DragonsWest

Reviewers are very cool people, they want the game to be fun, too. Best of luck with your cache!

I feel for you, dude. I'm a local and he's probably stolen caches I've placed. I'll find out soon enough. The problem is your "friend" is a sociopath and that's a mental illness nobody on here, at Groundspeak or in the local caching circle can handle easily. That's a job for mental health professionals. Stealing caches today, stealing something else or turning to vandalism next up. I know it's not a popular thing to do, but you might suggest he seek professional help before he gets worse.

YMMV is also a good thing to keep in mind when rating a cache. Depending upon local expectations D or T may widely vary. I live in a fairly mountainous region, with some ORV parks and more kayaking waters than you can shake a paddle at. What counts for a 3.0 T hike here may be considered 4.5 or 5.0 T in the flat lands. D is always a trick. Rule of thumb on Evil should begin at 2.5 and go up, subject to modification if the CO gets a lot of DNFs for a cache still in place. Grading puzzles is probably the greatest art of all - some people will recognize the puzzle right off and Bob's their uncle, off the go to find it. While others may wrack their brains because some necessary little thing eludes them. Also, a higher D rating my convince some the puzzle is too hard and they give up without much of an effort. I'd suggest finding a good array of caches and using personal experience to guide oneself in their hides. Best of luck!

It isn't perplexing at all. Caches are not being maintained the way we think they should be maintained. Something Must Be Done™! We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this. Yes, and the way I go about it is by taking along a few extra supplies and some paper towels. Good geocacher me, I'll clean up as best I can anything which is wet or messy, jot something relevant in my notepad and post a note to the CO when I do my logs. I certainly don't advocate more interference from TBTB, automated or otherwise. We are players, we can handle this, invoke the local reviewer if need be. That's good enough.

I checked my stats on MyGeocachingProfile and found only one I didn't have. I suppose there are some challenges rattling around, but anything which takes me more than a few minutes to figure my compliance I lose patience with (aside the major Fizzy, USGS-quad & Delorme pages challenges, which are among the finest anywhere.) I wasn't aware there was a Lost And Found Tour one, I wonder what else is lurking in the code that we don't know about. Watching the game, controlling it (props to anyone who gets the reference)

Congrats! I certified in the cold waters of Grand Traverse Bay in Michigan, before moving westward. Lemme tell ya, getting back into that wetsuit for a second dive, in 10 degree winds, was the cat's meow. I believe there are a couple around Monterey and Pebble Beach. As of yet I haven't gone diving out here and would probably prefer recertifying before having a go. Best of luck!

You got my hopes up, but then I clicked the link and discovered the critical four letters you left out: "FREE Printable USGS PDF TOPO! Maps" These only cover the continental United States. Free though, as in beer!

Certainly not your post. I'm just perplexed by the whole exercise of trying to govern the maintenance of caches, with or without computer guided missives and regulation, through the forum.

From the article you linked to: I suspect the volunteer reviewers had a hand in the creation of the Health Score. It takes a bit of the load off their shoulders, so I could see them advocating for something like this. I just don't see how we can use an automated advisory system - that could never be perfectly-tuned to properly cover all edge-cases - to automatically pass judgement on the maintenance abilities of cache owners. At the risk of raising the ire of the reviewers that read these forums, I would suggest that a better course of action would be reviewer involvement in adoptions. I don't know what it's like in other regions, but the number of adoptions in my area is relatively low, so this shouldn't add too much work. It would just be like dealing with new submissions, but with a smaller subset of guidelines to review. A more aggressive approach would likely be less welcome to the majority of cachers. I've had a few caches which were absolutely peachy with Needs Maint or even Should Be Archived logs. I've also tripped over at least two ammo boxes in my travels where were less than obvious hides (pile of leaves sort of thing), one of which had a long string of DNFs. Sometimes the perception of geocachers that a CO should run out and inspect their cache are well founded, others they can be a pain. If you poke COs too many times they'll get grumpy. I observe these notices are not simply flooding the email, even on some of my caches (after the recent rains) which could stand some looking into, and I'm good with that - I already know which I need to look in on and try to make my own schedule without someone standing over me with a club. I think the dot would like to be in the position or egging on the one there to swing the club more often. I see that as less than helpful.

Logging an Attended on one's own Event or CITO is fine. Claiming a find on one's own cache is not usually done.

All sounds quite idyllic - almost double rainbow territory I'm just left wondering why, if all is rosy in the garden, Groundspeak felt compelled to come up with the Geocache Health Score at all. Because, my dear nanospec, it's a passive means to look after things. That players would deign to take on the role of warden in this asylum bothers me more.

That was my fist thought too. Send me a link to it if you get one up and running. Heck, maybe I'll put one out for your next visit! I'm on a roll. Two new caches (one replacing an old favorite, which will find a new place in the field) recently. The cache your elders warned you about! Lead you astray, they said it would! Listen, you did not! Now you find yourself on a trail to Forbidden Coordinates! Man. That sounds like it has fun engraved all over it.

Nicely done bit of handiwork and cachineering there. One recommendation I'd add, when hiding wood out in the woods, make sure its a type that doesn't decay quickly. Possibly give it a dab of stain to help preserve the surfaces where water is likely to be in regular contact. Thanks for hiding a good cache!

Where's the button?

Yep, the community spoke. People who have a tough time with it for one reason or another need to repeat my mantra: Geocaching means different things to different people. Soonest people accept that the sooner they are on to more productive things. Such as hiding more caches.

On another trip, closer to home, I found about 20 cubic feet of fireworks, just before 4th of July, all stashed below and overhang behind some vines. I engaged the Wisdom-o-Matic and left well enough alone.

Indeed and that's the key issue. What Team Microdot has in mind would involve that the system automatically blocks cachers from being allowed to adopt caches (including all cache owners who do not yet own a cache). I would not want to have such a system not even if there existed a way to appeal against such bans where someone human would have a look at the situation and unblock the user in certain cases. As soon as I saw this subject I knew I'd find posts like this. This really is a slippery slope to go down, beginning with the classic line: There oughta be a law! When you create a law, rule, statute, condition, etc. there must be a processes, so this becomes: There oughta be a law and more work for people to do to enforce it and handle appeals. Meanwhile, back at the kindhearted and most revered volunteer reviewer's desk there's this thought rattling around: Oh, geez. And up at the lily pad a committee fails to coalesce, largely because they are thinking the same thought. They'd rather be having fun and promoting fun. And out in the field, where the great masses of geocachers roam from dawn to dusk (and beyond) they are mostly of a single mind on the whole topic: Nope. At least, that's the way I see the whole ball of ambergris.

"Homemade rail bus" - The Red Goose, up near Mt. Shasta. Left in the woods on a short bit of track. Tributes abound in graffiti. And of course there's a geocache.

I'm perplexed. Why are people's noses out of joint on this? Geocachers are happy, it's a good thing. You're unhappy? Ignore it. Don't dwell on it. Go about your business. Nothing to see here. Shoo!

Any excuse for a party. - Former college student

Yes, I would bet it is much less of a load now when new geographic souvenirs are released and made retroactive, because there is a diminishing pool of people who qualify. When the US and German states went out, they had to retroactively apply to thousands and thousands of geocachers, and let's face it, the system was pretty new. Now, any country souvenir that comes out is only going to have to sift through retroactive awards for 2,000 caches or less -- even poor North Dakota had more caches back then -- plus they're (hopefully) better at rolling them out. edit -- trimmed a sentence I missed, we are more in agreement than not I haven't heard about the status of the Souvenir system since talking with Moun10Bike. At that time the system was pretty shaky, good at doing simple things like dates, not good at complex operations. I assume geographic areas would be farmed out to a routine which had a pretty good set of points defining boundaries, often software divides such things up into myriad tiny triangles, which are then very easy to identify if a point exists within or not. It still would take some CPU power and if you've ever played with GSAK FindStatGen you've an idea who long it takes to sort through some of this. Going back and reviewing the entire backlog of finds would bring even the finest supercomputers to their knees, so diligent have been geocachers at running around far and wide. Perhaps at slack times the servers could have a go at this.

What's the user name? https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783 I know him personal as well. He seems to have quite a large coverage. I believe you're mis-reading GeoCrater's profile page. He handles maintenance issues for a large number of areas -- things like reminder notes on listings that have been disabled for a long time, monitoring for possibly troubled caches highlighted by the Cache Health system, and responding to "Needs Archived" logs. That is different than the task of reviewing new listings. Follow the link in my prior post to see a list of the reviewers covering Central and South America. I see. He took on Reviewer status for Nevada recently. Odd, though, the link for Nevada Reviewer - GeoCrater is still pointing to Roadrunner.

What's the user name? https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783 I know him personal as well. He seems to have quite a large coverage.

I once owned one of these caches, there were four caches in four different US states. I forget the details but you needed a parther in each state to find those caches to get the coordinates for your local one. Sone people logged all four, while others would only log the cache they actually found. Some people felt logging finds on the ones you didn't visit to be a cheesy practice. Groundspeak for the most part (there are a few exceptions) doesn't police logging practices. They are generally between the cache owner and the "finder". Thanks, Brian. I think the GS attitude is "please, geocachers, work it out amongst yourselves." Because if people engage in pissing matches and drag in reviewers and GS staff a rule may be in the offing which won't make anyone happy (except perhaps the relieved GS staff who will point to the rule.) I've participated in one of these big international caches and thought the whole thing was a fun idea and I'm grateful for having had the opportunity - where players are creative the game grows.

The more I look at this thread the more I think 2 things: 1. Forbidden Coordinates sounds like inspiration for puzzle or multicache and I'm feeling "in the zone" with the creative juices flowing and all. 2. Forbidden Coordinates would be a great name for a rock band.