[Az-Geocaching] opencaching.com

[Andrew Ayre]

Well, thats the problem. It's far from perfect I know, but I haven't see
anyone come up with a really practical alternative. If I see one then I will
happily ditch my effort and support the better system. I hoped that someone
like Jeremy (who obviously has a lot of good ideas) would take the code and
work it into something even better. For example, maybe it would be best if
the cache location and style were just removed altogether? I don't know.

If you reduce the items in the list down like you have, what do you take out
and what do you leave in? For example, I see that in your list you have
omitted the single most important thing for my wife - accurate distance to
the cache from the nearest parking. Different things are important to
different people.
Also, since writing it, I've been asked by people to add a surface type of
X, a route obsticle Y, which I have done, but it shows that I thought it was
complete enough when something else doesn't think so. A simple list would
produce a lot more requests I'm sure, and it would end up as a less well
structured big list.

So, to counter the complaint that it spoils the fun (which I agree with to a
degree), I provided the option to encode the text. Now the problem becomes,
how do you decode all that text - what a chore. If you provide an automated
decoding method then you may as well not bother encoding the text in the
first place. Note that you can always generate the text and then chop out
parts you don't want.
An example off the top of my head where I don't think it will spoil the fun
is in puzzle caches. There you can work out the final location of the cache
and even if you have a description of the route, there is a lot of fun in
seeing for yourself if you correctly worked out the right pile of rocks it
is under, even if the text said "under a pile of rocks".

My view is that providing something, anything, is better than nothing, and
that is what I set out to do. I also hoped that by creating something,
anything, it would start a really useful, constructive discussion on the
subject with the aim of creating something better, but unfortunately that
didn't happen and I doubt that it really will. Maybe if more geocachers are
exposed to my current system, there will be more discussion on how to make a
better system? Remember that a lot of geocachers don't read the forums or
this list, so their only exposure might come because someone generated the
guidelines and put them on their cache page.

Regarding your PS, I think that a lot of the discussion on the gc.com forum
with regard to rules turns into a "lawyerish" (is that a word?) discussion
on the fine detail, which becomes the focus of the debate. The same thing
can happen with a tool for handicap accessibility. I think that you have to
be pragmatic and draw the line somewhere. I don't think 100% inclusion is
ever going to be possible, but isn't 80% inclusion better than say 70%?
However, an over-simplifed system might not provide any benefit and most
geocachers might not see the point using it.

Maybe I should just go ahead and create a second, simpler system like you
suggested, advertise it and see if the support is greater than the first
system...

It would be great if the members of this list would give me some guidance on
this issue - I have the ability to write the code. If you prefer to contact
me privately, my address is andy @ britishideas dot com.

Andy


-----Original Message-----
From: az-geocaching-admin@listserv.azgeocaching.com
[mailto:az-geocaching-admin@listserv.azgeocaching.com]On Behalf Of Brian
Cluff
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2003 7:20 PM
To: listserv@azgeocaching.com
Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] opencaching.com


Andrew Ayre wrote:
> Also the guy running opencaching.com has shown an interest in integrating
my
> Handicap Accessibility Guideline Generator into the site. Something that
> geocaching.com appears to have no interest in doing, despite my offer to
> Jeremy of the PHP code for free...

Jeremy might have had a problem with your HGG, for the same reason that
I did.  It's waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too fine grained.  Not only would it take
a significant amount of time to fill it out, but it would squeeze all
the fun out of hiding a cache for cacher.  You would literally need a
clipboard and a large list of things to continually scan for while
hiding the cache to make sure that not a single thing got missed.
Now don't get me wrong, I think it's a wonderful thing to try and
include as many people as possible, but it seems like the amount of
deatil would squeeze the fun out of geocaching for the people that it is
intended for... you need to leave a little something suprise in the end.
I think you would be better off with just boiling the whole thing down
to just a few questions like the ratings rather than breaking down every
little detail, something like:

handicap friendly Parking or Starting Point coords:___
Parking or Starting Point diffuculty: (0-9)
Cache Vicinity terrain: (0-9)
bending required (yes no)
bathrooms nearby (yes no)
cache may be difficult to open (yes no)

The cache location and style section in particular is so detailed as to
make it no fun at all.  I'm suprised there isn't a close up picture of
the cache and cache hiding location from a distance in that section.
You can't cater to everyone, so just make it general and make a
definition of what the different ratings appoximatly mean and leave it
up to the people to decide if they want to go to the cache or not.

Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek

P.S. You did leave out a place to list all plants in the area.  We
wouldn't want to leave out people with severe allergies. :)
There is also no mention of the amount of thorns and other stickers that
might get into a seeing eye dog's feet <grin> :)

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