Are mass moveables fundamentally broken?

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RebornCyclist
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Are mass moveables fundamentally broken?

Post by RebornCyclist » 11 December 12 11:00 pm

I find myself at a GCA crossroads.
I like the site for the extra (actual) caches, the forum, and the various stats views.
The advent of mass moveables every December, however, is close to driving me away from the site for the following reasons:
1. The cache list is swamped with moveables.
2. The cache density, hitlist and nearest unfound lists are similarly full of moveables.
3. Ditto the recent logs - hundreds of "found it" and "moved it".
4. I can't reasonably load them to my GPSr unless I update it every couple of hours.
5. Even if I do this, it is HARD WORK to work out what is and isn't at the listed coords - people find but don't move, find and hold on to them, move but hand to someone else, pass round at events and lose track of who took it.
6. When they go missing, there isn't a clear responsibility, as the cache owner wasn't usually the hider. There are three moveables in Southern Tas that have been mislaid for at least 6 months but still show up in all the views.

The occasional moveable isn't an issue, but this just takes over the entire site and makes it difficult for those of us trying to do some caching when we have time.

All this said, it's not do bad after the "game" finishes, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, there are still plenty of gnomes and frogs in the views, many of which aren't actually there.

Interested if there are others similarly affected.

RC

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Richary
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Re: Are mass moveables fundamentally broken?

Post by Richary » 11 December 12 11:25 pm

I do find I get a lot of (useless) move and found logs on GCA caches during the races. Useless because by the time I get a chance to go looking they have often moved again. That's under my control though, as I should be able to remove them from my notification list if I so choose.

I have set up a private query to only look at movables placed on that date. When I am about to go out, or am out for work somehere different, I will download it. One advantage if iPhone caching. It only runs when I ask it to, so I assume generates real time information.

I don't tend to look at the history or nearest unfound lists so that doesn't worry me. My only suggestion if you aren't into the race would be to remove moveable caches from your notification lists to save on emails. You could also set up a PQ that shows the caches near you without moveables, and that would give you the GCA ones near home that aren't going to relocate annoyingly quickly and at random 8)

Moveables used to be a feature at GC but killed off ages ago apart from a few grandfathered ones. I guess the difference here is a lot get put out very quickly, and in the first few weeks get moved a lot. Once the game finishes there is a good chance they will still be there when you go to find them.

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CraigRat
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Re: Are mass moveables fundamentally broken?

Post by CraigRat » 12 December 12 7:04 am

RebornCyclist wrote:I find myself at a GCA crossroads.
I like the site for the extra (actual) caches, the forum, and the various stats views.
The advent of mass moveables every December, however, is close to driving me away from the site for the following reasons:
1. The cache list is swamped with moveables.
2. The cache density, hitlist and nearest unfound lists are similarly full of moveables.
3. Ditto the recent logs - hundreds of "found it" and "moved it".
4. I can't reasonably load them to my GPSr unless I update it every couple of hours.
5. Even if I do this, it is HARD WORK to work out what is and isn't at the listed coords - people find but don't move, find and hold on to them, move but hand to someone else, pass round at events and lose track of who took it.
6. When they go missing, there isn't a clear responsibility, as the cache owner wasn't usually the hider. There are three moveables in Southern Tas that have been mislaid for at least 6 months but still show up in all the views.

The occasional moveable isn't an issue, but this just takes over the entire site and makes it difficult for those of us trying to do some caching when we have time.

All this said, it's not do bad after the "game" finishes, but as I've mentioned elsewhere, there are still plenty of gnomes and frogs in the views, many of which aren't actually there.

Interested if there are others similarly affected.

RC
This is where a /my/query comes in very handy.

Create one that excludes movable caches and have it emailed to you on a friday to load up for a weekends caching
It's what I do usually.

RebornCyclist
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Re: Are mass moveables fundamentally broken?

Post by RebornCyclist » 12 December 12 7:33 am

Fair enough - I've used GCA queries just to look at on a map, but not for downloads (though I download GC queries, so it's just lack of experience).
Ignoring moveables would suit me fine, I think, but there are some great GCA caches I do want to see/find.
The issues with the cache density, hitlist and recent logs are still there, but I can use GSAK for the first two and just not bother browsing recent logs until January, when the activity calms down.

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tronador
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Re: Are mass moveables fundamentally broken?

Post by tronador » 12 December 12 10:55 pm

I feel that way about trig points and found they cluttered up my cache page when they first came out. It's all settled down a bit now but I fixed my own problem by just filtering them out on my PQ, so now GSAK is not cluttered with them, I ignore them and I can happily go about finding the caches I want without " caching noise" interfering what I was really after.

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