Talk:Reflowered Graticule

• I support this proposal! ...but then I would, wouldn't I? It's MY proposal! Michael5000 (talk) 03:53, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• It is cool to go geohashing in a graticule that has been inactive for a long time, and I have done so myself twice in this month in 52,14 and 53,12. That being said, I don't think it is a good idea to make it an official achievement.

The achievement would create an incentive to not go Geohashing if the graticule in question is under the threshold. There may be a tempting Geohash, but one would not visit it because the graticule has been inactive for nine years and it would ruin next year's Reflowering. Or maybe someone else visits the location and then one would get mad at them because they ruined next year's Reflowering. I think that achievements should never create incentives like this.

On the other hand, this has been the third time that this achievement has been proposed (albeit using different names: necromancy, restored virginity - those proposals were less formal though, without their own pages, so you might have not seen them), so clearly there is some demand. I have given it some though and thought I might vote needs work - what if we make this a gradual achievement, without a hard cutoff date after ten years? What if it was similar to the Consecutive Geohash, the Two to the N achievement or the Multihash, rather than the Graticule Hopper (which really should be a 2^N-style gradual achievement too IMO). What if we start after six months, when the graticule has just fallen into inactivity? Reflowering it then would be cool, but not super impressive, the equivalent of claiming a Consecutive Geohash for only two consecutive days. But when the time since the last expedition has been longer, the act of Reflowering becomes more impressive, the equivalent of a longer consecutive streak.

Well, while I think that would be better, the main problem remains: It would still create an incentive to not go Geohashing. It would create an incentive to let active graticules become inactive to claim this achievement. It would create an incentive to not go geohashing in a graticule with two years of inactivity, because if I don't go geohashing now I could claim the more impressive three year ribbon next year.

After the threshold has passed and the graticule has been revisited after a long time, that is definitely cool and it feels like there should be an achievement for this. The problem are the incentives during the time the threshold has not passed yet. Therefore, I oppose the creation of this achievement. --Fippe (talk) 10:20, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• I kind of see Fippe's point, but can you really get mad because you chose not to go geohashing some place and someone else did? The goal of a game is to play it, right? If you gamble the opportunity you know there is this risk, and I always have interpreted achievements as incentives you can pursuit without losing your head over them.

I don't really think it will incentive to not go Geohashing, but having said that and being honest I can really see the frustration of a 9 year old graticule being visited if you were "saving" it. (But "saving" is kind of relative. If you haven't been in a graticule in 9 years is because it's not really that convenient for you to visit it, so it's not like you can go there anytime you want.)

10 years seems a long time, so I really liked the gradual proposal of 1 year, 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, for example. (I believe 6 months might be a little short).

So I would say needs work --SastRe.O (talk) 13:08, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

I agree that you should not get mad - it is a game after all! But I could see it happen anyway, probably not openly expressed, but rather mumbling under one's breath :-) --Fippe (talk) 18:24, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• It turns out that this suggestion was made under another name ("Necromancy") in 2020 by McKay.

• Visit a graticule that has been visited (not virgin), that hasn't had a visit in X period of time: e.g. 10 years.

This argument was entered in opposition.

It would create an incentive to not go Geohashing if the graticule in question is under the threshold. There may be a tempting Geohash, but one would not visit it because the graticule has been inactive for nine years and it would ruin next year's Necromancy Geohash.

This idea is certainly logical, but I don't think it's terribly realistic. I don't think that an achievement like this would be sought-after enough to spark this kind of gamesmanship. If it did become that popular, then that would mean that it was in fact serving the purpose of encouraging people to head out to the less frequently visited graticules. A small problem would only manifest itself, in other words, if it was coming along with a large benefit. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michael5000 (talk • contribs) 2022-05-23T13:45:57‎

I think that this argument overestimates the popularity of Graticule Hopping. I know you do it a lot, and I certainly also like to do it, but most people don't travel that far for geohashing purposes. We live in a world where active graticules directly border virgin graticules, after all. Rather than traveling to a far graticule to reflower, it is more realistic that people would wait for a nearby graticule to pass the threshold, which is a bad incentive for the reasons I already described. Achievements should give incentives to go geohashing, never to not go geohashing. --Fippe (talk) 18:24, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• Question: How many graticules are currently up for grabs for the achievement as originally formulated, anyway? (That is, that have been hashed but not in the last decade.) Obviously more could appear over time, but aside from that it seems to be a limited resource on a far different scale than that of simply unhashed graticules. Arlo (talk) 20:36, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

Quite a few; a lot of places (especially in the boonies of USA and Canada) got hashes back in 2008 or '09 or '10 and then no activity afterwards. It would be interesting to sort hashed graticules by last successful hash.
(I wonder which had the oldest. I checked all expeditions up to 2008-05-23 and all were in highly active graticules, but 2008-05-24 has tons of expeditions and it wouldn't surprise me all that much if at least one of them was in a grat that hadn't been hashed since... oh, I see Warwick, Australia is one.)

Arguably in the medium-to-long term this is a less limited resource: you can only deflower each graticule once, but you can, in principle, reflower it multiple times. Of course if geohashing really picks up, opportunities would be very scarce, but that's just as true for the virgin achievement. --January First-of-May (talk) 21:18, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

951 past one year, 831 past three years, 590 past seven years, 338 past ten years. There is a list at least active graticules --Fippe (talk) 23:26, 23 May 2022 (UTC)

• I think this one needs work for the reasons mentioned above. The goal of encouraging folks to geohash in less active graticules is one I want to support, but it seems that the idea of putting a date target of some kind would discourage hashing before then and only encourage hashing after some arbitrary time period. Perhaps then the qualification for this achievement should not be based on calendar time at all? I'm not sure what measurable quality would work best but I want to suggest basing the achievement around how few expeditions a graticule has as the method for determining which graticules qualify, even if that does depart somewhat from the original concept. It could even be scaled in a similar manner to how Fippe suggested above, with reflowering a graticule that only has a single expedition awarding a more "impressive" achievement than reflowering one with 5 or 6 previous expeditions. --Tarasaurus (talk) 20:53, 18 July 2023 (UTC)