What is the secret behind the instant update of the profile stats?

Question

As the title says: It is not the first time i observe this behavior with the update of the profile stats.

I logged my caches, few minutes later, the profile stats were up to date.

What is the secret behind this? I can't believe that this is a coincidence, because it happend to often and on different times.

Comments

I can not confirm what is going on behind scenes, but it is what generally makes sense. You have  one slot a day to update your stats and PGC does it only if it makes sense (you or somebody else wants to view your statistics and there are new logs).
If you log a cache or caches and then open PGC/stats, I assume it is one of the triggers that will pull your recent logs and update your statistics. I would be surprised if the stats would be generated just in random scheduled times.

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Hi Jakuje, i observed this behavior the last days and it might be correct, what you say.

Before going caching, i did not log in to PGC. In the evening, i logged my caches online, and after i am done with that, i go to PGC, check my Statistic and yes, they were instand updated in that moment.

Answer 1

The crossbreeding of frogs and polar bears has created a tenacious all knowing geocaching statistics beast. (Ok maybe project gc needs a mascot.)

In reality this appears to be a premium feature and one I appreciate. There are some guesses out there.  Mine is that when premium members log in after an extended absence, pgc queues a request to fetch their recent logs. (Its among the first things i do when i sit down with any of the pc tools i use.)

Comments

Another factor is that there are two ways logs can be found, the first is looking up a user and finding all the caches they have logged, the other is looking up a cache and finding the users who have logged it. In either approach project-gc ends up known all the logs for all users.

I believe (but don't know) that project-gc primarily uses the second mechanism, and how aggressive it is depends on the age, state and update frequency of the cache (hence why edits to logs on archived caches can take a long time to be detected). If your caching trip was retrieving new caches then it is likely to be detected much sooner than older caches and so be available in you stats.

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The self support function to update your finds almost certainly does the first.  My guess is they switch between the two approaches as appropriate.

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Agreed, self support is first, but the routine periodic background jobs are more likely the second - though they may mix and match.

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Perhaps this was not obvious in my post.  The suggestion was they are doing non routine queries based on last log in time.