What's new on Geocaching Australia

Discussion about the Geocaching Australia web site
2y'stassies
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Re: What's new on Geocaching Australia

Post by 2y'stassies » 29 May 22 10:29 am

Thanks for this addition. They look really good. \:D/ \:D/

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caughtatwork
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Needs Maintenance and Needs Archiving

Post by caughtatwork » 02 June 22 9:45 am

Two new flags have been set at Geocaching Australia.

Needs Archiving
A Needs Archiving flag will be set with the log date when a "Needs Archiving" log is created.

This will be used by the administration team to review geocaches that "Need Archiving" 30 days or more after the flag is set. If the administrator decides there is no action, they can remove it by logging an "Admin Review" against the cache with an explanation.

The flag can be unset by the cache owner creating a "Maintained" log on the geocache page. Simply deleting the "Needs Archiving" log does not remove the flag.

The Needs Archiving date will be displayed on the geocache listing page showing you when it was set so you can determine whether the cache is worth seeking.

The flag date is not yet selectable in a My Query and that will come in time.

Needs Maintenance
A Needs Maintenanceflag will be set with the log date when a "Needs Maintenance" log is created.

This will be used by the administration team to review geocaches that "Need Maintenance" 30 days or more after the flag is set. If the administrator decides there is no action, they can remove it by logging an "Admin Review" against the cache with an explanation.

The flag can be unset by the cache owner creating a "Maintained" log on the geocache page. Simply deleting the "Needs Archiving" log does not remove the flag.

The Needs Maintenance date will also be displayed on the geocache listing page showing you when it was set so you can determine whether the cache is worth seeking.

The date is not yet selectable in a My Query and that will come in time.

We hope that these flags will assist you in determining whether you want to seek a geocache or not and to help keep the system clear of those caches which fall into disrepair.

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caughtatwork
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My Query updates, crypt logs and deletion

Post by caughtatwork » 10 June 22 10:31 am

Three new things at Geocaching Australia this morning.

1. The ability to filter on caches that Needs Maintenance and Should be Archived have been added to the My Query tool. You can now exclude geocaches that have either or both actions set so you can avoid geocaches that may be under the weather.

2. The ability of a geocache OWNER to crypt (encrypt and decrypt) logs on a geocache if they feel that there may be spoilers involved. On a geocache that you OWN look for a small shield to the right hand side of each log. Clicking that icon will crypt the log to or from plain text. A text line "Log Encrypted by Geocache Owner or Geocaching Australia Administrator" will be added when you encrypt the log and removed when you decrypt the log.

3. The ability for a LOG owner for an externally listed geocache to remove their own log. This is needed as occasionally we get a duplicate in the feed and rather than having to wait for an admin to remove the duplicate, you can now choose to do that yourself. You will be challenged to confirm your deletion and when the log is deleted it can not be recovered other than importing the log again. Note that the method of deleting GCA logs remains the same. i.e. Edit the log then select delete.

If you can any issues with any of this new functionality, please let us know in the Report Issues Here thread viewtopic.php?f=1&t=19288

Enjoy.

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whitewebbs
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Re: What's new on Geocaching Australia

Post by whitewebbs » 15 August 22 8:16 am

caughtatwork wrote:
01 January 70 3:35 pm
....we have created a set of 8 floral emblems of the Australian States and Territories for you to trade and deploy as a new facade for your icon. ......
Thanks to the orb this week I have been able to trade for a new icon facade.

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caughtatwork
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GPS Adventures Exhibit Caches

Post by caughtatwork » 26 September 22 3:25 pm

Hi All.

Now that Australia will have it's first GPS Maze at the Mega in Wangaratta, the GPS Adventures Exhibit cache type has been created at GCA. It remains a GC only cache type, but you can add it to your My Query, see it in maps and see it is listings with its own icon.

Thanks for Chwiliwr for letting us know this was happening so we can keep everything up to date.

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caughtatwork
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Re: What's new on Geocaching Australia

Post by caughtatwork » 19 October 23 12:51 pm

You may have seen recently there has been some forum discussion around Local Government Areas. The development team have been hard at work generating data for a full refresh of the LGA's for Australia and New Zealand including some of the combined off-shore islands. These have just been loaded and are now available for use.

Given the data has changed, you will likely find that if you were tracking your LGA's for certain challenges, the numbers may have changed. We are using the data provided via https://osm-boundaries.com/ and to a great extent the data remains unchanged from the source.

A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a state, province, division, or territory. Geocaching Australia only provides LGA's for Australia and New Zealand (Regional Councils).

LGA boundaries are sourced from Open Street Maps (OSM) with areas that are not present in OSM being generated based on other available data. We do not provide any guarantee that the LGA boundaries match the local government areas and are provided for statistical and mapping purposes only.

We do not encourage you to use these boundaries for another other purposes.

Geocaching Australia is aware that some boundaries may have gaps between LGA's or overlap other LGA's based on the data sources from OSM. We do not curate the quality of data and accept it 'as is' from the source. Some LGA's are not present in the OSM data as they are Unincorporated Areas and do not have a boundary. Unincorporated areas are often in remote locations, cover vast areas, or have very small populations. Some Unincorporated areas are split into smaller LGA's for mapping purposes and some remain are very large areas with multiple, distinct boundaries. Some offshore islands are incorporated into the LGA boundaries and some of these are not associated with a specific state as they are administered by a level of government other than the state or local government. For example, management of Macquarie Island is the responsibility of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service rather than a local council.

Some shoreline boundaries are set off-shore to cover islands and inlets and some follow the shore-line quite closely. This may result is some LGA's being 'rounded' or 'bumpy' vs. some LGA's which are quite 'crinkly'. The data is provided and used 'as-is' from OSM as Geocaching Australia does not attempt to correct boundary areas. There are also LGA boundaries that are 'disconnected' from others. e.g. French Island in Victoria is a separate LGA with no connecting border to any other LGA. It appears as a true island surrounded by uncorrected water. However, another island such as Rottnest Island in Western Australia is connected to the mainland through the Cockburn LGA.

Geocaching Australia is aware that when attempting to show the LGA's for New Zealand they will sometimes not render correctly and this is due to the data for the bounding box crossing the antemeridian, the line at 180°, opposite the prime meridian. Moving the map or zooming in to New Zealand may address that issue.

The development team are also working on other LGA related activities for your mapping, challenge and entertainment purposes and we will show these in the next week or so.

One change we can demonstrate now that is available is that the page to look for a zone has been simplified.
https://geocaching.com.au/zone
You used to have enter a zone type, state and letter to refine the names.
From now, you just start typing the name of a zone, any zone, any type of zone, and the field will autocomplete based on what you have typed. You can then select the zone you are interested in and click Submit to get to the zone details.

If you have any question or queries about the new LGA's or the new way to search for a zone, please kick off a new thread to start those discussion and the development would be more than pleased to help explain what we have done.

Enjoy.

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caughtatwork
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My LGA

Post by caughtatwork » 26 October 23 8:28 am

In an attempt to make the Geocaching Australia site more useful in terms of LGA challenges, today the development team announce that we have created a My LGA page for your LGA enjoyment.

You can get to the page from your "My Cacher Space" https://geocaching.com.au/my/ page which also controls access to all of your cacher space items by clicking on "Local Government Area".

You can also access the page directly at https://geocaching.com.au/my/lga/

As ideas are presented for further inclusion in the My LGA page, the development team will take on board those suggestions and will actively be seeking new and exciting ways that we can make your experiences here at Geocaching Australia more enjoyable.

In the meantime, please enjoy your free and open access to the wonders of My LGA.
About
A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a state, province, division, or territory. Geocaching Australia only provides LGA's for Australia and New Zealand (Regional Councils).
LGA boundaries are sourced from Open Street Maps (OSM) with areas that are not present in OSM being generated based on other available data. We do not provide any guarantee that the LGA boundaries match the local government areas and are provided for statistical and mapping purposes only. We do not encourage you to use these boundaries for another other purposes.
Geocaching Australia is aware that some boundaries may have gaps between LGA's or overlap other LGA's based on the data sources from OSM. We do not curate the quality of data and accept it 'as is' from the source. Some LGA's are not present in the OSM data as they are Unincorporated Areas and do not have a boundary. Unincorporated areas are often in remote locations, cover vast areas, or have very small populations. Some Unincorporated areas are split into smaller LGA's for mapping purposes and some remain are very large areas with multiple, distinct boundaries. Some offshore islands are incorporated into the LGA boundaries and some of these are not associated with a specific state as they are administered by a level of government other than the state or local government. For example, management of Macquarie Island is the responsibility of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service rather than a local council.
Some shoreline boundaries are set off-shore to cover islands and inlets and some follow the shore-line quite closely. This may result is some LGA's being 'rounded' or 'bumpy' vs. some LGA's which are quite 'crinkly'. The data is provided and used 'as-is' from OSM as Geocaching Australia does not attempt to correct boundary areas. There are also LGA boundaries that are 'disconnected' from others. e.g. French Island in Victoria is a separate LGA with no connecting border to any other LGA. It appears as a true island surrounded by uncorrected water. However, another island such as Rottnest Island in Western Australia is connected to the mainland through the Cockburn LGA.
Geocaching Australia is aware that when attempting to show the LGA's for New Zealand they will sometimes not render correctly and this is due to the data for the bounding box crossing the antimeridian, the line at 180°, opposite the prime meridian. Moving the map or zooming in to New Zealand may address that issue.

How To
Your My Query is used to generate the base data for further refinement in this selection. Simply start typing the name of one of your My Query's and then select the name to use it.
You can use the State / Island selector to further refine your base data.
This form treats all Found, DNF and Owned geocaches as matching criteria. If you only want Found caches in your results, your My Query should return only those caches that you have found. If you only want DNF caches, then your My Query should return only those caches that you have logged a DNF against.
You may refine your My Query here by selecting All Sources to use every cache regardless of source listing site as the criteria. If you want to filter down to only Geocaching Australia caches or Groundspeak Caches, use the appropriate selector.
Bounding Box and Contiguous Zone Path are mutually exclusive. We recommend you complete date for one or the other, but not both.
A Bounding Box is a distance, North, South, East and West from a set of co-ordinates in kilometers. i.e. a Square x kilometers along each side with the co-ordinates in the centre.
A Contiguous Zone Path will attempt to find a path from one zone to another where every zone in between is connected. Simply start typing the name of the LGA into the Start Zone and Stop Zone boxes to set the start and end zones.

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Now_To_Morrow
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Re: What's new on Geocaching Australia

Post by Now_To_Morrow » 26 October 23 6:21 pm

That's a really neat feature! It took me a few attempts to figure out what does what, but I got there and like how it works.

Thanks for all the work put into this new feature.

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caughtatwork
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Charts

Post by caughtatwork » 31 January 24 6:40 pm

Geocaching Australia has had a set of home grown graphs since, oh, around 2005.

Recently your development team has been updating the cacher graphs to be a little more visually appealing and interactive and today we announce that charts are the way to go.

Everything that was a graph is now a chart, but due the code we are now using they may look slightly different. For the time being graphs will remain in place so you can compare the pair and highlight any issues that you find with them. Once we're satisfied that the new charts are generally acceptable, we will remove the old graphs.

https://geocaching.com.au/my/charts/
https://geocaching.com.au/my/graphs/

Both MattyRx and I hope that you enjoy the new capability at Geocaching Australia.

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wayn0
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Re: What's new on Geocaching Australia

Post by wayn0 » 31 January 24 11:01 pm

Very nice, thanks :)

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