as77

I don't think that is true. I have a PQ where I set the distance limit to 500 miles and I request 250 caches. The largest distance I get is 46 miles. edit: I see you've come to the same conclusion in the meantime.

Jeremy wrote on July 31st last year that this was on his to-do list. See this thread: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...topic=76601&hl= In another thread, he also indicated that this feature is not a high priority. I guess we shouldn't hold our breath.

It is true that the method you are suggesting does not force people to pay, but it does more than encourage them. It pressures them into paying by making a growing fraction of the hobby pay-to-play using MOCs that are exclusionary and divisive. MOCs have always been controversial since their introduction. I think you should find a different way to achieve your goal.

Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If you read the OP you will realize that this thread is not about the MOCs that are MO for protection. The OP's intent was to recruit more PMs by placing a lot of MOCs everywhere.

The point was that I think many, or maybe most of the MOs in my area are MOs for legitimate reasons, so I can go find them anyway.

Yes, and for many of them, the declared intent of making it MO is to reduce traffic. Some of them are even listed on Navicache.com as well, where anyone can access the description.

Sure, no big deal. That way I get to find the cache and I can still choose not to log it. (BTW in the PQ generator there is an option to only include member-only caches. If I use that and update my regular database with it, I can distinguish the MOCs by the update time.)

Hold down CTRL-ALT-DELETE at the same time. Thanks for the helpful tip, I knew your expertise could always be counted on. I just checked, looks like there is no attribute in the gpx file that would indicate whether a cache is MO. This would be a nice addition when the other attributes are added.

Yes, that is actually a problem. I need to find out how to filter out MOCs in GSAK. There must be a way to do that.

I thought getting non-PMs to become PMs was a good reason... You know - money for the site, enjoyment of PM features for more people... etc... Frankly, to make a cache MO for that reason reminds me of cheap marketing tricks used by pushy salesmen. Sign up today and we'll include 10 more caches for you to find as a special thank-you gift to our valued customers. What's next, an MLM scheme to recruit more PMs?

I'm a PM but I don't like MOCs and when I see that someone makes a cache MO for no good reason, I choose to boycott that cache: I don't go hunt for it.

I guess we disagree on what defines that...free caches won't disappear...there's a very small chance that a single park could go away (not likely, but we'll go with it). So what? People already pay to enter many state parks to get caches...around here, without a season pass, that will often run you $3 - $5 per DAY...the site only costs $3 per month. If people want to participate in this activity, they're already spending a lot more money on equipment and gas to get to these caches...we're not going to lose too many people just because they may need to pay to see a few caches. (especially given the fact that there will still be non-MO caches available). For new cachers, caches at great, attractive locations are a strong attractive force. If most caches at those places become MOCs, this attractive power will be largely lost and fewer people will take up caching. That means fewer paying members, too, and a general decrease of the popularity of caching. Also, it will promote the perception that geocaching has a commercial character to it. There is a huge difference between having to pay the costs associated with caching (like gas, park entrance fee, swag, etc.) and one player telling the other player "if you wanna find my cache, you gotta pay, dude, otherwise I won't let you hunt for it".

Doesn't bother me...First, I don't think a large park would ever become exclusively MO and if it did, then people who wanted to search for the MO caches in that park could pay $3 for a month and treat it as an "entrance" fee to cache that day (or week or month). We should not allow geocaching to become a pay-to-play activity. That was my starting point.

I'm not talking about an entire metropolitan area. If they just convert a big park that is a very popular caching destination to MOC-only, that's bothering enough.

I noticed that even in larger county or state parks where there are, say, about 10 caches, usually only 2 or 3 people own all the caches, and they are usually veteran cachers and of course premium members. It's enough if those 2-3 people decide to convert their caches to MOCs to make all caches MO in the park. So the best hiding spots are occupied by MOCs. Add in a park management policy that says no off-trail caching and no more than 10 caches in the entire park, and there you have it: non-PMs are excluded from the park as far as caching is concerned.

Just looking for the caches and logging the finds and DNFs is also a contribution.

No, not now, but if people start an MOC-craze it could become a problem. BTW I would guess that a significantly larger percentage of people who hide caches are PMs than of those who just look for them. What I wouldn't like to see is all the great spots occupied by MOCs.

Kit Fox's post just made my point stronger. We need rules against oversaturating an area with MO caches. I suggest two rules similar to these ones: 1. Any cacher must place at least 3 non-MO caches before he is allowed to place an MO cache. Reason: let's not allow more than 25% of caches to be MO caches. 2. No MO cache can be placed within 2 miles from an existing MO cache. Reason: let's leave appropriate space for non-MO caches to be placed among MO caches.

That is fair. My worry is, though, that if people see that a significant percentage of caches are subscriber-only then they would feel more inclined to place subscriber-only caches themselves. It would be a slippery slope, and in the end the result would be a lot of parks where all caches are subscriber-only. That is something I definitely wouldn't want. Every subscriber-only cache pushes geocaching towards becoming a pay-to-play activity. We don't want this, therefore I think other ways should be found to encourage people to become premium members.

If the percentage of caches that are subscriber-only starts increasing, a new policy should be implemented that limits this percentage and restricts the placement of new subscriber-only caches. Otherwise all caches, or all caches in a particular area could become subscriber-only and the game would become completely pay-to-play, which is contrary to Groundspeak's well-publicized commitment to keep the basic game free forever.

Subscriber-only caches, as the name implies, inherently carry the message that you should pay to play. Increasing their number amounts to pressurizing people into paying.

Geocaching is not a "pay to play" type activity. Therefore I strongly oppose the topic starter's idea.

The maximum number of caches in a "full gpx" file could be smaller, e.g. 200 or 150 instead of 500 for regular gpx files. This would compensate for the increased size (and server load).

Why do you want it as a PQ? I'd just hit the cache page on gc.com and look at all the past logs there. Querying for all logs will just increase the burden on th PQ servers for no good reason. Why, because out in the field I don't have internet access Do you?

Instead of the "decrypt" link, just use my ROT13 bookmarklet. See here: http://users.adelphia.net/~szia/rot13.html Then you just highlight the text to be decrypted and select the bookmarklet link to decrypt it. A popup window appears, showing the decrypted text. I never use the "decrypt" links.