Message from Groundspeak

[AR-HICK]

This did not happen to me (my connection lags behind just a few days), but another cacher in the area did receive this message and was KICKED OFF Groundspeak for 15 minutes. TIME-OUT for surfing the web, I still am laughing about this!

Whoa! Slow Down
You've been redirected to this page because the site hamsters noticed you are viewing pages faster than humanly possible. There are several reasons why this may be happening:

* You may have installed an add-in for your browser that is doing things you don't see.
* You are using some automated tools to pull information on the site.
* You have super human abilities.

What You Can Do

* Stop! Have a cup of coffee, glass of water or go out geocaching. We'll let you back in shortly.
* Disable any add-ons to your browser, like Greasemonkey, that may be hitting the site too fast.
* Stop using automated tools to access the site. Like Mos Eisley Cantina, we don't allow droids here.

To the Super Humans

We're jealous! Hopefully you are the hero types and not the villains, but we don't judge. Just don't steal geocaches.

However, if you could be so kind as to slow down your super surfing, it would help our servers respond to other users that don't have super strength, speed, or tight fitting leotards.

I thought this was too funny not to pass it along to everyone. I am sure it is not a joke, lets say very reliable sources and after the day I have had I can believe anything.
Has anyone ever heard of this?
Has it happened to you?

[arkfiremedic]

Hasn't happened to me and I use GreaseMonkey. I have had trouble with gc.com with pq's and such, maybe this was the problem?

[Nukeworker]

It happened to us last night. After about 15 minutes it allowed us back on.

[astrodav]

LOL .... just had it to happen to me. This is something new I think, since I was doing nothing different than I have in the past. I was consulting a map, plotting out old cemetaries, & the map went blank. This has happened to me several times & it's always an unrecoverable error. I have to reload the main GC.com site, then navigate back to the map I was on.

I tried doing that this time & got the Hamster-On-Steroids warning. :lol:


P.S. I just sent GS a nice heads-up on what is happening, since it appears to be affecting multiple "honest" surfers.

As the "warning" mentioned, it's a form of flood-control, in order to prevent over-loading the servers. It's a common application employed on web-sites .... I've used something similar on my own sites before. It appears they turned the dial a little too much towards the "aggresive" setting. So now it's also affecting those who AREN'T trying to flood the servers, rather than just the ones who ARE, which is what they were surely targeting.

Let's hope that their server-situation isn't so bad that they will justify limiting the surfing of the entire community. That wouldn't be good at all. So hopefully they'll see that several of us have started getting the "Time-Out" warning, who actually don't deserve it, and crank it down a notch or two.

Off-the-subject, but I also included an inquiry is they would consider adding "Frownie" icons to the maps, which show caches we have DNF'd. It's nice to see the smilies showing us the ones we have found, but I would also like to see which ones I've NOT found. This might can be used in our cache-route planning, letting us know at a glance which ones we need to try again ..... or not try again at all ..... just depending upon how each individual feels about their DNF's.

In case some cachers don't WANT to see those, I also suggesed that this feature be incorporated as a radio-button, which would allow each individual to turn the frownies on. Some cachers may want to leave them off & there would be no change at all to the way the maps are currently displayed.

Will let you know if I hear anything back from them on either issue.

[Ashallond]

I haven't gotten that one, but I've gotten the maps on cache pages to "max out" and shut down the map pull with a overload green/yellow/red guage with the needle all the way to the right. on days when I've been plotting large caching runs.

[grzz51]

Geezzz, guess I need to get a better laptop......I ain't never done had nuthin like that happen to me :?

[astrodav]

It's happening all over the place. Supposedly, because of numerous reports, they loosened the strings this morning on the throttling deal, so hopefully we won't see that Slow-Down warning again.

As usual, they waited for the end of the week, on a holiday weekend, near quitting time, to implement a huge site update .... then go home. :lol: