-CJ-

Not that many caches that I wished to ignore; however, pretty much work with placing and maintenance of my own caches. So, don't want to do additional PQs for this purpose.

Yesterday I got an email message from one cacher whom I know. She described her experience of hunting a cache together with a colleague coming from country X (I don't want anyone to be offended on the national ground). My friend was surprised with the "X-style" of geocaching: the guy simply ignored all muggles that were around. People were passing by, she said, some of them turning their heads, looking a bit interested. There was a couple on a bench nearby who stared at the guy while he was possessed with his search. He finally found the container, signed the log and replaced it - all in the same style, like if he was the invisible man. I wrote that she wasn't the first person who was surprised by people not using any stealth tactics while searching. I myself witnessed foreign cachers who paid no attention to the surrounding people. They started actively searching a cache immediately after they were at GZ. In one case a company of excited cachers talked too loudly so two workers came out of the nearest cafe to find our what was going on. Once in a country Y. I grabbed a container, signed its logbook and was about to replace it but was interrupted by a company of three lads who approached the GZ and started their search. I put the container in my pocket and waited; they tried different locations and argued with each other loudly where this cache could be. I was standing only three steps away staring at them; they acted like if I was invisible. Finally, I asked them to stop, passed the cache to them and pointed at the place where they should put it afterwards. In our local community we are trying to be very careful. There have been many caches where I abandoned my attempts because of muggles. I have always thought that the worst scenario would be that my actions would bring someone's attention to the cache and it would be muggled. In many cases I succeeded after waiting for half a hour or more. Sometimes I returned to a much crowded place but failed. We discussed a whole system of tricks here: bags, smoking, shoelaces, taking photos, all that things we used to camouflage our actions. But why don't our colleagues do the same? Perhaps they are coming from other cultures where geocaching is a widely known sport. It is easier to grab a cache from below a bench and if your neighbours notice and ask questions you just make them happy with a story about geocaching. Perhaps they are subject to popular belief that normally no one in a crowd pays attention to what you're doing. So simply do what you do and don't worry. (This may be true in some cultures but definitely not here). Or probably they don't own any caches and therefore don't know how diffivcult it could be for its owner sometimes to organize a trip to replace a missing cache. Recently one visitor grabbed my geocache while several meters away a company of youth enjoyed BBQ and beer. I visited this cache several hours after him during one of my regular maintenance trips. The container was already gone.

Tried to use that function but wasn't impressed by it. Ignoring caches in my area made it more difficult to choose place for my own new caches.

So, no need to send additional explanations to the owner of the spoiler, right?

This is why we usually go caching with our bears - these creatures are able to make impression on our police. We call them geobears around here. If we talk seriously, there are several reasons for not doing this. a) Local policemen typically don't know anything about geocaching so you'll need to start from scratch. b ) They hardly can communicate in English so you better be fluent in Russian. (Perhaps you are). c) They typically don't like anything uncommon that they don't understand. You cannot seriously rely on the legal system here that would protect your rights. Anyway, the worst scenario I can think of is that you will be transported to a local police office, questioned here and spend some hours behind bars before they understand you're just another crazy tourist who's most likely harmless though suspicious. I can hardly imagine that you will turn any Russian policeman into your faith after talking about the sport with him.

Thank you Keystone, this quote answers my question.

Please pardon me for this post and thank you for the link. I will read it and hope that I will find an answer to my question there. The moderator may close or delete this thread of course.

I wouldn't recommend doing this in Russia

My question relates to the website's practice of publishing "country souvenirs" in profiles. They are mostly nice and I like them but I cannot understand the policy. For example, I got a Hungarian souvenir but no Italian souvenir. One for Latvia, nothing for two neighbouring Baltic states, Latvia and Estonia. OK, I can understand why they don't have a souvenir for Russia, I'm not complaining about this. (Perhaps we will have one in a decade or two). But some other countries look pretty much advanced but lack souvenirs. Is there any clear (published?) policy on that? (if yes, where could I find it?) Any plans about what countries will be granted souvenirs, say, in 2015?

Still cannot understand why you call this "hard and fast". Maybe a language issue I agree. Smiley is not that important either. It's just a matter of fact. If it was a reward for my efforts, a compensation of my wasted time, a matter of fairness or whatever, then I should agree that every other person may have his/her understanding of being rewarded, about situations when it's fair or unfair to log caches as found when it was "not exactly what happened", and so on, and the common simple understanding of a "Found it" phrase would be lost. I think I got your point with the "junk cache" (the photo published above). You mean that folks obsessed with what you call "hard and fast" idea prefer to leave paper in a cracked leaking container because this is the only way for them to say "yes, I followed all rules and found the cache!" However I see no troubles for such person to publish a NM or even NA log either. I suppose that such cachers probably do this even more often because they're so focused on rules Maybe not. As for abandoned geocaches I believe it's the very big and different problem and it would be unfair towards the lady to spoil this very thread with this theme. So, my example on the topic. Once there was a geocache I visited with my wife. It took us about 2.5-3 hours to walk there from the train stop through woods and sands and finally we approached the place. T=4. Hint was too vague to understand. Something resembling the cache container was about 8 meters high on a pine. Neither cache description nor any attribute suggested I should climb. Though the way looked not so difficult and it was not raining I suspected that I was too fat and awkward and could break some branches on my climb up and falling down. "Nevermind, - I said, - let's go". My wife was enthusiastic however and persuaded me to let her climb the evil pine. She's much smaller and made it easily. We had no car and had to walk 2 hours through the the dark forest to the nearest highway just to find we were late for the last bus and had to hitchike for an hour more. At the hostel I logged the cache as found. However I would not be upset if I didn't because it was just a statement of fact.

Thank you NYPaddleCacher for your explanation. I've met such geocaches too. I don't understand how they relate to "vertically challenged" caches though. My point is to make things simple, not hard-and-fast as is was suggested above. My attitude comes from understanding that a smiley isn't a reward, it's just a statement of fact. In addition, this simple approach make the game easier to me. If I start thinking of various exclusions like "it was too slippery and too dangerous to climb and grab the container but since I saw it I think I could..." then soon it will be a game of exclusions.

What are "temporary logs in junk caches"?

If I don't sign the logbook I don't mark this cache as found. No exceptions. This is a game so there should be clear rules. If there appear more and more exclusions than the game simply becomes less interesting. I've ran into caches on trees many times. Some of them I couldn't reach. I just say to me: "OK, it was great that I managed to get to this nice place and enjoy views. Time to go". Nothing bad happened. No reason to question whether I can log this cache as found or not.

haoral, it was nice to meet you too. There's a chance I'll be in Istanbul again by the end of the year.

As for the caches and geocaching in/around the city I suggest you contact lis_its from SPb. You've probably seen his account already since he's the owner of many caches around there. Try dropping him a message. I don't think there are any special requirements in SPb that would differ from other Russian regions. I suggest you don't take photos of military objects and mind CCTV cameras. Mind that police doesn't know about geocaching in this country so don't rely on your readiness to explain your strange actions with "I'm just searching for a cache", it doesn't work here. Anyway, you won't be in trouble until you look for it. Won't help with the .ru website, sorry. It's probably not worth spending time on this since (as you said) you don't read Russian.

I'm a bit frustrated by lessons like "1 is not equal to 2" and that I cannot view the situation from the point of a monolingual person. Now it came to "entitlement" and "obligations" like if I was pushing anyone to write logs in my language. My initial interest was to discuss what audience people target at when they communicate. I think it's about to go too personal now and I wish to avoid that. Please excuse me for any misunderstanding caused by this thread. I really appreciate all opinions published here and let me say again that if you even come to our country please let me know in advance so I could organize something nice for your geocaching staying here. JPreto, thanks a lot about sharing your interesting experience in Brazil.

Why? I could easily write here in my language following the same logic that people provided above. I would say: "If you are that curious you are free to translate my posts into your language". I bet you won't translate. Not because my posts are all about the sunny weather and aren't worth translating (you cannot know before you translate them). Just because it's a miscommunication from the very start. Same with logs. One writes a log in some unknown language. He says: "Well, if you're that curious you can translate it yourself." It's obvious that he is not much interested in communications, sharing experience, etc. If he's not much interested, I'm not much interested too. This would be a good answer to the initial question. From what was said above (and how it was said) I can probably guess why we have so many misunderstandings with such a simple theme. In our country the game is pretty young and, let's say, logs matter. Logs are the way of sharing experience, telling about problems with geocaches, making new acquantainces, promoting the sport at whole. This is why we care and why what is said in the guidelines means much to us. With your longer history, numerous geocaches and thousands of finds some individual logs in languages you don't understand aren't that important.

Do I really sound that selfish? If so, I'm sorry. I thought that I started with the phrase that "my caches go in two languages" and we're now communicating in the language which is more comfortable to you then me.

In theory you're right but I'm talking about myself and I won't do translation. Just like you would not post your third message in this thread if I replied you in Russian, no?

Why do you think I started this thread in English?

In my own country many people can only speak Russian. I think I'm able to imagine that No. It's not really about what I expect, it's about what the visitor expects. Whom he addresses to in his logs. Himself, as CanadianRockies suggested? A sort of a personal blog about own adventures? I think I can imagine that too. But if it's so how about that sharing of experience in the guidelines? I see logs translated into English quite often. Someone writes in his language, say Czech, and adds translation into English. It's always nice. It shows that the author of the text thinks about the audience. One cannot rely on automatic translation, true. It may be a bit awkward, probably some emotions are lost, but I've never seen meaningless translations in geocaching logs. They were always easy to understand. I recently returned from Istanbul, Turkey, and met their local geocaching community. Very nice people. They talk Turkish among them of course. However they are geocachers, they have used geocaching.com (in English) for years, all their geocaches in Istanbul have descriptions in English. Not all of them speak English fluently but they can read this language. I left all my logs in English aiming at sharing my experience from geocaching in this city and knowing that people would understand me. Same with geocaching communities in Lithuania and Latvia whom I met this month too. When I got acquainted with their caches I saw they also provided bi-lingual descriptions - in their native language and in English. Thus, I wrote my logs in English. So, before addressing the audience I try to find out if the audience understands me. Do you often address any audience in language which the audience doesn't understand and without organizing any translation? If so, what sharing of experience do you expect from your speech? Very nice comment. I need to think about this next time I go abroad to a country where neither English nor Russian is widely spoken. The log in Japanese (let's leave the ciphers aside) in a cache in Moscow would be just the same as "TFTC". Being either visitor or CO I will simply ignore this log. So, it looks simple. If you don't care about your logs being read you can use the language you're most comfortable with, no matter whether the audience understands you or not. For instance, I could start this thread in Russian language, are you able to imagine how this discussion would look like then?

Geocaching 101: Share your geocaching stories and photos online. Finding your First Geocache: When you get home, log your experience online by going back to that cache page and using the links provided. The cache owner is automatically notified of your log and is always happy to know about your adventure, the condition of their cache, and any environmental factors. Upload photos to share your experience visually with other geocachers. Logs are written to share stories/experience, this is how I used to think.

I live in a country where English is not the main language so as a CO I typically translate all my geocache desriptions into English for those guests of our country who don't read Russian fluently. So, my caches go in two languages. What I cannot understand is when a visitor logs such a cache and leaves his message in Spanish, Finnish or Lithuanian. No problems with brief "TFTC-style" logs but when there are several phrases describing the visitor's experience... what audience are they targeted at? I have four possible variants in mind. - The visitor was so happy that he/she couldn't find appropriate words in other languages do describe how great was my geocache. - He was absolutely disappointed but didn't want me to be insulted by his log so used the language most probably unknown to me. - He had 100+ geocaches in his plans for the same day so no time for translating anything, sorry. - He used this very phrase in all his logs since the beginning of time so why change anything? Any other ideas?

I remembered the date only after I ran into this thread.

I actually suspended logging trackables after I witnessed several examples of how they were logged at geocaching events. Few people have been really interested to see the items and ask questions about their origin, owners, missions, etc. The majority was happy to get the list of codes only. I believe that some (many?) people haven't ever seen trackables they "discover". Bulk logging and formal phrases, no special attention to any trackable or photos. So, the value of this action has decreased in my eyes and I cancelled this way of "discovering" trackables at my side.