A 'lil HooHaa

Messing with the blogging world since 2005

geocaching challenges

Good riddance: Geocaching challenges finally sent packing

Finally.

Groundspeak, the owners of geocaching.com, have finally come to some sort of senses and gotten rid of Challenges, a feature they launched last year. Though nobody ever came out and said this (that I saw), it was undoubtedly a way to try and appease the mass of people who have been clamoring for the return of virtual geocaches.

I gave this concept thumbs down last year when it was created. I never saw enough improvements to change that opinion. Apparently Groundspeak’s opinion of the Challenges wasn’t great either.

See ya, Challenges! Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out!

Everything seemed so rushed. There were countless numbers of flaws with what they launched and it was way too easy to get around the system and users could score more “finds” by doing all the work from their computer. I saw several challenges where people from around the world found an image needed and posted it, despite the reality that they didn’t actually complete the challenge.

And, “owner’s” hands were tied.

See, with geocaches, an owner owns the geocache. That means if you armchair a find, I can delete it. With challenges, you didn’t have that option. In fact, once you created it, it was done. You couldn’t do anything from that point forward. You didn’t even get notifications that somebody completed the challenge you created!

No editing.

No deleting.

No verifying.

Nothing.

What’s the point then?

The idea of geocaching is to get out and find something. It’s a way to get outside and see something. Not just sit on the computer and search for images so you can “claim” a find.

Heck, after initially having them “count” toward your finds for geocaches, Groundspeak at least was smart enough to switch that up.

This is what Groundspeak had to say in a post to its forums Tuesday afternoon:

In our effort to inspire outdoor play through Geocaching, we are often faced with decisions about what to focus on next, and what to focus on less. It is through these decisions that we explore opportunities to grow the global game of geocaching.

Occasionally, during this process, we are faced with the reality that certain ideas don’t catch on as we had hoped. In these situations we owe it to ourselves and to you to make tough decisions about the future of every project and the resources to be applied to each. Sometimes, as a result, cool features must become casualties.

In this spirit, we have decided to retire Geocaching Challenges.

This means that, effective today, we have disabled the ability to create new Challenges. We have also removed the Challenges application from all mobile application stores. In approximately 7 days, we will be removing all traces of the Challenges functionality and related content from Geocaching.com.

On an office wall here at HQ is a sign that reads, “Let’s make better mistakes tomorrow.” By accepting that we will sometimes get it wrong, we can allow ourselves to learn from and imagine new opportunities in the world of Geocaching. Our hope is we can take the lessons from Challenges and create better tools to guide you on your next adventure.

Kudos to Groundspeak for realizing that this was a failed idea.

Geocaching had grown to an amazing size and with Groundspeak being the main players in this game, the company needs to try different things. I don’t blame them for attempting this.

And I personally hope Groundspeak doesn’t decide to bring virtuals back. The ones that are out there now are just fine. They are able to be done and that’s great. But as this game continues to grow, if there’s not a serious set of rules with virtuals, they’ll be overused and become a bunch of trash. I don’t want a virtual cache to take me to a parking lot, which you know would happen.

If Groundspeak wanted to work with some National Parks or something and unveil some virtuals in conjunction with places like that, I’d be all for it. But not for opening them back up to anyone. It would get out of hand.

For today, Challenges are on the way out and I applaud Groundspeak for making this decision. It makes the game better by not having Challenges and it, hopefully, will help the game swing back to what it was originally intended to do — get outside and find something.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog@gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook!

Thumbs down on Geocaching Challenges

Groundspeak’s newest addition to the geocaching family is more than a week old. Some kinks have been exposed and people are forming opinions.

I’m giving Geocaching Challenges a thumbs down vote.Let me say that I like the idea and the premise of the challenges. I just think the execution was weak and not that well thought out. In discussions with fellow geocachers about the challenges, I’ve likened it to a bit of anarchy.

I hope to change my mind one day.

By that I mean that people have had the chance to create things they’ve wanted to for years with virtuals, but haven’t been able to do so. Some of these challenges are so silly and pointless. It doesn’t seem to mesh with geocaching.

By theory, geocaching is a game in which people have to go out and find something. Maybe not necessarily a physical box, but they have to go out and find something. Challenges, by theory are also supposed to do that. Alas, there are several key parts that make this not so. And considering Groundspeak has made the challenges a part of the geocaching site (instead of its own site, such as Waymarking), it has left open the big debate between different factions of game players.

With me, I’ve tried to like them. And I hope there will be a day when I can change my mind. Alas, for now, there’s no chance of that.

There are too many things wrong with geocaching challenges to like them.

Let’s count a few of the ways —

  • Finds still counting on your overall totals, even though Groundspeak said they were going to split them.
  • Too many can be armchaired.
  • No checks and balances.
  • No true way to verify.
  • No “ownership.”
  • Searching for challenges is cumbersome.
  • You can’t see which challenges people have completed.

Let’s take a peek at these items one at a time.

First, the finds. Look, let’s be honest, geocaching is a game. People play it their own way. If people want to use these as geocaching finds, fine. But for those of us who think that’s silly (and considering Groundspeak has responded in saying that they were separating the two, I would think the vocal groups agree), there’s no way around it.

In regard to splitting the finds, Jeremy Irish, the president and a co-founder of Groundpeak posted this on the company’s feedback site:

Cache finds and challenge completion counts are now split out. Both are displayed on the logs unless you have not found a Challenge or found a Geocache. In that case the statistics for Challenges/Geocaches won’t be shown.

To me, this doesn’t appear to be separating them. See, when one looks at your profile, it still shows caches found/challenges completed in one number. Where is the separation? We have benchmarks on our profiles, too, but those aren’t counted in the overall number. One of the people I cache with, Brent, has done a few challenges. Here is a screen shot of his profile front page, showing what he’s done:

Note that finds and challenges are separated. This has been like this since the challenges started. So no change here.

That seems simple enough, no?

But, when one clicks on Brent’s tab at the top of his profile to see his geocaches and totals, here’s what one will see:

Though it notes total found/completed, it would appear to me that these numbers are still together and not separated, as people have been told they will be.

The little print down at the bottom shows that the totals exclude benchmarks. Why not just do the same for challenges?

This all leads into my second point — too many can be armchaired. By this, I mean that a lot of challenges can be done while you sit at home on the computer. In fact, one of the original “worldwide” challenges (which only Groundspeak can create) was to kiss a frog. Any type of frog. People were grabbing stuffed frogs, taking a photo and posting it. Within minutes of the posting, at that. It’s since been archived as the feedback was very poor.

I want to give an example from one local geocacher, Bob, who created a Brooks Chicken Challenge. It said in the description:

Residents of Oneonta are familiar with the animated neon sign outside Brooks House of Barbecue, which depicts a hatchet-wielding cook in mad pursuit of a fleeing chicken.

To complete this challenge, you and a friend need to go to Brooks Barbecue, pose in front of the sign, and post a photo of yourselves reproducing the activity the sign portrays.

Within minutes, someone not from the area and who, at that point had 80-something challenge completions (he now has 101), had posted a sign just of the sign and made some silly remark.

Already, that’s going against the spirit of the challenge.

I flagged the find, hoping something would come of it. I hadn’t checked in a bit, but it appears that or someone else flagging it or if Bob contacted Groundspeak appears to have done the trick as the log has since been deleted. That’s a good thing, though the stats for the challenge show that it’s been accepted once (the person in question still has the log on there that they have accepted the challenge), and has been completed once (though there is nobody logging that they completed the challenge).

Knowing the situation, I also created a challenge to see what would happen. I created a challenge at Mount Utsayantha in Stamford, noting that players had to have a photo of themselves on the fire tower. Anywhere. High, low, at the top — anywhere as long as they were on the fire tower. One person (Brent) has logged it, so no armchairing has been done, thankfully.

Alas, it doesn’t matter because I have no control over the listing.

See, when one creates and “owns” a geocache, he or she has control. That means they can make sure finds are legit, can change the listing or fix something if there’s an error and basically be the person who makes sure the credibility of geocaching stays.

No so with challenges. Once someone creates a challenge, they have a short time frame to fix the page. Once someone logs the challenge as a find, however, your hands are washed of it. You don’t get notices saying it’s been logged. You don’t have control over it. Nothing. It’s now just out there. So if someone in Bangladesh wants to log it improperly, they can.

That leads to my next three points that there are no checks and balances, no true way to verify and no “ownership.”

When somebody submits a geocache to the website, it goes through a process. A volunteer reviewer decides if it meets the criteria needed to be listed on the site and approves or disapproves it, usually with reason and how one can fix the issue. If someone really disagrees with the reviewer, one can go to Groundspeak to appeal. It’s all a process.

I can’t say that I always agree with reviewers. I can’t say that I haven’t gotten mad at decisions made. And I can’t say that I haven’t been baffled with how different reviewers can be when interpreting guidelines. But, in the end, they are there for a reason. And it’s a good reason. It makes sure things follow a certain protocol and makes sure things aren’t just haphazardly thrown out there.

The only reviewers here are other cachers, who can vote thumbs up or thumbs down on a challenge. I think if there are enough thumbs down votes, Groundspeak eventually archives it. But how many thumbs down are needed? How long must it stay out there before it is archived. With so many of these things popping up, can Groundspeak keep up?

With that comes the no verification and no ownership. If things are just out there and the creator has no control, the only way to verify appears to be complaining to Groundspeak. I would imagine that they have a lot more things to worry about than someone in some tiny town in, say, the Midwest, who isn’t happy because someone armchaired their challenge.

Those complaints add up.

If the creator had a little control over the challenge, then it might be better in that it would be made sure that the meaning of the challenge was upheld. It would make it so people on the opposite side of the country or world couldn’t search for an image of the item and do a quick log.

There needs to be some sort of a checks-and-balance system or verification. Until then, anarchy can continue to reign.

The other thing that I’ve found painful is the way to search for challenges. If they aren’t Groundspeak’s worldwide challenges, then you have to put the town’s name in and it doesn’t appear to give you stuff too far from where you search. For example. the Oneonta one is the only one that comes up when I search “Oneonta,” despite the Stamford one being only about 25 miles away.

In geocaching, you can set up queries to search and see. I haven’t seen that on challenges. Also in geocaching, one can pull up a map and see where the caches are. I haven’t been able to do that with challenges. I realize that challenges are also geared toward smart phones (which is another reason it’s silly that all the challenges are linked to geocaching as not everyone has a smart phone) and you can use the app on there, but I haven’t really tried it yet as I haven’t been out of the area far enough to see what it does.

Finally, one thing that irks me is you can’t go to someone’s profile and see what challenges they’ve completed, just how many. I can see all geocaches and benchmarks someone has done, why not what challenges they have completed? What gives on that? It would be a nice thing to see what challenges friends are doing, in case you might want to do them as well. As I said, searching for caches is already hard enough. Now I can’t even check friends challenges to see if there are ones close? Seems like this would have been a no-brainer.

I do still think challenges have a chance and a place in the game. I just believe that if these had been worked on for so long, it wasn’t done with the right thought process. I will hold out hope that things become better with them. If there are some changes to the process, I think it could be a wonderful addition to the geocaching website. But for now, it just seems sloppy and poorly executed.

I hope the challenge change a bit. I really do. And should they change for the better, I’ll have no problem re-visiting this topic and giving it thumbs up. At this point, however, I can’t do it as I just don’t believe it is a good addition at this point.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com. Also, please “Like” HooHaa Blog on Facebook by clicking the button on the right side of the page!

 

Geocaching challenges are here

Today is the day that Groundspeak takes the next step in geocaching.

Over the past week or two, Groundspeak (the owners of geocaching.com) have been sending short videos about challenges, a new game that will work somewhat like virtual geocaches.

A virtual cache is one that doesn’t require an actual container. It takes the geocacher to a spot where a container can’t be placed. Someone then has to do an activity or read and report something to get the smiley. Though some virtuals are grandfathered and remain, new virtuals were ended several years ago.

Since then, many in the caching community have called for the return of them.

Challenges is the answer. Somewhat.

Challenges are supposed to be launched today. The geocaching.com website is scheduled to go down at 2 p.m. Pacific time (5 p.m. Eastern) for the updates. (This was recently changed as it was originally 11 a.m. Pacific). There will also be mobile applications (iPhone, Android and Windows Mobile 7) that are supposed to be released at the same time. (It would appear that this has already been released for the iPhone).

With all that in mind, I’ve done a lot of research. I’ve read a lot of things, listened to the exclusive interview that the Podcacher Podcast had with Groundspeak bigwigs Jeremy Irish and Bryan Roth and watched the videos. I’ll attempt to break things down here for my geocaching readers.

What is a challenge?

A challenge is something that will bring a player somewhere and that person will have to do something to finish the challenge. As of now, there are two types of challenges — a photo challenge (sweet!) and an action challenge. Groundspeak is also working on a third challenge, the discovery challenge.

“You’re basically challenging someone to go somewhere and do something,” Irish told Sonny on the Podcacher midweek micro podcast. “So it’s very broad. Then the idea is the community can take that action or photo challenge … and rate it and give it some kind of value. Is it interesting or not interesting? We’re taking the responsibility from the reviewers and putting it on the community to say ‘what do you thing is interesting to do?'”

The photo challenge will require someone to take a photo at a location.

The action will require someone to do something specific, such as shake hands with a statue.

By bringing this aspect to the game of caching, it throws a lot of things cachers are used to out the door, such as the 520-foot rule. Challenges won’t be under the rules of geocaching because, well, it’s a challenge. So places that were formerly off limits, such as Disney World or a national park, is now open because all you are doing is bringing someone to a spot to complete a challenge.

Said Irish on the official Geocaching blog, Latitude 47:

What are the guidelines for issuing a challenge? Unlike caches, there aren’t any official guidelines. Instead, you can rate challenges with thumbs up or thumbs down, and there are reporting tools available in the case that a challenge is inappropriate or unavailable. We’ll be tweaking these tools and introducing new ones as the activity grows, to ensure that the community can collectively decide what is appropriate, and what isn’t. For example, there is no 520’ guideline and Challenges won’t be blocked from being issued at Disney World, or even a pub.

This is where things get interesting, however.

Reviewers won’t be approving or declining challenges. Users will submit them and they will be out there. The community will have the ability to vote thumbs up or down on what they think of the challenge. Even if you don’t complete the challenge, you can vote. That’s an interesting twist to things.

“We feel like by adding this tool set to geocaching.com website, we’re going to allow people to have more fun with location, being creative and sharing location-based experiences with one another and it should be a lot of fun to see what they come up with,” Roth told Podcacher.

Challenges, too, can be accepted without completing them first.

Basically, the community is now the enforcing part of this. There are ways, however, to get Groundspeak involved. If there is an inappropriate challenge for example, Groundspeak can step in and do what it has to do.

Finally, though people submit the challenges, nobody owns them. In other words, once a challenge is submitted, it becomes public domain of sorts. That way, users can’t go deleting logs of other people etc.

What’s this mean to me?

If you don’t do challenges, nothing.

You can go on playing the geocaching game as if these challenges never existed. They will have their own spot on the website (www.geocaching.com/challenges when it goes live) and will have a separate count for the “smileys.”

That’s something many people will wonder.

According to Irish and Roth on Podcacher, a user profile will show caches found, challenges completed and trackables logged. When people look at logs, it will show a cumulative finds total and will show the breakdown of the cache finds and challenges completed. (I was a little lost here, so it might not show the split unless one hovers over the total number. I’ll have to wait with everyone else until the page goes live to see how it works. But it sounds like it won’t count like a true “smiley,” which I think is a good thing).

“At the end of the day, we’re not changing anything related to geocaching,” Roth said. “You can still geocache in exactly the same way and if people don’t want to participate in challenges, it’s not going to effect your count at all. If they want to look at everybody else in the community and take their find count as a measure of street credibility, they’ll be able to break our specifically how much of it is challenges and how much of it is geocaching. We think that is a good compromise and gives everyone a little of what they want.”

For premium members of the geocaching.com website, this will be good for you as premium members will be the only ones who can submit challenges at first. All users can do challenges, but premium members will be the only ones allowed to submit challenges and only one every 24 hours.

Challenges will be submitted through the website, but eventually will be able to be submitted through the mobile apps. Challenges also won’t be in pocket queries, but Groundspeak is working on a downloadable GPX files (same idea as geocaches) that will be on the challenge site.

My thoughts

It’s interesting.

I personally like that these won’t count as “finds” because with no rules and guidelines, there’s a chance that this becomes an over-saturated situation. In fact, I’ll bet that it becomes over-saturated. Though I might have issues with guidelines sometimes, there’s a reason they are in the game. It’s to make sure things don’t go nuts.

Just look at Waymarking.

In that, you have things like McDonald’s being listed. Is that the way this is going to go? I could see people who want to prove a point posting a lot of silly things. There is the “thumbs up, thumbs down” voting process, but what does that do? Does a certain amount of votes archive a challenge? If not, all it means is that people don’t like something, but it still stays there.

That being said, if it doesn’t come up in normal geocaching searches, then no harm, no foul.

The thing about many of the older virtuals that are grandfathered and still out there is that they are cool. They take you to interesting spots or have you do something neat. Irish told the Podcacher Podcast that they weren’t getting rid of those virtuals. In fact, he said he figured some of those virtuals would also become challenges.

Is that where geocaching should be heading?

I won’t give my personal thumbs up or down until I know more. I am excited to check this out when it goes live and over the next week or so. The reality is that geocaching is growing. But with that growth comes a lot of bad, including with traditional containers. I have seen a lot of newer cachers placing poor caches and then stop playing the game or never go check things. People rush to do a lot of things and don’t always think or get permission to place a cache in certain spots.

At least with challenges, it’s more of photos or actions. That could be fun.

I look forward to trying them. And maybe creating a few (I already have a few ideas). But I’ll save my judgement until I’ve had a chance to see what Groundspeak is rolling out to us.

Feel free to leave a comment, or e-mail P.J. at hoohaablog [at] gmail.com.