geocaching.com site update

[Kiwi Moose]

I think your reasoning is a little sus Gav as I can still look at anyone's profile and see what days they did what cache. I'd have thought that if privacy and cacher stalking was the reason then that page would have been the first to get "fudged". I suppose we can wait and see what the real reason behind it was but I'm not holding my breathe. I haven't tried a GPX (or API update) to see if the log dates come down properly (which makes the privacy issue much less moot.).

From a programming view, perhaps the processing power / algorithm to convert each date on each log into the user selected date format / timezone was killing the server? Much easier to take a rough "About 2 days ago" than to do the work for each log.

Edit to add that it will also kill the AddLog macro for GSAK which relied on scraping the web page for the info it needs. But then again, they have an API for that now.

[rediguana]

They're won't roll it out all at once - it'll be a little change at a time. I expect that the public list of a cachers logs will also disappear in due course, unless a cacher chooses to make it public. That has already been raised in feedback.

I would expect that a cache owner will have rights to see full details, it will be third parties that will generally not see the full detail. Unless the logger chooses to make the log public.

The date formatting does seem a little weird given that they've put a fair bit of effort recently into providing flexible date formats. Of course the date change could have been entirely cause as a result of the AddLog macro

API access will of course be limited to Premium members I guess, meaning that there is a higher barrier to entry.

Going to be interesting to see where this goes!

[Phoenix NZ]

Some interesting reading (of not particularly happy cachers!) in this thread:

http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index. ... 80337&st=0

Plenty of requests to change the date back seem to have been heeded:

OpinioNate (Groundspeak Lackey):
OK I'm pursuaded to return the date to the log. I'm not sure yet if this will be in addition to or in place of the timeago display. Thanks for that feedback guys.

No mention of it's implementation being due to privacy concerns.

[rediguana]

Heh, its amusing seeing the level of 'interest' in getting the log dates back. A bit overkill though some people asking for times to be included as well...

[GSVNoFixedAbode]

I'll certainly be glad to see the dates back; wearing a different hat, the actual date gets to be important in follow-ups!

[Hurricane Luke]

Thought I'd just add my voice... If you don't like the avatars and the badges (that is, "Premium Member") appearing in the logs, if you are using Firefox (and I believe, Google Chrome), you can download an extension called AdBlock Plus. Run and install it, and then go into "Tools > AdBlock Plus Prefs" and paste these rules into the filters:

Code: Select all

geocaching.com#p(class^=logOwnerBadge)
geocaching.com#p(class^=logOwnerAvatar)


and then click "Add Filters" and "Apply". This will hide them from view. It won't save the space that is taken up by the avatars, and I'm not entirely sure it saves any bandwidth (as I'd say the avatars are still downloaded - just not displayed, i.e. like a jQuery script...), but it certainly declutters the page a heck of a lot.

As for those of you who (continue) to use Internet Explorer , The only way I can think of removing the avatars would be to upload your own custom CSS stylesheet - with the above rules edited out.

Cheers,
Luke.