[Groundspeak is removing Benchmarking and the logs/photos]

So I used to qualify for a local geocache which requires the finding of 14 icons.  I had 14 with benchmarking.  But now it is gone, I only have 13, so I can't log a find on the geocache unless I find a different Icon.  Bummer.  

 

https://coord.info/GC2HRF5

[No "NM", when not finding a cache?]

6 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I think it's sad that NM (now Owner Attention Requested) has now been effectively turned into NA (Reviewer Attention Requested). Looking at the logs on that cache, the three consecutive NMs were from five years ago and were about water getting into the container, but there's no mention of wetness in the more recent logs, in fact one of them says "all good here". Archiving a cache simply because the owner is inactive and hasn't cleared an historic red wrench isn't punishing the absent owner, it's punishing the community and only serves to further discourage logging NMs for issues that don't require archival of the cache if they're not addressed by the owner.

Well put.  

[No "NM", when not finding a cache?]

On 10/31/2023 at 12:55 PM, barefootjeff said:

 

Yes, I saw that. So who's right, the author of that blog post or the reviewer who said "Cachers are reminded that the "Needs Maintenance" log should be used only if the cache is found and there are known maintenance issues."?

If it is posted on the Internet it must be true.   
 

if a cache has multiple DNF then NM “could” be appropriate.  It is not appropriate the first time it isn’t found unless there are is other preponderance of evidence that maintenance is not needed, such as but not limited to finding only a portion of the cache, seeing that the location is compromised (hint says hanging in a tree and there is only a fresh cut stump), or the area of ground zero is within a newly fenced area with a “no trespassing” sign, etc etc etc.  My objection remains to the first DNF posting NM because they are sure if there own cleverness in finding caches

 

Some say that there is no harm to posting a NM.  This, from todays email shows another cache which bites the dust due to a NM from five years ago. Now it is geotrash. https://coord.info/GC3MDVG

[No "NM", when not finding a cache?]

As with most areas of life, I advocate moderation. A cache that is clearly needing attention, like the hanging lid without a logbook needs a NM. 

a cache that had many DNFs NM could be appropriate. I don’t know what the correct answer is but it is clearly not 1 DNF, perhaps five, definitely 10 or more. I believe the actions in my area for archiving caches are a bit over aggressive, which is a view shared by other local Cachers as well.

 

I guess my question when I can’t find a cache is, is the problem me or the cache?  When in doubt, just post the DNF

[No "NM", when not finding a cache?]

1 minute ago, Max and 99 said:

In my area we are always given a month after the cache is disabled, usually longer if we post updates on the cache page. This also gives time for other people to find the geocache so you know it's okay and you may not need to make the trip. 

But I feel your frustration with that one!

Almost every day I get notification of a local (within 60 miles) cache being archived.  Some of them are archived even though contemporaneous logs clearly show the cache is fine, but the CO is either MIA or doesn't get how to log a maintenance log (not everyone is computer savvy).  My question is, how likely is this cache to become geotrash if it is no longer on the radar?

[No "NM", when not finding a cache?]

On 9/22/2023 at 2:14 PM, barefootjeff said:

 

First up, NM isn't called "Needs Maintenance" anymore, it's now "Owner Attention Requested". It's a request, not a demand, and it's just asking the owner to please do a check because something might be amiss. I don't even know why a reviewer should be getting upset about OAR logs because they're directed to the owner, not the reviewer."

The reviewers have been archiving caches because the CO didn't "clear" the NM with a reviewer note, even though the subsequent logs clearly state that the cache has been maintenanced, is in good shape, and has been found.  So it isn't true that it is not a demand.  COs are required to respond to all NM/OAR logs, with archiving of the cache as the penalty for noncompliance. 

 

I support the notion that NM should not be used for a DNF unless there is clear evidence that the cache was missing (such as the stump and sawdust for a cache hanging in a tree example above).  I recently had a NM placed on one of my multicaches, because said cacher had looked everywhere and couldn't find it.  My maintenance run, which came at a very inconvenient time, required a 60 minute drive and 30 minute hike, and when I got there, the stage was hanging right where it should have been, over this cacher's head while he focused on digging around the stump where he thought it was hidden.  Bottom line, I felt compelled to rush there because the reviewers are so aggressively taking action if you don't respond, and I knew it would be another month before I could get there otherwise. 

 

So to quote the statement above, "how do you know it needs maintenance if you couldn't find it?"  A DNF is a DNF, no matter how much confidence you have in your own caching ability. 

[Wheel of Challenges]

I agree that the survey wasn't particularly helpful.  

 

My take is that I really liked those Wheel of Challenges that emphasized

1. finding creative caches: ie with more than 10 favorite points,
2. special cache types, like letterboxes or multicaches
3. Adventures labs

What I didn't like were:

1. emphasis on numbers, finding many random caches
2. emphasis on number of days caches.  I live in a rural area, and work full time, which precludes finding that daily cache which I would have in an urban area.  

[Will we ever get offline capabilities?]

What is the Lackey response to this thread?

[Completing drafts destroys the images saved in them]

On 10/4/2023 at 12:53 PM, worrellsquirrel said:

 

 

We apologize for the delay with this fix. There were several issues that cropped up with drafts in quick succession -- some of which have been trickier to figure out than others. We appreciate your patience and assure you that our engineering team is still investigating the root cause.

 

Thank you.

I have had the same problem since July.  Originally I thought it was just part of Groundspeak's general incompatibility with Safari, but in fact it happens with Chrome and Edge as well.  

What dismays me is that three months later, there still isn't a fix.  I came to the forums, because 6 weeks after sending two messages to Groundspeak about issues, I have yet to receive a reply (unless you count the autobot generated message that they have your comments and will get back to you in a couple of days).  Hopefully there will be a fix soon, because having to upload logs, then manually go in to add the pictures is very cumbersome. 

[Will we ever get offline capabilities?]

First we had Wherigo, but then Groundspeak lost interest it in and wouldn't support the software so it became too difficult to manage.  Adventures are obviously their intended replacement, but without adequate support: ie making it offline friendly just like the other types of geocaches, it will also become a difficult and frustrating aspect of geocaching that will cause people to say "why bother."  I did one in Lincoln, NM which is the Billy the Kid state park.  It was very interesting, but I literally had to drive 10 miles down the highway, open the app and all the questions, then go back to find the answers, then drive back down the road to input the answers.  I messaged the CO about this and this is his response:

     "I debated placing that adventure, but there is SO much history in Lincoln, I had to try it. That's why I had the geofence opened up pretty much to the intersection of 380 and 70 in order for people to get stops opened before entering Lincoln.  I hope you enjoyed the visit and stops despite the tech challenges in Lincoln. The whole point is to see somewhere new and interesting. "

 

Bottom line Groundspeak, if extreme workarounds are required, then what are you using our Premium membership fees for?

[Do Adventure Lab caches work offline?]

This really needs to be fixed.  Yes, it is true that you need to have some connections to show you are at the location: aka geofencing.  However, there are some locations that simply don't have adequate signal to download the information.  But if you already have it, then a smartphone can still work.  Please fix this bug in the app. 

[map crashes on safari]

I am adding my second to this issue. The map is unusable and wondering when Groundspeak will look into it

[Log trackable using iPhone app is un-user-friendly]

Yes that is true. Another issue is that the find nearby caches searches according to your filters not for all caches nearby. Which means that if you log the cache first and have the search function set to show only I found caches you can’t drop in the travel bug 

[Bonus caches for adventures]

On 6/21/2020 at 3:44 AM, Happy Humphrey said:

I'm a little surprised that there is no facility (that I'm aware of) in the Adventure Lab to link to a bonus cache, bearing in mind that it's going to be a very popular pairing.

In my adventure I give details of the bonus cache in the "location completion" text for the end of the final location. At the moment there is no bonus cache, as I'm waiting for permission to place (and then review). So the text is basically "watch this space". Is it correct to assume that the journal entries are saved on the local phone, so if I make changes to the Location Completion text the previous finders only see the text at the time of their find? If that's correct, my plan is to message any finders with the Bonus Cache details once it's in place. Obviously, subsequent finders will get the benefit of the Bonus Cache details,.

I tested the full adventure yesterday by setting it to Private and cycling the whole thing on the ground, and hoped to see the Location Completion text with the mention of the proposed bonus cache. In theory, that should work well enough. But I noticed that in the field, the journal entries only contain the Location Completion image AND text for the first stage. The rest show only the Location Completion image WITHOUT the text. On returning home an hour later I checked again and the Location Completion text is now showing.

So, 1) it's a bit clunky to have to include the bonus cache location (or codeword or whatever) in the Location Completion text. That forces you to insist that the caches are completed in order, as otherwise you'd have to give the bonus cache details in every stage and people would only have to bother doing one stage. Ideally there should be text at Adventure level, that is triggered once all stages are complete. In there you could include Bonus Cache details. There is a splash page congratulating you on completing the adventure, but if it's customisable I haven't noticed.
2) It doesn't seem that you can trust the Location Completion text to be available to finders, so crucial information cannot be put there and the Bonus Cache information might not be visible when people have just completed the Adventure. So it may be wise to duplicate any crucial text by overlaying the Location Completion Image with it.

I came to this discussion to get an answer on how to leave information specifically the location of my bonus cache when I have set the adventure to be non sequential ( because I have found it annoying with other adventures I have done to learn that I drove past some locations on the way to the “first” location). Am I correct in assuming that in fact there is no way to access the final completed screen on the adventure for editing?

[Does the Mystery at the Museum "Penalize" Geocachers?]

10 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Well you only have to look back to 2015 for that year's Road Trip promotion. Each week had a different task to perform to get that week's souvenir:

• Meet Your Road Trip Crew - attend an event.
• Fun with Favourites - find one cache with ten or more FPs.
• High Five for the Earth - find one EarthCache or attend a CITO.
• Let's Get Extreme - find one cache with terrain 5 or difficulty 5.
• Put On Your Thinking Cap - find one mystery cache.
• Road Trip Hero - awarded just for getting the other five souvenirs.

So all up a total of four caches to find and one event to attend (or three caches, an event and a CITO). A far cry from the present-day promotions requiring anything up to 100 finds (as in Hidden Creatures) to complete, and on top of that they're now quarterly instead of annual.

 

[Sarcasm warning]. Maybe they could redo this next year but add a final step where you then go find 100 caches in a 10 square mile area

[The biggest jewel heist in history!]

12 hours ago, bflentje said:

 

You mean, most players here in the forums... which represents what, 1% of the total players? And those here in the forums never leave the forums. So whatever the perceived consensus is here is not reality and for sure is not representative of a true cross-section.

 

Thank you for pointing out that I didn't personally poll every geocacher on the planet earth.  I admit that I only came onto the forums when I realized that Groundspeak had locked out further comments on their blogs.  

My consensus is based on: 1 reviewing forums, 2 reviewing twitter and social media, and 3 contact with other cachers.  It also includes my own opinion.  Bottom line, is I am hoping that someone in Groundspeak will take note and never do that [find 35 caches regardless of type or quality] for future promotions.  I have likewise lobbied them via other social media.

 

Honestly, the hairsplitting over words and meaning (see the huge argument over the word "penalty" in another post about this topic that completely went sideways) is why I rarely visit the forums. A simple observation about a geocaching related issue soon breaks down into a Webster Dictionary argument. So I will return to the 99%

[The biggest jewel heist in history!]

On 8/1/2019 at 5:34 AM, barefootjeff said:

 

With the promotion called Mystery at the Museum, and mention of having to figure out the changed combination to put the jewels back in the vault, I'd imagined the final stage would have been some sort of puzzle to solve, maybe something like in Mission GC or the final step of Mary Hyde, or maybe just solve and find a Mystery cache. For a delirious moment I even pondered the possibility that it might be to find a cache with a jewel in its name, thinking my Quest for the Middle Sea Diamond and Middle Sea Pearler caches might see a bit of action. But never in my wildest dreams did I expect solving the "mystery" would be just "find another 35 caches".

If there is a consensus, it appears that most players were very disappointed that the final step was "find another 35 caches."

[Does the Mystery at the Museum "Penalize" Geocachers?]

10 minutes ago, CachedIronSkillet said:

I just closed the case... and had fun doing it.  What I don't understand is how there can be a design that does't require more work for someone who has exhausted their local pool of caches.  No matter how you slice it, if you have to drive to get new caches you have to drive to get any promotion of this type.  

 

So was this one well designed?   It certainly wasn't perfect, but it wasn't too bad. 

 

I have plenty of caches in my area left to satisfy the entire set of steps, yet I still went with my caching partner to a park 2 hours from home this Saturday.  Why?  Because that's why I cache.  I don't cache to stay near home... and I can't afford to travel via plane each weekend but we can split the gas money and go see a waterfall that I've never seen, walk a few miles on a trail that had us make several 1000 foot elevation changes to get the heart going... and cussing at film containers over a mile from the nearest road that are labelled regular size.  The need to hit the final 20 caches didn't make us travel... it was the urge to so something new.  The 15/35 just set the numeric goal at 20.  We did 23.

I concur.  I would like to see promotions that aren't twice as hard for those who have already found everything nearby

 

[The biggest jewel heist in history!]

First, appreciation to the Groundspeak Lackey's who worked to create a new, unique challenge promotion for us, thank you for your work and efforts.  I know you are trying to make the "sport" (hobby) grow and give us a reason to get out and find interesting geocaches.  Thank you.  My comments below are not intended to attack you, but provide feedback to consider when you work on the next promotion. 

 

The promotion started right after I had been out of state with access to hundreds of unfound caches.  I worked on it but quickly found that living in an area with few unfound caches it was a challenge that required going at least an hour away.  Got the detective, clues and gems.  Was very disheartened to see that the final step was "find 35 caches". So this challenge is to find 57 caches, but find the first ones in a particular order, then just do a power trail. 

 

In a metro area where hundreds of unfound caches about, this is very doable, and you could go to an area and just "cache"

 

As a rural cacher who has found (or placed) most of the surrounding caches, this requires preplanning.  With the mystery aspect, where I didn't know what the next task was until I completed the previous one, planning was not an option.  If the entire promotion would have laid out from the beginning, I could have only sought the clues and gems, then saved finding other caches until later.  Of course this also means crisscrossing the land, ignoring nearby caches now only to return later.

 

The final step was unimaginative, and essentially reduces geocaching to a numbers game: meaning that powertrails, rather than going to interesting locations, or looking for unique geocaches is the best way to succeed.  I was disappointed that this was the final step.  I decided that finding 20 more caches in the final 7 days was not worth it, and voluntarily stopped the promotion

 

My suggestion is that future promotions need to consider that not everyone lives in an urban area with large quantities of unfound caches, that travel may be required, and that knowing what will be required will produce MORE interest in the promotion.  "Begin with the End in Mind" as per Covey's 7 habits.  This promotion didn't allow that.  Moreover, people cache for many different reasons, and that one reason is just as valid as another.  

 

I'm hoping the next promotion will not focus on numbers, and if travel will be required allow us to plan ahead for this travel.  The mystery is much like a surprise birthday party:

“I don't approve of surprises. The pleasure is never enhanced and the inconvenience is considerable.”-George Knightly from Emma by Jane Austen

[Does the Mystery at the Museum "Penalize" Geocachers?]

Thank you The Jester!

[Does the Mystery at the Museum "Penalize" Geocachers?]

On 7/20/2019 at 7:21 PM, Keystone said:

I split off all the above posts about the concept of "penalizing" geocachers from the main "Mystery at the Museum" thread.  Definitional debates can continue here.  Questions and feedback about the promotion can occur in the main thread.

Can you tell me where the real Mystery at the Museum Thread is?  I would like to read it but a simple search was not helpful

 

I still regret all the time wasted reading about the definition of "penalty"

[Help My Earthcache: a collaborative effort]

This may not be the correct forum, but does anyone know of a listing of Earthcache owners?  

 

I have an Earthcache I either need to adopt out or archive and I'm wondering where I could look for potential CO.  Cache is in Arizona, specifically the Arizona Strip (adjacent to Utah and Nevada)

[New earthcache logging rule]

I just discovered this thread as well.  I have an Earthcache I have struggled with this issue on.  People will claim a find then want to wait 2-3 weeks to send answers.  

 

I have asked them to send the answers the same day they post the found it log.  This is simple logistics, I am not going to keep a spreadsheet comparing who logged it and who sent answers. This Earthcache is an overlook on a scenic highway and gets a lot of visitors, so daily or more often finds in the summer are not uncommon.  Do both at the same time.  This particular Earthcache is pretty easy though:  look out and see how many layers you see.  There are a couple other questions but generally if the answer is even reasonable I will say ok.  However, if I get a logged find and no answers I send them a message reminding them.  The biggest issue is foreign travelers complaining about lack of internet.  If they try, I work with them.  If they don't I delete the log

 

As the guidelines say, "send the answers then post the log". 

[Better Support for Wherigo from Groundspeak]

On 10/27/2017 at 2:49 AM, redsox_mark said:

Thanks to Ranger Fox and others, Wherigo continues in spite what seems lack of official interest or support.    I own 2 Wherigo caches, and I've created the Wherigo for a third (a friend is the official owner).     One of my Wherigos  The Adventures of Tom Sawyer gets found quite a lot (much more than my puzzle caches), as does the one I did for my friend  Little Bridges # 600 Tarr Steps.   

I agree they can be tricky to create (I used the official builder, which is probably the hardest!).    Ranger Fox's Wherigo\\kit  is much easier to use.

I encourage the OP to create one.    

 

I've actually created four.  

[Better Support for Wherigo from Groundspeak]

After almost 10 years of geocaching, one develops the desire to do something new (getting bored with microcaches, LPCs, etc).

Wherigo seems to have the most potential.  The problem is that there is very little support for it.  With a smartphone, the issues of GPS manufacturers not supporting has gone away.  However, the app (for iPhone at least) is very bug ridden.  The best whereto design program I can find (ranger fox) is good.  Groundspeak seems to be ignoring what could be the best new direction in this area (the sudden success of Pokemon Go shows this).  

Does anyone know what the official GS position and intentions with this are?