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SoCalAdmin

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Everything posted by SoCalAdmin

  1. You are correct. Southern California hosts one of the greatest concentrations of geocaches in the country. Sorry, no can do.
  2. Looks like I may have been suffering from itchy approver finger! I can't find any reason that I would have knowingly allowed this, so I must have just overlooked it when approving them this weekend. Sometimes you get flying through the queue and just miss stuff. Oh well...
  3. Just wanted to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a prosperous New Year! To all the X-mas newbies, welcome aboard! To all the seasoned veterans, keep the caches coming!!!! I hope that Signal the SuperSantaFrog brings you everything you ask for!
  4. I sent the club a wire stating, "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member."
  5. Just include the information that the cache has been approved in a reviewer note on the cache page. We'll take your word for it, but if we find out that you lied, we'll have to make you sit through 58 consecutive viewings of The Holy Grail. We'll also make you do the fish slapping dance.
  6. They are a cache size indicator. If you hold your mouse over the graphic, you'll get a pop-up telling you what size it is. I think that might only work in IE though - it doesn't seem to work in my Firefox browser.
  7. Post a Should Be Archived note to the page. This will generate an email that goes out to the approvers. If no action is taken within a week or so, feel free to email us with a list of caches. We try to check on disabled caches as we are doing approvals, but we obviously cannot check the entire state, so any help we can get would be appreciated.
  8. California currently has 4 approvers - more than anywhere else in the world. Typically approvers handle several states - I handled 3 when I started, but the volume increase we have seen here in CA has made it quite challenging. WestCoastAdmin and I both handle California from 37 deg on down. We have just added another approver in the last week or so to help out Hemlock. As he gets up to speed, I think you'll see approval times decrease in the northern part of the state. If you ever have a cache that you think may have slipped under the radar, feel free to contact any of the approvers directly via email and ask (nicely! ) if they have had a chance to look at the cache yet. In a pinch, we all help each other throughout the state and around the world. Yes, we are unpaid volunteers. In addition to the approvals, we have to deal with lots of email, SBA notifications, long-term disabled caches, general housekeeping, etc... so there is quite a bit to the job. Dealing with emails takes up at least half the time we put into it. But we all love geocaching and are happy to be able to give back.
  9. No it's not the only reason. But because virtual caches exist, they obviously felt no need to work with the geocachers in Georgia to address their concerns with traditional caches and so they issued a decree with apparently no public input. In their memo they state that geocachers can submit "a land feature such as a unique rock formation or a unusual tree configuration" as a virtual. So with the more stringent guidelines concerning virtual cache placements (which they admittedly are probably not aware of) it amounts to pretty much a ban on geocaches inside the forest. I'm sure that they are also probably not aware of the differing opinions about virtual caches on geocaching.com.
  10. Chattahoochee-Oconee National Forests in Georgia has now banned everything but virtual caches within the forest. Won't it be fun to be able to hunt nothing but virtual caches within National Forests all across the nation soon?
  11. If it meets all the guidelines, it will be approved. Yes it's subjective. Of course. What "wow's" one person, doesn't "wow" another. But we allow for that in our decisions. Believe me, it's much easier to approve a virtual cache, than deny it and deal with numerous emails from an angry owner. But the VAST majority of the virtual's submitted, don't even come anywhere close to meeting ANY of the guidelines for them. Read the guidelines. Follow the guidelines. Use the reviewer notes section to explain why it is that in addition to meeting all the guidelines that this deserves to have the special recognition of being a virtual cache. It's pretty simple. It's not easy, but it's simple.
  12. Well, as one of the approvers from the area... Yes, we are all volunteers that have been asked by geocaching.com to become approvers. As someone mentioned above, the biggest requirement for becoming an approver is to be active within the geocaching community. I can't stress how important that is. Become involved with a local geocaching organization, host geocaching events, participate with other geocachers by helping them out when they come to your area, etc... The other important thing to keep in mind is that the job of the reviewer is to make sure that cache submissions comply with the guidelines of geocaching. The best way to demonstrate that you know the guidelines is to follow them in your own cache placements, as well as helping out constructively on the forums and speaking with your local approver about the guidelines before you place a cache that may not quite comply with them all. As far as adding more reviewers... That is always an ongoing issue. As geocaching becomes more popular, it is neccessary to add more reviewers. What we try to avoid at all costs is getting too many fingers in the pie. That is why we don't have 300 reviewers for the US. Too many people, too many opinions and too much confusion. The other thing you want to keep in mind before offering to do the job is the amount of time it takes. In addition to reviewing caches, there are LOTS of emails to answer and act on, archiving disabled caches, investigating reported incidents, unarchiving caches, hand holding, etc... It's not uncommon for some approvers to put in 20-40 hours a week doing this. That is time that we could spend with our families, working, geocaching, etc... It's a fun job and the effort is worth it, but it is a HUGE commitment of time and energy. If your caches still have not been approved, please feel free to send me an email via my profile and I'll be happy to look into them. Good luck and happy caching! Edit-- I see that Keystone has replied just before I did. I echo all of his comments as well. He tends to be a more eloquent speaker than I. (and a better speller!)
  13. Cache approvals are running a little behind right now. There was a get together last weekend that many approvers and the GC.com staff were at, so not much got done over the weekend. There are still about 100 caches in queue, but it should be clear by tomorrow.
  14. As the reviewer who actually approved most of them, if not all of them, let me chime in here... As Hemlock pointed out, the caches met the guidelines that are currently in place for traditional caches. That's why they were approved. As far as terrain ratings go, when possible, we try to get cache owners to put an appropriate terrain rating on a cache. If I see a cache placed on a mountain top rated a 1 on terrain, I'll confer with the cache owner before approving it. Micros placed in a park are very often rated as 1s and do not really raise a flag when submitted. Speaking as a geocacher, I find it particularly annoying when a cache is deliberately under rated. If I find that one person constantly under rates their caches, I will sometimes contact them via private email and suggest that they might reconsider their ratings. Most of the time, I just take into account their method of rating and avoid their caches all together. As an approver, I cannot and do not attempt to make a judgement of the quality of a traditional cache hide. It's impossible. It's also silly for anyone to even suggest that we can.
  15. I'll be on the lookout for caches in the SDRP area from now on. Since they began removing them, I've tried to keep them out, but the boundries of the SDRP seem to be a little nebulous. Does anyone have any maps of the areas affected? Oh and golanv, I've contacted you via email also.
  16. I deleted the duplicate topic in this forum.
  17. Hey everyone, I'm back. Sorry about the delay in getting caches approved. Actually, I was on a business trip in New York City and could not get internet access in my room. The hotel (a Hyatt, by the way...) had a business center that had internet access available at $.50 a minute! So needless to say, I didn't get much internet time. But now I'm back. I've waded through the approvals and the queue is clear right now. I'm still trying to get through a MASSIVE backlog of emails though, so if you've emailed me, it may take a day or two. Looks like the Riverside event was a lot of fun. I'm sorry that I missed that one. There will be our annual Southern California Geocachers picnic coming up in June though, so watch out for that. Congrats Parsa on passing 1000!!!! I've still got a couple of hundred to go to get there, but I'll make it eventually!
  18. Actually, that is, of course, the number of active caches out there. There are currently 121883 caches that have been submitted to geocaching.com, I think - which includes the ones currently in the admin queue. The reason I say "I think" is because if you click on a cache page you get a bunch of code in the URL which looks like random letters and numbers (I'm sure someone a lot smarter than me can decode it, but I can't). However, if you click on "log this cache" the url changes to something like - http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?ID=104271 where 104271 is the sequential number of the cache. At least that's the way I read it and it seems to work out for caches that I know were submitted right after one another. In any case, 121883 is the last ID I could find in the admin queue, so we've got a bit to go. I hope my deduction of the total number of caches is correct. Can anyone confirm this? Added: What I posted above appears to be correct. ID #4 in the system is Mike's First.
  19. Ficky, If there are any problems, you can also feel free to contact me. I and several other people have been covering for Northern California while Hemlock has been busy.
  20. Well, thanks guys. It's nice to hear a few nice things about the admin every now and then. I'm one of those admins who likes to stay behind the scenes a bit, I do post here every now and then and I try to at least browse the forums a few times a week. In answer to the question about the approver for Nevada, it's CO Admin. He handles all of Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado. I take care of California from 37 deg N on down and Hemlock handles the rest of California. Utah Admin takes care of Utah and Wyoming. We all help each other out in all areas, so if you have a question, feel free to direct it to any of us. Lazyboy... It depends on the car.
  21. I think 3 months is about the max I like to see them go. If the problem hasn't been corrected by then, I think it's appropriate for an admin to see if the cacher is going to replace it or if they just want to archive it. I'll try to contact the owner at least twice by email over a period of a couple of weeks. If I don't hear anything back, I'll archive it for them. If archiving it generates a response and they want to replace it, then I can unarchive the cache.
  22. Bobkat, Please email me about any caches in your area that you have concerns with and I'll be happy to look into them. Though I do try to look around for caches that have been disabled for some time, the area I'm in charge of is pretty extensive. Several people have compiled lists of caches that have been disabled in their area for a long time and emailed them to me. Be sure to include both the name of the cache and the waypoint number so I can find them in the system. SoCalAdmin
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