[jholly]

Skavt, on 16 January 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:

Sandy, on 16 January 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

We are looking into how to better address this aspect of the game. But refrain from comments, like "this sucks!" as it is not appropriate forum behavior and could mean that you do not get to post in our forums.

Thank you for the feedback. I do support your efforts and love this game. This is the first thing I wrote. The social part of the site (the one I was talking about last few post) however is very bad. I do hope I am allowed to express my opinion. If something isn't good, it just isn't. As software engineer, I am used to tell things straight. I wasn't in any way offensive.

p.s. I hope that being a premium member tells you enough about my support to you guys. I wasn't paying because of the features, that's for sure.

That's strange, the features is the only reason I pay.

[larryc43230]

jholly, on 16 January 2012 - 09:07 AM, said:

That's strange, the features is the only reason I pay.

+1

--Larry

[niraD]

Skavt, on 16 January 2012 - 08:18 AM, said:

Sandy, on 16 January 2012 - 07:52 AM, said:

We are looking into how to better address this aspect of the game. But refrain from comments, like "this sucks!" as it is not appropriate forum behavior and could mean that you do not get to post in our forums.

Thank you for the feedback. I do support your efforts and love this game. This is the first thing I wrote. The social part of the site (the one I was talking about last few post) however is very bad. I do hope I am allowed to express my opinion. If something isn't good, it just isn't. As software engineer, I am used to tell things straight. I wasn't in any way offensive.

It's more effective to describe specific problems, or to describe specific suggestions. Focus more on things like "adding friends is disabled by default" or "there is no wall/list of friends' activities", and less on whether something "SUX". And you might find it more useful to post in a different forum, e.g.:

Community Q&A and Discussions> Geocaching.com Website

Discussions with Groundspeak> Geocaching.com Website

[Skavt]

jholly, on 16 January 2012 - 09:07 AM, said:

That's strange, the features is the only reason I pay.

I pay to support the site owners. Geocaching works great with basic membership. But we are getting off the topic.

This post has been edited by Skavt: 17 January 2012 - 12:23 AM

[t4e]

Skavt, on 16 January 2012 - 05:30 AM, said:

t4e, on 16 January 2012 - 05:04 AM, said:

this ain't a social website not facebook to have a "wall of activities"

I disagree. If Geocaching isn't social activity, than I don't know what is. I was not talking about Facebook-like "wall" of activity, but rather about list of recent friends' geocaching activity. So which caches were found/not found/hidden by your friends. That would make use of this site more fun.

like Larry said, geocaching is not necessarily a social activity
some people want their whole activities hidden

i do not use FB but it is my understanding that there is a way of "connecting" your geocaching activities to your FB account and broadcasting your activities

Skavt, on 16 January 2012 - 07:16 AM, said:

larryc43230, on 16 January 2012 - 07:05 AM, said:

If it came to a vote, I would opt to leave the social stuff for Facebook and ask the powers-that-be at Groundspeak to concentrate on what they're best at: maintaining a database of geocaches for me to go looking for.

And what is better way to help you find a great cache, than showing you list of the ones that are recently found by your GC friends? This feature already exist, only you are stuck with manually checking each friend, instead of showing it all in one place.
I was obviously misunderstood. I am not requesting classic social features (like chat, status updates etc.). I agree this should be left for Facebook and similar websites. However aggregating some data in relation to users that you are connected (friended) to is obviously a great and useful feature. It is also becoming a standard for on-line portals like this one.

its not hard labor to check each one, besides i have a really hard time imagining how that page will look when you have say 10 friends, i can only imagine clutter
there's plenty of other ways to keep track of their moves

Skavt, on 16 January 2012 - 07:16 AM, said:

If somebody (like larryc43230) would mind seeing such activity list, he/she could simply not connect to any Geocaching friend.

What is more, why bother having the "add friend" feature anyway, if there is no use in having one?

so because you can't click a couple of links to see your friends activities i should be deprived of the ability to add friends?

the "add a friend" is useful because instead of searching for a user they are right there in your "friends" list

[thebruce0]

t4e, on 17 January 2012 - 05:33 AM, said:

so because you can't click a couple of links to see your friends activities i should be deprived of the ability to add friends?

the "add a friend" is useful because instead of searching for a user they are right there in your "friends" list

I think all of this is neither here nor there... the friends feature on gc.com should stay, but its implementation is bulky and clunky at best, imo. It could use some serious tweaks to make it far more usable, informational, and interesting. Large blocks for each friend, which you can't sort or see any sort of aggregated information about -- well, 'friends' right now really is just some arbitrary connection between one account and another. That's about it. It's big, bulky, static bookmark list. That's not really all that social, imo.

On the friends page, make it instead an activity feed first, then have a tab or dropdown to see or find a specific friend from the list. Provide different views, like viewing log types. In friend details, if they have other social sites connected, show those in the information - there's your quick link out to the real social networking.

The GC.com friends feature should be easy to use and relevant with the information pertaining to geocaching, providing doorways into the more social networks if those users have provided that information.

[northernpenguin]

t4e, on 17 January 2012 - 05:33 AM, said:

Skavt, on 16 January 2012 - 07:16 AM, said:

If somebody (like larryc43230) would mind seeing such activity list, he/she could simply not connect to any Geocaching friend.

What is more, why bother having the "add friend" feature anyway, if there is no use in having one?

so because you can't click a couple of links to see your friends activities i should be deprived of the ability to add friends?

the "add a friend" is useful because instead of searching for a user they are right there in your "friends" list

Technically I could just bookmark my friends profile pages using my browser favourites/bookmarks feature if that's all I wanted.
Chalk me up as another one that would like the friends feature on GC.com to be an activity log of what my friends are doing, with potential links to other social networks.
As long as it's opt-in I can't see it being that much of a problem.

[niraD]

I'm usually much more interested in what my geocaching friends are going to do in the future (when I might be able to join them) than in what my geocaching friends have done recently (when it's too late to join them). But I don't need the geocaching.com Friends feature to help me with that, because I have email, local forums, Facebook, etc.

[thebruce0]

niraD, on 17 January 2012 - 07:40 AM, said:

I'm usually much more interested in what my geocaching friends are going to do in the future (when I might be able to join them) than in what my geocaching friends have done recently (when it's too late to join them). But I don't need the geocaching.com Friends feature to help me with that, because I have email, local forums, Facebook, etc.

Ok, so more to the point then, if the Friends features on gc.com were improved, would it hinder or deter or reduce your use of GC.com's friends features? Or would you feel that improving would still be better for the general populace, even if you didn't take advantage of the improvements? (those who wouldn't use it aren't really reasons not to move forward, unless the changes worsen their experience)

Basically, would changes/improvements to anything on the site improve your experience or make it worse, or would the changes be irrelevant to you? (saying you do friend/social stuff elsewhere doesn't really indicate if the changes here would be Good or Bad )

This post has been edited by thebruce0: 17 January 2012 - 09:57 AM

[OpinioNate]

New release notes are posted.