Witters Critters

I couldn't find any other posts related to this one, so forgive me if there is one out there... Suppose you and a fellow-cacher or two want to go caching. You are all avid cachers, and none of you want to revisit a cache you have already been to. You'd like to generate a list of caches that no-one in your group has found yet. Is there a way to do this? Or, said another way : Given a set of two or more geocachers, is there a way to generate a list of all the caches that none of them have found? Just curious... Witters Critters

Of all I have read, Markwell's solution seems the best. It would be nice to be able to sort for caches which have achieved the min 4 votes, or at least highlight them in some way on the cache listings. It would also be nice to reward members that have put out these good caches (like a months free premium membership for achieving 4+ votes). Seems to me not too difficult to implement. The "voting booth" could simply be a list of all caches you have visited (and that are still active) with a checkbox next to them. You check all those you want to vote for and click a "Vote" button. Before your votes are cast, the system would check that you haven't marked too many. That's my two cents.

ok, ok... I'm new to this. Realized this topic has already occurred 4 times. I checked them all out, and here are (IMHO) the best of the best ... you have caught yourself looking for clever hiding places in your own yard you're driving your 4 year old to preschool and he says "There's the coordinates" when he sees numbers on a telephone pole you say "Someone should put a cache there" at every park you pass you have to sort through the batteries in your pocket(s) to find change for the phone. you were late to your brothers wedding because someone hid a new cache in the area. you have a revolving credit card for the dollar store. your prize bloodhound is trained to sniff out caches you have a ziplock FULL of "possibly useful" batteries that you just CAN'T bear to throw out! your dashboard cellphone holder has never held a cellphone you goto the local building supply store to just check out possible cache containers. you have more GPS units then you have tv/vcr/stereo/DVD remotes. most if not all of the waypoints in your GPS start with "GC" you never leave home with out at least one GPS. you do a funny little dance near a hidden ammo box. You know most of the backroads, parks, open spaces, public grounds, rock formations, dollar stores, goodwill stores, thrift stores, and fuel stops within a 100 mile radius of your house. No matter how hard you try, you just can't pass an old dead tree without looking in it or saying "That would make a good spot". your Medical Alert Bracelet says "In Case of Emergency, GoTo N37:34.911 W85:33.911" you buy a backpack child carrier for the sole purpose of bringing your baby on cache hunts. you look at modern art in front of gov buildings and wonder how you can hide a microcache in it! you stockpile altoids tins for microcaches! you don’t know how to read a map, but you’ve found over a thousand caches. you now know just how many dirt roads there are in your area. the homepage on your browser is set to www.geocaching.com. you spend at least an hour every day revising your geocache web page(s). you can read the "additional hints" quite naturally without clicking on the "Decrypt" link. you think that the "additional hints" are for whimps. you always make sure that you have trading trinkets and your GPS with you when you leave the house. all of the "junk" in your junk drawer has been replaced with new items. you think that coordinates are more efficient than directions. you can translate between WGS84, UTM and NAD27 in your head. you are writing a screenplay entitled, “Geocaching: The Movie”. you think that geo-raiding should be a capital offence. somebody asks you if you have any "cash", and you immediately give them the coordinates of all of your hidden "caches". you start each day off by eagerly checking your cache for new visitors. your idea of “close by” is anything within a hundred mile radius. you spend $100,000 on a car just because it comes with a GPS. your brand new $100,000 car is covered with dirt and full of stickers and cheat-grass because you realized that there was a cache “close by” the dealership. you legally change your name to your geocaching username. you’ve ever traded items directly between two caches because you didn’t have any “trading trinkets” with you. you always leave the house at least an hour early so you can catch a cache along the way. you can honestly say that you’ve intentionally been to more than one virtual cache and/or micro cache. at Christmas, your idea of “high quality” items includes pocketknives, sunglasses, geo-patches, etc... you are saving all of your 35mm film canisters for your multi-cache. you have hidden caches in more than ten states. you know the exact coordinates of every cache in your home state. you met your spouse at a cache. your honeymoon consisted of 7 days, 3 hotels and over 200 caches. the engagement ring that you gave your fiance' came from a cache. you put your marriage proposal in a cache and gave your significant other the coordinates. all of your family vacations are based on where the most caches are hidden. the three websites you visit when you are planning a trip are www.expedia.com, www.geocaching.com, www.mapquest.com...in that order. you no longer have that uneasy feeling about searching around on property that you aren't sure isn't private. you always bring your light meter so you can act like you're just "looking around for the best light to take a picture" in case there are non-geocachers in the area. you've ever caused yourself to hyperventilate by taking the "hard way" to a cache. even after losing 10 pounds, you argue that geocaching simply CAN'T be exercise, because it's too much fun! you no longer notice the stares that you get while climbing a tree in a park or digging around in the dirt while wearing your best Sunday suit. you see the world as just one big multi-cache. everywhere you look, you think to yourself, "That would be a GREAT place to hide a cache!" you have endless debates about whether geocaching is a sport, a game or a hobby. you have boots, backpack, water bottles and a hiking stick in your trunk, ready at all times just in case your six year old told Santa that he wants an E-Trex Legend for Christmas. you are thinking of moving to have a more dense cache environment the Easter Egg Hunt at your house involves your kids putting on coats over thier PJs, hiking boots and a GPS unit. you leave a nice warm house in the pooring rain at 2AM to try for a first to find. your child's first word are "Found IT" you drool when passing the GPS section at the sporting goods store. your 2 year old grandson thinks a hike in the woods always ends with finding a box.

Here's a few to get you started. I'll pick the best responses, and compile a master list You know you're a geocacher if.... you give your home lat/long (from memory) to anyone who asks you where you live you can program a waypoint on your GPS blindfolded you ALWAYS have spare batteries in your car you have driven your minivan down an unimproved two-track to find a cache you spend 80% of your vacation planning researching nearby caches. you use the free web-access at libraries when far from home to find nearby caches you have more than 100 nearby caches pre-loaded in your GPS you always have cache page print-outs from geocaching.com with you you have ever skipped a meal during a caching binge you traveled more than 50 miles one-way for the express purpose of getting an FTF I don't know if anyone has already started this list... If so, please point me to the link.

Maybe I wasn't clear - The rating would be given by those visiting the site. In theory, "lame" waypoints wouldn't get rated very high (possibly even zero), and so wouldn't earn points for the owners. - Witters Critters

We could actually do BOTH - have a running counter (for those not interested in points) AND having the point total available (for those wanting that detail). As a rationale for points.... - Points would provides a rough measure of the quality/popularity of the contributer's waypoint, thus rewarding more usefull contributions. Having only a counter doesn't reward the quality/popularity. - Assigning higher points to creating a waypoint as opposed to visiting one encourages more waypoint creation vs. just visiting them. - Giving the FTV (First time visitor) more points makes it more likely that a waypoint will be visited (and rated) by at least one person. - If Groundspeak awarded free months for accumulation of points, it would encourage creating more usefull waypoints that would gain the creator points more readily. - Enforcing the visitor to rate the waypoint before they receive points for their visit also puts a quality measure on the waypoint for the benefit of potential visitors. An average rating could also be tracked and displayed for every waypoint. Just some ideas... don't know how difficult they would be to implement. -Witters Critters

I like the thought of rewarding use of the site, especially the creation of usefull, accurate and popular waypoints. The most difficult aspect will be preventing cheating by requiring proof of a visit. Here's my suggestions: - Give 20 points to category owners for each category they maintain to be received after the first visit occurs to a waypoint in their category - Give 10 points for creating a waypoint to be recieved after the first visitor logs their visit (of course, the creator of the waypoint wouldn't be allowed to be the first visitor) - Give 5 points for logging a visit to a waypoint. (10 points if you are the first to log). There should be some form of proof of the visit (picture of visitor with GPS, information only available from site, etc.) This method of proof could be precribed by the creator of the waypoint or perhaps the owner of the category it is in. - Require visitors to give an overall rating of the waypoint (for accuracy of coordinates, integrity of information about the waypoint, appeal of location, usefullness, etc.) Assuming an overall rating of 0(worse) to 5(best), give the creator of the waypoint that number of points each time a visitor rates your waypoint. - Since category owners will have a lot of work on their hands, reward them with 1 point for each visited waypoint in their category. - As an incentive, give a free month of Premium membership for every XXX points earned (500?, 1000?)