Favorites... They've Been Here Awhile

It's the holidays and I have a small bit of time to be a numbers geek. We have gathered a lot of favorite points from our finds and long ago figured out that a bookmark list naming 1 out of every 20-25 finds was a good ratio for us. We have given a lot of favorite votes and have a lot never awarded. Favorites have now been out for a while so I thought I would play a bit. I started by looking at the numbers for our caches. Our top five caches with the most favorite votes are:

AGT-Warren-Irvine at Night 33 Favorites

Bang, Bang! Snip, Snip! 10 Favorites

AGT-Warren-Blueberry Fields Forever 7 Favorites

Don't Be Takin' Me Lucky Stones 6 Favorites

AGT-Warren-Warren & Tidioute Railway Company 6 Favorites

Okay, so our caches aren't going to win to many favorite contests. Still, 33 favorite votes for the night cache visited by a lot of GeoWoodstock attendees is pretty nice. For the percentages of favorites, our top five looked like this:

Arboretum Stroll 30% Favorites

Waymarking Bingo Challenge 30% Favorites

Don't Be Takin' Me Lucky Stones 25% Favorites

Here, There, and Beyond 24% Favorites

Set Plan, Rogue! 17% Favorites

What does any of this mean? It really seems to say our caches don't get visited too often, but cachers that do visit them seem to like them.

As a comparison, I looked at caches we've found to see which have the greatest votes and which have the higest percentages. The top five favorite vote getters are:

Original Stash Tribute Plaque 983 Favorites

Groundspeak Headquarters 827 Favorites

Mission 9: Tunnel of Light 760 Favorites

Un-Original Stash 291 Favorites

The Iron Horse Express 227 Favorites

The highest favorite percents of caches we found are a little different.

The Spot 35% Favorite (195 Favorite Votes)

Mission 9: Tunnel of Light 34% Favorites (760 Favorite Votes)

Auto Art 32% Favorites (115 Favorite Votes)

Groundspeak Headquarters 27% Favorites (827 Favorite Votes)

Octopus Garden 20% Favorites (110 Favorite Votes)

Stone Wall Stash 20% Favorites (74 Favorite Votes)

Excalibur 19% Favorites (83 Favorite Votes)

ancient lake 19% Favorites (72 Favorite Votes)

State Game Lands #109 17% Favorites (105 Favorite Votes)

So based on this sample, how can your cache become a big winner in the favorite votes?

Be located in Washington or Oregon near the Triad.
Be near a GeoWoodstock.
Be near a mega, even better if it is a recurring mega.
Be an old cache.
Be a traditional hide - one mystery and one virtual made this really short list.
(Groundspeak Headquarters doesn't count - its not really a puzzle.)
Don't require special equipment like a boat.

The one odd cache on the list above is Excalibur. It wasn't a really old cache (2006). It wasn't really close to any mega events, but it was really popular. The Spot is almost an exception too, but it was a destination for many GeoWoodstock IX visitors. Our list is missing one other cache doesn't really fit the above suggestions. The Thousand Steps Cache is one we haven't visited. It has 140 votes and a 29% favorite rating which puts it in the same ball park as The Spot being a tough terrain cache that hasn't had a huge bump from nearby megas. It is a fairly old cache having been published in 2002.

I must admit surprise at some of the things which didn't guarantee big favorite numbers. I expected virtuals and earthcaches would have big followings. They seem to pull a consistent level of favorite votes, but not as much as I expected. The lone exception is Auto Art which gets the nod for being near a Geowoodstock.

One thing is certain. There aren't many popular caches with favorite percents in the teens and above. If you see a cache with more than 15% favorites, it has really won over other cachers. We really enjoy the favorites feature and will continue to use it.

More than anything, this post says sunset is near five every evening, and it's too cold to go caching. ;-) Happy New Year. May your caches get favorite votes and may you find caches you want to favorite.

Geocaching Poll Results

The poll results are back. Sixty-one people participated (Thank You).

Most poll participants like:
1,000 Cache Pocket Queries.
Being Able to Run My Finds Every Three Days Instead of Seven.
Voting for Favorites.
Downloading Pocket Queries Instead of Receiving E-mail Attachments.
The New Stats Page.

Poll participants weren't so excited about:
The Beta Map.
The New Look of the Forums.
Souvenirs.

While 1,000 cache pocket queries carried the highest percentage of positive responses, the new favorites system gathered the most support (28%) as the new feature most liked. Interestingly, 5% of the responses also marked the favorites system as the new feature least liked.

There were no real negative results. The response to souvenirs seems to be indifferent at the moment. The forums have a base of geocachers who don't use them which was reflected by one quarter of all the responses. The Beta Map was rated positively by only 53% of the responses, but looks like it could be a big winner if a cacher's finds could be filtered.

This was fun. It certainly wasn't scientific. I enjoyed stopping back to see the voting progress. Again, thanks to all who participated.

Nice Enhancement to Geocaching.com's Favorites

For those of you who use Greasemonkey Scripts, Lil Devil has a super Script to add on which will calculate the percentage of finders who have marked a cache as favorite. The image above is for a nice multi we found yesterday in Lake Metroparks. Note, it has "only" two favorite votes. Since it has only been found thirteen times that means 15.4% of the finders have checked this one as a favorite. It's a second way to look at the new favorites votes.

New Poll - Ten Questions About Geocaching.com

I think we as cachers have much to be thankful for this holiday season. As our wonderful game celebrated 10 Years of finding Tupperware in the Woods, Groundspeak did many, many things this year to freshen the site and add new features. I have been really pleased with the changes, but was most happy to have pocket queries grow to 1,000 with the chance to save time in my day by downloading them rather than opening single e-mails and by being given the chance to show other cachers which caches we have visited and think are special with the favorites option. I was a little surprised on a local forum to see someone characterize these changes with the words "makes the game feel cheap & juvenile". It made me pause and wonder, is this person right? I don't believe so, but I'd like to know what you think. Please take a few moments and answer the poll questions below. Constructive, even critical, comments are always welcome, but hey this is my blog and I am a Wizard so I know how to say "avada kedavra" if anyone gets nasty.