guess I'll just unsubscribe as there has NEVER been any important announcements in the letter, so I'm sure I won't miss anything.

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I got my Weekly Email this afternoon.

 

The "Recent Geocaches" section is including nearby events. Not only is this redundant to the "Upcoming Events" section, it also includes events which have already passed (such as all the nearby WWFM events that were "placed" on Saturday).

 

The farthest away listing in the "Recent Geocaches" section is 71 miles. I am wondering what the cutoff distance is now; I think it used to be 100 miles?

 

Mine cut off at 20 miles.

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In looking at my weekly news letter, I see that the list of events and caches have been really reduced. Trying to research my issue, I see I am not the only one with an issue regarding the listing of event and caches.

 

I agree with those before me that mention upcoming events and mega events. The first question I have is what is the filter criteria for what events get listed. I personally have an event scheduled from June and that event was listed on last weeks mailer but not this weeks? Also on my mailed I dont even see GeoWoodStock. I can understand the reason for attempting to tweak the mail with last weeks WWFM the mailer was much larger but I dont see any reason to change the way the mailer functioned. It will make it harder now for the user to search out caches and events that they would have otherwise seen in the mailer.

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I think everyone is missing the point. The cache listings and event listings were drawing focus away from the important announcements at the top of the letter. We can now focus on the important announcements. I like the new format, it is nice and compact and streamlined. Good job Groundspeak!

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I think everyone is missing the point. The cache listings and event listings were drawing focus away from the important announcements at the top of the letter. We can now focus on the important announcements. I like the new format, it is nice and compact and streamlined. Good job Groundspeak!

If I had said this, it would have been sarcasm, but I can't tell whether you're being serious or not.

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I think everyone is missing the point. The cache listings and event listings were drawing focus away from the important announcements at the top of the letter. We can now focus on the important announcements. I like the new format, it is nice and compact and streamlined. Good job Groundspeak!

 

Question, is the newsletter a premium feature, or is it available to all accounts?

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I think everyone is missing the point. The cache listings and event listings were drawing focus away from the important announcements at the top of the letter. We can now focus on the important announcements. I like the new format, it is nice and compact and streamlined. Good job Groundspeak!

 

I think sadly you are missing the point. When Groundspeak sponsors a mega event one of the things they agree to provide is a mention of the mega event in the weekly mailer that goes out to everyone subscribed to it. They are now in breach of that for every mega event sponsorship agreement.

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Yesterday, I received the actual weekly mailer and there was no change.

A few events listed far far away (about 150 - 250 km). New Caches were listed only about 20 - 40 km from my home coordinates and many of the new published ones I received a notification mailer were missing.

So, the mailer is completely useless for me.

 

The only solution I see, is to enhance my notification radius to get new published caches as soon as they were published.

If Groundspeak has planned to take load from their Mailsystem by sending smaller Newsletters it will not help. If all PM's enlarge their notification radius the load on the Mailsystem will increase a lot.

 

Please give us back the old weekly mailer.

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I have made the same experience this week as Homer J: Nothing changed compared to last week. The farest Cache reported is 20km away and only CITO-Events are listed. For me this behaviour is a bug. The change in the cut off for notifications about new caches has not been mentioned in the release notes. Please fix it and / or correct Your release notes.

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