Request: sharing vgps to also share corrected coords (optionally)

Question

Hello support,

in the meantime I'm using the share option of VGPS with other PGC-premium cachers to plan common geocaching tours. To make this really a common planning I share with "read/write" option that anyone of the team can add geocaches to the VGPS and this is working very well, generally.

But, when the other team member has solved e.g. a mystery and entered the fixed coords either as overwrite or in his private note correctly, thus PGC can and will evaluate this, this information is not shared in that common cache list.

Please fix this, because otherwise planning e.g. a tour route does not work with VGPS.

Rgds

itsbrody

Comments

What would you like to happen if you are 3 persons with access to the VGPS and everyone has different solutions for it?

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Seems to be easy to solve, because only one of the <n> persons can add a cache to shared list. This is documented by the column "added by".

Guessing that a person, who add a mystery or the like for tourplanning, I'd suggest to use his solution at first.

As a feature request : additionally, if the list owner has also a solution, PGC could compare both and maybe warn on differences.

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So if 5 people has access. The one who added it hasn't solved it. The other 4 have different solutions.

I am just trying to tell you that what you are asking is not very simple. Neither has the VGPS system been built for sharing solutions. In fact I would expect a lot of geocachers to say "everyone should every geocache themselves". Though I personally agree that it is ok to share a solution with a group of geocachers I am out with, and where we log it together.

But on the other hand I seldom feel the need for everyone to have the solution, and I geocache based on the VGPS sharing almost every week. Therefore I also fail to see how it would be impossible to plan tours without sharing solutions, but I guess that depends on how one uses it.

Regardless, we will most likely do something for this in the future though. We already have some concept code for it. It will definitely not be something automatic. I think many users would rage if there solutions was shared automatically just because someone else (or themselves) added the geocache to a VGPS. But our future solution could be something like having these two functions:
* Copy my solutions into user note x where non exists yet.
* Copy solutions from user note x where I do not have a solution myself.

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You'll ever find people, who disagree a solution. But what is the sense of sharing, when the data inside is not correct? Using other tools or exchange channels is - sorry to say that - a NoGo for me and makes this feature less usable.

In my geocaching teams and I have several teams, I'm part of - we share ideas, solution ways and also the solutions. We help together to solve difficult ridles. Other geocaches might live common gecaching in an other way; I for sure know these discussion on some internet groups, I'm on: Not to help until FTF has been logged or not to help, when ... (think about reasons).

> But on the other hand I seldom feel the need for everyone to have the solution

Very easy - you dedice to solve a line of mysteries one by one in a team with the goal to make the outdoor part once all of them are solved. These are in the common list and shared with all team members; any of them provides solutions the general way (private note or overwriting the coords) and the team sees the growth of the solutions. furthermore with the correct data anyone of the team think about, how to arrange the tour. If any of the team members only aware of the own solutions, this is not possible.

The automatism you do not like is the same, I use with my own solutions. If one don't want that, this could be configured (e.g. on that special list, when preparing the "share mode" and maybe by default switched off)

The "copy into xx user note" seems to be a solution, but what do you do, if the the numer of characters do not fit. My solution (in my private note) could have other details I need, besides the calculated coords.

To examine the private note, if they contain such corrected coords, which also works for WiG and any other cache types, and mirroring them into the corrected coords is a great idea, but can be used in some more use cases, I think.

Answer 1

This would be a nice feature, but it needs double-safeguards to prevent the accidental publishing to the world (or to your friends).  I'm working a list of extremely simple offsets (add x to lat and y to lon) and it's simply tedious. It would be nice for all of us in the group to be able to share the updated way points.

I can appreciate the complexity of conflicts and resolution.  Thanks for the consideration of this feature.