http://www.opencaching.cz !?!

Dear neighbors,


I'm writing here because I want to inform you about a new development concerning caching:
www.opencaching.com widely since 2003.

The idea of opencaching is not a company providing central data, but several independent servers with independent interfaces (in different states and different languages) sharing the data.

The aim of this listing site is not primarily a competition to geocaching.com (most of the nearly 5000 caches in 10 countries are also listed on gc.com), but to give the users a free access to the data (no login, no fees).
This enables everyone to make their own maps and statistics.

The major advantage of this system is that every community can make their own site (in their own language!) and that caches can have multiple cache descriptions in different languages. If the czech (and maybe alos the slovak) cummunities are interested, I am positive that the organizers of opencaching.de would be very willing to support you.

Just have a look at 0

Rest of message:

Just have a look at www.opencaching.de (no login necessary!).
Hope to see you there soon!

Greetings from Linz & Happy New Year,
BalkanSabranje

Skvela myslenka.

The listing site is of course
www.opencaching.de

Happy New Year BS,
I was looking at oc.com back in 2003 when it first appeared. It looked like a nice idea: a meta listing site, aggregating the cache and log data from other listing sites. At that time, we had gc.com with regular server performance problems and Navicache, which had some popularity in a few regions and some crosslisted listings in the rest of the world.
As expected, GC was not willing to give away the data (honestly, I don't even know if the OC folks tried to work out some agreement) and Navicache also realized that they don't really have a license from their users their users to redistribute the data, so the OC project died for some time. Now it has reappeared as oc.de - great, so now we have gc.com (performance ok in the last year), Navicache (which looks pretty much the same as 3 years ago), TerraCaching (a private club, invite-only membership), gpsgames.org and oc.de.
Should I list my cache on all of these sites to get more audience? I tried listing two of my caches on NC, never got a log there which wouldn't have been a copy of a gc.com log. It doesn't seem to justify the additional maintenance of multiple listing.
Sure, it is cool to have a site which is not subject to amerikanische Rechts- und Moralempfinden... just wondering what is the difference: if you look into OC FAQ and hiding guide, you will find all the stuff you know from gc.com guidelines - "Bitte vergrabe den Cache nicht", "Alkohol, Drogen, Explosivstoffe, Messer" etc. are forbidden here as well, you have to obtain a permission when hiding a cache at Privatgrund, the only thing I am missing is a rule against commercial caches. Doesn't looks like a big cultural clash.
Well, as written by other posters, we already have geocaching.cz with maps and statistics, and the regional sites like gc.cz and gc.de are being tolerated by Groundspeak - so unless there are some drastic steps like Disney buying gc.com and cutting off the access, I don't think there would be much pressure to move.
Haggaeus, your friendly neighborhood censor

Just one months after the first posting in this thread, opencaching.cz went online!

Greetings from Linz & thanks to JohnieZ and all the others for their devotion,
BalkanSabranje

Hurááááá! Včera bylo pozdě.

nejak mi neni jasny, k cemu je to dobry. nemam problem s gc.com. v urcitych vecech muze byt trocha centralizace i k uzitku... ?

So it's totally independent and interactionfree from gc.com? Won't there be a little chaos in logs then?Why should it be chaotic? Just like with navicaching.com, terracaching.com, gpsgames.org etc., all the caches are independant, and the logs are as well.

Ok. I have experience only from Czech and Slovak Republic. Here in CR are most of caches registered only on gc.com (on Navicache there are at the moment 13 caches) so if I want to see all the caches here, I can use only database of gc.com and don't need to search through databases of three independent servers.
In Slovakia they have site, which provides it's own cache database, there was strong movement to register all caches on both - gc.com and gc.sk- in the past, but there are still caches which are on gc.sk and not on gc.com. So when I wanted to do some cachehunt near Nove Zamky, I have discovered that there is no cache. Physically it is - but registered only on gc.sk. Similar situation is in Hungary, maybe worse, because they haven't web pages in any international language and many of their caches are registered only there (with Hungarian description).
When caches are registered on more servers, some logs can be on one, some on another. When I want to read them all, it is more difficult. That's the thing which I meant with words "little chaos".
That doesn't mean that I am against this idea at all. I am only interested how these things are solved, if they are.
I hope it is clear I don't write english everyday :-))
Michal

First of all - Happy New Year to all of you Folks! I am, as the mediocre geocacher, absolutely satisfied with gc.com system and would not support any crumbling of the system that works. I am really not a fan of any separation and I don´t want to see, one day, a number of separate gc sites (e.g. czechcaching, moraviancaching, sileziancaching, west/middle/east slovakcaching, bavariancaching, sachsencaching, oberöesterreichcaching, niederöesterreichcaching, tirollcaching, ..., myprivatecaching, ...), ... a tricky game. ... what´s really behind it? K.I.S.S. !!

Skvela myslenka.

Nesmysl.

Haggaeus, your friendly neighborhood censor

To be exact and explicit: I had NEVER real problem with Haggaeus and thanks him for all his advices. But censorship it is a principal point for me, simply I hate it. And I want to make some "adult" caches - with some bottles of wine for FTF, maybe porno-theme caches and so on. Maybe to drink a glass of wine is a horrible thing for US citizen but Europeans are a little bit robust, at least as I hope.

Happy New Year to you also, Haggeus
it's not about a clash of cultures, but (for me! - and I can't speak for oc.de, of course) it is a lot about little services that have been widely demanded but not provided for non-US cachers by gc.com and that were obviously more or less easy to implement for oc (to name but a few: search by city names, search by postal codes, separated language versions, smaller administrative units ("Länder/Bezirke"), legal data for maps) and more features are said to be worked on (or already finished) by oliver, orotl, carsten77 et al. : statistics, maps etc.

As a cacher, oc is an additional offer for me, not an alternative religion (alternative to gc.com, of course).
The alternative system exists, and it is free to you and your fellow cachers in czech republic, slovakia and all other states to make use of it.
If I understood Igi right, the slovak community (or parts of it) are working on a relaunch of geocaching.sk (with a cache listing system seperated from gc.com); as a foreign cacher I'd be VERY happy to use the same cache listings even without understanding the slovak interface (moreover with the hungarian system, where I understand nothing at all).

Cheers,
BS/2

Hurááááá! Včera bylo pozdě.

But today is better than tomorrow, isn't it?!

nejak mi neni jasny, k cemu je to dobry. nemam problem s gc.com. v urcitych vecech muze byt trocha centralizace i k uzitku... ?

Taky to nechapu, zbytecna duplicita a chaos, free je to i na gc.com, ze se clovek musi prihlasit je vyhoda, ne nevyhoda, spise mi to pripadne, ze si nekdo chce honit triko a stat se slavnym tim, ze taky zalozi gc site.
Jedine, co chybi, je davkove stahovani treba celeho statu, ale to by asi vyrazne zvysilo trafic a jako omezeni je povinny prispevek pro tuto moznost. Prispevky ale zarucuji, ze tento server neskonci na nakladech na provozovani a hosting, ktere se musi urcite nekde platit. Navic my takovy vlastni server uz mame, geocaching.cz :-)
Proc delat veci komplikovane, kdyz jdou delat jednoduse...

Nesmysl.

Proč?

I hope it is clear I don't write english everyday :-))
Michal

It is perfectly clear.

From my very personal point of view, the situation you describe (having to check two or more cache listing sites) CAN not be solved as long as it is a company that "owns" the cache descriptions and not the community or the cache owners.
It is a company's right to make money from their business, and its our right to share our work (caches, descriptions) for free if we wish to do so. I am a paying "member" of Groundspeak myself, but I do not have the impression that my wishes or those of the European caching communities are very well respected or very high on the priority list (that's probably also the reason for singel-state listing-sites like the ones in Slovakia, Hungary and Russia).

If you take the slovaking listing site as an example: By simply restructuring their cache database to a form similar to that of oc.de, they could restart with a slovak language interface PLUS 5000 caches already in the beginning (lots of them very close to Bratislava).

Regards,
BalkanSabranje

I prefer solution similar to RSS and content aggregators - anybody can create any caches at any web place and publish basic data (location, type, description, hint etc.) at simple XML format. Aggregator sites will poll for registered addresses of XML resources and create maps, lists and other stuff. There is the only problem with logging - but it can be solved. Such XML format can be based on RSS with a little extension.

To be exact and explicit: I had NEVER real problem with Haggaeus and thanks him for all his advices. But censorship it is a principal point for me, simply I hate it. And I want to make some "adult" caches - with some bottles of wine for FTF, maybe porno-theme caches and so on. Maybe to drink a glass of wine is a horrible thing for US citizen but Europeans are a little bit robust, at least as I hope.

Jsem si jist, že naprostá většina geocacherů nedělá geocaching kvůli nalezení P-cache nebo lahve vína (na to mám P2P sítě, půjčovny DVD a vinotéky ), ale samozřejmě proti gustu žádný dišputát. Milí geo-Bakuninové, skutečně si založte "open-free-non censored" GC server, zkuste ho spravovat a nalákat lidi na návstěvu takových keší. Ale jak již psal Haggaeus, podobných pokusů bylo více a buďto zkrachovaly rovnou, nebo zanikají na úbytě doteďka.

And I want to make some "adult" caches - with some bottles of wine for FTF, maybe porno-theme caches and so on.

I doubt that a cache with pornographic contents would be allowed or stay listed longer than a few hours on oc.
Alcohol is something different, of course