GCA only cacher entering logs

crew 153 · Post by **crew 153** » 29 March 05 8:13 pm

There is a new cacher who, I believe, has only joined the GCA site and does not have a GC.com membership. They have found a couple of caches and entered the logs on this site (GCA.com) . As they do not have a Gc.com membership the logs do not appear on the GC.com site. I am assuming that they should transfer back to Gc.com, although I did post a note (through GCA.com) on one of my caches this morning which has not yet appeared on Gc.com. Is there a problem with this Max

leek · Post by **leek** » 29 March 05 8:19 pm

The feed of data from geocaching.com to geocaching.com.au is one-way only... Logs/notes entered on geocaching.com.au will never appear on geocaching.com...

I guess all that you can do as caches owner is to advise the person that the normal thing to do would be to log the caches on the site where they are primarily listed, but if they don't wish to play on geocaching.com I'm not sure what your options are... Typically they would have to look at the geocaching.com site to get the full cache description...

crew 153 · Post by **crew 153** » 29 March 05 10:09 pm

So why does GCA give you the ability to enter logs for caches from GC.com?

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 29 March 05 11:00 pm

crew 153 wrote:So why does GCA give you the ability to enter logs for caches from GC.com?

Because some caches, notably locationless but also overseas caches that have been found by holidaying Australian cachers don't appear in the feeds so there has to be a way for the finders to enter their finds. Finders may also wish to add images to their logs here ( As I have on one occasion).

crew 153 · Post by **crew 153** » 30 March 05 9:48 am

riblit wrote:Because some caches, notably locationless but also overseas caches that have been found by holidaying Australian cachers don't appear in the feeds so there has to be a way for the finders to enter their finds. Finders may also wish to add images to their logs here ( As I have on one occasion).

Why wouldn't you log these caches on the Gc.com site? Or do you log them on both? 
I can see the problem for new cachers who find the GCA site and thinking that it is the "PRIMARY" site logging their caches only on GCA and thinking that was the right thing to do. There is no explanation anywhere to tell them that they should have to also be a member of GC and should log the majority of their finds there and only use the GCA for the few extraordinary logs which they might never use.

The Garner Family · Post by **The Garner Family** » 30 March 05 10:07 am

I don't want to rehash all the discussions we've been through already, but I agree with crew 153 in that somewhere we should be recommending people join geocaching.com and log there finds for gc.com caches there. It's only fair to the owners of the caches that finds for there caches are encouraged to be logged on the site that the cache is hosted on.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 30 March 05 10:18 am

Why wouldn't you log these caches on the Gc.com site? Or do you log them on both?

The caches to which I am refering would have been logged on the groundspeak site, however as they are not within Australia the details do not appear in the feed. The feed is Australian and NZ caches, not cachers.
A lot of cachers like to have all their find logs here as it keeps the stats reasonably correct.

I can see the problem for new cachers who find the GCA site and thinking that it is the "PRIMARY" site logging their caches only on GCA and thinking that was the right thing to do.

Whenever one joins a site or forum one should read the <a href="http://riblit.geocaching.com.au/faq/#top">site faq</a>

There is no explanation anywhere to tell them that they should have to also be a member of GC and should log the majority of their finds there and only use the GCA for the few extraordinary logs which they might never use.

The logs, as well as being a record of the finds, give this site the ability to show statistical information a lot of cachers find very interesting and informative. The recommended caches is one the comes to mind. The postcode search here is more accurate than at groundspeak as i! refine it here. Groundspeak just accepted the original data from i! and haven't updated it. 
Cache logging is covered in the <a href="http://riblit.geocaching.com.au/faq/#lo ... ak">faq</a>. It also covers cache mirroring and missing groundspeak caches.

Dooghan · Post by **Dooghan** » 30 March 05 10:21 am

crew 153 wrote:
riblit wrote:Because some caches, notably locationless but also overseas caches that have been found by holidaying Australian cachers don't appear in the feeds so there has to be a way for the finders to enter their finds. Finders may also wish to add images to their logs here ( As I have on one occasion).
Why wouldn't you log these caches on the Gc.com site? Or do you log them on both? 
I can see the problem for new cachers who find the GCA site and thinking that it is the "PRIMARY" site logging their caches only on GCA and thinking that was the right thing to do. There is no explanation anywhere to tell them that they should have to also be a member of GC and should log the majority of their finds there and only use the GCA for the few extraordinary logs which they might never use.

I agree with you crew. I did mention that this would happen in another thread and at the time I did say that log/edit button should be taken off gc.com caches. All you are going to get is logs on both sites and it is going make it harder to follow and messy

Dooghan

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 30 March 05 10:25 am

The Garner Family wrote:I don't want to rehash all the discussions we've been through already, but I agree with crew 153 in that somewhere we should be recommending people join geocaching.com and log there finds for gc.com caches there. It's only fair to the owners of the caches that finds for there caches are encouraged to be logged on the site that the cache is hosted on.

I was still formulating a reply when you replied. 

I am open to suggestions, the information re logging is in the <a href="http://riblit.geocaching.com.au/faq/#top">faq</a>. It is also in various threads in this forum. It appears that people either don't read it or don't act upon the information. How do you suggest we get people to read the <a href="http://riblit.geocaching.com.au/faq/#top">faq</a> and act upon the information contained therein?

Cached · Post by **Cached** » 30 March 05 10:34 am

The FAQ is really hidden right down the bottom of the front page.

There should very clearly be a line in the greenish box at the top that says something like "New here? Read the FAQs" with a link. That page really assumes you already know why you are there.

"Congratulations you found it intentionally or not" - yeah - but what now?? There is nothing there to click to explain what the heck you just found.

Try looking, or get somebody to look, that has never visited the site before and see if they can make sense of it.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 30 March 05 10:44 am

Dooghan wrote:I agree with you crew. I did mention that this would happen in another thread and at the time I did say that log/edit button should be taken off gc.com caches. All you are going to get is logs on both sites and it is going make it harder to follow and messy

Dooghan

So you are suggesting that cachers should lose the ability to add logs for their overseas and locationles caches or to add images to their logs here? Sorry, I don't agree with that. It's too heavy handed.

crew 153 · Post by **crew 153** » 30 March 05 10:49 am

I can see no reason why I (or 90% of the users of GCA) would want to put a log onto a GC cache on the GCA site.

riblit · Post by **riblit** » 30 March 05 10:54 am

Cached wrote:The FAQ is really hidden right down the bottom of the front page.

There should very clearly be a line in the greenish box at the top that says something like "New here? Read the FAQs" with a link. That page really assumes you already know why you are there.

"Congratulations you found it intentionally or not" - yeah - but what now?? There is nothing there to click to explain what the heck you just found.

Try looking, or get somebody to look, that has never visited the site before and see if they can make sense of it.

More visibility - good idea, the link is also on the top right of every forum page, just above the search link, but then people have to register to see that one. 
I'll put the suggestion to the page designers. Meanwhile, do you have any other thoughts about introductory text?

crew 153 wrote:I can see no reason why I (or 90% of the users of GCA) would want to put a log onto a GC cache on the GCA site.

Hmmm, How did you arrive at that figure? Assuming that is correct, what about the 116 registered users who want to. Don't they count?

Cached · Post by **Cached** » 30 March 05 11:02 am

So you are suggesting that cachers should lose the ability to add logs for their overseas and locationles caches or to add images to their logs here? Sorry, I don't agree with that. It's too heavy handed.

I can see Dooghans point.

BUT

If we must keep the ability to log GC caches independant of GC, then as this would be a reasonably infrequent occurrance, could it maybe pop up a warning or somesuch when you attempt to make a log against a GC cache that this is possibly not the appropriate place for the log and that they should consider registering and logging on gc.com ? At least then they know.

Not everybody is going to read forums - and they shouldn't have to have read the FAQs to be able to navigate a page well. When I speak to my friends about GCA, they've been past but don't really understand what it is for....

ideology · Post by **ideology** » 30 March 05 11:05 am

crew 153, the reason we created the logging functionality was because of the stats here: we were trying to present leaderboards and things, and people kept email us saying that we were missing data here and there. so rather than respond to each issue individually, we added the ability for people to add logs to this site, import logs, etc to synchronise it with the groundspeak site.

there was a discussion some time ago about this and pretty much everyone agreed that it's better to log the cache on the site it was originally listed. this has been fine for the most part but as new people come on they haven't seen that discussion. so how about we put in a warning message or something so that if people log a groundspeak cache on this site, it suggests that they log it on that site and only log it here if their finds are unsynchronised.

unfortunately we don't have time to do this right away (although mind socket might?) the reason is that we are moving servers to the US and it's taking most of our geo-time. the server has oodles of bandwidth so we will be able to to pictures, etc which we can't do now. we have moved over a number of personal websites to the new server and it seems to be going well. the main hiccups are due to installing the latest software on the new server so it breaks the occasional piece of code we have written. next up will probably be http://ideology.geocaching.com.au and then the other cacher subsites that we have set up for people. these ones are pretty simple. then we'll move across the GPX files. the horrible horrible bit will be the forum and the main gca site, but fingers crossed!