[Option to exclude lab caches from number of founds]

7 minutes ago, Wacka said:

I found a multi where stage 2 was  about a meter above stage 1.

This was already covered in the thread. See 

 

20 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

Currently your only option is to delete them. If you change your mind later you can add them back. I can't promise it will never change but it's been like that for a long time. The help center tells you how to do it.

I see, thank you, will consider this. However uncertainty it stays like that is kind of discouraging.

[Option to exclude lab caches from number of founds]

23 minutes ago, Mausebiber said:

So if you are not happy with Als, in fact, you are not happy with the AL owners

Please notice that I never complained about lab caches nor their owners. I actually love doing lab caches. I am doing more of lab caches than other caches recently. I'd like to just have a way to exclude them from my founds as they are highly inflating the stats. That's all I wanted to have. The way how they violate several rules of geocaching - which I already mentioned several times - allows you to get huge number of founds within small amount of time and effort. Lab caches founds = inflation of founds. I think it's a relevant request.

[Option to exclude lab caches from number of founds]

3 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

Stages of a multi can be as close as the owner wants: 13.5m, 1m, 6 cm.

But you'll get no found for such stage, for lab cache you'll get.

[Option to exclude lab caches from number of founds]

30 minutes ago, The Leprechauns said:

That sounds like the equivalent of a roadside power trail of geocaches at sign posts.

It's not an equivalent, nor close to it. I already explained that Lab Caches points can be super close next to each other. See this map of Bratislava where I enabled few Lab series:

 

And now see that some points which are considered founds are less than 15m from each other (here just 13,5):

This is something which cannot happen for any other cache. You cannot even have physical stages so close for other cache types. So please let's stop comparing them to other caches. You can literally go to city center of a bigger city and score easily hundreds of points.

[Option to exclude lab caches from number of founds]

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Can we also make it so that lamp post caches and guardrail caches and sign post caches don't count as a find?  They are so easy and require no effort.

As responded by Goldenwattle, they don't need to be 161 metres apart. And you still need to find them, open them, log them, return them. And make sure no one sees you. You may deal with the condition of the cache, etc. It's really not the same with lab caches. Lab caches can be literally few metres apart and you don't need to touch anything. In my city there are hundreds of them in just small area. Tempo how you can gather founds is dramatically higher.

 

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"Deleting" them doesn't actually delete them, it just hides them from your profile and statistics. Now that the Science of Discovery promotion has ended, I've just gone through and deleted all the AL stages I'd done during it, but those finds are still shown in the app and I can still see a list of the ALs I've done at https://labs.geocaching.com/logs . At the bottom of that page there's a Show Deleted Logs link that will restore them all if you change your mind.

Does this revert also the time stamp when I fulfilled them? Are my reviews restored as well? The "Delete" button just sounds too scary. But it's true that what you described looks exactly what I'd like to achieve. Just that Delete button sounds dangerous. Delete usually means removed forever. Maybe that's just bad UX and could be just labeled "Exclude"/"Include" instead of "Delete"/"Revert".

[Option to exclude lab caches from number of founds]

Every stage in lab cache counts as a found. This is actually problematic from plenty of reasons:

- Effortless. Comparing to other cache types it costs almost no effort to score a found. Most of lab cache are simple questions to answer.

- Unfair. You don't have points for every stage in other cache types. Also you don't need to log anything, do research, fulfil tasks, etc.

- Inhomogeneous. Has nothing to do with geocaching, except you're outdoors. Even earthcaches and virtual caches requires you to learn something, to research something, do some tasks. Lab caches? Nothing, simple question answering.

- Cheating. People builds databases with answers and using fake gps to earn cheap points.

 

And some more. Simply this is not a geocaching, it's an own game. And while I am enjoying doing lab caches I really dislike idea adding them to my total found statistics.

Please, reconsider it, do a compromise and allow to filter out lab caches from statistics for people who just don't want them to be added. So anybody who looks at my profile would see only cache founds without lab caches included. And please do not argue that I can delete them. I do not want to delete them, I just don't want them to be included in total found. This is a valid use case for lots of people. Many people either stopped doing lab caches, or even worse stopped playing geocaching. Please don't let this happen.