-CJ-
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Posts posted by -CJ-
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I've seen their patches in Istanbul so I can confirm they are great. Sadly, I spent all me pocket money on badges that time
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There are two different worlds that you will observe after playing the game for a while
In the first world there are people who say that COs should take care of their caches, go out and replace logs, and your best behaviour would be to log this cache either NM or NA, depending on circumstances. In the second world there live happy COs who send you grateful messages after you replace or dry their wet logs. The first world is bigger though -
The answers will also depend on the time of the year and the time of the day, along with how many time I'm going to spend outdoors, the terrain and the way I'm going to get there (walking? driving?)
Once upon a time my geocaching day ended at a height of about 3,000 meters above the sea level. I was standing on a snow track, looking at all that rocks around me and a glacier I was walking directly to, in a fancy "office" boots with a suitcase in my hand, thinking "what the hell I'm doing here?"
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Tip when geocaching with small children: carry several trade items in your pack or coat pocket. When the cache is found, insist that an adult must open the container (for safety reasons). If it's low on swag, slip in trade items from your secret stash, which you were holding in your other hand.
This sounds not like the best idea for me and my kids. My approach has always been to try to bring their attention to the surrounding area, places of interest, nature, great routes, etc. As a result, my kids are very tolerant to what we find inside containers. On the other hand, they are not as enthusiastic in geocaching as their daddy
But - no, I've never did such tricks with secret stash. Take the game as is. Be cool and help to maintain the cache - add new items and replace/dry logbooks when needed. -
I cannot place any cache because these locations are thousands of kilometers from my home, and since there are no local cachers I will not be able to provide proper maintenance.
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TriciaG, there are no caches in that regions. Not a single hide. There are also no cachers living nearby. It may hard to believe but in our country this situation is typical. I suppose it will take years before geocaching will reach those places.
dprovan: Your plan is to have an event with the hopes of meeting a local or two and trading trackables with them
I'm pretty sure that no one will come. As I said, there's a slight chance that someone could get interested and appear but this chance is close to zero.
I don't mind about forgetting about the game for a while and just leaving all trackables at home. I asked my question because
a) Sometimes there are trackables with missions like "Travel around Russia and come back to the country of origin". I bet their owners just don't know the situation. I would love to help them but I don't know how.
I've noticed (more than one) events of this sort: meet-and-greet in some cities/towns where there are neither cachers nor caches. Some enthusiast comes for business, spends several days there, just to discover that no one comes. I'm almost sure this is done without any hidden intentions (like bringing/visiting trackables) but in a true hope that someone will attend. The owners of these events do not deserve any bad words because they come without knowing the real situation. This reason doesn't work for me though.So the words of Isonzo_Karst about event to "facilitate the social aspect of geocaching" seem reasonable. I just regret I cannot do anything to help trackables to move to great locations where they could be.
For instance, this is the city I'm going to visit next weekend: http://www.geocaching.com/map/default.aspx?lat=64.555467&lng=43.265133#?ll=64.5071,40.44754&z=10
Population: 361,000. Nice place, many interesting locations to visit and wonderful destination for any trackable that I currently have at hand. No traces of geocaching. I checked the local geocaching website too (which is far more "productive" in regions usually) but it looks like that all caches there have been placed as virtuals by guests from Moscow and have been totally unsupported since their appearance on the website.
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Let's say I've got some trackables that want to travel deep into the Russian province. Brave idea, but there are just few geocaches (and geocachers) outside Moscow / Saint-Petersburg at the moment. Imagine that I'm going to travel to such "deserted" city/town "in the middle of nothing" (in geocaching terms). I publish a "meet-and-greet" event at the website suggesting everyone to come at 8pm at some given place, put coordinates that I know (say, there are my colleagues there who can give me the exact coordinates). At the given date/time no one comes. I let all trackables to "visit" the event and they get their destination/distances.
To me it's an etiquette question because I suspect that no one will attend. (Though there's a little chance to meet another lonely geocacher at the same date/time in the same town). Thus, it's maybe not honest to announce a meeting.
However I've seen such "zero events" before in our country. So, I suppose there are no any violations of guidelines. Am I right?
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Well apparently (judging from the blistering e-mail) that blank logbook is more important to many FTF hounds than the fun of finding the cache.
It was not just once or twice when people logged my caches happily as "FTF in a brand new logbook!" despite of the fact that it was just a replaced logbook in a pretty old cache
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I added the English translation yesterday so the event to be approved easier. I already see it on the map, great!
Frankly, I didn't even think about using Google Translate to evaluate anyone's texts
When I heard of a published event to be approved as a MM event I thought that this could be similar to the procedure of approval of a new geocache. Our reviewer knows Russian language however. His decisions have been based on the guidelines, not "spirit". When I read here about some listings being not approved and going to the appeals things became even more confusing -
This was a long thread to get through it from the beginning to the end... have mercy next time please
There are three moments that sounded interested to me as we discussed them in our community.
First, that strage line about photos. Being not a native English speaker I could harldly understand what was meant by "Would you be interested in sharing photos and stories from your event with Geocaching HQ?". Was it a sort of request for sending photos/stories to Groundspeak? We're planning a rather small event indoors, no impressive photos to share. Since English is not our first language I seriously doubt that anyone will agree to write a story in English to be published on the website. Do they need our stories in Russian? Can't be. Or did Groundspeak request permission for publication of stories and photos that our fellow geocachers may attach to their "attended" logs? The most intriguing issue was that this answer was mandatory in their webform so I could not just omit it.
Second, since our meeting will be conducted in Russian language and for the Russian audience and its description is published in Russian too - I wonder how can Groundspeak judge whether our event is "in the spirit of Maker Madness" or not? Do you read Russian fluently enough? I noticed the same question raised by Finnish cachers recently.
Third, "a creative cache" may have different meanings in different geocaching communities. You might be surprised if I tell you that a LPC would be a highly creative hide around here. Why? Because lampposts in Russia do not have those nice skirts that I can see on many photos publised at this website. Actually, I've never met an LPC here. Moreover, those well-known metal nano containers seemed really creative only a year ago. Why? Because they are not sold here and very few enthusiasts have purchased them from online shops, mostly from German ones. Thus, we understood the idea of a "Maker" event as a "Cache Author" (Cache Owner, Cache Creator, etc.) event.
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I noticed that people coming to Russia sometimes organize a meet-and-greet events in different cities/towns and are pretty much disappointed that no one pays attention.
In most cases it's not about your event being ignored - it's just the lack of geocachers around the country. Even in many large cities of Russia there are no cachers at all. This is exactly why there are so few geocaches in many regions of the country.
However in Moscow (and I think most tourists coming to Russia visit the capital) there are people whom you can meet so feel free to announce a meet-and-greet event in the city. If you don't want to publish your intentions but just have an idea of passing a couple of trackables or whatever else, please contact me in advance so this could be organized for you.
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Sometimes trying to get to an untranslated hide is a challenge itself
I did that once or twice in Finland where they have fairly large number of listings in Finnish. It's funny when you are trying to find a cache having only its coordinates and (sometimes, but not always) its size In our country we have a tradition of translating all listings into English. (Some of our listings are actually in English only).
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A single DNF can often trigger a chain reaction for no good reason at all.
I've seen situations like that. When someone reports inaccurate coordinates the next person (who read the previous log(s)) is "prepared" in his mind that he may fail to find the cache because of inaccurate coordinates.
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RobDJr, I would agree if we translated a standalone word. However, geocaching guidelines include many mandatory conditions too so I would not call them "recommendations".
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Thank you for your advices and opinions. I'm translating the guidelines from English into my language for the newbies around here. My interest in asking this question was to make all written guidelines as clear as possible before translation. My final goal is to translate them accurately so the result is easily understandable by a non-guru audience, no contradictions and/or vague wording. Since English is not my first language my task (one of them, actually) is to exclude all chances of misunderstanding before making any judgements. I thought there could be some article in a Help Center that I missed or I just gave some words in the guidelines some different meaning. Or, at last, there is always a chance that some guideline is obsolete. In this particular case - taking into account what have been seen there - I'm pretty much convinced that I made no mistakes in my translations by now. It's an issue with the source - the guidelines.
In the Guidelines... Doesn't say "You Must"One of the reasons for me to ask this question was that there was a brief discussion among translators and it was suggested that the meaning of this very guideline was "you must".
I have only put the GC code on a few of our caches over the years.I did that for none of my caches. I've seen very few caches with codes printed on their containers. It's typical and none seems to be bothered with the fact that guidelines aren't followed. Groundspeak itself sells nano containers that have no space to mark them as "official geocaches" and add a GC code as it is said in the guidelines. This is one of painful moments when the guidelines says "A" and the reality is "B" (and you may be asked by a newbie cacher why it is so).
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So, Bear and Ragged, do you mean that the guideline "include the GC code on the outside of the container" is not a must but an option?
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In the text titled "Hiding Your First Geocache" it's clearly said:
Step 3 - Placing Your CacheStep 4 - Submitting Your Cache
Step by step. First place your cache. Then submit it. There's not a word saying that I should "half-submit" some raw listing before placing my container or visit the hiding place twice to follow the guidelines.
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According to the guidelines:
To avoid confusion and alarm when a cache is discovered accidentally, clearly label it as a "geocache" and include the GC code on the outside of the container.It seems obvious to me that when I place a geocache I don't know its GC code. The code is assigned only when the cache listing is published.
Please explain me the meaning of this guideline.
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Clan Riffster: you're right, these two cases are similar. We've had enough discussions about the reason for geocaches not to be buried. More cachers have come since then and asked us about this rule because it hasn't been explained in the guidelines. The fact that someone knows "the purpose" doesn't mean yet that everyone knows it (especially in communities where English is not the primary language).
One who introduced changes to the guidelines could get rid of vague wording and/or add a help article. Do you think it is possible?
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The language limiting "stacked events" was present in the prior version of the guidelines. We reviewers have relied upon it for years. If readers did not appreciate the meaning of the prior language -- particularly those in countries where English is not the primary language -- then it's good that the new, clearer language has replaced the prior version.
I live in country where English is not the primary language, I'm a volunteer translator and (sorry) I cannot fully agree.
Old version of "Stacked Events" guideline language:
For caching events with several elements, multiple event listings may be submitted if each element stands on its own merits as an event, and meets the listing guidelines.
This guideline relates to events that have several elements. For example, if I invite people to join me in a park for a 2 hours walk and then to celebrate the date in a cafe these two "events" should not be published as two separate instances at geocaching.com. The way to improve this language would be to give the words "on its own merits" some additional explanation in a Help Center article.
New version:Events with several elements, a sequence of events, or events that are near the same time or location and intended for the same audience should be submitted as a single event. Additional waypoints may be added to the event listing for the locations of event activities.
The guideline was amended with "events that are near the same time or location and intended for the same audience". You probably think that this is a "clearer language" because you have one specific situation in mind ("stacked events"). However this language actually extends the limitation to events which have no signs of "stacked events" criteria - for example, two events organized in one city on one day independently. The vague wording "near the same time or location" and "the same audience" shows green light to interpretations.
With the new guidelines one can be disallowed to publish an event to celebrate "a souvenir date" in his city only because there's already some event in this very city with the same idea and on the same day. The previous guidelines had no such restrictions.
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The guidelines introduced new vague terms as reasons for decision making. (What is "near the same time"? What is "near the same location"? What is "for the same audience"?) The fact that these terms are attempted to being explained here and not hyperlinked to any articles of the Help center is another proof that these terms are unclear and subject to interpretation. Saying that "this limitation isn't new" is another proof that it has been around for a while so there was enough time to introduce these limitations properly on the website.
Each time I'm told that "your local reviewer will decide what the guidelines mean in your case" the written guidelines loose some points in my opinion. Frankly, this is no problem for me as a geocacher. We Russians have lived in a country with such attitude to legislation for decades. The problem is for me as a promoter of the game in my region since the guidelines that I've used as a basic educational material have lost part of their strength.
We have no problem of so-called "stacked events" around here. Someone decided that the guidelines should be restricted in this part and said that this "enhancement" wasn't new: it had rested in his head and had been implemented by some reviewers whom he knew. It's difficult to explain all this to my fellow geocachers, really. It's easier to say: "They invented some guidelines at Groundspeak for their needs. Don't pay much attention, better rely on our reviewer". We currently have great reviewer, BTW. I hope he stays as long as possible with us.
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events that are near the same time or location and intended for the same audience should be submitted as a single event
Who wrote this and for what reason?
Does the author of this text believe that there must be no more that one event in Moscow in one day? In the centre of Moscow city? In Moscow region? What if one event is at 11am and the other is at 4pm - are they "near the same time" or not?
It's said clearly: "(Events) are organized by geocachers and are open to other geocachers". What is "audience" then? Let's say, there are two events to celebrate some holiday, one in a park (family/kids/dogs friendly), another in a pub in the evening. Are these "audiences" different enough to organize two different events? What if 90% of attendees appear to be adults with no kids/dogs - does this fact make two audience "the same"? What if John organizes a walk around the city centre and Paul thinks about spending all the event in a cafe - do their intentions (two different types of activity) mean they have different audiences to hold two separate events - or not?
Last year we organized several events around here. There's a funny guy here who's not easy to communicate to. He used to avoid our meetings but to publish his own events within 24 hours after he sees our events on the website. If Groundspeak offers a souvenir for any event being attended at any particular day chances are 100% that he will double our event with his own small meeting. (Even if his event involves only him and his family). Frankly, I don't care. As it is said in the guidelines, events "facilitate the social aspect of geocaching". If someone ignores this social aspect it's between him and maybe our local reviewer but this behaviour should not influence our meetings in any way. With the new guidelines I may be in situation when there's an event already published on some particular day and its owner doesn't wish to communicate/negotiate on any matters; at the same time I'm not allowed to publish another event "near the same time or location".
Replace "should be" with "are advised to be". The mandatory wording creates a series of vague conditions and may lead to awkward situations when it's really not needed by anyone.
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Thank you all for your opinions.
Still waiting for someone from the target group. I know, there are different communities and I will certainly try different approaches. However this thread has been useful too.
Let me suggest a short and clear scenario to be more specific.
Currently most of my visitors are foreigners. I live in the capital of the country where tourists come quite often. What could I do to improve my communications with visitors of this specific category?
Adding a string with my personal contacts and invitation for help would probably make some good though I already tried similar approach once and haven't succeeded. The problem is that cachers of this category don't have much time here in this country to get any use of correspondence with COs. Or, at least, they think this way. Really, if I failed to find a cache on Wednesday and my flight is on Friday morning, should I write to the CO and ask for assistance with any cache? I would most probably have no time to pay another visit to this location. Even if I have time, I doubt that we could get any help in such a short period.
I understand that some people may have troubles with calling by phone and asking questions to some unknown person. In our country this practice has been common. Several years ago when the game on the Russian geocaching website was pretty active there wasn't a weekend in my life without a couple of phone calls from my hides. Apart from making fellow geocachers happy with knowing they are not alone, there were cases of emergency when we had to organize a sort of a rescue operations for people who went geocaching and got lost in our woods (especially in winter). Anyway, I still can agree that if you don't like talking to strangers by phone you won't call me even if my phone number is written in big thick red letters at the head of a cache's listing. However, why don't get into contact by email before coming to the area? Groundspeak advises people doing this, so why not using your chance to get acquainted with the local community? I get such requests very rarely. I wonder if my attempts to be friendly and make communications easier are worth doing. Perhaps there are some cultural differencies, not individual features of a given person.
Another example are events. We've conducted a series of events last year. These were mostly small meetings in the downtown Moscow at hours that we thought may be convenient to many people. Event listings were always translated in English. We highlighted the fact that working language could be English if there were attendees that do not speak Russian. Despite these attempts I remember very few foreign cachers who attended our events (though I noticed that cachers always log some hides at the dates of events). I don't remember any foreign cacher who published a "meet-and-greet" event in Moscow in 2013. Last year I monitored this practice in Ireland and was pleased to see that it was common when guests came to Dublin and invited locals to small meetings like "Greetings from New York" or "Vikings are here again!". I personally would be happy to attend such a small event in my city but they just aren't published for some reason.
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My question is addressed to COs from not yet "cache saturated" areas who own 40-50 physical hides or more and continue placing new geocaches with the idea of their area/community getting more "geocaching developed". (I'm not talking about power trails).
My "hidden/found" ratio is 13.5% now (compared to 0-2% for many active forum inhabitants). This means that I place caches more often then they do and hunt for caches much less time then they do. Currently I own over 60 caches and I'm going to increase this number to at least 100 this year. This is the only way to promote the game around here, I think. More caches, more new people involved in this sport, more new COs, more attendees at our local events, etc. This scheme works though not at turbo speed, you know.
Cache placement leads to a bunch of issues, maintenance among them. Of course, I take care about my hides; however if you live in a country with large distances, poor roads and very small geocaching community, and having many caches to take care of - you should consider using other people's assistance when possible. I appreciate when cachers call me or write me by email suggesting help. It's difficult because there are novices that are too shy to make a simple phone call and experienced cachers that believe they must avoid doing any maintenance, asking any questions and communicating with the CO in any way. I wish to encourange people being more active when going outdoors for geocaching: to be ready to contact COs when necessary, make small repairings to the caches found, etc.
The question is what you usually do to improve communications with people who visit your geocaches. Any educational materials (maybe they are worth being translated into my language), special events, announcements in your geocache listings, bookmarks, contests, anything.
I've noticed (more than one) events of this sort: meet-and-greet in some cities/towns where there are neither cachers nor caches. Some enthusiast comes for business, spends several days there, just to discover that no one comes. I'm almost sure this is done without any hidden intentions (like bringing/visiting trackables) but in a true hope that someone will attend. The owners of these events do not deserve any bad words because they come without knowing the real situation. This reason doesn't work for me though.
Maintenance Etiquette
in General geocaching topics
Posted
JPreto, I wonder - and this question relates to anyone who supports the "clear as water" idea - when you post your second (NM) log, do you visit the location again before posting this NM log?