Later today there will be new attributes released on Geocaching.com. Please keep it secret until they are published at Geocaching.com. We haven't been allowed to announce it until today, otherwise we would have, since it potentially can have been relevant for new Challenges.

There are five new attributes in pipeline. One of them are "Challenge", we have therefore removed our voting system for Challenges. Project-GC will instead depend on this attribute to see if it is a Challenge or not. Our old list, created by votes from our users, has been sent to HQ. They have manually reviewed all items on the list that had both >= 3 up-votes and >= down-votes. The attribute should be added to all existing Challenges.

All new attributes will be realistic to get. Our understanding is that none of them are like the Partnership or GeoTour attributes. One of them seems to be harder than the others.

Additional information might be added to this thread during the day, and/or tomorrow, and maybe even later this week.

There aren't images for the new attributes available yet. Until there is, which hopefully is later today, I will use the Cactus icon, since that attribute is obsolete.

It seems like only four out of the five new attributes will be added today. We have no ETA of the fifth.

The four that will be added today are:

| id | group_id | attribute_name                  | has_no_option | base_filename     |
+----+----------+---------------------------------+---------------+-------------------+
| 69 |        6 | Bonus cache                     |             0 | bonuscache        |
| 70 |        6 | Power trail                     |             0 | powertrail        |
| 71 |        6 | Challenge cache                 |             0 | challengecache    |
| 72 |        6 | Geocaching.com solution checker |             0 | hqsolutionchecker |

We do not know much about the attributes.
* Bonus cache - We know nothing, we can just assume it will not be set on old geocaches, due to the technical difficulty.
* Power trail - We hope that these will be added to at least some trails, but we do not have a clue of HQs plans. If they want it added to existing trails, a helpful tool is a must in our opinion. We do not know if that will exist.
* Challenge cache - Wrote about it above. HQs plan is to add it to all existing Challenges.
* Geocaching.com solution checker - We do not know anything, but we just assume it will be automatically applied, on and off, depending on the checker. They already have the data in their database.

> * Power trail - We hope that these will be added
> to at least some trails, but we do not have a clue
> of HQs plans. If they want it added to existing
> trails, a helpful tool is a must in our
> opinion. We do not know if that will exist.

The release notes (perhaps updated) said:

Quote
HQ Release notes
Power trail attribute
Note to cache owners: As a one-time community service, we offer cache owners the opportunity to email us a list of GC-codes of their currently published & active power trail caches where they would like the attribute added retroactively. Please email a comma-separated list of the GC-codes to us via the Help Center (choose Appeals) by September 30, 2020.

They made it clear this was a one time and limited time offer.

I think the bonus cache ones will be the hardest.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/03/2020 05:38AM by TravelingGeek. (view changes)

Could these attributes please be added to https://project-gc.com/forum/read?7,27 ? I tend to use that list when looking attributes up.

I updated the linked post. I believe the missing attribute 68 is getting closer to be released.

Thanks. It's good to have the info all in one place.

We could also consider moving the data to the Wiki pages where anyone can edit them, and replace Targets sticky post with a post that links relevant Wiki-posts.

Making a first release now. So in case anything is really broken, you know why.

So for those that are still using old school arrays for the attributes... to save you some typing, here's what you need to add:

[69] = "Bonus cache",
[70] = "Power trail",
[71] = "Challenge cache",
[72] = "Geocaching.com solution checker",

[69] = "https://www.geocaching.com/images/attributes/bonuscache-yes.png";,
[70] = "https://www.geocaching.com/images/attributes/powertrail-yes.png";,
[71] = "https://www.geocaching.com/images/attributes/challengecache-yes.png";,
[72] = "https://www.geocaching.com/images/attributes/hqsolutionchecker-yes.png";,
                                                                               ^
                                                                               |
                                                           IGNORE THE SEMICOLONS.
                                                they are being inserted by the fourm software.

Note the -yes on the end of the name that Magma posted.

I'm sure using GetAttributeList() will yield better results, but there is old code out there.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/02/2020 04:45AM by TravelingGeek. (view changes)

The image links above links to images that are 80x80 (.png). The images you probably have in the old list is 30x30 (.gif). For some reason HQ hasn't rendered 30x30 gif images for the new ones. I will inform them of this today. There is a function in the Geocaching Live API to fetch all attributes, that returns image links as well, which doesn't work. :)

Using the png files is solvable by setting width="30" height="30" or style="width:30px;height:30px;"

Good to know on the sizes. Look forward to hearing when HQ updates theirs.

I presume these are not meant to have corresponding negative attributes?

None of the new attributes can be set to negative. Not the next one either from what I know.

Can I suggest a bulk refresh of challenge caches (as calculated the old ways - name and exception list) to pick up the new attribute? The other new attributes would be good too, but (a) they wouldn't have an easy way to detect and (b) I'm not aware of any new challenges being proposed specifically to find several of these.

I've got challenges in the queue just waiting for HQ to run their scripts so people can qualify for my new challenges.

I have refreshed all Challenges (determined in the old ways) in Project-GC manually a few times since the new attribute release, to make sure the attribute ends up in Project-GC faster.

Currently there are 14346 geocaches with the new attribute according to Project-GC. Out of 37157 by Project-GC defined Challenges. I just started yet another refresh, it takes a few hours, also refreshing potential PT-caches and Bonuses.

Personally I am a bit surprised why HQ didn't add the Challenge attribute within 24 hours after the "big release". I have read indications that it should take a month from release date before they run it.

Looks like HQ's Challenge Cache attribute script may have run. I spot checked a few of the local heavy hitters and their attribute count matches the Project-GC profile stats.

I'm really surprised that HQ hasn't been more proactive with the Geocaching.com solution checker attribute. The data must be in one of their databases already. Seems like a simple join to me. But what do I know.

When you send in a list of Power Trails, the response you get says they will be updated in early October.

I concur, HQ must have run their script. A day ago Project-GC had ~20,000 geocaches with the Challenge-attribute. Now there are 37,109.

With this we will release some code that has been waiting for this. Code that uses the attribute to decide if it's a challenge or not.

It did however not take me a long time to find a challenge (or several) that doesn't have the attribute...

Groundspeak has run the script to add the "Geocaching HQ Solution Checker" attributes. Nykkole reported in the release notes thread that it may take a few days for the indexes to be fully updated.

They stated last week that the HQ Solution Checker script was complete... That didn't feel right to me. I found several examples where it didn't and posted to the release notes form on gc.com. HQ said:

Quote
Geocaching HQ
Thanks for reporting this! We have discovered the issue and are working on a fix.

I hope they get that fixed up soon.

I also looked at the power trails.... seems like many power trail cache owners didn't take advantage of HQ's offer to update the attribute for them. Bummer.