Are you sad to see the end of PGC points?

Question

I have created checker scripts and tags for a few years.... a bonus was getting a nice shiny PGC badge. Diamond status required a dedication to creating scripts/tags, that's for sure!

The PGC Points page says it is now obsolete.... due to various issues.  Of course I understand that the system was difficult/controversial/open to cheaters, then it makes sense to close it, but it does make me a little sad.

More a sad *sigh* than a question..... just wondering if anyone else feels the same way?

Answer 1

I was expecting a reset but not the extreme of rendering the PGC badge system obsolete.  For me, it was an incentive to learn how to use the tools provided and help others understand what I had learned but it is now gone.  I do not believe it was a good decision to drop it completely.  Hopefully, something will be implemented that can take its place.

Change is always difficult to adjust to and, if I've learned anything from 2020, change is a necessary element to help improve a system.  The BadgeGen update was a great addition but the elimination of the checker points was unexpected and disappointing.  Now, the PGC points is obsolete adding to my disappointment.

Comments

I appreciate being chosen for best answer although it was totally unexpected.  Thank you for that.

I have noticed that eliminating the PGC points has caused most participants to drop away from this Q & A.  Now, only a few participate.  The upside is it helps eliminate non-relevant and downright unhelpful answers whereas the downside is that people will be waiting longer to get an answer or worse, may not get one at all.

Answer 2

For me, the benefits of Project-GC are absolutely paramount.
The really great tools of the site are the reason why I use PGC.

The support system also works well, hopefully without PGC points.

Instigating interaction by awarding points and batches is not purposeful in my opinion.
I can imagine that the active and helpful participation of the users can and will be achieved differently.

For me, the shutdown is understandable and comprehensible.
I wish the smart and diligent minds behind Project-GC.com continued success.

At this point I would also like to say thank you for the work done so far.
THANK YOU

Answer 3

The "badges" from last years are still present in the profile stats. I believe that this is more important that the past contributions are not forgotten. Hopefully we will see some other way to reward active contributors in PGC in the future, maybe in a way that will better reflect who contributed where and how more openly, rather than a summary of one number throughout a year.

Answer 4

No, not really, here's why: it was based on everyone else's usage vs just my own.

Earlier this year, I saw blue for the first time & thought, "Wow, that's cool, I've never seen blue before!" And through some of the projects I was working on, it managed to get to green. I was so excited.

That's where the novelty & fun ended for me. I was just barely hovering at the green level right around the #240-250 mark **for the rest of the year. No matter how active I was on the site, there was always someone who was more active the next day & bumped me right back down to blue (I dropped quite a few #s the week I caught a cold & needed to sleep all day).  It was irritating that I couldn't keep my own, individual level based on a set activity point number reached for the year (instead of based on everyone else's usage, that part sucked).

I literally only came in this morning on Jan 1, 2021 to see if I lost that green on the very last day of the year, or if I miraculously managed to keep it. I did keep green, YAY! I vouched never to attempt to reach green again because it was such a negative experience for me. I only wanted to use the page for specific things, not just clicking around aimlessly looking at the same stats I looked at the day before, so for me, holding that position was not easy.

I would like to see the badges work more like the gems in geocaching, where using PGC once or getting the minimum # of points gives you bronze, x number of points gives you silver, and so on (ie: x number of points sapphire, x number diamond). That way there is a challenging but still reasonable goal to reach. Then once you get it, YOU KEEP IT. It doesn't ever drop to a lower gem, it only goes higher. Getting bumped down by the folks who were in the tier above me on a regular basis was frustrating as heck! So unless this comes back as a standardized, "reach x points for ruby badge" system, I say good riddance.

Comments

So, basically you advocate eliminating the competitive element where your badge is dependent on others participation?  Perhaps that is what will be implemented and I can see the advantages.  It would also help to minimize "farming" points in order to gain a higher badge level.  Farming points really annoyed me on the Q & A.

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Yes, exactly, TigreToot.

I could see how "farming" would've been part of the problem. By how quickly my status would change day to day, something seemed "off." I may've even reached diamond level through sheer amount of natural PGC usage this year had it not been on that competitive scale. I personally was trying to strike a balance between wanting to get the emerald badge & actually using the tools (rather than just doofing around using up resources & causing unnecessary extra traffic). This individual badge might be an option that could eliminate a good portion of the problems the old system caused.

Thinking this out: so, let's say a person does whatever it is to get their diamond badge. If the player did it by farming, aimless wandering, etc, they'd probably stop doing so as soon as they got the highest badge, leaving those who really need/want to use your tools behind with less people in their way pointlessly bogging down the site. Maybe if you want to encourage a longer streak of activity, perhaps some of the points could have to do with number of days in the year they visited or something similar. No matter what system you use, there will be folks who will use it in a manner it wasn't really meant to be used, but you can manage where that activity manifests itself.

Anyway, those are my thoughts.

Answer 5

Ich habe die PCG Punkte auch sehr gemocht, schade.
Vielleicht gibt es ja bald eine andere Möglichkeit, wäre toll.

I also really liked the PCG points, too bad.
Maybe there will be another possibility soon, it would be great.

Answer 6

For me PGC Points was a motivation for using PGC more intensively.

E.g. Batch Discovery of Coin-Collections that I had in the fingers on Mega/Giga Events. Now without getting this small icon with points I'll think going to use other Trackable-Discovery Tools / Apps.

I'm also wondering how >70 Points are possible on Jan 1st.

Answer 7

No, I'm not sad. It started out as a way to reward those who contributed value to the site - but it turned into a points contest, a sad race for people to "answer" questions they didn't understand with unhelpful information, because they got points for an "answer," no matter how useless it might be.

As long as we're getting rid of things that have backfired, perhaps we can stop tracking log length as a badge or statistic, and perhaps then people can actually just log things about the cache they just logged instead of copying and pasting their life story, their geocaching career, and their yearly, monthly, and daily goals, or better yet, ASCII art, and then perhaps tacking a sentence fragment about the cache they just logged at the end.

Comments

I agree with your statements about unhelpful answers that actually did nothing or, even worse, provided incorrect information.  My biggest pet-peeve was those who were farming points.  In this thread an obvious point farmer answered it 8 times instead of editing their original answer https://project-gc.com/qa/?qa=21906/will-2020-what-your-plans-goals-celebrate-years-geocaching&start=0#a_list_title.  Perhaps a better solution would be to drop the  Q & A category from the PGC points.

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The above link shocked me.... I totally agree with the sentiment.  My opinion is that creating checkers is often (but not always) harder than simply 'answering' a question, and I agree that dropping the Q&A from the points would have been a better solution, it is obviously utterly self serving....and who am I to judge?

From what I could see, most questions could answer themselves if people actually used the site for 5 minutes longer or did their own very shallow investigation.  The site rewarded laziness as it incentivized others to insta-answer lazy questions to get points.  Those checkers however don't make themselves!

Anyway, I choose THIS comment from TigreToot' as the correct answer!

Answer 8

I liked the PGC points.

But the site says: It's obsolete.

But points are still counted and there is already someone with >500 points. The 2nd and following are 77 PGC points.

So - is the site down or are points still counted ?

Comments

How can people be on ~77 allready? I understand in the mid 40's, but almost 80? And 500+, how the..

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Probably donations.

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You get basic points for:
* Subscription
* Validated email address
* PGC notifiers
* Active membership

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PGCPoints is in the process of being removed.