Tequila

Very true but doubtful in this case given, (1) The cache existed blissfully as a 4.0/2.0 for almost 6 years. (2) All of the finders in the past 15 months found it because they needed the original rating for their Fizzy Grid. Hard to imagine they would recommend a change in the ratings. (3) The CO changed the difficulty from 4 to 5 after he published the puzzle solution on the listing effectively making a tough puzzle cache into a simple traditional. Common sense would suggest that if the difficulty rating needed changing, it would decrease, not increase. (4) The CO changed the terrain rating from 2.0 to 4.5 in spite of the fact it is the same 400 meter hike from the parking along a defined trail with minimal elevation changes that it has been for almost 6 years. It is even more interesting that the chosen new rating of 5.0/4.5 is a very rare combination locally; one that required many cachers to drive up to 8 hours to find a legitimate one. However,whatever the reasons for the changes, it was all for naught. The caching gods must have noticed this anomaly as well. Somehow, after being archived, the rating was magically restored to its original rating. BTW, I would be curious to know if you have an explanation for the cache name change incident. I see the cache has been renamed again but the rather odd "0' at the beginning remains. .

Here is a 16 km hike that I created in a really nice and little visited conservation area. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...aa973&log=y You have to solve a complex puzzle first and then visit 9 stages. One word of advice. Do not create an out and back where the final is near the start. Once FTF is over, some cachers will go straight to the final and ignore the other stages.

That is a very good point. Software would be much better at finding name changes, rating changes etc.

The challenge with Groundspeak assuming ownership of the challenges is policing the requirements. Locally, we have a cacher who: (1) Changed the name of a cache to a nonsensical name in order to make it easier for other cachers to complete an alphabet challenge. (2) Changed a cache rating to an hard to get rating and then archived the cache in order to mess up the matrix of several cachers trying to complete the fizzy challenge. As the owner of two challenges, I only need to "police" a few cachers. If GS owned all the challenges, they would have to dedicate a full time employee to validating etc. .

I just ran a quick test of creating a new PQ. Took about 20 minutes for the results to show up in my email.

I created Ontario's first Fizzy Challenge (Tequila:81 Proof) before there was a massive influx of challenges. At the time, there was no requirement for the CO to have completed the said challenge and, in fact, I was short by about 20 caches. When I did complete T81, I logged a find on it. I have never logged a find on my caches before but felt that a fizzy challenge was significant enough to warrant an exception. Particularly a fizzy with a date restriction. And it was not about the numbers for me; I quit logging most of my finds years ago. Of course, it is up to each individual to decide what is right for them. I doubt anyone would criticize you for logging the find, assuming the challenge was significant enough. .

Must be restricted to newly created PQ's. I am now into several months of problem free PQ delivery.

My scheduled PQ's came through on time.

Yes. There is an option in the listing that you check to make it visible or invisible. Good catch on your part. I got an FTF (back when I cared about FTF's) by seeing the cartridge a day before the cache listing.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/wherpigo/id385035547?mt .

you really believe that? there's not a trace of TPTB in this thread or anywhere else discussing this issue, and its been going on for about a month now Brad has been in the thread several times notifying that a certain bot account had been banned. TPTB have a long standing and well known policy of not commenting on their processes etc. in the forums. And there is lots of proof that they won't be goaded into commenting either. However, given the fact they implemented CAPTCHA for non-PM downloading would seem to be a clear sign that they are doing something. If I was TPTB, I doubt that I would go public with all of what I was doing to put a halt to the bots. That just makes it easier for the bot to figure out how to get around things. Several posts to this thread start with "...it could be worse,,,,,,the bot could be doing this..........". This just fuels the guy(s) with ideas. I tend to agree with knight2000. This thread is feeding the bot guy. He has cachers arguing with each other. He has cachers giving him new ideas. He has cachers admitting how frustrating it is. etc etc. It may not make him go away, but if this forum was reduced to simply "here is another account........", it certainly wouldn't be as much fun for him to read. .

so what is the point of having PMO's? I don't have a picture of a dead horse being flogged but I know some forum members have. So I will leave it to them to post it. Suffice it to say, that question has been discussed ad nausea in countless other threads. I suggest you do a thread search and you will quickly find it. In a nutshell: not much. Most, if not all, PMO features are easily circumvented or flawed in their completeness (ie. audit log). .

You will be wasting your time. All of my caches are PMO and they were hit. . well that royally sucks and Groundspeak better fix that loophole, which i thought was only open through iPhone use, or remove the option of allowing PMO's of course since nobody from Groundspeak ever comes in here to comment we are completely barking up the wrong tree and their lack of a response in this issue is seriously becoming ridiculous and annoying It is not a loophole per se. It is a well known fact that Jeremy has blessed the backdoor for logging PMO caches. You can find that info in several threads. I doubt it will be closed.

You will be wasting your time. All of my caches are PMO and they were hit.While I don't have any PMO caches, there were a number here in NH that were hit by the bot, so I can verify that it will do no good. Here's one now. The method of logging to a PMO cache is well published. Probably as easy to Google as the bypass for CATPCHA. .

You will be wasting your time. All of my caches are PMO and they were hit. .

Most likely the ratio of volunteers to cache logs on a given day: That's a lot of filtering by reviewers to keep it away from the COs. A lot. -- The ideas of CAPTCHAs and such are simply us brainstorming potential methods to help keep the burden down on the volunteers, and the cache owners. The "found it" or "write note" logs are merely a distraction that the COs can ignore. When the bot uses NM, NA type logs it gets a lot more annoying as the caches affected now get action items against them. Leave a cache with NM on too long and your reviewer may archive it. Not to mention, I'd rather the reviewers are not flooded with bogus NA logs, when they already have enough emails to look at in a day. To clarify, I was not suggesting the reviewers have any onus on this situation beyond simply reporting a bot when it might be brought to their attention. My suggestion is that cachers (owners, non-owners, reviewers) keep a vigilant eye for a bot. That process seems to be working quite well ad demonstrated by how quickly they are reported to this thread. Once a potential bot is identified GS takes over and deals with it. .

So you want to inconvenience/punish tens of thousands of cachers in order to stop one bozo????? That is even more onerous, and horrible, than asking the CO's to delete the bot's logs. What is wrong with asking GS to take complete ownership? Edit to add: I did notice that yesterday's update included a CAPTCHA to query downloads for non-premium members. That should help a little bit. .

Sometimes it is a bomb: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=261179 .

IMHO, this comment is spot in. .

Why would inconveniencing hundreds, if not thousands, be better than simply deleting the few bot accounts? Are you suggesting this only be done for new cachers? That is a little less onerous but still shifts the responsibility away from GS where it belongs. If you are suggesting all cachers have to wait to have their logs approved, it will never work. CO's will be swamped. Cachers won't be able to run their My Finds report at the end of a weekend of caching because logs haven't been approved. And what does a cacher do when a CO is on vacation for three weeks and not checking email? Etc. Etc. Etc. I did. Have GS step up the plate, take ownership of this problem and delete any bot accounts and associated logs. This won't stop bots; nothing will. But it would reduce innocent cacher responsibility to simply reporting a bot. Most cachers submit very few new caches and there is an inherent amount of checking required for the approval. Waiting a day or two for a few caches to be published is not the same as waiting for your logs to appear. To expect CO's or reviewers to start verifying logs is insane. They did not cause this problem. Why should they be saddled with fixing it. Let GS take ownership and fix it internally. Did Tylenol ask consumers to sort through their pill bottles and check to see which pills were tampered with?

OMG!!!!! I can just see the forum thread now: I logged a find two hours ago and the CO has not approved it. This is a horrible idea and puts even more onus on the innocent caching community to fix a problem that belongs to Groundspeak. .

I agree. A lot of innocent cacher owners are bearing the brunt of these bots. That is unfair. If Groundspeak doesn't step up to the plate and take ownership of this issue, the bots win. There will be a lot of unhappy geocachers and that is probably one of their objectives. IMHO, when one of these pop up, GS should delete (not just ban) the account and all associated logs. .

I had a PM cache logged by Saturday's bot. He was searching for caches that had the sequence "Barf" in the title. No idea if it is the same bot as NH. .

Sorry, Ken. It was a highlight of my caching career. Chuck

The following cache will not be accepted as part of a qualifying grid. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...t6=Go&log=y .