Tags

This page contains information specific to Geocaching Australia.

Overview

You can give your caches, logs, images and swaggies a "tag", which is like a keyword or category label. Tags help you find items which have something in common. You can assign as many tags as you wish to each object.

Usage

It is best to be concise when setting a tag for an object. For instance: If you wish to highlight the fact that a cache is at a waterfall with a lookout and great views you could tag it with:waterfall,lookout,view

Common words and phrases like 'if' 'and' 'for' etc. are not saved, as well as punctuation and special characters.

You can set multiple tags for an object by seperating them with a comma.

Tags can have spaces within them, so kid friendly,playground would be 2 tags, one called kid friendly one called playground.

You can search on tags by visiting this link

Partial tag a.k.a. wildcard searches are now available. i.e. Searching for kid will return kid. Searching for kid* will return kid, kids, kiddy, kid friendly, etc. Interested in bushwalking but not sure if it's "bush walking" or "bushwalking"? Just use bush* and see the results.

You can restrict results to a country / region of your choice if you are only interested in your own state for example.

You can also exclude or ignore caches you have found or caches you own.

Results are now ordered in "tag match" groups. i.e. Caches that match "locks" and "box", caches that match "locks", caches that match "box".

Caches are ordered by closest to your home co-ordinates if you've provided them.

The cache details are now a full bar of details showing distance, direction, etc. All the usual goodies. This helps you see more information about the caches you may be interesed it.

There are 2 types of tags: Public Tags and Private Tags

Namespaces

In an effort to provide more consistency in using some tags, more unique names could be used to ensure that they don't clash with existing tags in common usage that either may not be defined, our are used to mean different things by different cachers.

NZ Namespace

The NZ Namespace 'nz-*' has been created by a group of New Zealanders to tag caches with some specific characteristics. These were created and are maintained via discussion in the NZ GPS Forums[1]. To date, the following tags have been suggested. (to come)

If Australians are interested in using these definitions as well, we are more than happy to modify the name of the namespace, perhaps to gca-* or something similar for it to be used more widely. This will of course mean sticking with the definitions as they started, otherwise it will be necessary to review all existing tags to reflect changes.