Guidelines
Introduction to the Forums
The goal of the Geocaching Forums is to promote the activity of geocaching and location-based outdoor play. It is an open forum sponsored by Geocaching HQ for discussing all aspects of geocaching, Adventure Lab®, Waymarking, Wherigo™, benchmark hunting, GPS usage and other geocaching-related GPS gaming. It is a friendly social network for GPS enthusiasts around the world.
The forum guidelines are important and should be read and accepted before you choose to participate. Geocaching HQ and the global geocaching community encourage contributors who are courteous, polite, and respectful. We discourage those who choose to behave in a disrespectful or irresponsible manner. Geocaching HQ, its staff, and community volunteer moderators will take appropriate steps to ensure discussions adhere to these guidelines.
If you have any questions regarding the appropriateness of a forum discussion post that you have read, you can use the Report Post found at the top of that post. This alerts a Geocaching Forum Moderator to look into that topic. You may also contact the author of the post, citing the appropriate section of the forum guidelines. Be respectful, as all contact with other users through Geocaching.com or our forums is subject to the Terms of Use.
Forum moderators are generous community volunteers who give up their time to help build a better community. Volunteers assist with focusing topics of discussion and will gently enforce guidelines, as needed. Moderators can edit or delete posts, and can move, close, or delete topics. Moderators can ask users to refrain from posting further in a topic after violating a forum guideline, and they can temporarily suspend users' posting rights.
Discussion forums are moderated to preserve the spirit of an open, interactive discussion without offending participants. Please understand that we are not attempting to censor any messages or opinions.
Forum Guidelines
1. To post in the Geocaching Forums, you must be 18 years or older.
2. Forum courtesy: Please treat Geocaching HQ, its employees, geocaching community volunteers, fellow community members, and guests in these forums with courtesy and respect. Whether a community member has one post or 5,000 posts, everyone should be treated respectfully.
3. Foul language and obscene images will not be tolerated. This site is family-friendly. All forum posts must conform to a family-friendly standard and contributors must act accordingly. It is not appropriate to replace characters in a profane word to elude the built-in censoring filter, or forum moderation.
4. Personal attacks and inflammatory or antagonistic behavior will not be tolerated. If you want to post criticism, please do so constructively. Generalized, vicious, or veiled attacks on a person or idea will not be tolerated.
5. Sock puppet accounts are not permitted in the Geocaching Forums. A sock puppet account is created and used by a person who already has a primary account, for the purpose of posting anonymously. Posts from known sock puppet accounts may be deleted, and both the sock puppet and primary accounts may be suspended from the Geocaching Forums and Geocaching.com. Please use your real, primary account for posting in the Geocaching Forums.
6. Keep on topic: Responses to a particular thread should stay on-topic and pertain to the discussion. Users should use the Start New Topic button to start a new discussion that would otherwise be off-topic in the current thread. Threads that veer off topic may be redirected, closed, or moderated by a moderator. Deliberate disruption or derailing of topics is not appropriate. However, moderators allow for natural progressions of topics.
7. Post in correct forum: Please do your best to post new topics to the appropriate forum section. Moderators can take action when a thread should be moved to a more appropriate section.
8. Private discussions: Sometimes, a discussion thread strays off into a friendly dialogue or a heated debate among a very small number of users. For these exchanges, we ask that you please use the Private Message feature that is provided through the Geocaching Forums, or the Geocaching.com Email or Message Center. Public forum posts should be reserved for matters of interest to the general geocaching community. Reminder: All contact with other community members through Geocaching HQ's websites is subject to the Terms of Use.
9. Spam: Posting the same message, or an unsolicited commercial message, to one or many topics or sections is considered spamming and may result in a restriction on future forum posting privileges. Duplicate messages may be deleted or consolidated by our moderators.
10. Commerciality and postings with a larger agenda: It is Geocaching HQ's desire to maintain forums for the purpose of promoting the activity of geocaching and location-based outdoor play. We intend to limit forum discussions that promote commercial, social, political, or charitable agendas as well as those which do not reasonably relate to the activity of geocaching and location-based outdoor play. Threads or posts perceived to have been made with the intent of promoting any of the above agendas will not be permitted. Please note that the Volunteer Forum Moderators may provide reasonable latitude for forum discussion postings relating to local events and issues in local discussion forums. Notwithstanding the above, Geocaching HQ reserves the right to include or permit the inclusion of limited commercial content in this forum at its sole discretion.
11. Limited non-promotional references to other location-based games are generally permitted. However, please refer support questions or dedicated threads about those games to their discussion forums.
12. Discussion of geocaching applications created by Authorized Developers is permitted. Limited non-promotional references to unauthorized geocaching applications are generally permitted. However, support questions or significant discussion of unauthorized applications should be directed to their discussion forums.
13. We generally do not allow surveys to be conducted or promoted in the Geocaching Forums.
14. Personal classified advertising is permitted in the 'GPS Garage Sale' forum and, per Geocoin Forum Guidelines, in the Geocoin Forum. Please note that Geocaching HQ is not involved in any related transactions and assumes no liability for any issues relating from such transactions or related discussions.
15. Any messages you post in these discussion forums will remain available to the public for as long as this discussion forum is online; please post carefully and with due consideration to the content of your post. An exception is if the post does not meet forum guidelines and is moderated. Moderated posts may be removed or edited by moderators or Geocaching HQ. In the unlikely event that we do edit your post and you do not like the changes, we can delete the message at your request.
16. If someone has posted copyrighted material or otherwise illegal material, please notify Geocaching HQ so that we may take appropriate action, or report the content using the Report Post found at the top of the post. Owners of copyrighted materials will be required to submit a copyright claim in accordance with the Geocaching.com Terms of Use Agreement, Claims of Copyright Infringement.
17. Abuse of the Geocaching Forums, including the private messaging and post reporting features, will not be tolerated.
Additional Terms: The Geocaching Forums are further governed by the Geocaching.com Terms of Use Agreement, the terms of which are hereby incorporated into these guidelines by reference.