Geocaching Australia

In trying to create a query that includes/excludes powertrails I figured the best way to do it would be via tags. The problem is that I have to tag all the powertrail caches with "powertrail" or something similar which would take forever doing it one cache at a time. Which got me wondering if there was a way to tag many caches in one hit?

One idea I had would be to create a query to include all the caches in one powertrail and then have some way to tag all of those caches with the same tag...

Thoughts? Does this already exist? Is there a reason it doesn't?

Doesn't exist.

Added to ideas section of http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Geoc ... pment_List

You could probably do something with GSAK.
What is the end game you're trying to get too?
You could tag them in one of the user data fields and then filter them out to refresh, map, etc

Nothing in particular - just thought it would be nice to look at the map and not see a big blob of caches and instead see those 1 or 2 non-powertrail caches that are in there...

Also the question of how many puzzle caches in the state are actual puzzles? could possibly be answered accurately...

Probably much easier in GSAK.
I guess you aren't a GSAK user as stuff like that becomes second nature.
It's well worth the small investment in dollars and a bit of learning curve scaling.

I do use GSAK a bit - mostly for organizing puzzle solutions and FindStatGen.
Most of the time I just use GCA since it's easier and more up to date. With GCA you can also share queries with others which I have done a few times in the past.
I know GSAK has more functionality in the filter thing but when I find something GSAK can do and GCA can't, I just mention it here and soon GCA can! Which can then be used by everyone.

Here you are c@w - this was the tread about powertrail tagging.

No one else cared and we/I forgot about it and moved on...


But if you want to make it work now:
It could be done by making a query that captures all the power trail caches and no others (assuming this can be done) and then have the option to add one same public tag to all the caches in that query. Think along the lines of an "Add Tag" option on the list of options at http://geocaching.com.au/my/query/ which asks you to enter a tag and then it adds it to all the caches in that query

Or:
Have a URL tag add thing like this: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/ga8020?addtag=new_tag
And then a simple macro could allow the output of a GSAK filter to be turned into GCA tags.

Also, having an option for "NOT equal to tag" in the query generator would probably also be needed - but this already on the development list

How would you define a query that captures only powertrails? By name? There are no attributes that I can see that identify whether a cache is a power trail or whether it's a series. I see them as different. A power trail is caches, placed for no reason, 161m apart to boost numbers. A series (like a Rail Trail) is not a power trail. How would you consider separating the two or identifying the two?

A URL based tagging system is workable, but not very performance friendly. However I don't see that a a major issue as this would be an infrequent run.

I think the terms "power trail" and "series" do not need to be differentiated in this request, but the OP can confirm.
I don't believe that logically there is a absolute difference anyway, any discussion about it results in varying opinion based definitions, none of which are hard coded anywhere.

gmj3191 wrote:I think the terms "power trail" and "series" do not need to be differentiated in this request, but the OP can confirm.
I don't believe that logically there is a absolute difference anyway, any discussion about it results in varying opinion based definitions, none of which are hard coded anywhere.

It's a thing that will upset people.

My series of caches along a rail trail which are all different and have a nice stroll is very different to 100 mint tins, 161m apart at the base of electricity poles.

I can easily foresee someone getting very upset that their hard work is being classed as a "numbers booster". People get very upset when certain words are used, so my query is whether they should be phrased differently.

recon using 'series' rather than 'Power trail' shouldn't upset anyone... (but then you never know)

I don't know what the actual tag would be - you could even have a different tag for each powertrail/series, ie. "wandering heroes", "tour de france", "sa premiers", and so on...
That way people can chose the series they do and don't want by picking the tags?

As for defining the query, some would be easy (eg. all puzzles hidden by the user "Fishy tales") and some would be hard (eg. Wandering Heroes series). I suspect that a combination of hidden date range and hidden by name would be able to filter out most series.

Things like Wandering Heroes could probably be identified by name, as the names seem to be fairly standardised. Here in Sydney there is one along a bike track that used to all be called WRPT ...., but now that has been taken off so there isn't necessarily a query that could easily find them.

I would be opposed to just having a PowerTrail tag that could be added by anyone to any series of caches as C@W pointed out, whether a series is consider a PT is really in the eye of the beholder.

Side issue: did we lose some existing tags during the site layout change? It seems all the "2014 sa cache awards" tagged caches have been 'untagged'. Not a big deal - just wondering what happened?

Richary wrote:whether a series is consider a PT is really in the eye of the beholder.

This is the crux of the problem.

Power Trail is a dirty word to a lot of people.
One can look at 'series' like Wandering Heroes in SA as being both a series AND a powertrail (people do go and do it as a numbers run), but I'm sure tagging it as a power trail would cause offence .

I have played around with trying to identify related caches programatically, but it is tricky. (Looking at name similarity, proximity etc etc).

Perhaps we need to tag them with another term other than power trail - perhaps 'series' is the better term. Less offensive to some...