tozainamboku

I admit that I may be arguing for a "wow" requirment here. I see a difference between a cache in a location that I may enjoy just for the challenge of getting to even if I end up with a DNF and cache in location that I have no interest in going to even if I know for sure there is a cache to find. But asking a reviewer to make the distinction is a "wow" judgment that I suspect few would volunteer to make. So I have to accept the current state where Reviewers can make a judgment of when to archive a cache and even that Groundspeak may provide guidance to treat lack of owner response the same regardless of the remoteness or age of the cache.

Don't know of a way to get a list of someone's favorites. If the person has a bookmark list of favorites you can create a PQ from their bookmark list. Someone with over 10000 finds might have more than 1000 favorites so creating a PQ from this list might mean that Groundspeak would have to change the limits on PQs.

Difficult caches (that may get DNF more often) that are also difficult or challenging to get to (high terrain and therefore sought after less often) are ones that appeal to a small number of cachers for whom the adventure and challenge is more important than getting another smiley. Many of these caches have been around a long time and the cache owner no longer participates in geocaching and who may not even have the same email account that they used for geocaching. So while the guidelines/policy of allowing the reviewer to disable or achive caches that may be missing and that have an unresponsive owner sounds great for cleaning up the myriad of listings for caches that no longer exist, it is bound to cause issues for people who are looking for lonely caches that provide this extra adventure. In the past, I had the impression that reviewers would not start this process on their own unless someone had posted a Needs Archive or perhaps if someone want to place a new cache in the area that was being blocked by the cache. The caches dicussed in this thread indicate that some reveiwers are now proactively looking for old, abandoned, and potentially missing caches. It could be that, in fact, someone wants to place a cache, maybe in a more easily accesible location nearby, and this is bringing the cache to the attention of the reviewer. That could be a tough call: preserve a more difficult but potentially missing cache or allow a new cache. The main issue with reviewers proactively achiving caches so "they don't show up in searches", is that it tends to confirm that the game has changed to one where people have a sense of entitlement that they aren't going to look for a cache that might be missing, instead of one where people cared less about finding the cache and more about the adventure of going to a new place. There has always be a dichomoty between these two motivations for caching, and clearly the arrow has moved toward the "it's all about the smiley" camp over the years. Could this thread be a response to what appears to be taking sides in the debate?

Why? They know where they are so the question is "did they really find them?" There are no "rules" per se on who can log a find online. As a cache owner you agreed to be responsible for quality control of the logs on your cache pages. You are supposed to delete logs that are bogus, counterfeit, off-topic, or otherwise inappropriate. It is extremely rare for anyone other than the cache owner to delete a log. A Groundspeak lackey might delete a log that contains inappropriate language or perhaps if someone write a computer program that logs finds on 10000 caches all in one day, Groundspeak might undo the damage. They are not going to touch a log from the cache owners relative, just because the cache owner probably showed them just where to look. That said, it seems unlikely that a cache owner is going to delete his wife's or father's log. So if your wife or dad want to log the cache they can. The decision is entirely up them and you as the cache owner. There were some comments about "if they sign the log", which need to be explained. Since cache owners can delete logs there is nothing stopping them from deleting log for arbitrary and capricious reasons. In fact, at one time cache owners could make up rule for logging an online find and delete logs that, in their judgment, failed to meet these "special" requirements. Groundspeak eventually concluded that this privilege was being abused. So cache owners were told, that "Physical caches can be logged online as "Found" once the physical log has been signed." In other words, no more arbitrary special requirements. Some people have have a reading comprehension problem and read the above statement as "Physical caches can be logged online as "Found" only once the physical log has been signed." This is clearly not the case; cache owners are free to accept online found logs even when the the log says something like "Forget a pen to sign the log". Another interpretation (which I personally feel is also wrong) is, "Once the physical log has been signed, the cache owner may not delete the online "Found" log." By this interpretation, some feel that if your wife and father sign the physical log in the cache, you would be force to accept their find log. I don't believe this is the case, but, hey, why don't you test it. Have your wife and dad sign the log then delete their online finds. Let us know what happens

Makes one wonder what the point of a challenge 'cache' is then. Completely defeats the porpoise of challenge caches. Might as well do away with them Poor idea. Some challenge cache owners view finding the challenge cache, and not the smiley for logging it, as the reward/incentive for doing the challenge. Finding a challenge cache when you have not completed a challenge is a burr under the saddle [saving knickers for later ] of some cache owners. They simply have to delete that note because they can't imagine anyone would find a cache that was meant only for those who qualify. Frinklabs' suggestion simply recognizes that some people will find the cache and then complete the challenge for the smiley. Rather than making the smiley the reason for the challenge, the suggestion is to find a way to recognize those who found the cache and have also completed the challenge. So, on paper, the CO can't dictate the order, but in reality they can? ...sounds like that clause needs to just be removed from the guidelines if it's never enforced. Not really. Once upon a time there were challenge caches (mostly just Delorme and county challenges) where you had to email the cache owner to get the coordinates, and ALR caches where you had to do something in addition to finding the cache to log it online. The guideline were changed to allow ALR cachse if they were listed as mystery/unknown type and the coordinates could be determined from information on the cache page and without mailing the cache owner. Usually this meant the cache was at the posted coordinates. At this point reviewers began publishing challenges if they complied with these same rules. I don't know if there was a 'memo' from Groundspeak or if the reviewers simply on their own decided that completing a challenge could be considered an ALR. This forever changed the nature of challenge caches. First because you could now find the cache before you completed the challenge, and second because it allowed for many new kinds of challenges to be published. Then one day, TPTB decided to not only stop publishing ALR caches but to render all the existing ALR restrictions on logging null and void. Of course TPTB at the same time declared that doing a challenge was not an ALR so the new guidelines didn't apply to them. Magic!! This later required TPTB to specifically state that challenges could not require you to complete the challenge before finding the cache, only that could not log a find online until you both completed the challenge and found the cache. Sounds a lot like an ALR. But TPTB say it isn't, so it must not be. At the same time COs are given a lot of leeway in deleting notes, and apparently a CO can delete a note saying you found the cache but haven't yet done the challenge. Well, that's certainly true. All California cachers are nicer. It's just that we don't wear knickers, so we can't get them in a twist.

Not quite true. Groundspeak actively pushes the FTF prize on a very regular basis as one of the benefits of buying premium membership. They talk about it in mailings, sure. But they never talk about rules. They just say it's when you find "that clean, unsigned logbook...". And that's just external affairs/outreach talk--show me where Groundspeak outlines anything specific about a FTF "prize" (especially in the guidelines, or with an official mention or validity with, say, a statistic on your profile) beyond mention in some emails. Back to my popcorn. The terms of use indicate that while Groundspeak provides a service where individuals can exchange information about games and opportunities for location-based play, Groundspeak does not provide any games itself as part of its services. (I'm not sure the HQ cache or the Block Party event are?) Certainly Groundspeak can suggest games and ways to play. These are suggestions and a few requirements/guidelines that restrict certain games from being listed (or sometimes even mentioned) on their websites. Groundspeak is also free to provide premium services to support games and game play. FTF is clearly a game that can be mentioned on Groundspeak's sites. From time to time they may suggest ways to play this game and point out that their premium service can be useful for this style of play. But the actual 'rules' and game play are left to individuals to decide on. Threads like this one start because someone wants to apply their personal rules to how others play this game. They often degrade to where someone who don't want to play this game at all wants to make FTF simply a label to describe some other aspect of geocaching. While is is fun to debate what constitutes a find either for the purpose of deciding who is first or when to use 'Found' for your online log, Groundspeak's president has posted Even though there might be an FTF prize, or a cache owner may award a mention on the cache page to the FTF, there's still no reason to get your knickers in a twist about anyone else's definition of a find.

When someone scores a touchdown in football, it counts as a touchdown for the team, AND for the individual player's stats. The analogy I gave had nothing to do with touchdowns, or even teams vs. individual. It had to do with the US College championship. (I can excuse a Canadian for not knowing this). For many years there was no "official" US College Football champion. Instead there were several polls (coach's poll, sports-writer's poll, etc.) The team that finished number one in the polls would claim to be the champion. But sometimes the different polls had a different number one, or even sometimes two teams got the same numer of votes in a poll and there was a tie for number one. In these years there were co-champions. Then a group of organizations that sponsored various 'bowl' games at year's end, decided that every year one of their games would be the "championship" game. Using an esoteric ranking system, the number one and number two teams would play each other for the championship. But this system proved controversial. Often a team that was number three would have an outstanding performance in another bowl game against a team that earlier in the year had defeated the number two team. And the number two team would eek out a victory over number one with sloppy play. That number three team would them claim that they really should be the College Football champions. This year, the US colleges have start a new system where a commitee picks the top four team and these four will play in a tournament to determine the "champion". Everyone will now agree on who the "champion" is. Yeah, right. So like US College Football, FTF depends on how you define it. The literalist are likely going to stick to their guns and insist that everyone must understand this term using dictionary defintions of "First" and "Find". Others will define find based on their understanding of when you can log a "find" online. Some will view FTF as a competition that begins when the cache is published and the notification goes out. They might even wish to go further and only count finds that got no extra help from the cache owner. Still others will view this simply an event to share with all the cachers who showed up at GZ to look for the cache. There is no prize, no leaderboard, and no trophy for being FTF (OK, sometimes a cache owner leaves a FTF prize in the cache or adds the FTF name to the cache page), but it sure is fun to watch people get their knickers in a twist over it.

If the reviewer didn't read the memo then how do you suppose the average cacher feels since we have no idea what is in these memos. Guidelines do change and I suspect that even though reviewers have a channel to find out about these changes, that sometimes it gets missed. However, I would have a hard time going to appeal if the reviewer was using the same old interpretation that I was familiar with and I was unaware that Groundspeak had a new more liberal interpretation. Instead I suspect that appeals are generally where a reviewer did make some judgement call. Perhaps in most cases, HQ will support the reviewer because the guidelines leave it up to their judgement (although without the "memo" one can only assume it's left up to the reviewer). It's when there are too many people who complain that their reviewer is making the wrong judgment that Groundspeak will issue a new "memo" that takes away reviewer descretion. My guess is that more often then not, the guidelines are given a more restrictive interpretation, though certainly there have been case where the reviewers are told to publish where before they could withold publication.

Do you have a similar problem understanding why football games are won by teams instead of by the player that kicked the winning goal?. Faulty logic. Yet, they have no problem crediting the individual player who actually kicks the winning goal. One person is the "first" to find it. How can there be six simulaneous firsts? There used to be the possibility for college football co-champions. I guess the new playoff format will fix that Perhaps if a group oachers wishes to claim co-FTF there should be a playoff to prevent someone from getting their knickers in a twist.

You doofus, you are not taking into account cultural differences. How can you possibly come up with a 3 difficulty? Clayjar clearly says... oh, never mind.. Sure you can use Clayjar, there are multiple legs so the difficulty has to be a least 3 stars. Except one could argue that the multiple legs didn't add anything that wasn't stated in the initial legs so the difficulty isn't increased no matter how often the same material is repeated.

I'm not really sure why people are so concerned if there is overlap. Back when you could have 5 PQ with only 500 caches per day, sure overlap cut into the total caches you could download. Perhaps when the limit was changed to 5 x 1000 there were still people who wanted to cover an area with ~5000 caches and the overlap meant they would get some number fewer than 5000. But now the limit is 10 x 1000 caches per day. If you don't get your full 10000 caches because of overlap are you really impaired? In any case as stated above, you can use date placed in your PQ to get more than 1000 caches in a circular area and reduce the number lost to overlap. The circular shape has a unique property in that the distance of the cache from the center point is computed and can be used to limit the PQ to the 1000 closest caches. Other shapes would likely have to be implemented as a circle that circumscribes the shape. After eliminating the caches outside the shape, if there are still more than 1000 caches those most distant from the center of the circle would be eliminated. Trying to adjust the sizes of the shapes so they have fewer than 1000 cache (so you don't miss caches) but as close to 1000 as possible (so you don't have to use up extra PQs) would be far more complicated and harder to explain than the overlap in the current system.

I'm guessing you haven't spent much time reading these forums.

Of course the common wisdom is that a cache has certain probability that is is missing (or even that that a cacher simple doesn't find it no matter the difficultly) so that if you have multiple physical stages and you have to find all the stages to complete the multi - that the probability of not finding any one stage and thus not finding the multi is higher goes up incrementally as there are more stages. I'm not sure that I agree with common belief - since there are rarely multi that can't be figured out with only finding some of the stages and when maintaining multi owners will often check all the stages, so the odds of any particular stage being missing is not independent of other stages being missing. However what is more debatable is whether the odds that the cacher fails to find a cache or one stage of a cache should be part of the difficulty rating or not. Perhaps it should be. A traditional cache in a high muggle area might be considered more difficult because 1) stealth is required and 2) the cache has a higher probability being missing. Either way it increases the chance certain people won't find it - even if it would otherwise be D1. However Clayjar doesn't ask if the cache is in a high muggle area or even if the cache is likely to be missing. So if you are in the camp that you must rate according to Clayjar then you can't use that argument. But if Clayjar truly means that any multi-leg cache must be D3 then the reason can't possibly be based on the the odds that a stage is missing.

I guess you need to ask "What is more useful - knowing the overall difficulty or the difficulty of the most difficult component?" Clearly the overall difficulty should not be less than the difficulty of the most difficult component, but it isn't clear how much weight to give to the less difficult components or to the number of components.

I think the state ones are more than sufficient. Until you get all 50 states, then a USA one would be great. 51 with DC 52? With Puerto Rico? 53 with Guam? Oooh! shiny pixels

I'm not seeing that. The Clayjar tool indicates that a cache might be difficulty 3 if it is very well hidden, or multi-leg, or uses clues to location. It does not say if your cache has more than one leg then it is a difficulty 3 or that it can't be less than D3. You are giving the Clayjar system and the ratings suggested in the help center far more weight than Grounspeak does. Read the help center article; http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=82 The use of the Clayjar tool is recommended - not required. The rating system is subjective. Geocache ratings vary from one community to the next. These are simply suggested ratings. Each geocache owner can make decisions about the final ratings of their own geocaches (despite the title of this thread)

I don't know what came first. But as I said on post 200, the statements for "D" are different between the definitions in the help center, and Clayjar. The statement "may be multi-leg" is in Clayjar only. It is the 3 rating where the definitions vary the most. Groundspeak definitions * Easy. In plain sight or can be found in a few minutes of searching. ** Average. The average cache hunter would be able to find this in less than 30 minutes of hunting. *** Challenging. An experienced cache hunter will find this challenging, and it could take up a good portion of an afternoon. **** Difficult. A real challenge for the experienced cache hunter - may require special skills or knowledge, or in-depth preparation to find. May require multiple days / trips to complete. ***** Extreme. A serious mental or physical challenge. Requires specialized knowledge, skills, or equipment to find cache. Clayjar 1 Cache is in plain sight or location is fairly obvious. 2 Cache could be in one of several locations. Hunter may have to look for a while. 3 Cache may be very well hidden, may be multi-leg, or may use clues to location. 4 Cache likely requires special skills, knowledge, or in-depth preparation to find. May require multiple days or trips to find 5 Finding this cache requires very specialized knowledge, skills, or equipment. This is a serious mental or physical challenge. I suspect that Clayjar may have developed his tool while the end description was still being debated, thus the slightly different wording. Also, without going back an checking, I imagine the Groundspeak lackey may have made minor edits over time as the description moved from the forums to various parts of the website. Some people want to interpret either the description in the help center or the Clayjar rating as cast in stone. Like many guidelines on GC.com, their interpretation has changed over the years. Often Groundspeak will udpdate the text to clarify or simplify. In addition these methods to arrive at a rating have always assumed there are situations where the cache owner may think a different rating is more appropriate. I personally rarely look at the D, and the T is only a first pass. For higher terrain I'll look at a map and the cache description to decide what to prepare for. So misrated caches don't affect me. But others are making choices based on the ratings and Groundspeak may have asked reviewers to exercise some judgement in places where the rating is obviously wrong. It isn't clear to me if events are always D1, but I don't think I've been to an event where I had problem locating the group once I got to the location. Maybe once when the picnic area they had reserved was usurped and they had to move the event a few hundred feet away.

I think it was the opposite. The discussions resulted in what you call the end descriptions. They are the metric that was defined to assign the rating numbers - along with a consensus opinion that there was some variability and that cache owners could make adjustments. Clayjar took the descriptions and created a form to fill in to make them easier to use. In fact the D rating on Clayjar's form is simply a multiple choice radio button that essentially has the user select the difficulty from the end definition. For terrain, Clayjar was able to break down the definitions a bit because they take into account distance, elevation gain, trail conditions, number of days of travel, and special equipment - so he asks about each of these and computes the T rating.

Does it really make your underwear uncomfortable? In an Internet world there are always a few who will post false logs. But it would seem to me to be self-regulating. Just how much fun is it to sit at home and post false logs on the internet compared to actually finding caches or actually discovering a coin? I'm not sure if the is a reason that so many of these silly logs happen to come from one country. I have a theory that is is a remnant from the former DDR, where posting annonymous false logs on the internet is one way you can get away with standing up to authority, but I really haven't researched this. Another theory is that they are just craving attention and it would be better to simply ignore these logs (or let cache owners quitely delete them). BTW, did cezanne press the report button because you cast aspersions on all Germans? Who moderates the moderators?

Trebbi isn't the only one. I had another log on my coin from Pubert2012 on 6/17/2014 (also from Germany). Of course my knickers are not in a twist, but I was wondering how the coin which is sitting in my desk draw and hasn't been out in over 4 years is suddenly getting discovered. Thanks for the info in this thread for pointing out how.

All right, so you don't like micros. Perhaps your experience has been that micros tend to be in places where you fail to see any reason for a cache beside just finding the cache itself, or more realistically you've found that caches placed for what you perceive as no other reasons than for the hide are likely to be micros. I happen to own several micros and am offended when someone says that all micros are use for are caches placed with no reason except to have another cache. Often the interesting location I want to bring people to can't support a larger cache. In other cases the choice of the container is part of the theme or allows for a more challenging hide. Still others have no particularly good reason to hide a bigger cache. I've gotten tired of getting emails or notes posted on my caches from travel bug owners pleading for someone to rescue their travel bug that's been stuck in the cache for six months. Many of my caches are found only about once every six months, so I've decided to hide micros so people don't leave travel bugs in them.

Sure the CO has the right to give hints or help. But it isn't going to seem fair to someone going after the FTF. The OP probably didn't have the CO's phone number in their address book, but the eventual FTF did. So being friends with the CO is an advantage the OP didn't have. There are no rules that say you can't take advantage or your friendship with the CO, or that a CO has to refuse to give help until FTF is claimed. Some COs are more sensitive to the appearance of playing favorites in the FTF race and they might refuse to give out hints to anyone before there is an FTF. The OP, like every single other thread on FTF ethics or FTF etiquette, imagines the FTF race is fair. The fact is that the ethics of FTF are a lot like love and war.

Of course, since even the Clayjar system says that the Clarjar system is only an estimate. Users are encouraged to add or subtract a half star if they they think the cache is easier or harder than the number the Clayjar system gives. And, in fact, not withstanding the topic of this thread, nothing prevents a geocacher from adding or subtracting more than half a star or from ignoring the Clayjar results altogether. The definitions behind the Clayjar system were discussed in a thread like this in the early days of geocaching. There were a few around back then who felt that just telling people to enter a rating where 1 meant easy and 5 meant difficult would result in a wide variation from cache owner to cache owner. So they tried to come up with some rules-of-thumb to help people rate caches. I wasn't around then. I no doubt would have found the debate then amusing, knowing that no matter what they came up with, it would be subjective and wouldn't solve the problem of consistency. cezanne wants the terrain rating at least to be consistent so he can use it to decide which caches are in his ability and which are not. But if you had a scale that worked for cezanne, it would not work for someone else. There may be things that cezanne is willing to do that someone else would find too difficult and visa versa. In order to reach a consensus the definition has to acknowledge that they wer only an estimate and that cache owners were free to make adjustments or even not use the system to begin with. That brings us to the topic of the thread. It appears that there has been a change where in a few specific cases, the language of the rating descriptions will be incorporated into the guideline for publishing caches on GC.com. For a while some reviewers have insisted that a cache with T1 must have the Wheelchair accessible attribute. Now it seems the event difficulty is to be reviewed, and that a cache owner may have a difficult time getting an event with D>1 published. I don't have too much of a issue with the changes other than - Update the guidelines instead of sending semi-secret memos to reviewers. Once again I find out of a change because someone starts a thread in the forum when the reviewer denies their cache. I also worry that this may just be the camel's nose poking into the tent.

I like nano-chip ice cream

But do you really think that's the only way of looking at the topic? I do not care at all in which way other cachers fulfill the requirements of challenges, fill D/T grids etc. Still it would be nice to be able to trust the D/T-ratings much more and to be able to come up with a consistent rating for one's own caches. I do not feel too comfortable with filling in just something or something that is interpreted very differently by different people. Some subjective influence will always exist and there will always be cachers who misuse a system or do not care to learn about its proper use. However the current situation is unfortunate in my opinion independently from the only issue you seem to take into account. I can understand the desire to use the ratings this way, but geocaching really is too broad to expect this sort of consistency. I understand that some mountaineering organizations have ratings for mountain ascents, some climbing organization have ratings for the difficulty of assisted and unassisted climbs, and some paddling clubs have ratings for difficulty of a rapids. These are looking at a particular aspect of difficulty and rely on both objective and subjective measurements to assign the rating. Yet even here there are difference between various organizations, particularly from country to country and while some people attempt to come up with equivalences between two rating systems they tend to fail at certain points because the different groups select different attributes and measure them differently. My guess is that what you are really looking for is for cachers to use the description to provide several ratings as appropriate for their cache. Good luck with a one to five stars.