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The April fools joke & possable end of GCA

Posted: 01 April 06 11:53 pm
by Geof
~~Your thoughts~~ wrote:How permanent is GCA?
Has this issue ever crossed your mind before this?

http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... sc&start=0

I know it has mine.

Cast your vote.

No need to comment if you don't want to.

Posted: 02 April 06 12:12 am
by Papa Bear_Left
I'm well aware that we're living on the goodwill (and chequebook!) of ideology, but I'm not too concerned about it for a couple of reasons.

One, the boys have the track record: they've been caching just about as long as it's been around and still seem to be keen to be involved in the caching community, and to improve and maintain this site.

Two, if they ever did get sick of it or move on or whatever, I trust their integrity and I'm pretty sure that they'd hand the code over to someone or some organisation to look after properly. It'd be a bitch, but we'd probably cobble together some sort of committee to handle it.

Let's hope we don't have to deal with the issue for a bloody long time to come!

Posted: 02 April 06 8:31 am
by Damo.
The poll question and answers could be a little less ambiguous!
Are you alluding to people not supporting GCA because they don't feel it is permanent?
But it's been around as long as the other site. (Give or take. Maybe someone else can provide the exact timeline.)

As for the rest, what the Bear said.

Edit to add: Found some good links on the history in the Wiki.
This is a must read for those who don't understand the animosity some feel towards Jeremy Irish and Groundspeak. http://geocaching.gpsgames.org/history/

And another with links to old newsgroup discussions and stuff. Interesting reading. http://www.guysnamedkim.com/geocache/ge ... story.html

Posted: 02 April 06 8:46 am
by swampgecko
Damo. wrote:The poll question and answers could be a little less ambiguous!
Are you alluding to people not supporting GCA because they don't feel it is permanent?
But it's been around as long as the other site. (Give or take. Maybe someone else can provide the exact timeline.)

As for the rest, what the Bear said.
Actually the hosting of caches(which I feel the poll is concerned with) is a recent (Feb 2005) developement thou the initial idea was rattling around in i!'s head for quite some time... the forums on the other hand have been here nearly forever in one form or another. The original forums were the gc.com one, a yahoo based one by geomonkeys, and pryness kid had one ..... Ideology kindly offered to take over the forum that PK had running and it went from there... I don't even know if the yahoo based forum is used now.

Posted: 02 April 06 10:57 am
by riblit
I'm siding with the bear on this one. i! have said that they would hand over the codebase if they ever got tired of geocaching so the site could live on. The are multiple copies of the data around in various GSAK databases within Aust and NZ so the data could be resurrected in the unlikely event we severed ties with the US and lost the link to the [gca] servers there.

i! have been around since the year dot with Australian Geocaching. For those that like link following and maybe doing their own research, follow the link in Damo's post to the guysnamedkim site, note the item of May 18 2000, scroll down to to the item of Sept 2, 2000, read it.
Go back to the May 18 entry and follow the link.
Go to the June 25 2000 log entry. Follow links if you wish.

Make up your own mind.

Posted: 02 April 06 11:07 am
by ian-and-penny
I hardly ever go there, so I'm not too concerned one way or the other.

Posted: 02 April 06 11:15 am
by riblit
ian-and-penny wrote:I hardly ever go there, so I'm not too concerned one way or the other.
I wonder why you come here to tell everyone you don't come here. (it is all the same site)

Posted: 02 April 06 11:46 am
by ideology
as riblit says, we were happily geocaching before gc.com existed and lived through all that history. we urge you to read the history: as george santayana said: those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

we recognise that nothing in life is permanent and have given our commitment in various threads that:
- the data is yours, not ours, so we will make it available in useable form (ie gpx)
- the code base is ours, but we are happy to hand it over to a successor
we've never given a commitment about the domain name, but we are happy to hand it over to a successor

the trick is going to be choosing the successor/(s). we might as well start thinking about that now because we know that our interests will eventually move on and it's better to plan succession than do it in a hurry

here's what we would be looking for in a successor or group of successors
- someone who has credibility in the gca community
- the drive to keep it free and open
- someone who will make the same three commitments as above
- someone who'lll take it on for a reasonable length of time, eg coupla years at least
- a decent server (not one of those time-shared dreamhost things - it will max out)
- php/sql/html/css/java coding for maintenance and development
- someone who can ignore the people who just want to take and complain without contributing

we aren't sure what the best process of choosing a successor would be. there should probably be some general discussion to improve the list of things above. then perhaps followed by a discussion about how best to achieve that, ie just one person/team or multiple teams, or some kind of committee with local representatives, etc. then we guess falling out of that would be some people who would put their hands up and then some kind of community input into who is doing what. it might be worth asking the NZ and other overseas guys for input to see the pros/cons of their approaches

your thoughts?

Posted: 02 April 06 12:16 pm
by Papa Bear_Left
Could I just keep my head in the sand (there's plenty of it here!) for a few years?

Posted: 02 April 06 1:12 pm
by riblit
as a diversion (and thread hijack), <a href="http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... 8280">here </a>is an interesting thread

Posted: 02 April 06 1:39 pm
by Geof
A good discussion so far :)

Posted: 02 April 06 2:32 pm
by swampgecko
riblit wrote:as a diversion (and thread hijack), <a href="http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... 8280">here </a>is an interesting thread
Well, call me "Silly"

Posted: 02 April 06 3:35 pm
by Mr Router
swampgecko wrote:
riblit wrote:as a diversion (and thread hijack), <a href="http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... 8280">here </a>is an interesting thread
Well, call me "Silly"
Ok since you asked "Hello Silly" :lol:

Posted: 02 April 06 6:52 pm
by ian-and-penny
riblit wrote:
ian-and-penny wrote:I hardly ever go there, so I'm not too concerned one way or the other.
I wonder why you come here to tell everyone you don't come here. (it is all the same site)
I visit the forum, Here as you can plainly see!

I don't visit there because the content holds no interest for me.

It may be the same site, but there are parts I don't care to visit.

Posted: 02 April 06 6:58 pm
by GIN51E
ideology wrote:we aren't sure what the best process of choosing a successor would be. there should probably be some general discussion to improve the list of things above. then perhaps followed by a discussion about how best to achieve that, ie just one person/team or multiple teams, or some kind of committee with local representatives, etc. then we guess falling out of that would be some people who would put their hands up and then some kind of community input into who is doing what. it might be worth asking the NZ and other overseas guys for input to see the pros/cons of their approaches

your thoughts?
Being only 21 I'd like to hope I'm going to be around here for a very long time and would love to put my hand up and help the site live on forever as we would never want to see it go yet my computer skills simply aren't there.

Although there is many people connected to this site who have a great depth of knowledge in the coding department so I'm sure no matter what happens the site will survive, only issue i see is the cost of running the site. servers etc which i have mentioned once before that i would be more than happy to contribute funds to the running of the site if its required which I'm sure many other cachers would be happy to do also.

but it would make me happy to know that there was someone ready to take control for whatever reason the site had to shift hands