Talk:Event

Where are Block Parties?

I'm missing the Groundspeak Block Party from this year in the list of geocache to be Events.
It's listed as a former name, but it ain't. Sänger (5839154) (talk) 15:12, 1 August 2025 (CEST)

If I look at my stats at groundspeak, I see the following items without a found for me:

• Geocaching HQ Celebration
• Groundspeak HQ
• Project APE Cache

The first two are probably that what's called Geocaching HQ Celebration (formerly Groundspeak Lost and Found Celebration) and Geocaching HQ Block Party (formerly Groundspeak Block Party) on the other side here. APE seems to be some very old stuff, that nearly is extinct now.

So the new Groundspeak Block Party is something omitted from the events on the badges and this wiki. Sänger (5839154) (talk) 13:00, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Now the year with Groundspeak Block Parties is done, and they still are not counted for any badge, ad are not mentioned on the front side here. I won't insert them there, as I don't have the faintest clue why they are omitted from lots of stats here and treated as second class events. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(Talk) 12:04, 25 March 2026 (UTC)

As no-one seems to want to answer, I'll ping those who have up to now edited on this page: user:212719, user:4523550, user:6278087, user:3305483. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(Talk) 06:24, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

I don't understand the question to be honest. In fact, I would say that there is no question mark in the content you have written. You say that Groundspeak Block Party isn't listed on this wiki page, but it is, and you say that as well. It is listed as Geocaching HQ Block Party (formerly Groundspeak Block Party), where the first part is what it's named at Geocaching.com after they renamed it, and the second part is the old name, that Project-GC still uses. It's also counted as an event in every statistic that Project-GC uses. The list on this wiki page is a copy from a list in Project-GC's code. It doesn't have its own badge, but it is an addon to The Geocacher (documented at BadgeGen#Addons). 'Groundspeak HQ' is GCK25B, a unique type for that single geocache, and it's not an event. If you have a question, please ask it. But if it's a general question that's not related to this wiki article alone it's probably better to contact Project-GC's support, or ask in the variety of support channels. magma1447 (3305483) (talk)

It's been asked several times in the forum as well, in one of my questions I explain the problem imho quite good: Inconsistencies in the counting of events. Thus BP are not counted as events for any badge, they are just ordinary caches, a wee bit like locationless. The question arose again in January this year, where pinkunicorn promised, that they will be included later, whatever later means, as nothing has happened since. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(Talk) 08:41, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

I still don't know what the question is. Your QA post makes plenty of statements, some are true, some are not. For example "BP are not counted at all as events, neither ordinary nor, as they should, as Mega" is an opinion, not a fact. The Mega Event badge counts Mega events, nothing else, and probably shouldn't count anything else. At least not as its designed and documented. The badges have their rules, and follow the rules they were designed with. There is still no question however, so it's hard to answer your posts. Later probably means later. I know there is an issue and "ongoing" discussion about the geocache types. It's not an abandoned topic, but we have the resources that we have and we use the as we see fit. Your QA post is even mentioned in that thread, so it's one of the sources to the topic. We have a six digit number of users, every user wants to prioritize something. You have your thing, others have other things. We have to way the need vs amount of work, every single day. I will bump our internal discussion. magma1447 (3305483) (talk)

There is a huge discrepancy between the treatment of CCE and BP, both some special event types that come only in certain years. All of them are accounted for on the events page in the stats. On the badges page only CCE are accounted for as events, and included in the badge for ordinary events (for me that's currently 281 + 31 = 312), BP are not accounted for as any event at all, neither Mega (I've got 7 on both pages), nor Giga (just one for me on both) nor ordinary events (that's just the 312 fron CCE + ordinary). I've attended 8 BP last year, and they appear only in the count for Geocaches, the all-inclusive-badge only without Lab-Caches. Thre they got as well an add-on, but that's it. For CCE I got an add-on as an event host as well, but lavette96 doesn't have one for a BP, just for CCE, Mega ans Cito.

So CCE are treated as events for the badges, while BP are not treated as events for the badges, no event at all, and that's something very inconsistent and for me not explainable. At least nobody has given any meaningful explanation yet. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(Talk)

The explaination is simple. There were no Block Party events for 15 years. Initially they were not included at all. CCE became included upon popular demand. They were a lot more common than BP and therefore got more attention and the need to prioritize them was higher. And the decision+solution was also simpler. Another reason to not handling this the last year is that all of Profile stats have been rewritten from scratch. This is a task that we did not want to mix into that work. But foremost, we haven't agreed on the proper solution internally. There are many paths to choose from, none of them ideal.

OK, that's a good explanation, why nothing was done up to now. Why wasn't it given in any of the posts in the forum?

There it's still either dismissive or misleading imho. And what are the many paths? I can only come up with two to three possibilities:

1. Treat them the same way as CCE and include them in Mega.
2. Invent a new badge just for BP.
3. Treat them as ordinary events.

I don't think #3 is something, that would be fitting. I'd use #1, as it's very consistent within the badges system. #3 will probably be a wee bit over the top for those seldom occurring types. Grüße vom Sänger ♫ ^(Talk) 09:50, 29 March 2026 (UTC)

I think this has already been partly answered. We have the resources we have. Your QA post has an ID higher than 30,000. We have named the forum you refer to "Community support", it's primarily a forum between our users. We do weigh in at times, but we have not answered the over 30,000 threads that there are. If we did, we would do nothing else. And this is just one of many support channels. Not the least, since every answer leads to a new question. This thread is a proof of that. If we have nothing to say, then there is nothing to say, especially not on something that doesn't include a question. As you mentioned yourself, there were similar threads, which had hints of what's happening, as you wrote, pinkunicorn had said that it was being looked into.

Regarding the various paths - Since you prefer your option 1, why would a Block party event with over 2000 attendees count as a Mega event? Such as GCAJ960 or GC5G4X5. The Mega Social Cache is about finding/logging/attending events of the type 'Mega'.

Leave as is is also a perfect valid option, even if I understand you wouldn't like it. BadgeGen is a set of badges, based on rules. The rules of BadgeGen doesn't connect to Project-GC itself, there is no bug there. There isn't really an inconsistency either since there isn't a real connection between the parts. Again, it's a couple of badges which each have their rules in a rule-set. BadgeGen just doesn't grant anything for Block parties (Geocaching HQ Block Party), in the same way as it doesn't reward anything for finding N of Abandoned building. One might think it's a bad design, that's okay. It could also be. But again, this comes from a concept (BadgeGen) that is > 15 years old where none of these events was supported, for good reasons. What happened was that support for CCE was added. And there is yet another option, to just remove the CCE support again. We are just making sure that we choose a direction that we can live with for another 20 years, that's one of the many reasons it takes time. Because that's consistency, at least for me.

With this said, we listen to most input, in one way or another. We appreciate thoughts and ideas. Some of them is made into reality fast, some are not. A lack of response doesn't have to mean that no one read it, or cared for it. In some cases the later of them does though. Some ideas are genuinely bad, some are just close enough to impossible, and in more or less all cases it's a matter of resources (again).

I don't know if you realize it. But it's a very small team behind this site. We handle a six digit number of users and I am the only full-time employee. Besides me most of the extra resources are from volunteers. I hope that explains the amount of resources we have a bit better.