Talk:Achievements

This page was getting crowded with suggestions that have already been implemented. I've deleted/condensed a lot of old talk so that we can FIND the new talk. If I deleted something you were attached to, you know where the history tab is. -Robyn 15:38, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

First geocache

I feel that for many people reaching there first ever geocache feels like an achievement and it seems worthy of an official achievement to me. Suggested titles "Babies first geocache" (actually that one might be confused with bringing your baby with you to a geocache) Let's keep it simple "My First time" --The George 05:52, 20 March 2012 (UTC)

First timers inevitably get one of the land or water or air ribbons (usually land, but I can think of those who didn't) and that serves that purpose well. I don't think a new first time ribbon is required. -Robyn 01:57, 20 March 2012 (EDT)

Award Icons

Matt suggested icons. DONE.

Discussion of various now-implemented icons and templates deleted.

-- user:Robyn, 15:38 UTC 10 December 2008

Proof

Proof criteria determined.

If the author of an achievement wants to limit it, they can. If not, not. It's all pretty-much honor system, anyway. Ted 02:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Am I correct in assuming you have to reach coords to claim most of these awards? "Reach" being a subjective term anyway, depending on your brand/age(/lack of) GPS. Awards you don't have to reach coords for:

Consolation prizes

• Correct: I don't think you qualify for these if you DO reach the coordinates.

Hashcard

• Correct, from the Hashcard proof section: "You can earn this achievement without reaching the coordinates, but not without seriously trying to get as near as possible."

Admit One

• Correct, "You are still eligible for the award even if the exact location was ultimately inaccessible, e.g. inside the lion enclosure at the zoo, or on the actual playing field at a sports event."

Counting towards XKCD-centurion

• Sort of correct: you must either meet people or achieve the coordinates.

Please add any others.

• Or conversely if you have "sponsored" an award and intended it to be only for people who reached the geohash, make sure that it makes that clear in the achievement text.

Oh, and reaching. So if you have a GPS, then within the margin error of your GPS. If not, identifying the location in some way via google maps or similar. --joannac 00:56, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

• I'd be somewhat unimpressed by someone who claimed a major award, like Centurion, or some very difficult geohashes without a GPS unless there was some very strenuous proof involved. I know from experience that "250 m into the bushes from where this road meets that one" can be way way more than 250 good paces into the woods. It's all honour system, really, but one honours some claims more than others. -Robyn 03:01, 16 February 2009 (UTC)

Organization of Achievements Page

Page reorganized a couple of times as the list grew.

Philosophy of New Achievements

Seems kinda silly to me to have an award for every single mildly interesting situation that might happen during a geohash. What's the point of having five hundred achievements? Keep it simple. --Joel 20:13, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

I disagree, at least for now. Let's let this evolve in "brainstorming" mode, and let it self-organize for a while. After some time has passed, we can see how things are shaping up and then present ideas for organization. For now, though, I'd hate to quash anyone's creative muse just because someone else thinks it's too silly. Heck, it is the Spontaneous Adventure Generator, after all, and a silly-grin is part of the proof-photo requirement...! Ted 02:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Creating New Achievements

This page has been superseded by Proposed achievements. Do not post new proposals here.

If there is a non-implemented achievement here that you would like to see happen, follow the proposal guidelines there and write up a good description of how the achievement should work on its own page with the Category:Proposed achievements, and then edit the page in response to any objections you get. -Robyn 23:14, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

You may also just leave a short note of your idea on Talk:Proposed achievements, that's where I moved all the non yet implemented ideas mentioned somewhere on this page. --HiroProtagonist 21:13, 30 January 2010 (UTC)

Implemented Suggestions

• Double Geohash - reaching two in one day - Multihash
• Blind Geohash achievement, for getting to the exact place without a GPS unit - No Batteries Geohash
• International Geohash - go to a different country (easiest for people in say 43, -79) - Border geohash
• Martyr - injured reaching a geohash - Trail of Blood
• V.I.P - geohash in a members-only or pay-to-enter location - Admit One Geohash
• Restricted Area Geohash - legitimate access to restricted area
• Holy Hash achievement, when geohashers arrive at coordinates and find a place of worship?
• Golf Geohash - on golf course
• Hashcard achievement - send a postcard of the hash from the hash
• Cross That Bridge Geohash - geohash accessible while on a bridge.
• Walking on Water Geohash - on foot, on the surface of a body of water, at the geohash
• Posted achievement - As an incentive not to trespass, I think there should be an award like the centurion for no trespassing. --Robyn 15:55, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Deleted, Merged, Rejected or Downgraded Achievements

Achievements that have been actively removed or rejected.

I think it's not a bad idea to go through the list from time to time. You'll often come up with an idea which seems good enough for an achievement, and notice later that it's just not being accepted. -- Relet 00:25, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I totally support deletion of the subjective achievements. -Robyn 26 August 2008 (UTC)

I support deletion of superfluous and unused achievements. Nemo 13:43, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Don't just delete unused achievements if they are hard. They can be something to strive for even if someone hasn't got them yet. -Robyn 01:55, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

• Strip Club Geohash - boring (probably unless you actually hit one). But then you could just create one of these for anything you visit.
  • I disagree. A strip-club is unusual enough and "off color" enough that having one's geohash spot fall on one is an event worthy of "hey, that's a good story" and sharing with friends. IMO, that makes it a good candidate for an achievement. It's like the graveyard one -- graveyards are far more common than strip-clubs, but the're still "off beat" enough that you'd tell your friends "you won't believe this: the spot was IN A GRAVEYARD, today!"
  • Dogging site? - Sorry - I'll get my coat.

"Good stories" are geohash achievements, IMO. 64.74.213.98 14:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

• Smoking Geohash - not actually difficult to achieve, and not that unusual that it could be called interesting.
  • I disagree and, hence, removed the delete tag, and placed my defense on the talk page (per delete-tag instructions.) 64.74.213.98 14:00, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
• The underpants geohash which was merged with Geoflashing
• The MacGyver and Maker awards were partly merged.
• The Easy Geohash which was degraded into a [term needed] (subjective achievement? I'd like to remove the term achievement).

Tracking Awards

I visited the "Centurion" page only to sadly discover it's part of XKCD-100. Seems like we need some sort of Hash Counter and Saturday Hash Counter (or awards). I just hit my 5th hash (with only one Saturday meetup), and I'll keep going to 100, even if they aren't all Saturdays (or all at 4:00pm or ...) Thomcat 13 June 2008

I agree. They are getting hard to count, and I've only attempted 14.

Recommend starting a user-page and putting your hash-participation in a section, there. Then it should be a simple matter to demark 5, 10, 25, 50, etc... Ted 21:44, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps i'm misunderstanding you, but the centurion award also works for numbers less than 100. I've currently made it to one saturday meetup so i added it to my page and it says, amusingly, nullaturion! i believe it goes to decurion when you get ten. --sermoa 20:18, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Records vs achievements

Just wondering if "records" wouldn't make more sense than "achievements" with arbitrary numerical values. Ie, rather than having an achievement for 100 different graticulas (a very big ask), why not just records for "most graticules". There are a few already (highest, lowest, hottest, etc...as well as most consecutive).

Object. Reason: Record holders will continue collecting more points, making it impossible to anyone else to gain that achievement, so one dedicated hasher takes the fun out of it for everyone else.

A few other ideas:

• Fastest (from time coordinate is announced)

Object. Has been discussed already and turned down for timezone issues. Depending on place and day of week, the coordinates are not even valid at the moment they come out. Also, in some timezones the coordinates come out in the middle of the night, so these people wouldn't have any chance. --Ekorren 11:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

So have a record for each timezone. No reason a Melburnian has to compete with a New Yorker. Stevage 01:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

You totally didn't get the point. It's not that some timezones have it more difficult, it's that "waiting for the coordinates and then run off" is simply impractical in many cases while standard in a few other. Australians would need to check the coordinates and run off if suitable in the middle of the night, which is basically not a good time to go to most destinations. In Europe, Asia, and everywhere for the weekend and NYSE holidays, the coordinates are not valid at the time they are announced. So if I would run off to make it a fast geohash, I'd get there on the wrong day, and need to come back the day after. And visiting the actual day's coordinates should always be preferred, that's basically what geohashing is about. Also, in the end it comes down to waiting for the nearest point which is covered by the Couch Potato honorable mention. --Ekorren 07:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Furthest (from position when coordinate announced)

"useless-burning-of-fuel-and-driving-too-fast-achievement"? --Ekorren 11:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Heh.

Well, actually, that would finally be taken by someone who does a long planned intercontinental flight on saturday and then goes hashing on sunday, and then never be looked at again. There's the globetrotter achievement for this case.

• Endurance (drop the 7 day requirement, just make it most consecutive without spending a night in the same place twice)

See general note below.

• Hashcram: most people assembled at the point at one time...

See phonebooth stuffing and migration --Ekorren 11:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Yeah, I found the phonebooth thing a bit weird. Stevage 01:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Largest geohash and migration cover it anyway. --Ekorren 07:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Simultaneous: most people simultaneously at various hashes

Simultaneous as in at the very same moment? Timezone issue, and hardly organizable. Ekorren 11:26, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Hmm, how would you organise people in so many different places. Oh wait, I know...the internet! But I was actually thinking regionally - you can get quite a few graticules in one timezone. The whole eastern seabord of Australia is one timezone and is hundreds of graticules. Stevage 01:09, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

In that case it comes down to saturday 4 pm which already is a preferred time. --Ekorren 07:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Stevage 11:04, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

Generally, record achievements are only suitable for a rather short time period. They start with ridiculously low numbers taken by people who didn't really try the achievement but just see they fulfilled the requirements by the word, slowly advancing, until someone does a real effort and sets a record so high that it takes all fun out of even trying for everyone else. At that time, the best thing would be to delete it and start all over again (which is not an option anyway). Which is why I generally do not like achievements based on beating a record, and will always argue against creating more of them. --Ekorren 07:44, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Maintenance

Is anyone else seeing any problems with the template for the Minesweeper Geohash? It looks like someone injected a link into the template somehow. Splitdipless 23:42, 11 February 2010 (UTC)

This was just generic spam, as occurs all over the wiki. An Undo on the template edit usually does for the moment - until the spammer strikes again. Actual solution is to protect the template. Joanna's job. --Ekorren 00:02, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Icon re-use in phone apps

My next plan for the Geohash Droid Anrdoid app is to allow users to add achievements manually when posting to the wiki, something that people seem to have been asking for. I'm right now designing an interface for it, part of which includes the icons used for the achievements themselves. Now, in lieu of downloading all the icons on-demand (unfeasible; this IS supposed to be on a phone, likely in the middle of nowhere, given the nature of geohashing, and besides, that'd just be a bit rude to the maintainers of the wiki), I'm considering putting all the icons in with the app itself.

My question is, do I have the right/permission to redistribute the achievement icons like that? I'll note that many of the icons aren't Randall's work, thus I don't know for sure if they're all under the same CC license under which he puts the rest of XKCD. CaptainSpam 17:32, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

You have the right to do anything you like with anything I've designed, mostly mine are taken from Randalls's work anyway. You probably will have to ask ilpadre and other creators directly. We've been pretty militant about not using things we don't have rights to, e.g. geotrashing achievement was changed because of this. -Robyn

Achievements for Previous Hashes

I would like some clarification on this. Do you still get an achievement if the hash reached was not that day's hash? I don't mean the origin/displaced origin achievements, but the ordinary ones. If not then I think that there should be more awards for previous Hashes. --Mnm7198 17:07, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

This is called "Retro-hashing." In general it is not encouraged, as going to TODAY's hashpoint is what we want to have happen. There are a couple cases, such as you mentioned, as well as Geohashing day where it can come into play. If you have other folks in your graticule, you can all go for a retro-hash together, and that sort of thing is encouraged as an "alternate meeting point" which is better than going to a point that wasn't generated at all. Jiml 17:30, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

This is pretty clear - no achievements for Retrohashes, except of the few ones which are explicitely made for them. It's an integral part of geohashing, that you need to visit the one and unpredictable set of coordinates of that day, instead of some arbitrary covenient point you choose from about 30000 known choices per graticule with all time you need to plan. Where's the challenge in doing so, anyway? --Ekorren 17:23, 11 April 2012 (EDT)

Achievements Pages Clean Up

• I have visited every page linked from the Achievement list and tried to improve usability and consistency.
  • Add "Category:Achievement award templates" where this is missing.
  • Put a link to the template at the top of the page, not in the nether regions of hell.
  • Some have no template. I have added a template.
  • Some are undocumented. I have documented these.
  • Fix anything else that looks odd or inconsistent.
  • The ribbon template links were all over the place. Now they are all at the top of the page.

--Sourcerer (talk) 09:26, 22 July 2015 (EDT)

Thanks, Sourcerer! It all looks much better. — Benjw  _{talk} 09:36, 22 July 2015 (EDT)