Update Request on Read First

Hi there!

In the Read First thread, there is a statement:
(http://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,13,13#REPLY)

What a checker can not do
* The checkers does not have access to logs from others on the geocaches logged. Therefore a challenge to log a geocaches that hasn't been logged for one year isn't possible. We are however looking into solving this in the near future (June is expected). Details are yet to be determined.

I understand how difficult this is, and was surprised to see it mentioned in the thread. Is there any news on if this is feasible yet? This is a challenge a lot of cachers in my area take part in and it would be great to have an official challenge for it :)

Thanks,
icklelego

I am glad we didn't specify what year. :) But we obviously meant 2016.

This has been down-prioritized due to other important work, including requirements from Geocaching HQ. We got that far that we started a thread here somewhere asking about feedback of what was needed. Since the input wasn't clear enough and everyone wanted different solutions and data it was postponed. The fact that it's irrelevant for new challenges due to the guidelines also weights in.

It's not that it's complex to implement. But it's complex to implement in a way that actually will help all different requirements from all different challenges, and at the same time doesn't take an hour to run.

Thanks for the reply ganja1447 :)

I apologise, I hadn't seen that thread asking for feedback so couldn't weigh in. My thought would be that if Project-GC implemented 1 method, then it would become the standard. There's no need to try and meet every requirement. Like for an FTF, everyone who cares about stats, uses {FTF} in their logs as that is the standard that has been set by P-GC.

Either way, I understand why it has been de-prioritised and I know you all have been very busy trying to improve user experience for the whole community, so thank you! I was very surprised to see that comment on the thread knowing about all the other stuff the team is working to achieve! :)

Thanks for taking the time to respond,
icklelego

No worries. I don't know where the thread is myself, and it might only have been visible to script developers.

As I mentioned, I doubt that a challenge like this can be published with today's guidelines, but I might be wrong. But if it's not allowed, there is no point in "setting the standard", otherwise I do agree with you.

The best solution in my personal opinion would be something like this:
For every found cache by the user, figure out the last find date prior to his/hers. Return all logs (inclusive) between that date and the users found date. Example for user A:

(date, username, logtype)
2016-10-06 B found
2016-10-05 C found
2016-10-05 A found
2016-10-05 D note
2016-10-04 D DNF
2016-10-03 E found
2016-10-03 F found
2016-10-02 G found
Would return the bolded ones.

EDIT: We would however need to look into how fast we can make this, and the memory consumption. Imagine a user with 50000 finds. It could easily become half a million rows returned.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/06/2016 10:44AM by ganja1447. (view changes)

You are correct, it is not allowed now with the new guidelines. Like FTF though (which also isn't allowed as a challenge in the new guidelines), it's one of those stats we all look at and I personally feel that it is a positive way of encouraging people to go get caches that haven't been found for a long time. Keeps the game fresh as they say.

No worries though, you've answered my question. As I said, I was surprised it was specifically called out in the *Read First* and was curious. Might be worth removing that reference if it's not something that will be worked on any time soon. :)

Thanks again,
icklelego