Dr. House

Given the response from NicoleLackey is likely to be the same as the answer you get from appeals@ (if not the exact same), will you be archiving this event or editing to conform with the guidelines?

I'm sure the charities could use a few hard workers Nah... then you'd be soliciting for Nike.

Another idea along the same line of thought above that would have satisfied both parties here (Groundspeak and the CO) would be to give the excess gifts back to those cachers who brought them in. Clearly there'd be an element of trust when giving them back to someone, but I think most people could figure it out. Once they've been given back to the person who brought it to the event, that person could then decide whether they wanted their item donated or not (and to a charity of their own choosing, should they wish to persue that). Again, none of this has to be mentioned on the cache page (Happy Frog) and the kids stand to benefit also (Happy kids and CO).

I wonder if the same charitable donation could have occurred had nothing been mentioned in the listing text and extra toys became available at the event. Last year's incarnation of this event seemed very well organized and I would imagine that a quick announcement to the attendees (or a vote by show of hands, if there's a concern about democracy for some odd reason) would have satisfied both sides here.

I am quite certain that this person is aware of this non-issue. I am equally certain that they will choose to hold "The Spot" in perpetuity by submitting their listing or not submitting their listing. Since there's nothing you can do to overrule their hold on "The Spot" (as was mentioned before in this thread by myself and CacheDrone, among others) my suggestion would be to come up with a new spot for gg's Challenge Cache. I think it's great you're fighting for this cause since it's something you really seem to believe in, but this spot is not going to become available again for the foreseeable future. that is a lot of certainty there, for the second time, care to tell us why that is? Could be because I know who is holding the spot. Could be because I am holding the spot. Could be that it's easy to make a statement such as this since nobody is likely to ever know who really is holding the spot. Pick whichever reasoning suits your preference of reality. I care not either way.

This perhaps assumes that there is only one listing overlapping that spot. Not sure how that would be handled.

Sorry for keeping these so long on you, but I got stuck on which may actually hold the key to solving this land claim dispute.

I am quite certain that this person is aware of this non-issue. I am equally certain that they will choose to hold "The Spot" in perpetuity by submitting their listing or not submitting their listing. Since there's nothing you can do to overrule their hold on "The Spot" (as was mentioned before in this thread by myself and CacheDrone, among others) my suggestion would be to come up with a new spot for gg's Challenge Cache. I think it's great you're fighting for this cause since it's something you really seem to believe in, but this spot is not going to become available again for the foreseeable future.

Of those who have interest in this idea, I wonder what additional filters you might be interested in? As a personal wishlist, I'd like to see: 1. Country 2. State/Province 3. Date Published

Putting on my OGA cap for a moment, we're opening a dialog with the Caledon BTC so we can have better answers and better landowner relations going forward. That ball's already in motion. Sounds good. I'm interested in hearing the nuts & bolts of that conversation. I realize there's only been a short time since this happened so take this with a grain of salt, but I'm curious if the dialogue between OGA and Caledon BTC has occurred and whether there's an update on this topic?

Wow... The group of folks you are referring to were nothing but accomodating to myself when I attended an event in the Ottawa area and any other time I've had the opportunity to deal with them in person at other events. I recognize that everyone will have different preferences though, so best of luck in creating your new group.

Appreciate that Jon. I did read the sticky prior to posting the original post. I also wanted to ensure that this feature request got sufficient time to percolate amongst the group as a "front page" item.

Is there some discussion behind the scenes going on regarding this feature request to determine whether to submit or deny it? I note that many other requests have received some sort of statement one way or another, but this one hasn't received one yet. I'm OK either way, but feel that many others would benefit from being able to specify additional filters when fetching from the API. As it stands currently, I choose not to use it since it takes too much fumbling around to try to get caches only in my province without missing some or filtering out those in a neighbouring state after the download.

Hi Folks! A feature suggestion in the GSAK forums (Link) was pointed in this direction to suggest as an idea for a future implementation. Realizing that these things may take time to implement, I'd have to agree that I'd really like to see additional filters made available to GSAK. Specifically, I'd like to see filters by country and state/province be made available to the application developers to include in their software. As it stands currently, I'd really like to be able to call to the API through GSAK asking for only caches in Country=Canada and State/Province=Ontario. Though I live very close to the International Border with USA, I don't often cache there, and thus, don't want to use any of my 6000 cache limit on caches outside of Ontario, Canada. Any chance of seeing this option anytime soon?

Putting on my OGA cap for a moment, we're opening a dialog with the Caledon BTC so we can have better answers and better landowner relations going forward. That ball's already in motion. Sounds good. I'm interested in hearing the nuts & bolts of that conversation.

I'd be interested to know whether any of the CO's (or anyone, really) affected has actually contacted the Caledon Bruce Trail folks to ask for a statement or some more details? As it stands at this point, we have tons of speculation and no firm answers from anyone.

I'm sure they are.

My understanding is that the age of the GC code has a lot to do with who gets an area first (or "holds" an area in this case). In other words, someone with unpublished GC code "GC2ABCD" would generally have first crack on a spot before someone else with unpublished GC code GC3ABCD. While I'm not certain of it, should the VR be advised by the CO of the unpublished cache that they do intend to use the area, there isn't any firm timeframe on exactly how long they get to "hold" the spot before it must be used, and thus could, in effect, hold it for as long as they wished.

Love this post. Says everything I feel about this experiment and wanted to convey in my earlier posts in a much more succinct way. I am in 100% agreement. Merci!

One thing I would like to see as part of a guideline for Organized Group Hunts is a bookmark list (of some sort) outlining which caches are being targeted as part of any particular OGH listing. In this way, a cacher can know in advance what they're getting themselves into and what caches they may have already found.

I'd imagine that the listing text in the cache description will suffice in making this distinction, so I'm not sure that a separate icon is necessary. Required? No. Nice to have? Yes. The same can be said about pretty much anything. If attributes were used more often we could potentially filter on that. But if this launches we'll potentially see hundreds of events per month in "Ontario" so I'd still like an easy way to spot the difference between GHAGAFAP and "Bob's friends weekly geocaching outing", without having to open up and read 100 event listings. Cuz what will happen is most people will simply stop after 10 events and completely miss out on the GHAGAFAP's or Spring Flings unless they find out by word of mouth. I don't see why there would be an issue with another icon type for Organized Cache Hunt vs traditional Geocaching Events, the same as we get icon types for CITOs and GPS Maze Events which both could arguably be classified generally as "Events" and people would find out if they are caching or picking up garbage by reading the listing. I'm not averse to some sort of method to filter (new icon or required attribute for "group caching") but I just don't see this as necessary. Case in point: Our BFL Crew outings. We know that these happen regularly on Friday nights like clockwork. What we generally don't know until the Wednesday/Thursday prior is where we're targeting. Given that there needs to be a specific meeting point and a minimum of 14 days of lead time to be considered for listing, we couldn't list our outings as a group caching event if we wanted to - and we're regular "group caching" type cachers. What I'm getting at is simply the notion that if we can't plan something 14 days in advance with a specific target area, I can't imagine many others will either, and thus, the thought that a cacher will have to weed through the multitude of "group" events on the website seems a tad remote. Not saying it won't happen, but it just doesn't seem logical to me. On the rare occasion, an adventure caching weekend is planned well in advance amongst the BFL, with the specific intent of finding caches. These tend to be in remote areas and thus require lead time to plan for scheduling and incidentals. In the past, if we wanted to have an event listed on the site to coincide with this, the description verbiage of that listing would be skewed in such a way that the event itself was the highlight as opposed to finding some great caches amongst friends. This sort of listing seems more the intent of the test for "Organized Group Hunts", IMO. There's no reason to hide the fact that we're going caching, and we're opening it up to others to join us. I also tend to think that BFL Bootcamp falls under this banner since I can't imagine very many people just coming to the command centre without going out into the woods to do some nightcaching too.

I'd imagine that the listing text in the cache description will suffice in making this distinction, so I'm not sure that a separate icon is necessary. I think this is a nice test to attempt to increase the social aspect of the game. It'll be interesting to see what folks come up with.

Whoa... How on earth did you figure that out with only vague descriptors of the service provided?

Un excellent choix! Félicitations!