Events Near You issue

[+strek2]

It used to be that when I logged into the GC website and pressed the "Events Near You" icon/button it would show only the ones in my area. Now it is showing all of them in the whole country. I leave the location entry box empty. Is this a bug or a new feature? I expect when an event is near me that is not 2000 miles away. I would assume that if it is going to do the country it would at least sort by distance instead of date.

[+hzoi]

I just tried it, and while it isn't showing every event in the USA for me, it is showing every event in my state. Closer, but still, some of those are 300+ miles away.

[+Balde Runner]

Funny, I was trying some of the new website features, and tried "find new caches near me". I live in Texas, and the first cache on the list was 300 miles away. In Texas, yes, but I doubt I'm going to jump in my car and go for FTF.

 

It would be nice to have an option to make "near me" mean a radius of some number of miles. I'd probably also find the current feature less than useful if I lived near another state but "near me" never included caches from just a few miles away.

Edited May 21, 2017 by Balde Runner

[+dprovan]

It would be nice to have an option to make "near me" mean a radius of some number of miles.

I think you've identified the problem quite accurately. The title is "near me", but then how near it is to you is completely ignored, and the ordering of the list is based on something else such as chronological order for events. You being able to declare what you consider "near" would be a reasonable solution, although even just using a value for near that someone might actually consider near might do the trick. I don't think there's any one good answer, but I'd say 30 miles is about the upper limit beyond which no one would consider calling it "near".

 

I don't use these links or even search much, but my feeling is that most people expect whatever list they bring up to be in order of distance from some specified spot, and in most cases that's what you get. It's cool that these lists can be ordered in other ways, but it seems like GS trying to use that feature in pre-canned searches is kinda backfiring by producing illogical results.

[+Backwards Charlie from Austin]

I would like to see both "nearby" events and "nearby" new caches have some upper limit that the user can set. During the week I would probably like some limit like 30 miles while on weekends I would probably like 100 miles. I definitely do no appreciate getting new caches/events over 400 miles away showing up on the lists.

[+Harry Dolphin]

I just tried it, and while it isn't showing every event in the USA for me, it is showing every event in my state. Closer, but still, some of those are 300+ miles away.

 

I run the other problem. I'm about halfway between New York City and Pennsylvania (about thirty miles either way.) It shows me all the events in New Jersey. There's one 111 miles south! But it won't show me the ones in Pennsylvania (32 miles NW). I guess that's because the filter for 'near me', is set for 'New Jersey'.

[+Team DEMP]

I just tried it, and while it isn't showing every event in the USA for me, it is showing every event in my state. Closer, but still, some of those are 300+ miles away.

 

I run the other problem. I'm about halfway between New York City and Pennsylvania (about thirty miles either way.) It shows me all the events in New Jersey. There's one 111 miles south! But it won't show me the ones in Pennsylvania (32 miles NW). I guess that's because the filter for 'near me', is set for 'New Jersey'.

 

If I click the Events Near Me link in the Geocaching email, it seems to show NJ & NY when I sort by distance since I'm near the border.

 

On the Geocaching.com home page, if I scroll down and click the Events Near Me box, it's passing in Virginia as the location which makes no sense. I expect this is the link Harry Dolphin is clicking and it's filtering by state. Maybe it needs to act like the newsletter link. Maybe there's a way for cachers to configure this?

 

The newsletter is doing a search of radius=100 miles and passes in my home coordinates.

The home page for me is passing in origin=Virginia,+United+States . No idea why.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I just tried it, and while it isn't showing every event in the USA for me, it is showing every event in my state. Closer, but still, some of those are 300+ miles away.

 

I run the other problem. I'm about halfway between New York City and Pennsylvania (about thirty miles either way.) It shows me all the events in New Jersey. There's one 111 miles south! But it won't show me the ones in Pennsylvania (32 miles NW). I guess that's because the filter for 'near me', is set for 'New Jersey'.

 

If I click the Events Near Me link in the Geocaching email, it seems to show NJ & NY when I sort by distance since I'm near the border.

 

On the Geocaching.com home page, if I scroll down and click the Events Near Me box, it's passing in Virginia as the location which makes no sense. I expect this is the link Harry Dolphin is clicking and it's filtering by state. Maybe it needs to act like the newsletter link. Maybe there's a way for cachers to configure this?

 

The newsletter is doing a search of radius=100 miles and passes in my home coordinates.

The home page for me is passing in origin=Virginia,+United+States . No idea why.

 

With then "new" search page it is pretty easy to set up a search for Events within a certain radius and/or one the includes more than one specified State. For example, you can set up a query which returns event listing within 30 miles of Buffalo, NY but doesn't include events across the border into Canada. If we just had a "Save Search" function with saved the criteria in the same manner as premium members can do with a pocket query, an Events Near Me box wouldn't be necessary. When the new search page came out I thought we would have been better served by providing short screen cast videos which demonstrated how to create those canned queries rather than just placing a link to a search which, quite frequently, did not provide the result one expected.

[+HHL]

Events near you (by distance from your home location - sorted ascending).

https://www.geocaching.com/play/search?ot=4&types=6,13,453,1304,3653,3774,4738,7005&pe=1

(This url was built by opening the search page - just enter nothing into the search field - but add filters for type Event) No rocket science at all.

 

Hans

[+Team DEMP]

I'm confident that Harry Dolphin and I know how to find events. What was being reported appears to be issues with some pre-canned links generated by Groundspeak.

 

Today, vs when I last posted, the "Events Near You" link on https://www.geocaching.com/play/search is more appropriately showing NJ vs VA as it was. Still, the search results in how Groundspeak is doing the search limits the results in their canned link to one state. They can just as easily make that canned link my known home location and do a radius search, which is what Harry Dolphin and I pointed out.