LaughterOnWater

What ^^^ he ^^^ said. I don't do costumes, vests, hard hats, none of that. I (and the wife) just go for it. If you look like you're worried about someone seeing you, they will. Just act normal, like you belong there and know what you're doing. I get asked more about what I'm up to by the nearby ranchers along rural back roads than I ever do in towns and parks. Agreed. Maybe it's a great opportunity to introduce muggles to geocaching. I've done it a couple times. Each time, the locals already knew about the cache and just said "You're close. Just keep looking."

Thank you.

When I attempt to ignore Arthur & Trillian in this forum, I get this Similarly when advanced search "Arthur & Trillian" in author, I get no results. A similar search with my own forum name yields results. There may be a glitch in the software that disallows people from searching on or ignoring forum names with ampersands in them. There is no way to ignore by user id.

Wow. Clearly, I have mistaken your motives. I'm thoroughly trolled. I'm not sure what else to say. This forum seems to have little use for new perspectives. I see that now. Okay. Message received. I am uncertain where this cruel bitterness stems from or why it is so important to stoke its existence, but I won't continue to enable it for you.

An alternative more legal method would be to have an off-grid website as part of a multicache (not connected to the internet, but set so you can connect via wifi from your phone or tablet to the local-only website.) Allow people to use their phones to log in to a website, and upload their selfies to the local web server. It could be a digital guest book, but not required. Since people are using their own phones, consent is automatic. On periodic maintenance runs, the CO could moderate which selfies or other images were not too rude to make viewable by other cachers looking at the website. The only problems are getting permission, power to a remote webserver, and keeping it from getting vandalized... Chris

I should define my hypotheses first: 1. Agenda lit is rampant. 2. People are replacing it. Additional hypothesis for future study: 3. Counter-Agenda Cards will reduce Agenda lit. I'll probably need to define "agenda lit", "rampant" and define what's also not agenda lit. And I'm not so sure agenda lit should be confined to paper. A video sermon or a commercial advertisement for a business on DVD might also be considered agenda lit. If someone has practical wording or ideas on how to define agenda literature, I'm open to suggestions. This is not a university study. If anything, it's an merely investigative study to determine whether there is something worth looking at closer. The object is to suggest through data that something is more than anecdotal and worth further consideration. If I were getting paid to do the study, that would be another matter. Cache sizes in consideration for investigation should be limited to caches that are of a size large enough to contain agenda lit. Caches should be relatively urban/suburban. All caches mislabeled as to size where they are too small to hold anything except a log should also be discarded from the study. Instead of regions/random caches, I suspect it would be just as random to take consecutively whichever caches I come across, the way any geocacher might cache normally, that are near where I live. I'm not sure setting regions and random samples wouldn't add a different set of biases. There's really no way to know unless you geocache normally, using any geocacher's random whim for how they approach a cache and doing it with regions/random samples. 750 caches out of a region of 10,000 caches? I'm chuckling here... By then I'd be old-hat, eh? There are less than 800 caches within a 25-mile radius of where I live including micros. A set of 40 to 60 caches of the target size range should be enough to determine whether my theory is more than merely anecdote and worth further investigation. A second visit to those same caches six months later might confirm or deny the second anecdote that once agenda lit is removed, someone is coming back to replace it. Again, just investigative. For many people to take part, it would also mean coming up with a standard operating procedure and a method that compensates for many various biases. There would have to be a way to determine whether some citizen investigators were intentionally fudging their results or reporting erroneously for other reasons. It is an intriguing idea to study cache size, location and contents anyway. I'm going to try to develop a standard procedure over the next few cache finds. Instead of a tray, I've elected to use this cutting mat for photographic scale. It's light-weight, just a little smaller than my tablet and can be held against larger caches to show cache size and used as a tray to display cache contents, or some of it. It will also give me something to write on for those scroll logs.

I didn't take photos of all the finds. I'm going to start now. For the photos you see in my finds, if you see anything business-card sized, it's often a map to a church on one side with agenda lit on the other. The more I think about it, the more I suspect it's probably the work of two or three people alone in my area.

Thank you for the terrific signature item idea! Ha ha ha! Oh, Leprechauns... You're very creative. Thanks for making my day.

Yes.

I saw! Isn't that great? I'm so glad he was able to get it through review. I wasn't able to find the cache, but it really is a beautiful place. I'm looking forward to attempting it again soon. Thank you, AC4SH ! Chris

I haven't exactly kept count. Good idea. I think I'm going to start counting. Please stand by. It may take a while before I have valid data. C Have you worked out a methodology to ensure that your sample is actually representative of your area? I'm open to suggestions. Right now, I'm trying to come up with a way to measure the size of each cache container. I'm thinking a light-weight tray with a 1-inch grid painted on it. All finds and cache container itself would be documented photographically against the tray for scale. All finds would be categorized and numbered. I'm thinking about a small tray because there's almost never a decent flat spot to lay stuff out. I'm curious if anyone else has done this before. If you know of a study, I'd be grateful for a link. Chris

I haven't exactly kept count. Good idea. I think I'm going to start counting. Please stand by. It may take a while before I have valid data. C

So if I agree that agenda literature doesn't belong in a cache, and I find an anti-agenda agenda card in a cache, should I indicate my agreement by leaving another anti-agenda agenda card? Ugh... Now I have to create a Counter-Counter Agenda Card...

Yes, focus on problems of greater importance.. like feeding the poor and sheltering the homeless. I already do volunteer at a number of organizations. Do you? None of the organizations where I volunteer spam geocaches. Define "rampant."

The irony is delicious indeed. Exactly. It's sublimely awful. But it is a fair swappable, and it has no agenda other than to counter all other agendas. A perfect swap-even. In areas where agenda lit is as-or-more common than any "swag", it's the only game-abiding retaliatory answer. Where agenda lit is negligible, it's a non-issue. You don't need to print Counter Agenda Cards. Keep Calm and Cache On. But logically, it's entirely appropriate to use this card where agenda lit is rampant. Others in the thread have pointed out that the only appropriate action is to swap up or even, the same was with any other item dropped into the cache. If others are swapping their mini-bike business flyers and restaurant menus for religious zines, that would be an even swap, right? So how is this any better or worse than other gamers swapping their preferred agenda lit? Isn't it actually better because it brings awareness to the fact that agenda lit (even the Counter Agenda Card) is just spam? This card is shouting quietly to be disallowed. C

We all come from different strengths and experiences. I welcome disagreement. But disagreement works best when it includes well-thought-out (or even half-thought-out) attacks on the logic of the original premise without ridicule or attacks on the original poster. Merely saying "What a stupid idea," makes me work harder to prove something when I'm not hearing any reasonable effort to pull the legs off the milk stool upon which my argument stands. Two nights ago, I was frustrated at being told, "What a dumb idea," and "You can't make any difference," and "What a noob." Half asleep, I whipped up a terrible idea in about an hour and a half -- the Counter Agenda Card. At first I was just joking. But the more others got involved, the more I realized that maybe it wasn't such a terrible idea after all. You and others have at least acknowledged that agenda lit is a nuisance. If nothing else, it got you and other gamers who have been in the game for years a sense that even if the rules don't change, there are ways to educate others about problems that exist in the game in a fashion that abides by rules, yet at the same time publicly demonstrates to gamers that some rules, or the lack thereof, might be changeworthy. The Counter Agenda Card is an example of how rules or their absence can be effectively highlighted in a respectful but public way, in order to do one of two things: a. Make agenda lit socially unacceptable, so that it becomes an unwritten game rule that we shouldn't drop agenda lit. b. Bring it to the attention of the people who own the game so that they can adapt the rules. We can't change people who don't play by the rules. Those who believe they are above the rules or laws are playing some other game. This is true in geocaching and in life. We can make the game better for those who do play by the rules, even if we don't change the rules. And most of us play by the rules. (And yeah, the smell of patchouli causes me to involuntarily hurl. ) Absolutely. Thanks Kelux. And I like the idea about asking for more interesting logs. I think I'll do the same when I create a cache.

It isn't logical. The items that are already specifically mentioned - ammunition, food, knives, etc. - are commonly found in geocaches. Naming them hasn't made people stop placing them. Okay, then let's unban them. What happens next?

You're right.I do seem extra motivated. Upon reflection, maybe I just get so much spam in my inbox at home and at work, it's just sort of the last straw that I'm finding it time after time in what's supposed to be an agenda-free hobby. Maybe I should back off a bit. The thing to do is let others decide whether it might be a useful tool for them. I'm going to try a couple swaps during the next few caches and see how it goes. Maybe others will do the same. Maybe they won't. Excellent perspective. Thanks. Chris

Any change to any specified guidelines will still exhibit flaws, so I accept that banning agenda literature has flaws. But perhaps adding your adaptation on top of my adaptation only compounds the flaw, rather than making it better. For instance, I'm talking about agenda literature. The only purpose of agenda literature is evangelism. Get others to work toward your goal. The purpose of a pen, a coaster or a beer cozy is to be a pen, a coaster or a beer cozy. To me, these are not much different than a rosary, a crucifix, a stone with a religious icon engraved on it or a string of Mardi Gras beads (essentially a glitzy rosary). These items all have a physical function, and it is not primarily as agenda literature. If we were to go by your reasoning then every item with any kind of writing on it is an agenda item, whether it says "Downtown Optometry" or "Duff Beer." Half of the pens in medium and large caches have some sort of writing on them. They would have to go. A lot of McToys have writing on them. They would have to go. Agenda literature is generally printed on paper. It spreads imperatives, onus and guilt-for-inactivity simply by reading it. It attempts to evangelize others to do the bidding of those who spawned the agenda literature. Like spam. Agenda literature makes a poor pen, bottle opener or beer cozy. Seed caches were banned because they impose an agenda. It's why agenda-literature should be banned. So gather, brothers and sisters by the compass-rose alter of the Counter Agenda Card. Let us spread as many of these cards as we can today and swap them for all other agenda literature, so that those ungameworthy agendas may meet their soggy slowly composting inevitability. Thank really hard about that one. Of course all laws or guidelines are useless with radicals and zealots. Guidelines stop most people, because we are not radicals and zealots. It's the same reason why door locks only keep out honest people. An alarm system is merely a two-minute head start for a seasoned crook. Yet we still use door locks and alarm systems. It's a logical next step to ban agenda literature for the main reason that most people will stop. Radicals and zealots aren't playing our game. For them, it's not about finding caches. In this instance, it's about stuffing already-found caches with their imperatives.

I have none experience on caching in USA, but I have many in a handful of european countries and Brazil, and the problem you are talking about is almost inexistent in those places (even in Brazil with lots of creeds). I presented geocaching workshops and held several Events in different countries where I always describe any caching tour with 5 steps. 1. Preparation. 2. Going out. 3. Search for the cache when you are close enough. 4. Write the log in the logbook. 5. Do CITO. I can't force others to comply... but I keep on trying. Thanks. Excellent advice.

I can't speak for Kelux, but I would expect most people to ignore agenda lit if they find it. That's the crux of the matter. There are three camps. Those who trash agenda lit and those who swap it and those who ignore it. Some people, regardless of the rules, trash agenda lit. Some believe agenda-lit trashers are bending the rules. Others believe there's no rule that says we can't trash agenda lit. Others believe the rules say we can't trash agenda lit, so they swap it out for something else, and trash the offending agenda lit. Others just don't care. I'm saying if you're ticked enough, and feel honor-bound not to bend the rules, just swap out for a Counter Agenda Card. If you're not ticked enough to do it, then, meh. Don't. Chris

I could see some kind of granules inside. I've bought the foamy toy caps for kids too, so I'm pretty sure I could tell the difference. C

A couple things I didn't recognize, one I only just recognized as drug paraphernalia, a bullet... This was an unusual cache, with lots of people living in tents near by. One tent close to me looked like someone had abandoned all their worldly possessions. It was only as I was finishing up my log that I realized I was not in a very safe place. Glad to have had the bike. The other cache, Love, Animals and Cars with the pill was more typical and definitely safer. Aspirin bottle with agenda lit, trash and weird untradable stuff. We have two alternatives. 1. Leaving the trash inside the container. 2. CITO. And if this "hypothetical trooper" saw him throwing the pipe? Let's stay on topic, shall we? I've found a few micros. Basically anything the size of a film canister or smaller has almost no swappables. But I've found more small, and medium caches and one cache big enough to bathe in. I don't particularly care for the magnet micros. You are compelling. Are you saying most people trash agenda lit if they find it? Chris

Oh narcissa... You know that most people follow the rules for the same reason ticking "found it" without having actually found it is an empty victory. If the rules allow spam, well... spammers gonna spam. If the rules disallow it, then it would be at least for religious and non-profit agenda lit droppers, unconscionable to continue, since they're basically rule-followers.

Jeez.. I've found just short of 10,100 caches now and the worst thing I've ever found inside of a cache was an unused and sealed feminine hygiene device. Unless you're caching the back alleys of the Minneapolis north side, I call BS on your claim that you've found those things INSIDE of a cache. I have found far worse things while caching but inside of a cache? Cough cough -- don't believe you -- cough cough. Cache: Bikeable. That's a bullet. I'd already chucked the crack pipe because I couldn't believe I was touching it. Cache: Love, Animals, and Cars. That's a pill of some kind, right in the center next to the football game stub.