TopShelfRob

I wouldn't click on their blog either -- if they don't want people concerned with where they rank on a finds leaderboard, logically they probably wouldn't want people invading their privacy by reading their blog.

Does it matter if it is an automated system "scraping" the data? What if just an ordinary cacher who happened to live in your county wanted to know where he ranked among all cachers in the county and were to manually tabulate all the "found it" logs on every cache in the county and set up a spreadsheet and published a list. Should cachers on the list have the right to opt out of having their actual rank appear on that list? Does the fact that one cacher who doesn't want anyone knowing that he ranks fourth supercede the fact that the cacher that ranks eighth has the right to not think he is actually seventh because there is someone above him that doesn't want to be counted? If you don't want your smiley count "counted" by anyone publicly there is an easy way to do that -- don't log the cache publicly. If you don't want to show up as the fourth-highest ranked cacher in Vermont, don't have the fourth-highest amount of caches found logged in Vermont. Maybe they can put your name up there, but that can't force you to play. Just ignore it. But don't try to force others to not play. If certain people at events knowing that the "blank space is you" bothers you that much, then don't go to events with those people.

Actually, I see it as one of the advantages of multi caches that they get less traffic and that some of those who cache for smilies stay away, in particular for long multi caches. I did e.g. a >120km hike with around 80 stages and it was the multi day hike that made that cache so special - it would not feel right to end up with 80 smilies. It was one great experience not 80 small ones. It's not the stages that make such caches so special. Cezanne Ah, so 1 smiley = 1 great experience... that's good to know. So I can stop at 2 LPCs and have 2 great experiences? (or twice the experience of your 80 stage, awesome 120km hike). I would have thought that your awesome hike would be about 80x the experience of 1 LPC. Might as well score it that way. Also, I only meant for the benefit of those who would call themselves "numbers cachers" -- those of you who like multis as they are, wouldn't have to concern themselves with how many smileys you get, since you aren't in it for the experience. Think of it as 1 smiley with 79 bonus points for being such a great cache. LOL, again I wasn't 100% serious with this anyhow.

I did say, I said it "partly in jest".

It seems there are arguments for and against multis, but one of the most popular arguments against multis for some people is that you're doing the "work" of 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. smileys and only getting 1 smiley. Maybe (and I say this partly in jest) COs should be able to set the amount of smileys that a find on a multi-cache is "worth". A three-stage multi = 3 smileys. A six-stage multi = 6 smileys. I mean, since we've already established that a "find" and a "smiley" aren't always exactly the same thing anyway.

True, it needs a secondary plot-line for the girls, maybe another scene in between scenes 3 and 4 while the guys are looking for all the caches... Probably something that would tie in with what Leonard was saying at the beginning that reminded Raj of Geocaching. Thanks!

Okay, I'll give it a shot: Scene 1 Howard and Raj have been Geocachers, and they're sitting with Leonard and Sheldon at lunch talking about something else and Raj let's it slip that something Leonard said reminds him of searching for a Geocache, and Howard slaps him and says "you idiot, don't tell him about it!" Raj says "Why not?" and Howard says "we don't want the whole world to know about it" and so Leonard asks about it, and Raj explains Geocaching to Leonard and Sheldon. Howard says it's the one thing he does that he doesn't tell his Mother about. And Raj starts to say something, and Howard says, "okay... one of two things I do that I don't tell my mother about". So they finish explaining Geocaching and Howard mentions there's even a cache on the ISS that he logged. Sheldon says it sounds stupid, walking around finding junk that other people have left behind, but Leonard says, "I don't know... it sounds kinda fun - just think, you never know what treasure might be hidden who knows where, right under the noses of people going past it everyday! I'm in, let's go find some treasure!" And then Howard and Raj look at each other, and then as they leave the lunchtable, Raj says, "No... it's pretty much junk." Scene 2 So the whole gang goes out geocaching and hence RobDJr's scene - Penny finds the cache the others couldn't which was right under their noses. The group goes through the stuff in the cache, and Leonard is rather dismayed at the lack of "treasure" in the cache. There is some cheap toys and a logbook, and a trackable. Then Howard says, "okay let's all sign it." Sheldon interrupts and says, "What are you doing? According to the rules you told me, the person who finds it gets to log it. Penny found it, therefore she gets to sign it. The rest of us didn't find it. We can't sign it." So Howard tries to explain that there are many ways to play, but generally how it works is that everyone present can log a "find" even though only one person actually "found" it. To which Sheldon replies, "I suppose you think that Watson, Crick and Wilkins all deserve to get the Nobel Prize for their work with DNA, then?" Howard, Leonard and Raj look at each other and Leonard says, "But Sheldon, they all did get the Nobel Prize." Sheldon says, "Yes, but that doesn't mean they all three should have!" Sheldon says, "Anyway this is a stupid sport. If I want to go all over the country looking for things other people don't want anymore (looking at the cheap toy), I'll just go to a yard sale." Scene 3 They are back at home and Sheldon enters wearing an "I heart Geocaching T-shirt" and announces he wants to give Geocaching another try. Leonard is still kinda disappointed: "Uh, I... don't know. You were right, it seems like a waste of time". He's upset that they didn't find anything worthwhile in the first cache they found, but Sheldon is persistent. He is wearing 3 GPS units in holsters on his belts and has a 5-inch thick stack of paper in his arms: "I went on the website you told me about, and I printed out an itinerary, (aside with a smirk to Howard and Raj: 'I did a pocket query') - and did you know that within a forty mile radius of us there are 366 Geocaches? Here." He takes from his stack, three stapled packets of papers and hands one each to Leonard, Howard and Raj. "What's this?" Raj says. Sheldon continues, "Among those 366 caches there are 312 traditional caches, 24 puzzle caches, 22 multi-caches and 7 Earth Caches. And 1 Munzee." Leonard: "What's a Munzee?" Sheldon: "I'll explain it later. I split the 24 puzzle caches up into four groups of six, distributed evenly in terms of difficulty so each of us can solve a quarter of the puzzles." Howard quickly flips through his packet, and says, "what are these co-ordinates down at the bottom?" Sheldon answers, "Oh, don't worry about those coordinates, I already solved them all, I just thought you all might like to see if you could solve them, too." Then Leonard says, "what's with the 3 GPS units?" Sheldon says, "Well, in case our batteries go dead, I have backups - this one is a Magellan, this one is a Garmin, and this one is a Bushnell, and we're only going to use the Bushnell if we're finding them too easily with the Magellan and the Garmin. Okay guys, let's go." Then Howard says, "Well, okay, but this is a little bit of overkill, usually Raj and me just head out in a random direction and wind up finding 5 or 10 or so. 366 caches, that's going to take us over a month to find them all." Sheldon says, "oh, no, here's the itinerary, we're going to find them all today. In 9 hours and 43 minutes. Hurry up, we leave in two minutes." They look over the itinerary, Sheldon has broken down exactly how long it's going to take them drive to each cache and how long it will take them to find each one. Raj says, "this one here," pointing to the itinerary, "it says we only have 20 seconds to find it, how can you be sure we'll find it so quickly?" Sheldon says, "well, according to the Google Maps satellite image, (he quickly flips a few pages and points it out to him) it's under the skirt at the base of this street lamp in this parking lot. I mean seriously, where else could it be?" So the four of them head out the door, Leonard trailing them and says sarcastically, "Oh, I'm sure this is going to be a lot of fun." Scene 4 They are in the car, they all look dazed. Raj says, "I can't believe we found 354 geocaches." Leonard says, "I can't believe we stayed exactly on the itinerary and..." (interrupted by Sheldon's watch beeping) "...found them in exactly 9 hours and 44 minutes." Sheldon: "Time's up, actually we were done in 9:41 - I'm glad I left a little leeway in there, you know what they say - spontaneity is the spice of life." Howard says: "I can't believe we didn't find 12 of them." Sheldon says, "Those twelve weren't there." Howard - agitated: "How do you know?" "Simple, we went to the coordinates, we looked, we didn't find them. Therefore they must not have been there." Raj: "Well, we could have looked a little longer, especially that one, I know I almost had it." Sheldon: "Which one?" Raj: "The one in the park by the creek next to the Supermarket." Sheldon: "No on that one, if it was there we would have found it in 2.5 minutes. In that amount of time of looking, we easily would have exhausted all the possibilities of where it could have been hidden." Howard: "But how do you know that?" Sheldon (annoyed): "Did you even look at the satellite image? I mean, according to Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, the obvious place for it to be hidden would have been where we looked, in the knothole in the tree on the left. It was extremely unlikely it would have been anywhere else, and mathematically impossible that it wouldn't have been anywhere we wouldn't have found it in the first one hundred and fifty seconds. To look any longer would have been foolhardy. Honestly! It's as if you're the one who just started Geocaching today instead of me!" Leonard: "Well, anyway, I'm glad that's over. Who knew there were so many geocaches in lampposts and guardrails?" Raj: "We could have told you that there wasn't going to be a lot of 'treasure'?" Howard: "Well, it's supposed to be about the journey, anyway, just getting out and seeing nature... not how many smileys you can get in 9 hours and 44 minutes." Sheldon: "I just wanted to optimize our experience by plotting out the most efficient use of our time. Trust me, you had the optimum amount of fun doing it my way." Leonard: "Well, even if we didn't find all 366 of them, I'm sure 354 is going to be a personal record for us that we won't be breaking anytime soon." To which Sheldon says, "What do you mean? Next week we're going to Nevada to do the E.T. Superhighway!"

I've seen one like this where the person who was along with the hider logged it as found (even before it was even published, in fact). While the person made it clear in the comments in the logs that "we are not claiming FTF -- please continue the hunt for true FTF!!!!", it seems to me it could still confuse things a little -- just by having logged it as "found", it's no longer going to show up in a search of "caches not found yet" and maybe because of that a would-be FTFer from going for it with urgency. So yeah, I'd wait until someone else claims FTF first.

Probably not that releveant at all, other than that in a forum thread that is about whether "busybody wannabe reviewers" are taking it upon themselves to point out trouble caches, that someone felt necessary to mention in the same sentence that a business that grosses millions in a year relies on volunteers to do the work.

As long as there is a "Most Found In A Day" and a "Most Found In A Day (Non-Power Trail Division)"

The business grosses a few million per year? If that was the case wouldn't they be able to hire some paid reviewers?

I don't see all of them on my map, all I see are the 25 that are on the first page of search results. For example here I searched for McDonalds in South Carolina, and it shows 57 results, on three pages, but only the 25 on the first page show on the map. (although interestingly only 23 are in South Carolina - one of the SC McDonald's is in NC, the other in NJ.) If I go to the second map I see the next 25, but the first page results are gone. But no matter, the small search window isn't really usable that much anyway for just browsing around on the map. I guess I should the rephrase the question I originally asked. After reading the suggestions, I realized it isn't even so much the small search window or only seeing one page of search results on the map at the time that is the main problem for me. I'm not looking so much for a "sit at the computer and seek before hand solution" --- more like I guess what I'm looking for is something (like maybe a smartphone app) or something that would just let me see all the waymarks near me where I am at the time. For instance I have the nearest 1,000 Geocaches already loaded by PQ in a GPS, and I use CacheSense app for my Android to view the cache descriptions as I'm out an about, and so I want to go Geocaching, this morning I went on a trip through a town about 25 miles from me, and now while I'm out in the field Geocaching, how do I quickly and easily see what Waymarks are near me? Other than go on the website the night before and do a search ahead of time for one search page's worth of results for a particular area that I may or may not wind up later being in, or looking for a particular category not knowing what category of stuff I may come across, I don't see how I can easily see what Waymarks I may happen to be encountering while out Geocaching in a way that's not going to take up 10x energy that I am trying to focus on the next Geocache and not totally take over the whole Geocaching trip. I can do a search, if I know what zipcode I'm in, and if I can see the search-results and the map in the small window to the right in a browser on my phone, but that's hardly ideal. What I am wanting to do is best described as: "While on a predominantly Geocaching-focused trip, maybe happen to work in some Waymarks that I happen to come across." For instance, I saw a civil war statue in a town square, so I took some pictures of it, but I had no idea I was going to be near it before-hand. But if I could see in an app while I'm driving around the waymarks that are near me, maybe there is something nearby I want to see? Or maybe I still don't exactly "get" the point of Waymarking..idk. But I'm trying to give it a shot.

I've tried out Waymarking a few different times in the past, but another mention of it led me to try again. I feel stupid, but I can't figure out if there is a way to simply just browse waymarks on a map. All I can seem to look at at one time is one page's worth of search results on the small map up to the right of the results. Is there an easy way to just browse a larger map of all waymarks (or in particular categories, etc.) by scrolling from location to location? (Without doing a new search each time?)

Do you give them a day or two to convert the "hkahdkh" into a real log? I'm not saying it's the case in these cases, and if they leave it like that they should be deleted. But sometimes when I'm out in the field with a smartphone and have to make a hasty retreat, I'll log some placeholder text. Sometimes it's just "TFTC" or something else short, but sometimes if I'm really in a hurry and/or with a spotty connection, it's just some random characters. Then when I get home at the PC, I'll edit it into a proper log. Deleting it "forthwith" might get rid of a log that intended on fixing it when they were at the computer. Agreed, most of these probably don't know any better, though.

I don't thnk the game really needs to have a score, but it does -- with every log we post, down below our name it indicates a "smiley" count. Show me a way to disable that from showing up, and perhaps it'd be easier to play the game without always taking into consideration everyone's score. If that number didn't show up there (or could be opted-out of displaying), I think that would make it more palatable for challenge cache non-qualifiers to consider logging a note instead of a find. Heck, if there wasn't a smiley count, I'd say a note would be as good as a find in any case.

"Forgot a pencil" doesn't hold much water with me. Ther's always something sharp around you can find to prick your finger with and sign it with blood.

Thanks so much for this post! That's one more read for me!

I haven't had that exact problem, but I do constantly have the problem of my Android losing the GPS lock whenever I am using it WiFi only with a MiFi device...I downloaded GPS Status & Toolbox and when in that app the lock is fine, but using any of the caching apps, (and I'm currently switching between CacheSense, c:geo, and GCDroid) using any of them, it constantly drops the GPS lock. I have to close out of the app, turn GPS off and on again, then go back into the app. Makes it almost useless. I can run GPS Status and it seems a bit better, but it may just be with that app I can see how many satellites, etc., it is reading so I just have a better idea when the GPS drops. After searching on the internet I have found many Android users (well Samsung S3, anyway) seem to report wonky GPS issues, like your problem with the compass and my problems and other similar issues. One suggestion said to take the back off and tighten the ten little screws, and the GPS should work better, I don't know if specifically it will have any effect directionally on the compass reading. It seemed to only make my problems a little better, but not much, it's still dropping GPS signal regularly, if not as often.

I wouldn't worry about it, either, just tell them that's the rules. But that doesn't mean I'd expect them to not find it confusing.

So you want to complicate things on the off chance some never before happened scenario happens, I think you should give up geocaching and get into politics. Again, you've been told over and over that the way challenge caches are set up works, why do you feel the need to complicate and ruin what so many people enjoy? I know we are in the entitled generation but I'm not there yet, earn it or ignore it, either way, move along, I give you no sympathy. Oh no you misunderstand. I don't want to complicate things, or ruin things, or change things at all. I'm just raising a hypothetical situation that was alluded to a few posts back and following the logic. I sure don't need any sympathy for a situation which I do not find myself in, as I certainly would be aware any such cache I am seeking was a challenge cache or not. I don't "stumble" onto caches without knowing what I am doing, as I generally am aware of what is on the Geocaching map in an area I am searching. As dprovan said, "I'm remarkably unconcerned about this scenario, as unlikely as it is inconsequential." I'd go a little further and say it's probably darn unlikely that it would ever happen. Perhaps you are confusing my comments here with my comments earlier in this thread, thinking that whatever I am saying has an ulterior motive of trying to get rid of challenge caches when I've already said that is no longer the case. Either that, or you are just anti- whatever I say, which I'm sure wouldn't be a first here in the forums. And, no, I don't think I'd be good at politics. I'd have to try to get too many people like you to vote for me.

I think a good point was raised earlier - what about (albeit the low probability) of a newbie cacher accidentally stumbling upon a challenge cache? A newbie cacher stumbles upon a puzzle cache they didn't solve - they can log it found - no problem A newbie cacher (non-premium member) stumbles upon a premium only cache - they can find the cache description page by backdoor - they can log it found - no problem A newbie cacher stumbles upon a challenge cache - they can only log it as a note Now, I'm not saying that that is likely or has ever actually happened much, but if that scenario does happen, explain how you could easily explain to them how those rules aren't confusing insofar as the underlying premise is generally: "if you can find it, you can log it" Generally, but not in the case of a challenge cache. Well, tell me how they would know it was a challenge cache if they just stumbled upon it and had not seen the cache description? Especially if they have previously "stumbled upon" a puzzle cache that they hadn't solved that they were permitted to log as found without a problem. Perhaps all challenge caches should be required to have a large disclaimer on them: "This is a challenge cache. Please read cache description and make sure you are entitled to log this cache as a find before logging!" I would hate for such a cacher to find a cache out in the wild and then not find out until they got home that they weren't entitled to log a smiley on it. Granted, I have enough trouble finding caches that I am looking for, I don't know how all these people seem to keep "stumbling" over these allegedly well-hidden caches out in the wild, but I guess it could happen.

Well, then it would just be part of the puzzle and not technically a mistake. Maybe if there was a pattern to the mistakes that would allow one to figure which digits would be transposed. Still not everybody is capable of easily solving every puzzle.

Non-qualifiers can already participate -- by posting a note instead of a found it. (this is a recording) Or maybe that's just a local thing here? Are there any challenge caches that indicate notes-as-found-logs will be deleted? ....corrected: partcipiate by receiving a smiley. Boy you guys sure do like keeping me honest around here.

Actually they're demonstrations of variety, in this case based on the CO's desire to either A) inspire a challenge (optional goal), inspire a caching style/concept (no goal, just awareness), or C) actually create a Challenge Cache (qualification ALR). We have examples of each. Denying C merely reduces the variety of caching styles and options, since A, B and C are all allowable cache listings, determined by the CO's desire, except that C needs to be statistically verifiable. I don't disagree with any of that - I'm just adding that in this exact case, she stated she wished she could have made it a challenge cache, but since it wasn't allowed to be a true challenge cache, she didn't desire to make it an optional challenge cache. Again, that's her perogative and that's fine, but if all she wanted to do was inspire a "caching style/concept (no goal, just awareness)", then she could have just done that instead of wanting it to be a challenge in the first place. By saying "I would have made it a challenge if I could have" but then declining to make it an optional challenge, it seems to indicate that an optional-challenge cache is inferior to an allowable ALR challenge cache. Yes, all the varieties are possible, but I get the sense that COs only choose to use "optional challenges" because they have to, not because of a desire to allow non-qualifiers to participate. (And as an aside, if challenge caches can be identified not by being their own sub-type, but by merely having the word "challenge" in the title, why couldn't library caches -- similarly not a official type -- be identifiable by the word "library" in the title? Sure, there may be an occasional non-library cache with 'library' in their title, but on the whole it seems like that would have been a way to verify it. Or, alternatively, she could have just sought to quantify the challenge by asking for people to have found a certain amount of caches with the word 'library' in the title. Perhaps that would have, like the OP of this thread discussed, led to people putting out a lot of non-library caches with the word "library" in the title just to help people qualify.)

Well all I'm saying is that by leaving out the "requirement" nature of the optional requirement, it's sort of undermining the viablity of the "optional challenge" cache concept. It's as if to say, "well, since I can't make it a 'true' challenge, I might as well not even bother with making it a challenge at all." It's not really a challenge that you can choose to complete or not, it's just a celebration of library caches, which is fine in itself, but as far as using it to back up what a "great example" of an optional-challenge cache could be, it kind of undermines that argument. ("They not only made the requirement optional, they took it out entirely!") Personally, I think it would have been nice to see the lists of library caches that those that chose to take on the challenge might have presented, and they might have been useful for others who wanted to seek out library caches. Instead there is only a bunch of "yay, I love library caches, too!" comments.