Geocaching Australia Ideas [closed]

Discussion about the Geocaching Australia web site
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ideology
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Geocaching Australia Ideas [closed]

Post by ideology » 28 March 03 5:16 pm

edit: Mind Socket updated 08MAR05

Here's some ideas of where we could take Geocaching Australia

General/uncategorised
- Server migration / forum upgrade / PHP upgrade / database upgrade / version control system ...
- Search by postcode
- Advanced search/query/stats engine
- Individual GPX download
- Precalculated distance matrix for more efficient distance based queries and clustering
- Scheduled/forthcoming cache release (coords hidden until T-0)
- Fix slow editing on forum post edit (may be fixed in new version)
- Fix CSS menus
- more geoscores - integrate with forum
- combinations of "planned" lists, possibly based on mates (caches my mates are also planning)
- Nieghbours - similar to mates, but using cacher coords
- Reviewer workflow
- Watch this cacher (placements, logs of their caches, caches they log). Option to automatically watch all mates?
- What do my mates recommend?
- Site map
- iCal feed for upcoming events/caches
- Zip gpx files
- wiki / faq / documentation
- When logging a cache, allow a non-published note to the owner (sends PM?)
- Show nearby unfound caches after logging - improves workflow
- Automatic winners' page for finders
- Cache attributes
- Image hosting
- User-friendly layout control of cache pages / logs (use BBCode?)
- Caption competitions
- Photo of the month


Cache listings/Mapping
- Manual selection of layers displayed (eg secondary roads on/off)
- Selectable map size
- Aerial photos and other raster maps
- Show nearby caches
- Store preferences
- Expand Cacheway to Perth and other cities
- Automaps embedded in secondary site pages
- Area warnings, eg Lane Cove National Park
- User correctable maps to improve quality
- Icons
- User lat/lon from forum profile


Caching
- Add new Geocaching Australia caches, travelling, trig, benchmark, locationless etc
- Moveable cache trails
- Add cache ratings (including cache of the year)

Geology
- Lists/maps which caches you haven't done, distance
- Groups unfound caches into hotspots

Forums
- File area
- Photo album

Hosted sites
- Database-driven blogger which makes it easy to make websites
- Aggregate comments to one page to make a community
- Links into geodashing, confluence points, etc, not just secondary site
- Autotext in comments, eg replace i! with <i><b>i!</b></i>, team names with links
- Auto cross-links between stories (perhaps as part of autotext, prompting bloggers to comment on each other's stories)
- Summarise comments across sites
- Auto links to CheatiSearch/Planner in stories (just click an icon)
- Auto-populate comment username

Stats
- click on graphs to get extra detail
- Cache(r) half life, plot decline in find frequency
- Cache(r) find frequency. Straight, and vs diff/terr
- team v location: where different teams are putting their caches. colours represent teams
- terrain v difficulty: correlated as most people don't understand the difference?
- terrain v location: urban are are easy terrain, the ones away are harder?
- difficulty v location: opposite to above
- team cache style profiles: terrain v location, coloured blob represents team. colour gets brighter/blob larger as teams plant more caches of that style.
- hit/miss ratio v terrain, difficulty
- time to first find v location, time: hypothesis is that ttff is small in sydney but large further out. other hypothsis is that average ttff has decreased significantly over the past 12 months
- we used to do stats which showed cumulative team finds over time. interesting to see new teams starting later but their curve rising quicker than older teams.
- team territorial analysis - thematic plot of where each team is usually active. for each team, assign (say) 5 points for a cache that they have laid, 2 points for a first find and 1 point for a normal find. then start shading areas based on the pointscore and see what you get. should be able to see odlid dave sitting down there in jannali, dogs up in hornsby, etc

Development
- Collaborative development environment

Stuff that's been done/deferred or had an alternative implementation
- New names for CheatiSearch/Planner
- Speed up using C and caching
- Multimap
- Fuzzy searching
- Multi-format downloading
- RSS feeds
- Improved incoming data feed
- Add cache logging
- Auto-logging to the secondary site
- Aussie travel bugs
- Local or self-approval for caches
- Open up to general geocaching discussion
- Email notification (of new posts, of replies)
- WAP/Java
Last edited by ideology on 07 October 05 8:29 am, edited 11 times in total.

leek
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ideas...

Post by leek » 29 March 03 12:27 pm

Hi guys... Love this new forum... the presentation is clear and professional looking... Once we've given it a good thrashing, I would hope that we can unite the Australian geocaching community within this forum... Hopefully, we can set up a structure similar to the ezboard one to allow local discussion...

I think what you've done with the .com.au site so far has been awesome and would like to think that it will serve us well in the future... One way of making a slow transition would be to have cache and log submission features added to geocaching.com.au, submitting them to the local database, but also automatically submitting them to geocaching.com on behalf of the user...
Doing this would have several effects:
- It would get around any copyright issues in the future, as the US would be getting their data from you.
- It would enable us to have local access to things like travelling caches and other banned types of caches even if they are rejected by geocaching.com
- It would also allow local approval of caches (possibly before they get submitted to geocaching.com) which would weed out any caches which aren't acceptable by using local knowledge.
- If geocaching.com became aware of what was being done, it may cause them to rethink the whole idea of rules and devolve the responsibility for approval to a more localised level.


One other thing to add to the list of improvements is the use of multimap.com in Cheatisearch... This site provides street level mapping for the whole of Australia (even bush areas)... I think it would be a welcome addition for non-Sydneysiders
Last edited by leek on 03 April 03 2:06 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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Post by ideology » 30 March 03 8:03 am

thanks leek,
we've added your suggestions to the list above

opening up this forum: as you say, there are already a number of australian geocaching forums and we think there would be more confusion than benefit by opening up yet another one. we twice offered to host the ezboard forums for free but our offers have been ignored, we don't know why. so at this stage we'd rather not exacerbate the situation by launching a similar forum. overall, though, we think it would be a great idea to open up the forums here, simply because the forums could be tightly integrated with the cache logging, eg automatic creation of winners forums, etc. so if you have any ideas on why the ezboard people aren't keen, please let us know!

auto-logging on the secondary site: wow, we hadn't thought of that! the shoe would be on the other foot then!

local approval: we think that skilled cachers shouldn't need to have their caches "approved" at all. skill could be estimated as some function of the cacher's activity, eg number/terrain/difficulty of caches found and number/terrain/difficulty/rating of caches planted. a good rating system would avoid the multiplicity of rules that are currently in operation. people could experiment, but if they put out too much rubbish, their overall rating would go down and after a while people wouldn't bother looking for their caches and their caches would need to be approved.

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Post by Mind Socket » 30 March 03 8:31 pm

Liking all the ideas listed so far. A winners' area is something that would take things to a new level, and allow people to rate the cache experience. It could even be further developed into a system that could be used for determining cache of the year.

Love your work i! :) Please let me know if you want extra hands on deck for coding etc, though being the labour of love that it appears to be, I'd understand if you wanted to keep it as your baby. :)

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Post by Mind Socket » 30 March 03 8:41 pm

oops, more ideas...
  • Aussie travel bugs? Aussie benchmark/trig/survey mark hunting?
    Mapping of moveable trails
    Separate locationless listing, if any :wink:
    Syndicated RSS feeds of everything feedable

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Post by ideology » 31 March 03 7:14 pm

thanks mind socket, great ideas, we've added them to the list
your comments about moveable cache trails in particular have made us re-think our data model for the site. it seems that a cache can have multiple points, which may be all active (redundant c) or sequentially active (eg moveable cache). a cache can also have zero points, eg the great gig in the sky #2. interesting stuff.
yes, we are keen for help if you know php and sql. let us know what interests you. your RSS work looks interesting.

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Post by Mind Socket » 01 April 03 10:50 am

Excellent :)

I've only seen a teensy bit of PHP, but I do database/sql stuff pretty much every day. Maybe I can do something to assist with the stats (run as a batch job to update static pages from SAS). Something to think about anyway...

I was thinking about the data model, and that, in general, there is certain metadata that may or may not be provided per cache, such as 1 or more owners, 0 or more coords, 0 or more links to additional information, 0 or more images, 0 or more discussion/log areas. Without complicating things too much, perhaps there is a need for a data backend that can support this sort of thing (it basically boils down to being a number of different "things" that can be associated with a cache).

Something else that might be really handy is a way to tag and group caches and save those lists for performing a certain action, such as printing, downloading, watching, _ignoring_. eg, I could tag a bunch of new caches, and print out their details in one big report. Then when I come back to the site, I know that the untagged ones haven't been printed yet. Perhaps this is getting too complex though... :)

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Post by Horus » 01 April 03 10:20 pm

G'day guys

Nice forum you've put together here, nice clean lines, loads nice and quick - which is good for us poor Tasmanians stuck on Telstra's pair-gain "technology"l, with an effective bandwidth of 9600.

Regarding your requests to the guys that run the ezyboard Forums - I just spoke to Darryn about it and I think there is a lack of communication within the admin. He has a few concerns about moving over, these mainly being moving over the old posts to maintain continuity, and members, i.e will they come over here. He also said he's a shy chap and doesn't know anyone at geocaching.com.au - I will try to introduce everyone concerned via Messenger or ICQ so you can start talking about maybe moving the forums over.

Personally, I think Darryn has done a good job of starting the forums at ezyboard, there was nothing around when he got it going and the membership has built up slowly. But I am in favour of centralizing geocaching activities and would love to see it all run from here, I think his concerns can be met.

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Post by pyrenees kid » 01 April 03 11:51 pm

Hi guys, and thanks Horus. Yes the new board is great. Lets hope the transtition over to this site works well. It will take a little time so be patient. Thanks to the guys at geo.co.au for taking the time to set this up.

Darryn

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Totally MY fault

Post by embi » 02 April 03 2:33 pm

:oops: Ok ..... I will own up to the lack of communication about changing over to here. I was supposed to talk to Darryn but lately havent had the chance and when I did see him I forgot all about it.

I think coming over to here and all the other things associated with it will be good.

Slap my wrists. :cry:

I did mention that I hadnt had the chance to talk to Darryn on the Ezyboard forums though (does that get me out of trouble??) :wink:

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Post by Horus » 02 April 03 5:03 pm

No sorry that's not good enough embi - tell you what, how about you get rid of the huge logo and there will be some forgiveness from this part of the world - you're cluttering up the nice clean lines of this new forum :D

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Post by The Ginger Loon » 02 April 03 5:11 pm

G'day guys,

I was just thinking that there are other forums used in Oz by the geocaching community that could benefit from a migration to gca. Most notably the YahooGroups mob (EcoTeam, RedDwarf [?] et al). I suspect you would have to set up some sort of files area to entice them over though as that seems to be the main benefit of using that particular forum.

I'm not sure if this board has that sort of capability or if you are prepared to host a specific files area or not but it was just someting that popped into my head.

Loon.

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Other forums..

Post by Team Piggy » 02 April 03 5:35 pm

The only two other forums that I can think of (apart from Aussie forums) are the aussie cachers and sageocachers, may be more though ?
The good thing about Yahoo ones though is mail is sent to the person, which opposes logging into a site to read it..
This one looks great though..
Is it going to be a totally ideology (geo.com.au) moderated item or are they going to pick cachers from each state to maybe help out with basic things ?

Great effort though guys..

Team Piggy.

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Post by pyrenees kid » 02 April 03 6:26 pm

Unfortunatly we cant host files on this forum as it is just that, a forum. And no its not an Ideology only run Forum. It will be set up, not unlike the ezboard forum with admins and moderators.
Time will come later for nominating moderators, Bribes in the form of cash can be sent to............. :lol: :lol: :lol:

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Bribes ...

Post by Team Piggy » 02 April 03 8:49 pm

Hmm, will Mud work ??
And can we get a little Piggy icon :lol:

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