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MnGCA
Minnesota Geocaching Association
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King Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 2347
Location: Exploring Minnesota
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 Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 6:26 am Post subject: geocaching.com PREMIUM membership |
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Why did you join? Why haven't you joined? What is your opinion of "members-only" caches? Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you?
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Joined: 16 Dec 2002
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Moe the Sleaze
Geocacher
Joined: 10 Jan 2003
Posts: 1130
Location: Champlin, MN
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 6:49 am Post subject: |
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It just seemed reasonable to me to help support the web site. Access to "Members Only" caches was also a factor.
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| What is your opinion of "members-only" caches? |
Now that I'm a member, I don't even notice if a cache is "Members Only" or not.
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| Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you? |
YES!
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"Hi, I'm Moe, or as the women know me - Hey! You in the bushes."
-Moe, The Simpsons |
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LanceVE
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 132
Location: Oakdale
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 7:20 am Post subject: Re: geocaching.com PREMIUM membership |
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| kingboreas wrote: |
| Why did you join? |
Because I wanted Pocket Queries and to support the site.
| kingboreas wrote: |
| What is your opinion of "members-only" caches? |
There haven't been enough of them around here to even notice before. But, since I'm a member I don't even really notice which are which.
| kingboreas wrote: |
| Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you? |
 Only if they got thru my pop-up stomper and ad blocker
Franklly, I don't know if you're talking about (1) Ads by gc.com or (2) You're thinking about trying to put ads on your own cache pages.
In the case of (1) I would expect that they would not have ads for paying members.
As for case (2), I believe the first thing I would do would be to forward the GC# in question to the admins and clock the seconds before your account vaporized..... |
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berg0449
Past MnGCA Board
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 63
Location: Maplewood, MN
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 9:06 am Post subject: |
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I want the site to stay around so I wanted to help support it. The queries also was a major factor.
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| What is your opinion of "members-only" caches? |
I do not know if I have visited, but I only notice when the cookie disappears anyway.
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| Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you? |
If I pay for a site and they give me pop-ups, I would say they are making money off me so I would think twice about supporting them again. If they give a pop-up for free account I would say that ok. As for a cache having pop-ups I would probably would not visit any of their caches, but would also forward the issue to the admins. |
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King Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 2347
Location: Exploring Minnesota
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 9:14 am Post subject: clarification |
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I was asking about administrative ads, not personal ones. I'll have a comment on that later.
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King Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 2347
Location: Exploring Minnesota
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 10:32 am Post subject: |
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I believe in supporting sites that I use, especially sites that I use a lot. I'm NOT a "Friend of George" [www.wheresgeorge.com] because I don't need the e-mail, or the graphics space.
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| What is your opinion of "members-only" caches? |
The first ones I looked for were the *Ringbone* value-added caches. I used the designation for my P.I.F. cache # 100:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=37055
and my 150th cache:
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.asp?ID=50430
If anyone wants to know why many of mine have become "members-only" send me an e-mail.
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Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you?
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YES ! I commend Jeremy for not throwing this garbage at us. One of my Field of Dreams caches was altered prior to approval, because links to my son's youth baseball team were 'advertising'. I did not think of them that way, but ...
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LanceVE
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 132
Location: Oakdale
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| Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2003 10:34 am Post subject: |
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Well, GC.com DOES already have a few (Thankfully well placed and unobtrusive) ads already, though only on the main homepage, and then usually only hawking GC.com stuff.
I think that's the thing... Most places that spew banner ads and pop-ups don't keep any kind of real control over the ^%$^ that the advertisers pull with the fake dialog boxes, etc.... Though, it does give me a laugh when I get a fake Windoze error dialog on my Mac.... |
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15Tango
Past MnGCA Chair
Joined: 17 Dec 2002
Posts: 825
Location: St. Paul
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003 5:37 pm Post subject: |
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I joined to help support my addiction and insure that the product will stay available, plus some of the bonus features of being a member helps. I'm in favor of "members only" caches--I had a cache that was "members only" for a while, and it did okay, then I opened it up to everyone and it disappeared within a few weeks--maybe coincidental, maybe not.
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There comes a time in every young boy's life when he gets an irresistible urge to seek buried treasure.--Mark Twain |
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jonsom
Past MnGCA Board
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 73
Location: Mounds View, MN
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| Posted: Fri Jun 06, 2003 9:44 pm Post subject: |
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Why did you join?
To support geocaching.com, and for the additional benefits too.
What is your opinion of "members-only" caches?
I think they are OK, I too had a cache that I started as members only, then opened it up to all. One of my cache's have been stolen.
Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you?
Yes.
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"The world is a dangerous place. Not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein |
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Queen Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 19 May 2003
Posts: 9
Location: Minneapolis
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| Posted: Tue Jun 10, 2003 4:12 pm Post subject: |
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| I'm not sure I'd benefit from the added benefits, but I think I'm going to join, if I ever finish school and have a real job, simply for access to member-only caches. There sure are a lot of them these days. |
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King Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 2347
Location: Exploring Minnesota
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| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2003 5:03 am Post subject: |
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Oh, Queen wanna-be o' mine:
Why would a struggling student even consider that? Get out in the world. Do some of the free ones. Find out what geocaching is all about. You may not even like the sport. Ticks, snakes, mosquitoes - all these will usurp the beauty of my future Queen.
Have we met? Were you at Bunker Hills with Gary? He hated the Sloppy Joes, remember? Maybe that wasn't you. I wish I'd introduced myself.
Maybe you were at Crosby with Hank? There were lots of folks that I didn't get an opportunity to meet. I hope you weren't harassed by the other cruisers.
I bet you were at Como. Mixed groups, easy to blend in, stay anonymous. I'm really intrigued. I hate 'caching alone and could use a partner.
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s4xton
Past MnGCA Board
Joined: 23 Mar 2003
Posts: 1070
Location: Minneapolis, MN
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| Posted: Wed Jun 11, 2003 3:54 pm Post subject: Re: geocaching.com PREMIUM membership |
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| kingboreas wrote: |
| Why haven't you joined? |
I love geocaching, but I do not like geocaching.com. The site, in my opinion, is a hack, and they do not test things very well. For instance, after their latest .NET upgrade, Safari doesn't work with it. This is a bit of a blow to Mac users such as myself.
Also, I would be more willing to donate if they were non-profit, and if I could have a penny of input as to where the money goes.
Additionally, I bet a ton of their money goes to Micro$oft licensing. I will not support that. Reasoning for this, if not obvious, deserves another thread and another forum.
Their site in general is also poorly designed, in my [soapbox!] opinion and could be majorly improved, not only for the end user, but to save on bandwidth and server processing time, which they seem to need quite a bit of, being the site is quite slow.
Also, it could be majorly improved for handhelds for people that use Opera on portable devices (such as the Nokia 3650 and Sony P800) and for other portable device browsers such as AvantGo and the Danger Hiptop browser (which I use for logging from the cache site). The membership includes downloading to a few portable devices, but they don't accomidate to people that have live internet connections, or people outside their platform of preference.
Geocaching.com has created a great community, and IMHO deserves the Webby it got (although Webby's in general are a bit of a joke), but they need someone with some experience with information archetecture and design to work on their site.
To argue with myself, it's commendable that the people that started geocaching.com have been able to continue with development of the site without much improvements from a third party at this point (speaking on assumptions there).
Lastly, there are currently no viable alternatives to geocaching.com. The other 3 or 4 sites that contain cache information are much more "hacks."
| kingboreas wrote: |
| What is your opinion of "members-only" caches? |
I think they are excellent for members, for members. I understand there are a lot of members on the west coast, and being that there are over a thousand caches in Washington, over a thousand in Oregon, and over five thousand in California, it's a good way for hard-core geocaching.com fans (not hard-core Geocachers, but hard-core geocaching.com fans) to enjoy caches amongst themselves. I think that's great. Neat. Just not for me.
What King Boreas is doing is different, although I agree with him that he doesn't have much of an alternative to secure caches that may have a higher chance of being stolen/damged. We work around this. That's fine, and I don't have a better idea.
| kingboreas wrote: |
| Would pop-up ads or flashing banner ads bother you? |
My browser blocks all pop-up ads. So I don't care. It would be stupid, though. It's a tried-and-failed method of marketing, unless you're aiming at the market of people with a low IQ that say, "oh, wow, I can get a wireless camera for $29" when they were trying to log a cache and not care. I'd say the majority if close to all of geocachers that use geocaching.com would not be in this gamut. Most decently intelligent people find pop-up ads to be annoying, and it's hard to market to an audience you've just pissed off. Marketing folks everywhere figured this out a few years ago. The days of Pop-Up ads will be going away, unless you're visiting sleeze/pr0n sites, IMHO.
On the contrary, AOL does cater to the idiot gamut, and I can't imagine them stopping with pop-up ads. AOL profits (well, used to!) from agressive marketing, not quality service, and this has been the case since version 1.5, when what's-her-name in marketing there sold the idea to start sticking disks everywhere on the planet. This extended to pop-up ads (try going to aol.com).
Flashing banner ads are stupid, and would bother me. I'm glad that Groundspeak partners with people like Magellan, that make decent adverts.
I think that the future of advertising on the Internet will start to follow the trends of print advertising in more quality (subjective!) newspapers and magazines, where the difference between content and adverts will blur. Instead of flashing pop-up ads, you'll see a paid advert section where there's an interesting story about "Geocachers from geocaching.com had this interesting [experience to draw in reader] ...using Magellan's new Color Meridian...[...and this was interseting too about their experience]" A sad truth, but once the PR industry starts hitting the web harder, this is the kind of easily-swallowable, dumbingly-interseting PR-driven content that'll start to be used over such things as flashing banner ads.
Um, that was more than two cents, I think.
</soapbox>
-Aaron |
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King Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 2347
Location: Exploring Minnesota
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| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2003 5:14 am Post subject: |
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Franklly, I don't know if you're talking about (1) Ads by gc.com or (2) You're thinking about trying to put ads on your own cache pages.
As for case (2), I believe the first thing I would do would be to forward the GC# in question to the admins and clock the seconds before your account vaporized..... |
http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?ID=72474
Does anyone consider this an advertisement?
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Joined: 16 Dec 2002
arrive...raise heck...leave (SCSA) |
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berg0449
Past MnGCA Board
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 63
Location: Maplewood, MN
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| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2003 8:13 am Post subject: |
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Where is the advertisement  I know it tells about the location but they are not selling anything. I know somepeople will say it is advertising the location, but I would not. I would say they are just telling me background information to get me to come to the cache. |
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King Boreas
Geocacher
Joined: 16 Dec 2002
Posts: 2347
Location: Exploring Minnesota
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| Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2003 9:11 am Post subject: |
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I didn't find any info about admission fees, which I expected.
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