opencaching.com

CoyoteRed · Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 220

I'm ready to move forward with my site, but I want to include the META info to be included in the opensource.

Namespace? GEOCACHE.whatever? Or should we use and expand on the GEO tag?

Things to be included:

Cache name
Cache ID
Cache waypoint
Location/coords
Location/state, country #for ease of searching via Google
Owner
Owner base URL #Home page URL from which all of there caches can be found
Cache type #Expanded list to be discussed seperately
Cache size #ditto
Difficulty
Terrain
Date placed

Those are the basics.

Optionally, we could have:

Date last confirmed/checked/logged
URL of GPX file this cache is included in # needed until the tools are in place.
Last edited
Short discription
Long discription
Hints

The last three could make the cache discription complete (if I haven't left anything out) and could be crawled by a spider to create a GPX file. Also, the list could be used by a program like Spinner to draw the freshest content directly from the cache page. Plus, with the discriptions in the META, the rest of the page is free to do whatever you please.

Can you tell I like Spinner? The reason I keep bringing up Spinner is because it can give the nearest caches from a cache and lists of nearest cache from a point via reflocations. You then upload to PDA and off you go. With this scheme, you don't have to wait on your PQ, just have it run in the morning and it'll be waiting for you.

I'd like to see a working scheme decided on ASAP.

CR

CoyoteRed · Joined: 18 Sep 2003 Posts: 220

You what, forget "Short Discription" and "Long Discription." Call it "Blurb" and "Discription."

Short and Long is probably not being used at GC.com as it was first intended. Short Discription was probably conceptually meant to be included in the cache list much like the listings on Google has a short discription.

By going with Blurb instead it would lessen confusion. Letting people know that the Blurb will be included in any search results, they 'll know what they need to put in there. i.e. not title graphics and such for what it's used for now.

Though GC.com has long ago reached a point that it would hard the make people conform to that standard, they could. It would mean listing anything outside any HTML tags in the short discription and putting within search result.

I really like the idea of short discriptions in the result list because it will tell me more about the cache without me actually having to go to the cache page. If I'm on a slow connection or the server where the cache page is hosted is slow, it'd be a real help.

I'd much rather see, "Nice hike in a local county park along a river" than nothing at all.

CR

hmarq · Site Admin Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 351

Let's be realistic here --

I don't think we're going to get a final standard metadata format hashed out this morning so you can code this afternoon and weekend Smile

I'd really like to see some input from the group/world ...

That said, what you suggest is a fine start, I was thinking a bit less, but if there is extra stuff in the metadata, it can be ignored, stored or both.

First I think there should be an identifiable namespace designation for geocaching stuff -- I think the geourl are using META="geo.attribute" varying 'attribute' as needed. I actually like that ... geo is only 3 characters, which is bandwidth friendly (it could be 2, but the logical gc usage folks would complain about).

attributes would obviously need to be lat, long, url to be completely minimalist, but as I'd really like enough info to search on with the listing server. So I'd add, terrain rating, difficulty, title, short description, country and state. Original waypoint if you want it, but in the case of these offsite ones, url serves the same purpose.

If you want to use the other items in your list, that's fine, the beauty is that spiders that don't recognized the extended format can ignore the other attributes.

hmarq · Site Admin Joined: 15 Sep 2003 Posts: 351

Oh yeah, I thought of a couple

Date changed: so that spiders can do a quick date compare and blow past pages that haven't been updated.

status: so that archived pages can still exist but be screened out of searches.