No need to drag this post out, the image is pretty self explanatory. What are your thoughts?
Is this a request for a rating system for logs? Like this?
Interesting idea but hard to get accepted. My first though was, to whom this is intented? And secondly a single "like" would be better suited to the whole.
Feature request: "Like" cache log / images etc.
Improve cache quality via log functions?
I'd assume it would more likely target the younger Geocachers, and people that love the more social aspect of the game. I think implementing a system that targets the social crowd could boost interest in Geocaching. Sure it would be a small charge, but everything adds up. And if people didn't like the feature, they could simply just disable it when they create their page.
That's why it's an incredibly bad idea in my view.
Not to mention that it's really, really easy to perceive that other groups of people are picking on you.
True, but it happens on any system which allows you to dislike something.
I can live with likes on logs if people really insist, but disliking simply ends up being destructive inside people's heads - and that's a very bad thing to be encouraging, especially through a simple game.
I'd think if the site thought it was a good thing for its members, it'd happen by now. They have added a "like"-like thing to the forums.
Much as one can't ignore a CO here (but can ignore their caches), rating people over a log I don't feel is a good idea.
It's not a rating, it's a reaction. rating someone is silly, reacting with a smile or a laugh is completely different.
It's not a rating, it's a reaction.
Don't waste any of your time proposing ANY social abilities be introduced into geocaching.
The thing I find funny is that you will hear "play the game like you want, I'll play like I want" all the time here except when it comes to introducing more social features into the cache page.
If you asked the forums, should Facebook even exist, you would get a majority telling you NO.
So make it only positive. It's the unhappy emotions I have more of a problem with - although, of course, people who are more vulnerable might still query why so and so got a smilie but I didn't.
So this just happened Thank you Groundspeak!
Where do you see that? It doesn't appear on the website. Is it (only) in the app?
Good to know. Thanks. It looks like it may have an actual rating system with that "1" in parenthesis.
I don't mean to be the wet blanket, but I think if folks are gonna give praises just because someone finally wrote something in a log, we should be able to have a "Terrible story / unhelpful" when one leaves a "TFTC" log as well. Hopefully that's already on whatever scale there appears to be.
thomfre: could you provide a larger screeshot?
Thank you! I thought it was visible only for users in Norway but it is actually norwegian caches that this new functionality is being tested on.
I like the "Great story" button and would sure use it a lot for nice logs. But how do you guys understand the "Helpful" one?
If a log is helpful in any way, like it tells you where you can park, how to get to GZ or have some tiny hints of some kind, I will click on "Helpful".
One person's "helpful" is another person's "spoiler", though, so I'm a bit in two minds about this aspect of it.
You can choose to not read the logs if you don't want to see potential spoilers.
These two "buttons" haven't changed the logs in any other ways, cache owners can still request that people edit logs they think are too big spoilers.
The new feature looks promising, and if it isn't abused, sorting for most helpful and/or best stories might be something I'm going to like. OTOH, I have read and enjoyed logs for 10+ years now without such a feature, so I won't complain if it doesn't pass the test in Norway.
I clicked on the Great story button to see it would tell me more about it and now the log as a Great story (2) and I could see any way to undo it. I've seen "reaction" buttons on other sites but they allow you to "undo" the reaction. If I add a favorite point to a cache, I can subsequently remove the favorite point. I should be able to undo a reaction.
If you click on your upvote, it will toggle back off.
I hadn't realized this applied to our earthcache, too.
Interesting how logs may now be sorted by best story or most helpful. No one has gone through the logs on our EC to rated any yet, so I haven't seen how it might shake out.
I'm going to give this one a big thumbs down.
When I write a log, it's about what I thought about the cache, the find, the experience. My thoughts.
No matter whether the ratings are positive or negative, I don't want my logs being judged. That's what this is. Judging.
I see it like what CHS did to DNFs. People don't want to post DNFs with the knowledge that the CHS sees them as detrimental to cache health. Yet, the best solution is to continue posting DNFs as we always have for the sake of helping the system improve.
With this rating system, it's not judgement - there's nothing inherently negative about it. There's no active "this is a bad log" option. However, it is easy to, say, believe you made a great log, then look back later and see no one else 'upvoted' your log, and maybe someone else's log you think is mundane somehow did better. The rating system, even though it's a positive reinforcement, can still instill a sense of competition or relative underappreciation... But then, others might just say if you don't care about ratings, then you should care if someone else got positive ratings and yours didn't.
So again, really, if we don't care about the ratings, then ignore them. Keep posting logs as we usually do (even if it's just "TFTC" logs). The logs that people like will be more visible to people who look for those logs. That's really the only difference this makes if we don't place subjective personal value on the results of that rating system.
At best, there will be better logs from people trying to gain ratings. At worst, nothing changes and simplistic unhelpful logs will still get posted, but they won't have the visibility that others will be earning.
At best, there will be better logs from people trying to gain ratings.
That's what concerns me with the "Helpful" category, as the more "helpful" a log is deemed to be, the more likely it'll be a spoiler for those who don't want to be told exactly how to find the cache. Sure, you can just say "don't read the logs" but that's an all-or-nothing solution.
Actually, sorting by "Most helpful" might be a useful tool for CO's to check for spoilers once in a while.
A geocacher friend of mine just suggested this: maybe there could be some visual sign when the cache owner reacted to a log (something meaning "The CO found this log useful" or "The CO liked this story").
With this rating system, it's not judgement - there's nothing inherently negative about it.
It absolutely is judgment. Even if you decide to say something is positive, you are making a judgment. And then Logs become like Forum posts. They are different things, and should remain so.
Logs can already contain spoilers, and COs already have to police logs (if they desire) to remove spoilers, and there's already a disclaimer that logs may contain spoilers. This isn't promoting adding spoilers, this is helping to encourage better logs; and if a CO feels the log content is not a sufficient spoiler to be deleted or edited, then the rest is up to the person reading the logs - at their own discression.
I'd be down with that.
The context was that judgment was a negative - "I'm being judged" is rarely if ever understood as with a positive connotation, so that's the context I was referring to. Of course someone can be 'judging' a log a good one. But no one is directly hurt by a positive rating. If anyone's hurt, it's because they've infused someone else's upvote as a slant against themselves because they didn't get it. Which is why people complaining about the upvotes yet saying they'll never use it is ironic. If you don't use it, it doesn't affect you in the slightest unless you choose to let it, which means it does hold value to you.
I'm just saying, if it's irrelevant to you, then it shouldn't matter if someone else's log gets voted up, regardless of how good or bad yours is. No one is voted down.
This very same concern arose when favourite points were implemented.
I'm game for this or the system being tested out that's mentioned later in the thread. I can already imagine the countless old-timers saying something to the effect of "No way! We don't need this newfangled social-face-tweeting! Now excuse me while I go check my flip phone for T9 text messages!"
As with any update, the most vocal are the minority that resists any change to the status quo. Of course, I'm one of the few that thinks bringing back virtuals in any form was a step backward and a mistake...so who am I to judge, eh?
I stand by my original point.
Logs are intended to be a communication between the finder and the CO & future finders regarding the experience of finding the cache. I never want to write a log with the thought in the back of my mind that this communication will be judged in any way.
Well, if someone judges my logs in the future he will be able to do so positively only. I don't have problems with that.
I stand corrected. You don't want negative or positive judgment. In that case, I have no answer for you. Though I don't know why you wouldn't like someone to say "hey, nice log there" (even if you can ignore the compliment) but okay.
I never want to write a log with the thought in the back of my mind that this communication will be judged in any way.
I don't want you to feel uncomfortable or anything but just to let you know that this is already happening.
Let's say I'm going to find a pretty new cache and I'm looking for some clues in previous logs. Let's say the FTF told he found it while going to a haircut. I could judge his log useful because it could mean that the cache is in the vicinity of a barber.
No if, ands, or buts,,, this is a way of judging someone's log. I don't think we need a like, great, or any other kind of easy to click button for this. If i feel inclined to say i enjoyed reading someone's log, then i will let them know and/or say so in my own log. There's no doubt this will end up having a negative effect with some if a positive reaction never comes their way.
You would think something like this might help to coax people into logging more than just the "found it/ tftc" logs that we see so much of today. With all the phone logging though, i doubt we will see any change. Imo, this would be very similar to cache favorite points that are supposed to be a positive thing. Placing a favorite point on a cache is judging that cache and at the same time, a cache that never gets favorited is being judged. Here again, you would think the favorite point system would help to encourage better cache placement but this hasn't been the case.
And yet favourite points have been and are indeed very useful to many many people. I don't put a loads of weight on favourite points, and most anyone who uses them would say the same, because they're clearly not a guarantee of a "great" cache. But they're informative. Just like these ratings.
As a critique, I'd prefer the Helpful tag over the Great Story tag, since the former is more neutral and certainly helps in situations like a non-responsive CO not responding to requests for clarity, or missing parking/trailhead waypoints, or adjusted coordinates, or comments about temporal changes to the area like construction and whatnot. "Helpful" isn't a synonym for spoiler. Again, it's possible that a log might get upvoted which spoils the cache a bit. If it's too much, the CO would deal with it. If it's iffy, well why are you reading the logs in the first place if you want to avoid spoilers, since those have always existed?
I agree that 'Great Story' is adding another level of social value to cache logs. I disagree that it'll be overly negative to the geocaching community, but have a similar effect to favourite points (love'em or hate'em) - every feature has its lovers and haters. It wouldn't bug me if that one were removed though. But 'Helpful' - that at least has been a suggestion that's been around for years which I'm pleased to see is being tested.
If i feel inclined to say i enjoyed reading someone's log, then i will let them know and/or say so in my own log. There's no doubt this will end up having a negative effect with some if a positive reaction never comes their way.
When we post a Found It, we often had the CO email us, thanking us for the nice or kind log. I thought that was a shame, that just saying something, to them, was a nice log.
- But yet another "point" system, just to say more than TFTC seems odd to me. Positive reinforcement?
I remember the site said "Ignore CO" for searches wasn't gonna happen, as they didn't want to say anything negative about someone.
A line of uplifting, well-meaning logs, saying they enjoyed the area may not see one story "point". I believe that shows as a negative towards them.
But I expect the cut n paste overly-long loggers might now figure a way to get these silly "great story" "points" (when many don't really bother to even read 'em anymore), to combine "great story" totals to their word/length totals on one of the third-party stat sites.
Sweet fancy Moses, don't do that!
This is what I'm worried about too. I like the idea in general with regards to improving log entries but I think it may backfire (like many tools that get twisted for use by the numbers-majority).
There are a few schools of though regarding the purpose of the online log. For some, it's just an obligatory step they have to take to get credit for the find. For others, it's for personal record keeping and they might include the find number, or other information that nobody else would really be interested in. There are also some that see the online log as a place to share their experience, putting their thoughts about the experience as way to share it with the cache owners and other geocachers. Those are the types of logs that I like reading and would likely push the "Great story" button. A lot of geocachers don't read logs at all, and even those that do may choose not to post a reaction at all. Posting a reaction is optional. I don't see how not reacting to a log is judgemental or negative.