Geocaching Australia

I've been noticing this for about a year and I thought there might be comments about this but haven't seen them anywhere.

In the daily email there are usually a number of "changed caches" at the bottom. Almost every day GC (not GCA) caches that have symbols at the start of the cache name seem to appear with their change usually being a name change.

This one seems to appear every day at present:
http://coord.info/GC6AT6D
because of the heart symbols I imagine. (less?)

A couple I often see are
http://coord.info/GC5HW6F

and

http://coord.info/GC5HW5M

although I think they used to have the symbol at the beginning and end of the cache name which may be the problem?

Not important but I keep seeing it and wonder why.

I don't know about other caches but I'm pretty certain I know why the Dubbo one, Andrew's Place 2, keeps showing up -

It's owned by a young boy and he fiddles with the settings every now and again. I think the most recent change was the difficulty rating which I can only imagine was raised due to high muggle area. It was easy. He seems to change something like the attributes but then changes it back again. Coordinates by one number has also been a change. Maybe I just have to give him more geocache to find in the area to stop him being so geo-bored.

I doubt these people have a clue that their actions are being noted and posted on a list.

Caches exported from GSAK will make the characters change.

I viewed this cache on GCA: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc4kx3n

The characters displayed as a skull and crossbone. I then exported that one cache as a gpx file from GSAK, then imported into the GCA website. Immediately the characters changed to question marks.

We can't really do much about this, short of locking the name when we first know of the cache, I'm not too sure that would be a good idea.

I'm assuming this is because Groundspeak and GCA both support Unicode in cache names whereas GSAK doesn't? How about just locking the names on caches that have Unicode characters in their name?

Given the problem appears to be GSAK perhaps lobby ClydE to add a flag to preserve unicode in cache names. I don't like coding work-arounds at this end.

Those symbols in the cache name are a PITA. They stuff up the search function in c:geo as well.
No reason to have them in my opinion.

Not a big enough issue for GCA to worry about I think. I was just bemused at how often the same caches kept turning up in the daily email.

Maybe the cache owners could be lobbied to change their cache names to text only?

Today's excerpt:

Changed Caches:
=========================================================
Brainy Bike by asbestiform (Hornsby) 3.12km North East
GCA: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc5hw6f
Other: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... wp=gc5hw6f
Google Map: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc5hw6f.gmap
Changes:
- Name: Brainy Bike -> Brainy Bike

=========================================================
Footy fields by klr kenny (Coffs Harbour) 429.69km North East
GCA: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc5f2qe
Other: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... wp=gc5f2qe
Google Map: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc5f2qe.gmap
Changes:
- Name: Footy fields -> Footy fields

=========================================================
Little Dragon 李小龍 by smirkwood (Kogarah) 27.06km South
GCA: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc4xm3g
Other: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_de ... wp=gc4xm3g
Google Map: http://geocaching.com.au/cache/gc4xm3g.gmap
Changes:
- Name: Little Dragon ??? -> Little Dragon 李小龍

In our next release I'm going to stop all this. Only Geocaching Australia caches will come out in the daily updates.

The daily emailer is now GCA only, across the board.

caughtatwork wrote:The daily emailer is now GCA only, across the board.

Fine by me. I guess that solves this problem.

there have been a number of posts in FB forums that I watch commenting on the demise of the notification emails. There are quite a few people who have relied on the emails to keep them up to date on happenings (particularly events) and are disappointed whenthey are now getting blank emails.

I thought the better way would have been to check for this type of change when an import was done and stop it there.

Which groups? Are they positing to the Geocaching Australia page?

The emails are not blank. They are Geocaching Australia emails, now about Geocaching Australia geocaches. If there are no Geocaching Australia caches, then the email is blank.

Maybe they could come into our forum where the management and decisions are made so they can voice an opinion about what they would like. They can then discuss needs with the folks who want them and the folks who don't want them. They can discuss the ever changing nature of names and things based on the tool of choice used for the data. They could choose whether they would like to ignore just names for example or whether we should also ignore text changes or may be just use the changes for lat/lon.

The number of times I have been bitched at because the names keep changing has finally resulted in things being ignored. I do not need the abuse.

The vocal folk at the site where the data is generated are the ones who get listened to and actions undertaken. If there is a silent majority, then they should become engaged and become a vocal majority. If we don't know what they want and they won't engage, then we can't provide a service to them.

Encourage them to come here and discuss and not whine at a forum we can't see.

caughtatwork wrote:Which groups? Are they positing to the Geocaching Australia page?

The emails are not blank. They are Geocaching Australia emails, now about Geocaching Australia geocaches. If there are no Geocaching Australia caches, then the email is blank.

Maybe they could come into our forum where the management and decisions are made so they can voice an opinion about what they would like. They can then discuss needs with the folks who want them and the folks who don't want them. They can discuss the ever changing nature of names and things based on the tool of choice used for the data. They could choose whether they would like to ignore just names for example or whether we should also ignore text changes or may be just use the changes for lat/lon.

The number of times I have been bitched at because the names keep changing has finally resulted in things being ignored. I do not need the abuse.

The vocal folk at the site where the data is generated are the ones who get listened to and actions undertaken. If there is a silent majority, then they should become engaged and become a vocal majority. If we don't know what they want and they won't engage, then we can't provide a service to them.

Encourage them to come here and discuss and not whine at a forum we can't see.

One of the troubles with the 'silent majority' is that they are silent and so hard to tell if they are in a majority or not but in any case they didn't have a chance to say anything in this case as this topic, and most of the others about it, was a lot about what the problem is and how it could be fixed when suddenly a decision was made to remove it.

In regards to the change in the email I know that a number of GCA users, who do not participate in the forums and probably never will, rely on the mail as it was for various reasons.

The change now makes the mail a lot less useful to them as the majority of the time for WA the mail will be blank.

In regards to the change data that used to come through about changes to caches I would prefer it back as I used it for a number of reasons.

It was always at the bottom so could easily be ignored if the receiver didn't want to see it.

Instead of removing the whole data from the other site perhaps just put a disclaimer on the top of the changed cache area pointing out that some changes appear due to data issues.

At least put back the upcoming events and the new cache data.