Annual Leaderboards

[Corfman Clan]

I am in the process of adding Annual Leaderboards to LonelyCache. What we will do is keep track of the overall top point gainer and top back country cacher on an annual basis. Each year everyone starts from scratch. Leaderboards will be kept for Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and LonelyCache Wide. Annual leaderboards will not be tracked by County nor on a Region basis. Only Overall leaderboards will be kept. At this time we will not keep annual leaderboards for the various cache types. Also, only points earned from finds made during the specific year will be used for the annual leaderboards. Points from hides will not as I couldn't see a reasonable approach for including them.

For 2012, the leaderboards will be tallied early morning up to January 10 where they will become final. Whatever is in the LonelyCache DB then is what it will be. If you have 2012 finds you have yet to log on Geocaching.com, then you better hurry and log them and ensure those caches are updated on LonelyCache. When I say early morning January 10, I mean 2:00 AM MST, so ensure your 2012 finds are in sometime before then. Only the top 500 for each leaderboard will be retained for perpetuity.

For 2013, everyone's current standing in the annual leaderboards will be tracked, just like the leaderboards LonelyCache currently has. Once 2013 ends, then the final 2013 leaderboards will be tallied up to January 10, 2014 and only the top 500 for each board will be retained.

Now your thoughts. I've been saying Jan. 10 is the last day for tallying the previous year's leaderboards. Should that change to Jan. 15? That gives everyone a week to log finds from the previous year, then another week for those finds to naturally be added to LonelyCache. The downside is waiting five days more before having the final standings. That wait also gives five more days where caches may be archived and removed from LonelyCache and their points lost.

[Corfman Clan]

I thought I'd post what the annual standings for 2012 currently are. These aren't final, but there probably won't be much change

LonelyCache Wide

Overall Points:

Code: Select all

1           thoehn                                             19084.0538105463
2           Fire Elemental                                     17180.744813101
3           merlot                                             14666.4875110925
4           cyclegreen                                         14651.466774105
5           Subman123                                          13870.2286584692

Overall Backcountry:

Code: Select all

1           A & J - Adrift                                     164.394478645667
2           RockyMtnRidgeRunner                                99.5242438198302
3           Baad Daata                                         92.5484827383333
4           RDAD                                               91.7676085939524
5           afudc                                              90.3621459392619

Arizona

Overall Points:

Code: Select all

1           merlot                                             13132.7048895664
2           Subman123                                          12830.0898017085
3           Corfman Clan                                       9352.06664000856
4           philbeer                                           9029.30675570591
5           Poehunters                                         9023.98382273571

Overall Backcountry:

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1           Subman123                                          86.119096455
2           afudc                                              75.4526278972958
3           Arizona Ranger Team                                70.825690144
4           RS Arizona                                         68.1640234271971
5           azcampbell                                         65.2585166784911

Colorado

Overall Points:

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1           Vivi                                               12935.4070289003
2           crumbcrunchers                                     10118.3210564779
3           sassydil                                           8854.08262160353
4           SAMANTHA1234                                       8600.08868298195
5           nickgatt                                           8270.04851763901

Overall Backcountry:

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1           Denali41                                           79.4701484694091
2           COpackrat                                          72.0976988899167
3           Borogove & Mimsy                                   57.6087154785833
4           gjhiker                                            56.2358966496017
5           ernie66                                            54.657571922969

Nevada

Overall Points:

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1           wizard of ahh's                                    9720.96211191279
2           PhantomWSO                                         7842.62210925223
3           CopterCaper                                        7639.55838683435
4           RRGEO.                                             7448.8424121816
5           BodieKane                                          7132.91119504751

Overall Backcountry:

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1           BodieKane                                          83.0506063552116
2           RRGEO.                                             79.9328887865305
3           mojave_rattler                                     66.3239514626785
4           A & J - Adrift                                     63.6886914732118
5           mcfail                                             63.1051456633474

New Mexico

Overall Points:

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1           thoehn                                             16985.9002913145
2           cyclegreen                                         13362.5606816973
3           2bassetslaves                                      12292.3079790687
4           wolf11469                                          11672.2718907832
5           fam2go                                             9774.23231169108

Overall Backcountry:

Code: Select all

1           RockyMtnRidgeRunner                                99.5242438198302
2           dnboe                                              73.3487663208095
3           snow_rules                                         67.6495550787738
4           Fugads                                             60.6014308412818
5           afudc                                              59.7964864119167

Utah

Overall Points:

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1           Fire Elemental                                     14216.0837842348
2           MarshallOD                                         10388.0909289018
3           sportswoman 500                                    10318.4324366113
4           Desert Dawg                                        8647.64612742292
5           ETrunner                                           8507.41612028705

Overall Backcountry:

Code: Select all

1           A & J - Adrift                                     146.162673949833
2           station4_16                                        80.0089197272877
3           Zuni Kid                                           77.6419617151643
4           pfeifferhorn                                       77.4908427106858
5           uttrout                                            76.6968970881944

[desert dawg]

Now your thoughts. I've been saying Jan. 10 is the last day for tallying the previous year's leaderboards. Should that change to Jan. 15? That gives everyone a week to log finds from the previous year, then another week for those finds to naturally be added to LonelyCache. The downside is waiting five days more before having the final standings. That wait also gives five more days where caches may be archived and removed from LonelyCache and their points lost.

I think the JAN 10th date is reasonable, this should give cachers ample time to get there finds logged and up to date...

[desert dawg]

Just an observation:
Looking at the LCP Wide overall Backcountry Stats..

1 A & J - Adrift 164.394478645667
2 RockyMtnRidgeRunner 99.5242438198302
3 Baad Daata 92.5484827383333
4 RDAD 91.7676085939524
5 afudc 90.3621459392619

I'm suprised the #3 AND #4 cacher listed do not show up again in the top 5 in their respective ( backcountry) states stats.
Could it be they spred their point totals over two or more states ?

[Corfman Clan]

I'm suprised the #3 AND #4 cacher listed do not show up again in the top 5 in their respective ( backcountry) states stats.
Could it be they spred their point totals over two or more states ?

Yes that is the case. Baad Daata has top finds in Nevada and Utah while RDAD has top finds in Colorado and Utah. If I showed the placings out to the top 10 instead of the top 5, I believe both RDAD and Baad Daata would have been listed in at least one of those state's 2012 BC board.

I should also mention that if you look at the #5 overall 2012 BC cacher, afudc, you will see he is also #2 in Arizona and #5 in New Mexico.

[desert dawg]

Interesting info indeed..
I crunched some numbers on my stat.
2012
found / logged 1467 caches.. ( 8647. LCP Points) = 5.89 PPC ( Points per Cache)
no power trails but did hit a few easy LPC's along the way chasing a couple FTF's .... ~

[Corfman Clan]

Annual Leaderboards have now been implemented. See the Release Notes, for more details.

[Fugads]

I have been chasing my way up the NM Backcountry 2013 Annual Leaderboard and got to thinking about how these leaderboards work. Specifically, do the rankings continue to change after the year is over? If someone goes ahead and finds a bunch of my achilles caches in 2014, could that cause me to drop on the 2013 leaderboard? In looking at this thread, it would appear to me that this is the case. This is all well and good, but I was wondering if this is the way the leaderboard should work. A couple thoughts scenarios come to mind.

• Someone ranked high in the annual leaderboard because they went after a bunch of high LCP caches could lose their rank in subsequent years due to achilles points. Does this mean they were no longer the biggest go-getter of LCPs in that year? In my view it doesn't since during the year in question they were active.
• You could end up rising in the ranks of a previous year's leaderboard by finding high achilles point caches of the leaders, as long as someone isn't finding your high achilles caches. Does this make you the more active point seeker for the previous year? Again, in my view it doesn't
• Someone could end up with a high ranking in a past years leaderboard simply by finding some caches that were newly placed that year, but that don't end up getting found again for a very long time (ie growth). Does growth make one the most active for that year? You could argue that they were certainly active going for FTF or hard/remote caches that are young, so yes that makes them as active as those who seek out the lonely caches that have been around but aren't found much. But it still seems wrong to me to say that that person was one of the top backcountry cachers in a previous year, when the caches that yield that status weren't "valuable" in that year.

So in my scatter-brained thinking, should the rankings for Annual leaderboards get frozen once the year is closed out? If you found the most points that year, or had the highest backcountry score, shouldn't that be irrespective of what happens to those caches in subsequent years?

And one final, slightly different topic, is how many years back does the site plan to go? Right now there is an annual leaderboard for the year LCP started (2012) and this year. Will a new year's leaderboard be added in 2014, 2015 etc... or will there be a cap on how far back these go. Any though about retroactively generating 2011, 2010...2001 leaderboards?

Anyhow... these kinds of thoughts happen when you get focused in on one kind of leaderboard. No real issue, just thoughts I've been having. I would be curious to know if anyone else has wondered about this aspect to the annual leaderboards.

[Corfman Clan]

As mentioned above, annual leader boards are frozen when stats are updated the morning of January 10 of the following year. Once the boards are frozen, all rankings and scores will not change.

Once a new year starts, so will that year's annual leader boards. All previous years' annual leaderboards will be kept. Right now only the 2012 and 2013 annual leaderboards are shown because that is all there is. There is no way to go back and create annual leaderboards for 2011 and earlier because caches that would affect those years' rankings have been archived.

I'm in the process of creating a knowledge book for LonelyCache. The following is what I have for the annual leader boards:

There are two types of annual leader boards:

• Year's Top Cachers Leader Board
• Year's Top Backcountry Cachers Leader Board

The Year's Top Leader Boards track how well geocachers performed in previous years or how well they are doing in the current year. These boards keep track of the overall top point gainers and top backcountry cachers on an annual basis. Each year everyone starts from scratch. Leader boards are kept for states and LonelyCache wide. Annual leader boards are not tracked by County nor on a DGP Region basis. Only overall leader boards are kept. Annual leader boards for the various cache types are not kept.

When a new year begins, the previous year's annual leader boards will be tallied early morning up to January 10 where they will become final. Whatever is in LonelyCache then is what it will be. Any cache finds that have not been logged on Geocaching.com and incorporated into the LonelyCache database by then will not be included.

For the current year, the annual leader boards will track everyone's current standing. Once a year has been finalized, only the top 500 for each leader board will be retained for perpetuity.

LonelyCache does not track caches that have been archived on Geocaching.com. This means that finds that are archived will not show on the current year's standings. Once a year has been finalized, however, all scores are frozen. This means that when a cache is archived it will not affect the scores from any previous years annual leader boards. Likewise, even though a geocache's cache points will change over time and from finds, that change will not affect the scoring of any previous year's annual leader boards.

[Fugads]

Thanks for the reply Corfman Clan. I should have seen those notes above. What threw me off is the note on the page detailing the caches that make up the score which reads.

Note: Only finds that have not been archived and still exist in LonelyCache are included
Note: Points shown are current, not the value from end of year 2012

So even though the leaderboard score for that year is frozen, and can include archived caches, when you try to see the score details you will get only currently active caches and values. Basically the details about the score do not reflect the total score for that year. I think seeing this made me think that the year's score was based upon those values, which led to me inquiry. As points change, that list might not even reflect which caches were the big gainers for that year, merely what caches found that year are still worth high point values.

[Corfman Clan]

Yes, that's a problem and can be confusing and is why I added those notes. Unfortunately it would take a lot of changes to keep track of the cache scores and who found them at the time the annual boards are frozen. More logs come in, some are deleted, and caches are archived and managing all that is a non-trivial problem.