What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Discussion about the Geocaching Australia web site
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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by tronador » 07 January 16 10:54 pm

Geosportz please. Its an Olympic year. The last two were so much fun.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by caughtatwork » 08 January 16 8:05 am

The Morris wrote:I love the idea of the history caches - I can see it used for a range of other special interest locations as well. I would also like to proceed with the earlier idea we had mooted about getting information from 2 related virtuals that give you the final for a physical cache. I'm assuming the programming is not going to be very different.
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... =1&t=18883
The one thing you can't really do is the photo item. As the site can't guess what's in the photo (i.e. you could load a photo of a clown) then anything would be OK. That's not really a good approach. Answering a question and if OK returning a partial co-ordinate is doable.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by LouiseAnn » 08 January 16 11:33 am

I have recently started researching locationless caches and I frustration I found quite early on is that there are a fair number that aren't technically locationless. I'd love it if these type of locationless could have the state you need to be in to complete them added to the attributes. This way I would stop looking at the Queensland bus one, for example.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by the Monkey King » 09 January 16 1:38 pm

Keeping the cache owner from needing to confirm a historical cache has been found is a good one, especially when the cache owner no longer caches or can't answer emails for what ever reason.

What follows isn't really that helpful, but might give someone better ideas on how to make a History Cache work:

If everyone had accesss to NFC (near field communication) devices this could solve the issue of arm chair loggers - An NFC chip can be loaded with information and even a link the web site needed to answer the history cache questions, and you need to be within about 12 cms to get that information.

This way someone has to visit the site to get the answers to the questions, and then tap their phone to the NFC chip to get a link to a web site were they can answer the questions.

Unfortunately no everyone will have a device that can use NFC, myself included. Some phones have them already, but not mine. (For a list of phones that do: http://www.nfcworld.com/nfc-phones-list/ )

So... back to square one.

I thought about folks needing to take a photo at GZ as part of the log, but I have seen a number of people make logs without adding the photo.

Another thought - if the historical site has a kiosk/information booth etc that is staffed, could asking the staff to hand out a question sheet to anyone asking them work? This would get muggles involved, but might be good for business so to speak. This way someone can only answer the questions by visiting the place to get the actual questions that need to be answered.

But it does have a flaw - not all historical sites have staff, and those that do wont have 24 hour access.

So it seems having a person visit a site and get a piece of information that can't be found via the internet might be the best way to do this.

As GCA doesn't have reviewers we need to rely on hiders doing the right thing in regards to picking a site for a History cache, so a clear set of guide lines would be needed - I am happy to knock up a draft idea for others to pull apart or add to if it would help.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by tronador » 09 January 16 1:59 pm

I would not be in favor of any cache type specifically relying on data access. The are a lot of us cachers using dedicated hand held gps devices and not smart phones. And I for one have no intentions of ever phone caching.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by Now_To_Morrow » 09 January 16 5:34 pm

Is there a way of locking people out of logging a history cache so they can only log it with a code hidden on site? I know that means you can't DNF or NA or the like, but can they just email for these? It would at least save the CO having to confirm it.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by CraigRat » 09 January 16 6:59 pm

No_Tomorrow wrote:Is there a way of locking people out of logging a history cache so they can only log it with a code hidden on site? I know that means you can't DNF or NA or the like, but can they just email for these? It would at least save the CO having to confirm it.
That could be done.

The mechanism for using a codeword is there, we would just need to activate it for that type.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by Laighside Legends » 09 January 16 9:36 pm

Just had an idea...

Would it be possible to get stats on just the caches returned from a query? (think along the lines of setting a query in GSAK and then running FindStatGen) But this could be extended beyond just found caches. Could be used to answer questions along the lines of, of the caches in the zone x which has the most finds?, what percentage of SA's caches are micros?, In which month were the most events held?, Of the caches hidden by x and found by me what percentage are puzzles?, and so on...

Not sure if any of that is possible but it seemed like a good idea...

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by petan » 10 January 16 3:53 pm

the Monkey King wrote:Keeping the cache owner from needing to confirm a historical cache has been found is a good one, especially when the cache owner no longer caches or can't answer emails for what ever reason.
Although having said that, the owner still needs to be involved - things change, information signs disappear or are redesigned and in the case of a certain building in my home town may disappear completely.
This way someone has to visit the site to get the answers to the questions, and then tap their phone to the NFC chip to get a link to a web site were they can answer the questions.
If you really wanted to go down that path why not go for a QR code - these are already used on this site. Personally I'd prefer to keep the cache information and the facility to log it together. Remembering the Earthcache model which inspired this - I go to the history cache site, (hopefully) I have read the cache description, I have my list of questions to answer, I can choose to either answer them on site using my phone data or take some notes and log them at home on wifi. As a finder of this kind of cache I would prefer to log at home.
As GCA doesn't have reviewers we need to rely on hiders doing the right thing in regards to picking a site for a History cache, so a clear set of guide lines would be needed - I am happy to knock up a draft idea for others to pull apart or add to if it would help.
I'd be happy to help with this. Might be good to take this to a thread of its own and any others who wish to be part of this conversation can be included.It also means that anyone who just wants to submit a general 'wish' for 2016 can do so without getting swamped by History Cache discussion.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by petan » 10 January 16 3:57 pm

CraigRat wrote:
No_Tomorrow wrote:Is there a way of locking people out of logging a history cache so they can only log it with a code hidden on site? I know that means you can't DNF or NA or the like, but can they just email for these? It would at least save the CO having to confirm it.
That could be done.

The mechanism for using a codeword is there, we would just need to activate it for that type.
So there will still be an option to be able to log a DNF/NM/NA without having to submit a successful codeword?

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by CraigRat » 10 January 16 4:46 pm

petan wrote:
CraigRat wrote:
No_Tomorrow wrote:Is there a way of locking people out of logging a history cache so they can only log it with a code hidden on site? I know that means you can't DNF or NA or the like, but can they just email for these? It would at least save the CO having to confirm it.
That could be done.

The mechanism for using a codeword is there, we would just need to activate it for that type.
So there will still be an option to be able to log a DNF/NM/NA without having to submit a successful codeword?
Yes, you'd only need the codeword to actually claim a find.

Of course, there is no 100% foolproof way to ensure a legit find, but those people are few and far between and of course gain nothing from doing so.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by LouiseAnn » 10 January 16 10:17 pm

no one must have liked my idea/comment/thought/suggestion......

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by petan » 11 January 16 7:40 am

LouiseAnn wrote:no one must have liked my idea/comment/thought/suggestion......
No, its a good idea to be able to isolate State specific locationless. Perhaps the use of Public Tags might also work.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by caughtatwork » 11 January 16 8:16 am

CraigRat wrote:
No_Tomorrow wrote:Is there a way of locking people out of logging a history cache so they can only log it with a code hidden on site? I know that means you can't DNF or NA or the like, but can they just email for these? It would at least save the CO having to confirm it.
That could be done.

The mechanism for using a codeword is there, we would just need to activate it for that type.
Except people share the codeword :-( So it's not perfect by any means. Neither is Q&A. Nothing is. Even NFC's can be hacked. Just ask Munzee whether you can also spoof your GPS location and log Munzees in far away countries. We're going to go with the best we can and if anyone tries to cheat too much I'm sure the community will admonish them.

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Re: What can Geocaching Australia do for you in 2016?

Post by caughtatwork » 11 January 16 8:22 am

LouiseAnn wrote:I have recently started researching locationless caches and I frustration I found quite early on is that there are a fair number that aren't technically locationless. I'd love it if these type of locationless could have the state you need to be in to complete them added to the attributes. This way I would stop looking at the Queensland bus one, for example.
Locationless means they can be found anywhere except where the lat/lon indicate. Restricting a locationless to a state is not something I'd be looking to implement on a locationless cache. The locationless concept removes the locale, state and country attributes and hacking them back in on only some circumstances is too much long term technical debt. Not saying that locationless caches can't be enhanced to have other information, but as a cache that has no location, using the locale or state or country removes the locationlessness from them. There need to be other ways to work out what locationless caches are about, so a text search needs to be allowed, or tagging to categorise them. I'd be looking for a whole of solution approach to locationless cache rather than piecemeal.

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