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Geocaching.com site update May 14th 2013


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Read the last update's Release Notes

 

Release Notes

Within the next couple of hours, we will be releasing the latest update to Geocaching.com. Here are some of the highlights from this sprint:

  • Continued performance enhancements initiated to aid site performance
  • Geocaching Block Party Pages updated for the 2013 Block Party
  • Terms of Use and Privacy Policy updated for all of our websites and mobile applications; we've tried to make them easier to read, and better address legal and privacy issues in the European community
  • Maps on cache details pages now zoom properly to include additional waypoints
  • Further development of a new weekly mailer
  • Changes to improve map performance
  • Flickr tab removed from Geocaching.com pages

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Terms of Use and Privacy Policy updated for all of our websites and mobile applications; we've tried to make them easier to read, and better address legal and privacy issues in the European community

 

Probably like most users of the site I don't maintain local copies of those two documents so a diff is a bit hard. A few words about the area and what changed would be appreciated.

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Further development of a new weekly mailer

 

I see the solution to the "not showing the complete list of mega events" problem has been to add a link to a bookmark list of all upcoming mega events.

 

That is not the same as sending out the list on the weekly mailer to 2 million subscribers so it still violates the Mega sponsorship agreement with every mega event organiser. :(

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T&C section 1 part A "While Groundspeak offers ways for individuals to exchange information about location-based outdoor play, Groundspeak does not provide any games or location-based activities itself and such games are not part of our services. As described below, Groundspeak is not responsible for game-related information available through our services and users are responsible for their own safety."

 

1.so if you are taking no responsibility for game related activity dump the reviewers and let us place caches where we want in our own country!

2."Groundspeak does not provide any games or location-based activities itself and such games are not part of our services" since the only way to get geocache information and log that you have found one involves visiting geocaching.com or using the API which are hosted by Groundspeak "Copyright © 2000-2013 Groundspeak, Inc. All Rights Reserved." how can this be so?

no wonder people are flocking to other gps based games

Edited by The Trekbuddies
to comply with forum guidelines
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I wanted to voice my option regarding the format of the weekly news letter. Mainly with regards to the upcoming event and mega events.

 

In this weeks mailer, the list of events are only for the upcoming three days. Before the change I was able to see events that were weeks away. There are two issues I actually have with this. I don't know about anybody else but if I was planning on attending an event, I would sure like to have more than three days notice. As I said before, in the old mailer I would be able to see those events weeks ahead of time, so I could make the necessary arrangements to attend one of those events that might be 180 miles away. In line with that, for an event that IS 180 miles away, that is out of my notification range so I would not see this unless it was included in the mailer.

 

The guideline for getting an event published is to have it submitted at least two weeks before the event date, so why cant the mailers notifications go out that far? If I was a host of one of these events I would sure like to get the word out as soon as possible.

 

Is there any plan on moving out the notification range of events to a more broader range of dates?

 

As for mega events, I again did not see Geowoodstock listed in the event column, yet I see the Block Party, which is only 900 miles from my home where as the Block party is over 2000 miles.

 

Again, I don't know about anyone else but I use this mailer a lot to plan my trips to events and would sure like more than a three day notification of them.

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Terms of Use and Privacy Policy updated for all of our websites and mobile applications; we've tried to make them easier to read, and better address legal and privacy issues in the European community

 

Probably like most users of the site I don't maintain local copies of those two documents so a diff is a bit hard. A few words about the area and what changed would be appreciated.

I'll +1 this. Especially when it comes to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policies.

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I agree with the new newsletter format. I have sent two request regarding the number of caches they are down displaying. Now they are only showing new caches within 20 miles of my home. it use to be up to 100 miles. This would allow me to search for challenges and other caches I want to add to my watch list and go after.

 

Another item they need to fix is the list of mega events on the left hand side. They have them listed alphabetically and not by date, IMHO it should be listed by dates.

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Just to clear some things up:

 

Now they are only showing new caches within 20 miles of my home. it use to be up to 100 miles.

Actually, it's the closest 20 new caches. There's no distance limit. If there were only a few new caches within 20 miles, you'd also get some that are farther than that. For example, there weren't many new caches in my area in the past week, so my 20 caches goes out to 82 km (51 miles).

 

Another item they need to fix is the list of mega events on the left hand side. They have them listed alphabetically and not by date, IMHO it should be listed by dates.

They're listed by distance from home. If you want to see a list of all upcoming Megas by date, they've included a link to such a bookmark list.

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Hi,

Actually, it's the closest 20 new caches. There's no distance limit. If there were only a few new caches within 20 miles, you'd also get some that are farther than that. For example, there weren't many new caches in my area in the past week, so my 20 caches goes out to 82 km (51 miles).

This explains why the distance cut-off changed each week. But only 20 Caches is a ridiculous small amount. There had been more than 600 new caches announced each week before the site update. Ok, that has been to much, but i think a maximum distance of 80 km would be fine. (Or better: make it adjustable in your settings with a maximun of let's say 100km). Hadling events should be similar. I'M not interesseted in Events more than 300 km away and showing only the some events which will held yesterday (worst case) is useless.

 

Regards

ColleIsarco

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This explains why the distance cut-off changed each week. But only 20 Caches is a ridiculous small amount. There had been more than 600 new caches announced each week before the site update. Ok, that has been to much, but i think a maximum distance of 80 km would be fine. (Or better: make it adjustable in your settings with a maximun of let's say 100km).

I never had any problem with the original approach, which sent me way too many caches up to a distance that was way too far away, and I just stopped scrolling through them when I felt they'd gotten out of range, a distance that changed from week to week depending on how much time I had when I was reading the newsletter.

 

I assume they want to change that because of the overhead it caused them, not because they thought we didn't like getting too much information and having to deal with it on the fly. If so, your proposal would open them up to the same problem they're trying to eliminate, since we could all just set our radii to 100km. It's kinda hard to tell, though, since they seem to have adopted the standard marketing culture of trying to explain everything as benefits to the customer even when the changes are really to benefit the company. I bet they're facing some huge tradeoffs, and I'm sympathetic, but we can't really offer any suggestions when we don't really know what they're trying to accomplish.

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But only 20 Caches is a ridiculous small amount. There had been more than 600 new caches announced each week before the site update. Ok, that has been to much, but i think a maximum distance of 80 km would be fine. (Or better: make it adjustable in your settings with a maximun of let's say 100km).

 

Surely there isn't really a need to duplicate the nearest caches functionality of the website in an email? If you want to see all the new caches near you, wouldn't you just use the nearest caches to home link on your account page?

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Surely there isn't really a need to duplicate the nearest caches functionality of the website in an email? If you want to see all the new caches near you, wouldn't you just use the nearest caches to home link on your account page?

Eh. The fact that they include a list in the newsletter indicates to me that they've already made the decision that that information is useful. So that leaves us only to consider how much information makes it useful. It's a different conversation to discuss whether they should change the newsletter to eliminate the list altogether, isn't it?

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But only 20 Caches is a ridiculous small amount. There had been more than 600 new caches announced each week before the site update. Ok, that has been to much, but i think a maximum distance of 80 km would be fine. (Or better: make it adjustable in your settings with a maximun of let's say 100km).

 

Surely there isn't really a need to duplicate the nearest caches functionality of the website in an email? If you want to see all the new caches near you, wouldn't you just use the nearest caches to home link on your account page?

This may come as a shock, but not all of us login everyday and check those things. The email was a nice prod.

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Surely there isn't really a need to duplicate the nearest caches functionality of the website in an email? If you want to see all the new caches near you, wouldn't you just use the nearest caches to home link on your account page?

Eh. The fact that they include a list in the newsletter indicates to me that they've already made the decision that that information is useful. So that leaves us only to consider how much information makes it useful. It's a different conversation to discuss whether they should change the newsletter to eliminate the list altogether, isn't it?

 

I would venture to guess that for most users, the list is now completely useless. They may as well just eliminate it from my point of view. In my case, this week, 20 caches covered 12 miles. I already have a notification for 30 miles. They claim that they are streamlining the newsletter. I would rather they use their efforts to make it a real newsletter. Perhaps a compilation of links to the past weeks blog posts and geocaching news stories from around the world. More importantly, tell us about changes/updates to the website, guidelines, TOU, changes to rate structures for different regions of the world. IMO, the newsletter has so much potential but the opportunity has basically been wasted.

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But only 20 Caches is a ridiculous small amount. There had been more than 600 new caches announced each week before the site update. Ok, that has been to much, but i think a maximum distance of 80 km would be fine. (Or better: make it adjustable in your settings with a maximun of let's say 100km).

 

Surely there isn't really a need to duplicate the nearest caches functionality of the website in an email? If you want to see all the new caches near you, wouldn't you just use the nearest caches to home link on your account page?

This may come as a shock, but not all of us login everyday and check those things. The email was a nice prod.

 

Every day? The email only comes once a week.

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Surely there isn't really a need to duplicate the nearest caches functionality of the website in an email? If you want to see all the new caches near you, wouldn't you just use the nearest caches to home link on your account page?

Eh. The fact that they include a list in the newsletter indicates to me that they've already made the decision that that information is useful. So that leaves us only to consider how much information makes it useful. It's a different conversation to discuss whether they should change the newsletter to eliminate the list altogether, isn't it?

 

Who said "eliminate it altogether"? I was responding to someone talking about having more than 600 caches listed in the email each week. That's just a ridiculous waste of processing time and bandwidth.

 

I may be wrong, but I always figured that little list was like a heads up "look, there have been some new caches near you" rather than a necessarily authoritative list of all new caches such that you need not check the website anymore...

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Hi,

This explains why the distance cut-off changed each week. But only 20 Caches is a ridiculous small amount. There had been more than 600 new caches announced each week before the site update. Ok, that has been to much, but i think a maximum distance of 80 km would be fine. (Or better: make it adjustable in your settings with a maximun of let's say 100km). Hadling events should be similar. I'M not interesseted in Events more than 300 km away and showing only the some events which will held yesterday (worst case) is useless.

 

Regards

ColleIsarco

 

I think, an adjustable setting of the maximum distance within new caches are listed in the newsletter would be the best way to solve the problem.

Perhaps, GS has shortened the contents of the newsletter to get more performance from the mail system. Sometimes the newsletter arrived about 24 hrs later than it was created.

But it is not important if the newsletter comes a few hours later. I used to read it on the next day or two days later to get information of caches far away, possibly worth a visit during a longer trip.

But only 20 caches from the home coordinates is useless. Yyou can see them just looking on the map...

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Who said "eliminate it altogether"? I was responding to someone talking about having more than 600 caches listed in the email each week. That's just a ridiculous waste of processing time and bandwidth.

Producing a list which contains such a small amount of information that makes it useless is a ridiculous waste of processing time. The truth in somewhere in between. This is the reason why I like to have the cut distance confugarable.

 

I may be wrong, but I always figured that little list was like a heads up "look, there have been some new caches near you" rather than a necessarily authoritative list of all new caches such that you need not check the website anymore...

No, the opposite is mostly true. Now I have to check for new caches on the web site. This produces more traffic than the short overview in the newletter.

 

Regards

ColleIsarco

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Who said "eliminate it altogether"? I was responding to someone talking about having more than 600 caches listed in the email each week. That's just a ridiculous waste of processing time and bandwidth.

Producing a list which contains such a small amount of information that makes it useless is a ridiculous waste of processing time. The truth in somewhere in between. This is the reason why I like to have the cut distance confugarable.

 

I may be wrong, but I always figured that little list was like a heads up "look, there have been some new caches near you" rather than a necessarily authoritative list of all new caches such that you need not check the website anymore...

No, the opposite is mostly true. Now I have to check for new caches on the web site. This produces more traffic than the short overview in the newletter.

 

Regards

ColleIsarco

 

That makes no sense. The newsletter never gave you the coords of each cache, which means you either went to the website for them, or you downloaded a pocket query. Either way, the newsletter really didn't do much for you.

 

Furthermore, your "more traffic" argument simply does not stack up. Use a lot of bandwidth/processing time to send a large list of caches to everyone, when most (if not all) will simply use the website anyway to get cache information vs using a lot less to send a small list and those who need more info will go to the website ad hoc at random times, to get the info they want...

 

Anyway, it's a pointless argument. The distance was always arbitrary anyway. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree and leave it at that.

 

Cheers.

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I see that the mailer is still limiting the number of events (10) and new caches (20). I have not seen any reason posted from GS as to why this change was put in place. I see people speculating as to the reason but nothing from HQ.

 

Since I used this mailer to look for upcoming event, now with it being limited to only 10, I can not see events that might be happening next weekend or even the middle of next week.

 

As a premium member I have the ability to run a PQ of events around my area, which is what I am going to resort to doing. I feel bad for those users who are not premium members and will might miss out on any cool and interesting events because of this limit.

 

In my option I would like to see the limit of event set to two weeks out not to the 10 next upcoming events.

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The feedback from over the years has been that the newsletter was too long and comprised mostly of data that was easily obtained via the web site. We decided to trim down the lists to put more attention on the main articles and just give a sampling of happenings in the area. We are of course open to tweaking things based on feedback, but overall the feedback coming into HQ is that the majority like the changes.

 

If you want to know more about event caches in your area, it is best to use the Advanced Search page: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx. You can set the drop-down to only show event caches, and you can specify whatever origin point you want. Once you have executed the query, you can save the link for quick future use.

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The feedback from over the years has been that the newsletter was too long and comprised mostly of data that was easily obtained via the web site.

Does your characterization of this as "feedback" mean anything more than you greased the squeaky wheel? I always thought it was great to have too much information so I could simply ignore whatever I felt like. Since I already thought it was well designed, I never considered providing any feedback to that effect. Did I miss my chance?

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The feedback from over the years has been that the newsletter was too long and comprised mostly of data that was easily obtained via the web site. We decided to trim down the lists to put more attention on the main articles and just give a sampling of happenings in the area. We are of course open to tweaking things based on feedback, but overall the feedback coming into HQ is that the majority like the changes.

 

If you want to know more about event caches in your area, it is best to use the Advanced Search page: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx. You can set the drop-down to only show event caches, and you can specify whatever origin point you want. Once you have executed the query, you can save the link for quick future use.

 

I'm wondering what is the source of these complaints and feedback. I don't recall a single forum post where someone complained that the newsletter was to big. Meanwhile, certain feature requests are repeated almost weekly, and they don't even get acknowledged, or if they do, it takes years to implement.

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I'm wondering what is the source of these complaints and feedback. I don't recall a single forum post where someone complained that the newsletter was to big.
FWIW, I posted complaints that there were too many events and mega-events, and that I wanted to reduce the radius from home used to display both in the newsletter. I wasn't the only one posting in that thread.
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I'm wondering what is the source of these complaints and feedback. I don't recall a single forum post where someone complained that the newsletter was to big.
FWIW, I posted complaints that there were too many events and mega-events, and that I wanted to reduce the radius from home used to display both in the newsletter. I wasn't the only one posting in that thread.

 

Thanks, I must have missed that thread.

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FWIW, I posted complaints that there were too many events and mega-events, and that I wanted to reduce the radius from home used to display both in the newsletter. I wasn't the only one posting in that thread.

I can't find the thread, but I will dare say that not all the other posters agreed with you. Furthermore, the events are listed first, so they have to be skipped. The caches are at the end, so the argument for a limited number of caches can't be based on usability as easily as the argument for a limited number of events.

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