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Thread: A Geocaching listing site for the UK

  1. #51
    nobbynobbs Guest

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    The only point I would say against that teasel is that we had three great guys who were doing exactly that and there wasn't any major problems or dissention about their decisions.
    We didn't have a free for all on the forums or heavy moderation to stop it.

    We just seemed to be a typical group of british people who like gentle guidance and accept that there are limits.

    And personally I'd just like to go back to that.

  2. #52
    Rambling Meanderers Guest

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    No, I don't think that we should be looking at a separate listing site for the UK (at least for the moment&#33 The one we have works pretty well most of the time and although I don't have much knowledge about such things I'd imagine that it would be a huge amount of work to try and replicate the functionality.

    And even then we'd lose the "global community" feel which there is to geocaching, which is one of the attractions. Not that I've ever cached outside the UK, but explaining to dubious family members that what we do is relatively normal is a lot easier when Google Earth allows us to demonstrate that there are similarly minded people all over the world!

    For the forums point, I think people may naturally come over to these forums rather than the *other place* anyway. We have (first posting for us!&#33 and it sounds like other are doing so as well. Maybe the question is why we didn't earlier? Well, to me (and no offence to anyone here) GAGB always seemed rather formal. Obsessed with landowner agreements and permissions. That's the impression given on the other site and the GAGB home page, at least to us. Very pleased to see that actually it's not like that at all! Although there is a healthy obsession with pubs :cheers:

    On the pub point, Nobbynobbs put it well in his email, but from the sounds of it we're not going to get anywhere with this one, and the decision of TPTB seems to be pretty final. I'm sure our (previous) reviewers have already had the argument and if they failed then we're unlikely to be successful.

    Is the solution to the pub point to have a downloadable .gpx file which contains details of cacher friendly pubs? Could be maintained by someone here, maybe with a forum dedicated to suggestions? There would be some work involved, but a lot less than the alternatives.

  3. #53

    Join Date
    Jun 2003
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    Originally posted by Rambling Meanderers@Apr 30 2008, 06:27 PM

    On the pub point, Nobbynobbs put it well in his email, but from the sounds of it we're not going to get anywhere with this one, and the decision of TPTB seems to be pretty final. I'm sure our (previous) reviewers have already had the argument and if they failed then we're unlikely to be successful.

    With great sadness and reluctance I think you are absolutely correct - the current thinking in GSP management appears to be what I have called (rightly or wrongly) fundamentalism.

    Innovation and individualism stifled to ensure a blandness across the game/sport/pastime.


  4. #54
    ghost cat Guest

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    Harping back to my love of conspiracy theories, could Groundspeak's plan be as follows:

    1. Ban all mention of pubs and restaurants in gc.com

    2. Allow said pubs and restaurants in waymarking.com

    3. Allow links from cache descriptions to waymarks

    4. Cachers create new waymarks, which they then link to from their cache pages

    5 Profit

    Seriously GS has put a lot of effort into their waymarking site despite indifference and actual hostility from geocachers. Therefore, they have plans for waymarks that are not yet obvious. So, the recent "get tough" policy could be either the next stage of the waymarking master plan or an attempt to bolster a flagging idea.

    Just my 2 (euro) cents worth.

  5. #55
    keehotee Guest

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    Originally posted by ghost cat@May 1 2008, 08:50 AM
    Harping back to my love of conspiracy theories, could Groundspeak's plan be as follows:

    1. Ban all mention of pubs and restaurants in gc.com

    2. Allow said pubs and restaurants in waymarking.com

    3. Allow links from cache descriptions to waymarks

    4. Cachers create new waymarks, which they then link to from their cache pages

    5 Profit

    Seriously GS has put a lot of effort into their waymarking site despite indifference and actual hostility from geocachers. Therefore, they have plans for waymarks that are not yet obvious. So, the recent "get tough" policy could be either the next stage of the waymarking master plan or an attempt to bolster a flagging idea.

    Just my 2 (euro) cents worth.
    Sorry - I'm missing something here - how do GC generate a profit from having links to waypoints?
    I haven't actually visited the waypoint side of GC yet ... is it pay-per-view???

  6. #56
    sTeamTraen Guest

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    Originally posted by keehotee@May 1 2008, 01:55 PM
    Sorry - I'm missing something here - how do GC generate a profit from having links to waypoints?
    I haven't actually visited the waypoint side of GC yet ... is it pay-per-view???
    Even if every pub in the UK which is currently referenced from a cache listing became a waymark, it wouldn't make for much extra traffic.

    Also, last time I checked there were no Google or even Groundspeak ads on waymarking.com, so non-premium members wouldn't generate any extra revenue and premium members of gc.com are premium members at waymarking.com too.

    You could argue that more people clicking on waymarking.com might make Waymarking grow by further word of mouth, but it's a bit of a stretch as a world domination plan.

    PS: It's "waymark", not "waypoint", but then I can't type the word "cash" correctly anymore :lol:

  7. #57
    ghost cat Guest

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    I can't see how GS can make money from waymarking either. Maybe that's why I'm not a dotcom millionaire

    What prompted my comment is the way GS have been pushing waymarking despite a total indifference from the majority of cachers. GS obviously have plans for waymarking. Been a business they would not throw money at it, if they did not expect a good return.

    Anyway, I did say it was a conspiracy theory.

  8. #58
    sTeamTraen Guest

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    People criticise Groundspeak for spending money on site features that they personally don't use, but I think this reflects how close a relationship a lot of people think they have with the company. If you travel on a Virgin train and it's a bit late, you probably don't get to thinking that it would be ten minutes earlier if Richard Branson got out of the cola or radio businesses.

    I too sometimes wonder why Jeremy, Brian, and Elias would choose to spend as much real cash (not start-up funny money from vulture capitalists) on R&D when they could probably be buying some very nice cars. Apparently they really do believe in the long-term future of the business.

  9. #59
    moote01 Guest

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    Originally posted by sTeamTraen@May 2 2008, 08:37 AM
    People criticise Groundspeak for spending money on site features that they personally don't use, but I think this reflects how close a relationship a lot of people think they have with the company. If you travel on a Virgin train and it's a bit late, you probably don't get to thinking that it would be ten minutes earlier if Richard Branson got out of the cola or radio businesses.
    I just don't get this remark, it has more than confused me. For a start a Virgin Train has to rely on many other backbone suppliers such as Network Rail etc, so not all their delays are due to their business.

    But previously reading some of the Geocaching Site generated errors they were caused by mainly 2 things; either Server capacity, or very poor SQL, so the investing in Waymarking etc. whilst their main Bread and Butter was keeling over was a very poor judgment!

    My point here is yes you are correct about the Virgin, but the Groundspeak analogy was far from being comparable; One being a multi-billion £ business with a structured investment plan, the other being a small US business that will and always will find it hard to make ends meet.

    Groundspeak is a small business and instead of trying to diversify they should work on getting their core strategies and technologies working well.

    There is one business though, which they might want to look at as a good model for International understanding of their customer base, that is HSBC.

  10. #60

    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Location
    Shropshire
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    Waymarking is quite popular if you actually go and look at some of the figures.

    The waymarking site is a large part of the total sites development if you actually go and look its probably very close to V2 of the geocaching website, i believe its been used as GC test bed for V2 features for quite a while now.

    I did not like it when it first came out but having had a new look im pretty sure its close to what we will soon see.

    NB i am a leader of a waymark group have logged two and know that many m,any UK ones are now listed just because forum regulars vilify it does not mean it is unpopular in the UK.

    The GC server problems were caused by a bug in the code

    Fortunately our latest release on Tuesday fixed the Most Painful Bug in the History of Time. As it turns out the nifty little code we use that transforms UBB code into HTML was using Regular Expressions - and that the libraries for Regular Expressions had changed, I would say drastically, between 1.1 and 2.0. Since we use them all over the site we were taking an additional hit every time it was called.

    Joe, our newest developer and currently the lead developer on the current version of the site, was finally able to determine this after some extensive debugging work with Microsoft. The Tuesday release implemented these changes and now each web machine is now running at under 20% CPU with the same amount of connections that put it at 100% on Monday.
    Links
    https://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/in...owtopic=179332

    https://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...&hl=biggest+bug
    "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning."

  11. #61
    moote01 Guest

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    Originally posted by markandlynn@May 2 2008, 01:49 PM
    Waymarking is quite popular if you actually go and look at some of the figures.

    The waymarking site is a large part of the total sites development if you actually go and look its probably very close to V2 of the geocaching website, i believe its been used as GC test bed for V2 features for quite a while now.

    I did not like it when it first came out but having had a new look im pretty sure its close to what we will soon see.

    NB i am a leader of a waymark group have logged two and know that many m,any UK ones are now listed just because forum regulars vilify it does not mean it is unpopular in the UK.

    The GC server problems were caused by a bug in the code

    Fortunately our latest release on Tuesday fixed the Most Painful Bug in the History of Time. As it turns out the nifty little code we use that transforms UBB code into HTML was using Regular Expressions - and that the libraries for Regular Expressions had changed, I would say drastically, between 1.1 and 2.0. Since we use them all over the site we were taking an additional hit every time it was called.

    Joe, our newest developer and currently the lead developer on the current version of the site, was finally able to determine this after some extensive debugging work with Microsoft. The Tuesday release implemented these changes and now each web machine is now running at under 20% CPU with the same amount of connections that put it at 100% on Monday.
    Links
    https://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/in...owtopic=179332

    https://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...&hl=biggest+bug
    Waymarking popular? When? Most Cachers I have spoken to have never considered it, a few have done one or two but basically don't have the time to commit to it. There i on exception to this, I know of one who Trig points totally by Waymarking.com.

    But this is not a forum for arguing the pros or cons of Waymarking, the site though is clumsy and unintuitive, and hard to feel yourself around, that is not the case with Geocaching.com. If it is the V2 test bed then God help us all as it is unappealing, poor ergonomics, basically I have seen home user site that look and operate better at the base level of point click and find.

    What really does get me about the whole Waymarking thing is the total lack of integration with Geocaching.com, what they gave us for removing what were many favorite caches (Virtual, Locationless and Webcam) Was a separate hobby for others to follow, rather than utilise intelligence and link the sites and the sites databases to form one entity, linking databases being a very easy thing if the original databases are written well.

    As for you quote about their new Developer, well I can tell you this, over 2 years back I sent Jeremy Irish an email pointing out that a flaw in their SQL Stored Procedures was the likely cause of the problems that they were having. His reply was rude at best, and made me feel at that time that Groundspeak was a brick wall when it came to communication. Having written commercial MS SQL databases, I thought I had been given a swift kick it the tender areas.

    So if V2 is what we see on Waymarking.com, then the quicker we part the better

  12. #62

    Join Date
    Apr 2004
    Location
    Shropshire
    Posts
    322

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    As for you quote about their new Developer, well I can tell you this, over 2 years back I sent Jeremy Irish an email pointing out that a flaw in their SQL Stored Procedures was the likely cause of the problems that they were having. His reply was rude at best, and made me feel at that time that Groundspeak was a brick wall when it came to communication. Having written commercial MS SQL databases, I thought I had been given a swift kick it the tender areas.



    Not a surprise given his attitude to his database of OUR caches, did you ever read the slashdot article on groundspeak its not very complimantary


    How many UK reviewers have resigned / left due to GC actions and attitude its certainly more than this two ??
    "If you can't be a good example, then you'll just have to serve as a horrible warning."

  13. #63
    pklong Guest

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    Slashdork only exists to argue about not very much though.

  14. #64
    moote01 Guest

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    Originally posted by pklong@May 2 2008, 04:38 PM
    Slashdork only exists to argue about not very much though.
    Ah! so it's an alternative to Groundspeak forums

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