LonelyCache

mojave_rattler wrote:I have always been a fan of the Owner Find Accolades on the DGP site. I would love to see this once stay with the new site.

Opjim wrote:Ditto. I think the owner should be able to receive points for the hide. Otherwise, I suspect that owners will log finds on their own caches to work around it. Also, it encourages the placement of difficult caches.

JAC0B wrote:

Opjim wrote:Ditto. I think the owner should be able to receive points for the hide. Otherwise, I suspect that owners will log finds on their own caches to work around it. Also, it encourages the placement of difficult caches.

I wouldn't log a find on my own, I'd just walk away from LCP. Geocaching.com is nearly perfect to me, the only things DGP had over it (in my opinion) were leaderboards and credit for hides. Being a big hider it was nice to get a little credit for it. Without credit for hides I would see no reason to visit a geocaching site other than geocaching.com I know it's not "all about me." But that's my two cents.

lpcAdmin wrote:The LonelyCache Project will be dedicated to showcasing lonely geocaches, the geocaching trailblazers that hide them, and those geocachers that seek them out.

AZ WANDERING BEAR wrote:I have been giving this idea some thought since a conversation recently with Corfman Clan at an event. He pointed out that what ever we do has to use the data available on the Groundspeak site. Also has to be something that can be programmable, ie no subjective inputs. Otherwise this gets all cumbersome and not really easily supportable. Makes sense to me.

So I combined his thoughts with some of the conversation regarding points for those who hide caches. We need people to hide caches, otherwise there aren't any to find. Some folks are mostly finders. There are some out there that are mostly hiders. And others do some or a lot of both. There's been contention about hiders of somewhat unfindable (vs truly lonely caches).

When I combined both of the thoughts above and a few cocktails and a sleepless night I arrived at an idea. Leader boards for overall, state and regions be broken into 2 groups -- hiders and finders. The data is there. Totally objective. Provides even more opportunities to see your name on a leader board.

Also, I really liked the idea of seeing who has found the most of a particular hider's caches. Looks like that data could be pulled up for anyone who has hidden lonely caches (how ever that term eventually winds up being defined). I really enjoy pursuing the caches of certain hiders because I know the quality of their work. Hiders might like knowing who is really racking up their hides. And again, another opportunity to see your name on a leader board.

Just middle of the night thoughts about lonely caches and hiders and seekers and numbers and programming.

AZWB

Corfman Clan wrote:

mojave_rattler wrote:I have always been a fan of the Owner Find Accolades on the DGP site. I would love to see this once stay with the new site.

I'm a big fan of that too and have every intention of including it here. In DB parlance, it is a many to many relationship (many hiders to finders and many finders to hiders) and that can be an expensive to DB query to run so we'll have to see how it goes.

Just to be clear to everyone, on the DGP, the Owner Find Accolades was the list that showed who a hider's top finders are. Then on your page, it would show whose caches you were a top finder of.

Owner        Rank  Finder               Points            Finds
Corfman Clan    1  Arizona Ranger Team  825.911024666833     16
Corfman Clan    2  TwoTurtles           462.119101429712     11
Corfman Clan    3  southpawaz           352.299343272894     10
Corfman Clan    4  AZ Wandering Bear    300.063431806227      8
Corfman Clan    5  Subman123            285.219717479712     10

Owner             Rank   Finder        Points           Finds
Cactusart kids       1	Corfman Clan  8593.70496799311   573
Cache-Chaos          1	Corfman Clan  1407.46104763803    24
kira's rangers       1	Corfman Clan  1312.04837707349   100
Arizona Ranger Team  1	Corfman Clan  1218.04834326673    32
AzCaCachers          1	Corfman Clan  1039.95562756112    78

Corfman Clan wrote:We finally got around to looking at this. We added a new table to the database to track it and have created the queries to populate the table. They run in a perfectly reasonable amount of time too, so that is good.
...
Now we just need to add it to the geocacher page

rocketsciguy wrote:Because I always have a follow-up question... what criteria or logic do you plan on using to keep these stats meaningful? For example, with a cacher with just one hide, everybody who has found that cache is the Top Finder of that person's hides. If it's an urban hide, say 4 yrs old and in a very secure spot, it may have 200 finders and be worth 2 ₧, and 200 people would be the Top Finder of that person's cache(s) and having that list seems unnecessary. But if it's ammo can placed by a BSA troop (using a throwaway username) during a high adventure camp and is worth 100 ₧, it might not seem too unreasonable to list the 4 finders as the Top Finders. I dunno? Just wondering what ideas you had, if you know what DGPAdmin did, or what ideas everyone else has.

• First we sort by points. Finder's with more points are ranked higher.
• If the point total is the same for two or more finders, then they are sorted by who found the hider's caches first. Earlier finders are ranked before later finders. Finders that made the last find on the same date are ranked the same.

Hider     Rank  Finder               Points          Finds  Last Find Date
TwoTurtles   1  Arizona Ranger Team  66.9562191759463    3  2008-07-04
TwoTurtles   2  cavecreaker_50       66.9562191759463    3  2008-08-17
TwoTurtles   3  southpawaz           66.9562191759463    3  2008-11-10
TwoTurtles   4  Corfman Clan         66.9562191759463    3  2008-11-15
TwoTurtles   5  wogunhiker           66.9562191759463    3  2009-02-22
TwoTurtles   6  ande2705             66.9562191759463    3  2009-08-01
TwoTurtles   6  dragnwagn8           66.9562191759463    3  2009-08-01
TwoTurtles   8  azK9Krew             66.9562191759463    3  2010-08-06
TwoTurtles   9  chrisjan             37.176826768254     2  2008-01-09
TwoTurtles  10  AZ Wandering Bear    37.176826768254     2  2008-04-16

Corfman Clan wrote:I was sure that there was a thread in the DGP forums that covered the algorithm the DGP used. If there is, I wasn't able to find it.

dgpadmin wrote:

Corfman Clan wrote:For the top hiders finds. Would it be easy to rank tied finders the same? For example if three finders have found all of a hider's caches, only one is ranked #1, another #2, and another #3. Perhaps all should be ranked #1 and the next, #4.

I checked the code and here is how finders are ranked for this stat:

First by total CPs. Where there is a tie, it is broken by find count. Where both CPs and find count are the same, tie is broken by which cacher got to that CP/Count level first (by checking latest log date). If all of that is tied, then cachers are really tied, meaning there could be 3 #1's and then a #4.

So if finders 1, 2 and 3 all have the same CPs and find count, they are ordered by who got to that level first. If you are talking about a case where the top three have found all of a hiders caches, then in order to move up from 3rd to 1st, you'd have to go and be the first finder in the group to find the next cache placed by the hider who's cache finders are being ranked.