Feedback on Geocaching.com removed.
I am not surprised to see this removed, they never really did anything about the feedback they were getting anyway. Yes they were doing some small things and they were re-inventing things that seemed to work alright. I think the biggest let down as of late was the “challenge” caches replacing the return of virtuals, it wasn’t really what a large percentage of geocachers wanted. According to Groundspeak they had over 5000 feedback topics and from what I see they only acted on a very small number of them. Now they want us to use the forums to bring up our requests and feedback, have you even been to the official forums, a waste of time for the most part.
They say they don’t have the manpower or bandwidth to do everything they want and we all probably voted no to a fee increase in the surveys so who really loses? I would be willing to pay a bit more IF they implemented some more improvements and listened to the users more. Now I am not really upset about it, I am happy with the service but I believe many are not. I would like to see improvements on listing caches (the checking of coordinates instantly would be nice) and maybe some more reviewers to speed things up.
Here is their reasons for shutting it down.
What do you think, did you ever use the feedback section?
Many many years ago:
1) we would put a few coords in our gps
Nowadays:
1) we use programs to pick and choose and sort and analyse hundreds of caches, and then put hundreds of them into the gps with one click.
Many many years ago:
2) we would go and find a cache or two using the coords in the gps
Nowadays:
2)We go and find a large number of caches using the info in our gps, including detailed maps and hints and the cache description and the previous logs and the coords.
Many many years ago:
3) we would come back home and locate the cache page online and spend some time writing an original log of our find.
Nowadays:
3) We log our find on our gps with comments and go home and plug the gps in the PC and have all our finds listed automatically. OR we log it at the cache site using our smartphone.
AND we are stilll looking at ways to make it easier
Change and improvements are inevitable and usually for the best, not always though depending on your point of view. I like change and am always finding ways to change or improve things in most things I do. I have a co-worker that hates change and panics every time we get something new at work. In this case I think that most geocachers would like to have some some say in what we pay for whether there is change or no change we need a voice that is actually heard and not brushed aside in a sea of rude or unhelpful post in a forum.
Pa I still cache that way, a few hundred caches in my 5 year old Magellan. I use my phone at times but almost always log at home. Eventually we may be able to just scan a QR code and walk away, that is why I find the Munzee thing way too boring.
For the iPhone app there are suggestions that have been on there and actively voted on since forever that have still not been implemented. Why can’t the app show the user how many total finds they have? It’s so simple. I guess they want to drive traffic to the website.
Oh, check the latest “update” to the app: “Temporarily removed Bing maps from available mapping options due to a new licensing policy introduced by the map provider.” I think I’ll hold off on updating my app now. 🙂
Crap, just installed the update by accident!
I did use the feedback section several times and a few of the items I participated in actually were implemented so I was happy to see them look at the results.
I can tell you that the official forums are a volatile place. However, I will say that it also depends on the topic, and the specific forum. In recent weeks, I’ve been posting to one of their forums for some help with a project and it the help has been great. So I think it depends on what the topic of choice is.
As far as Groundspeak’s reputation of not listening to it’s users, I think because of the volatility of many of the users on the main GSP site, it really doesn’t matter what GSP does, people are going to gripe. It seems that people want to complain and complain no matter what they do.
Am I keen on the new challenges? Not overly, but I do get what they were trying to do. Do I like some of the changes they have done? Yup, I do.
As a final comment, I will say that the removal of the feedback section will hinder me from posting any actual feedback since I prefer to stay away from most of the official forums due to the hostile nature of the posters there. It is unfortunate.
I’ve never been on the forums there but it sounds just like YouTube!
Not quite but close, less vulgar but just as sarcastic.