What's new on Geocaching Australia

[caughtatwork]

Sigh

The API returns QLD for Queensland, VIC for Victoria, etc, but for New South Wales it returns New South Wales
Nothing like consistency.
I've fixed this one and the others.

Alas, I can't test everything and this is something so non-intuitive to test I missed it.

[roundcircle]

Alas, I can't test everything and this is something so non-intuitive to test I missed it.

That's why we're here, to test the "stuff" that you can't.

[caughtatwork]

Tired of click, click, click to get to a certain page at Geocaching Australia? Want one click capability to get directly to a certain page? Want that all to your greedy little self?

http://wiki.geocaching.com.au/wiki/Favourites

My Favourites allows you to create a favourites list for any page at Geocaching Australia. http://geocaching.com.au/my/favourites

Under the Favourites tab, you will see a link called "Add to Favourites".

From any page, except the home page, you can click "Add to Favourites" and it will be added to your favourites list.

You can then add a meaningful name for your favourite and a number which defines in which order your favourites will appear.

There can be multiple items with the same number and they will then be randomly sorted, so it's probably best to assign a number. They don't have to be sequential

There is limited textual space in the navigation structure for very long names, so try to keep them shortish to make them more readable. Where applicable the name will wrap in the navigation structure. The more favourites you have that wrap, the more likely it will be that some of your favourites will drop off the bottom of your screen.

To remove a favourite, tick the delete box and hit the Update button.

While you are able to edit the link, it's probably best you don't otherwise you may get unpredictable results. Links external to Geocaching Australia will also work, but remember, your space is limited to your screen size, so too many external links will means you have fewer Geocaching Australia links.

[caughtatwork]

Um, nothing spectacular, but that's what you get when I'm in the office, on the bench and not near a window to stare out of.

Go to a GCA Google Map page.
Under the zoom bar to the left you will see this icon
Click him (he's a him 'cos he's blue).
Now click and drag on the map to select an area.
The area shape is the same dimensions as your browser.
Now let go.
Wheeeeeeeeeeee

[blossom*]

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee

[Fairly Magic]

Tired of click, click, click to get to a certain page at Geocaching Australia? Want one click capability to get directly to a certain page? Want that all to your greedy little self?

Love it, but it 'forgets' case. ie I favourited a page and it sent me to the page for fairly magic not Fairly Magic. I edited the capitals and it works fine.

Cheers Quilter

[caughtatwork]

Tired of click, click, click to get to a certain page at Geocaching Australia? Want one click capability to get directly to a certain page? Want that all to your greedy little self?

Love it, but it 'forgets' case. ie I favourited a page and it sent me to the page for fairly magic not Fairly Magic. I edited the capitals and it works fine.

Cheers Quilter

Thanks for the headsup. That's now been fixed.

[gmj3191]

Um, nothing spectacular, but that's what you get when I'm in the office, on the bench and not near a window to stare out of.

Wheeeeeeeeeeee

Just think if we leased C@W to MYKI for a week .... in return for a lifetime of server capacity for GCA.

What a WIN - WIN

[blossom*]

My Favourites allows you to create a favourites list for any page at Geocaching Australia. http://geocaching.com.au/my/favourites

I love it

[caughtatwork]

In response to the recent announcement from NSW NPWS http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... =6&t=15664 and after much senate discussion Geocaching Australia has responded as follows:

Note: Zone names below are for example purposes.

When you list a new cache:
If a geocache has co-ordinates that place it inside a Geocaching Zone marked as being under the control of NSW NPWS the following message will be displayed to the cache owner.

NSW NATIONAL PARKS AND WILDLIFE SERVICE ZONE:
This cache is in an area marked as a NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service area.
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Geocaching policy

Zone Name: Ben Halls Gap National Park (Click here for zone Details)

This may mean your cache is placed in an area where geocaching requires permission to be granted by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Please review the details and policies for this zone and act accordingly.
Note: Your cache may reside near the boundary of this zone, but is showing as within the boundary due to the resolution of our data.
There are two options for confiming permission has been granted or an exemption is warranted prior to your cache listing being available to be published:

* Upload a scanned or photographed copy of the permission form provided by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
* Confirm that your cache is not inside the area controlled by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service

Please note that any cache placements are your legal responsibility.

The two options are linked to different methods of confirming permission or confirming exemption.

Upload a scanned or photographed copy of the permission form provided by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
This will link to a page where you can upload a scanned or photographed image of the permission form.
Please note that the image is not publicly viewable. It is only viewable by the cache owner and the site administrators. The site administrators will only view this image in the event of a contact from NSW NPWS in the event of a query about the cache placement.
This action will automatically set your cache listing to have been deemed to have adequate permission. There is no further interaction from the Geocaching Australia website or administrators.

Confirm that your cache is not inside the area controlled by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
This will link to the cache description edit form where after reading and agreeing to the following text, an exemption is granted automatically. This text and checkbox is only visible if the cache is in a zone controlled by NSW NPWS. Note that this a "two step" process. You will create the cache listing, THEN, you will edit the cache listing and provide exemption permission. i.e. It avoids the "tick and flick" mentality of automatically exempting yourself for every cache listing you make.
This action will automatically set your cache listing to have been deemed to have adequate permission. There is no further interaction from the Geocaching Australia website or administrators.

I confirm that my cache is not inside the area controlled by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
I acknowledge that if the cache is subsequently confirmed to be inside the area controlled by National Parks and Wildlife Service the cache listing can be archived and locked by Geoaching Australia.
I acknowledge that any cache placement is my legal responsibility.

Publishing:
If you attempt to publish a cache that has co-ordinates that place it inside a Geocaching Zone marked as being under the control of NSW NPWS and you have not provided a scanned copy of the permission form OR declared a self exemption, the following message will be displayed to the cache owner. The cache will not be available for publishing until permission or exemption is done.

NSW NATIONAL PARKS AND WILDLIFE SERVICE ZONE:
This cache is in an area marked as a NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service area.
NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service Geocaching policy

Zone Name: Ben Halls Gap National Park (Click here for zone Details)

This may mean your cache is placed in an area where geocaching requires permission to be granted by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
Please review the details and policies for this zone and act accordingly.
Note: Your cache may reside near the boundary of this zone, but is showing as within the boundary due to the resolution of our data.
There are two options for confiming permission has been granted or an exemption is warranted prior to your cache listing being available to be published:

* Upload a scanned or photographed copy of the permission form provided by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
* Confirm that your cache is not inside the area controlled by NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service

Please note that any cache placements are your legal responsibility.

We are very aware that a user controlled exemption can be gamed by the system. i.e. Someone hides a cache in a NSW NPWS zone and declares the cache outside the zone granting themselves an exemption. Geocaching Australia cannot be perfect in its application of the NSW NPWS policy on geocaching. Even a reviewer system cannot be perfect as the zone data provided by NSW NPWS is not 100% accurate enough to judge whether a cache by the side of the road (which is not in the zone) is 1m on the road size or in the zone side. It will be a judgement call.

The senate and developers welcome your feedback and comments on our application of the NSW NPWS policy which we hope strikes an even balance between self policing and full on reviewing.

As usual, while I do as much testing as I can, sometimes things happen. If you notice something awry, please let us know.

[Richary]

That sounds like a fair and balanced approach. Will it be visible to a potential finder whether the approval has been gained by an uploaded exemption form or the hider ticking a box?

I ask because as you mention it is easy to game the system by ticking the box. It may then be obvious to the next finder that it is in fact well inside the boundary (under this process it could be smack bang in the middle of the park).

I acknowledge that if the cache is subsequently confirmed to be inside the area controlled by National Parks and Wildlife Service the cache listing can be archived and locked by Geoaching Australia.

Are you only looking at requests from NPWS to have it removed or will there be a process for someone who sees it as obviously wrong to act as cache police if they so choose? I am only asking so we can all understand the process.

As an example I found a GCA cache yesterday in a Park that was actually a conservation area so would not gain approval - even though the cache itself is 20m from the carpark and wouldn't cause any damage. If I had wanted to be cache police I could have removed it but of course didn't. But if it is obvious to finders a placement is causing problems then they may want to report it as SBA.

[caughtatwork]

That sounds like a fair and balanced approach. Will it be visible to a potential finder whether the approval has been gained by an uploaded exemption form or the hider ticking a box?

If there is no warning on the page about being in a zone controlled by NSW NPWS, then permission has been granted (either explicit or exemption). If there is a warning, then there has been no attempt to gain permission or exemption. e.g. Grandfathered caches. So if you see no warning it's either because there has been permission / exemption OR the cache falls outside the zone bounded area.

I ask because as you mention it is easy to game the system by ticking the box. It may then be obvious to the next finder that it is in fact well inside the boundary (under this process it could be smack bang in the middle of the park).

That's where it gets interesting. In some cases, the park is bounded on the outside and has an area INSIDE the boundary which is NOT under the control of NSW NPWS. So what might look to you to be in the middle of the park may in fact, be in an area inside the external boundary, not actually under management by NSW NPWS. Roads and verges are an interesting discussion as a lot of roads are not under NSW NPWS control. They belong to the roads authority. To you it looks wrong, to the data it might look like it's in the zone, to the hider, it looks fine. This will never be 100% perfect due to the different way people see different things.

Are you only looking at requests from NPWS to have it removed or will there be a process for someone who sees it as obviously wrong to act as cache police if they so choose? I am only asking so we can all understand the process.

As an example I found a GCA cache yesterday in a Park that was actually a conservation area so would not gain approval - even though the cache itself is 20m from the carpark and wouldn't cause any damage. If I had wanted to be cache police I could have removed it but of course didn't. But if it is obvious to finders a placement is causing problems then they may want to report it as SBA.

That's ugly and not something that is 100% agreed upon. We are not the cache police. If we are approached by NSW NPWS we will archive the listing. It's their park, they know what they are doing. A cacher approaching the listing site to have the cache archived is a different matter. They may not know the specifics of the boundary and have no authority to act on behalf of the land manager. They may be trying to perform a community service and they could be 100% right and they could be 100% wrong. We just don't know. We would probably only act on advice from NSW NPWS.

It's an interesting topic and one of debate that should occur. What does GC do? Do they archive the listing based on a cachers feedback (SBA)? Do they write off to the cache owner and ask some questions (like do you have permission?) If they're grandfathered, do they get a "pass"? I don't know.

[caughtatwork]

When you visit a leaderboard you will now see at the top of the stats, some GCA specific information.
e.g. http://geocaching.com.au/dashboard/au/

Code: Select all

Geocaching Australia Statistics (Last 30 days)
Averaging 1 new cacher every 20.57 hours
Averaging 1 new found log every 21.47 minutes
Averaging 1 new cache every 16.74 hours

Just another way of seeing how fast GCA is growing.
A new found log every 21 minutes. Wow!

Nothing on GC of course where they have about 120,000 logs a day which would be a little faster than one log (not find) a second

[Richary]

As an example I found a GCA cache yesterday in a Park that was actually a conservation area so would not gain approval - even though the cache itself is 20m from the carpark and wouldn't cause any damage. If I had wanted to be cache police I could have removed it but of course didn't. But if it is obvious to finders a placement is causing problems then they may want to report it as SBA.

That's ugly and not something that is 100% agreed upon. We are not the cache police. If we are approached by NSW NPWS we will archive the listing. It's their park, they know what they are doing. A cacher approaching the listing site to have the cache archived is a different matter. They may not know the specifics of the boundary and have no authority to act on behalf of the land manager. They may be trying to perform a community service and they could be 100% right and they could be 100% wrong. We just don't know. We would probably only act on advice from NSW NPWS.

It's an interesting topic and one of debate that should occur. What does GC do? Do they archive the listing based on a cachers feedback (SBA)? Do they write off to the cache owner and ask some questions (like do you have permission?) If they're grandfathered, do they get a "pass"? I don't know.

I agree, and maybe if someone sees a cache that has been placed without permission (grandfathered or gamed) that is causing problems they think are bad enough then maybe they should be reporting it to the ranger, with advice on how to contact the relevant listing site to have it removed.

Technically under the process from NPWS old caches should have the request form filled in by the CO to be approved. I guess those caches might have an advantage as there would be evidence as to what environmental damage has been caused if any. If the ranger hasn't noticed them yet they probably aren't a problem. But of course a lot of the original hiders are no longer active to go through that process. Or aware of the need either through here or GCNSW forums.

It is and will be a can of worms until it settles down, and probably deserves it's own topic. But I think GCA is taking the correct approach here. If the lands manager complains, then it needs to go. If someone thinks it is a problem then they need to know how to report it. Will have a think about that and work out how to add to the wiki in the next few days, as I have never done that before. After consulting with other people in GCNSW anyway.

[caughtatwork]

In line with the thought from this post:
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... 81#p173981

We now have a Warning Zone Checker.
With a simple cut / paste (or type) you can see whether the co-ords are in a warning zone and behave appropriately.

http://geocaching.com.au/zone/ (or from the Caches tab, select Zone).
You will now see an entry box for Warning Zone Checker.
Enter your co-ordinates for your cache (or any point really).
Enter these co-ordinates as a test S31 04.380 E151 25.587
Click Check
You should now be presented with a drop down selection of the warning zone that your cache falls into.
If there is no warning zone for those co-ordinates the message Co-ordinates are not in a warning zone will appear.
In the drop down, select the zone.
It will take you to a Google Map showing your cache and where it is in relation to the warning zone.
Click in the blue shaded area to get a description of what that zone is all about and act appropriately.