[Should geocaching HQ place a temporary cache outside their building until the offices open up.]

Baer2006, that is a super important point. A stat icon may be nice to the way some people play the game, but it shouldn't take away from the magic of visiting Geocaching HQ. Well, it would be magic to me to visit HQ. During business as normal you can buy souvenirs, take photos, peek through the glass into the offices... Sure currently we can order souvenirs from the geocaching shop online, but in my humble honest opinion I feel it would serve as a great reminder of my visit to have the icon. I would try to have it fall on a milestone, like 2000. 
And not gonna lie, it would be cool to see one less icon type I haven't found. 
Is that weird of me to think this? I don't know. I'm not too introspective.

[Who Are The Lurkers? Introduce Yourself.]

I geocache to get to enjoy my current outdoor hobbies with an extra twist. I already hike, white water raft, kayak, cave, rock climb, mountain bike, tree climb, road bike, XC ski, swim, and when I can I SCUBA. Geocaching gives me an extra excuse to get outside and do all of them. One of my first geocaches was while white water rafting the confluence of main and south fork of the Salmon river in the 'Frank Church Wilderness of no Return' and I was still kind of a muggle. That one really changed my perspective. 

 

I'll confess, i'm not just adrenaline. I geek out hard on stats. I'm crushing this 800+ day streak right now and am working on making the top 10 longest streaks in Idaho list. I may have been born in England, but Pocatello Idaho is my stomping ground. We have a geocache at our house and it is cool meeting people from around the country in my yard. We are redesigning our home geocache into a british phone box mini free library with some outlandish bonus features. Stay tuned.

It is cool to think that we are sort of part of a secret society but non nefarious. Walking to school every day I blazed right past 5 or so geocaches and had no idea - that blows my mind. It is also cool getting to know people and the mad adventures they get up to. I've been trying to build a teamwork geocache with Canberra Australia, speaking with great people like DarksideDan and some other locals in the area. Oh, Hey Dan! Eventually I want to set up a teamwork cache with each of the 6 main continents. 3 down, 3 to go.

[Should geocaching HQ place a temporary cache outside their building until the offices open up.]

THE cache that could be muggled, I totally understand the need to protect that thing. But some sort of stand-in available during the duration of the pandemic and office shut down to make that rare icon type would be fantastic.
With the locationless caches we have recently had a few people breaking the record of 12 icon types in a day. Having this back on the board makes it get interesting. I figure someone could thread together 16 if they were determined and planned well with events.

[Does This Sign At Trailhead Prohibit Geocaching?]

I have a few of my caches in a BLM spot of land that is potentially being transferred to a phosphorus processing plant (fertilizer). When the transfer is made, I'll be reaching out to the new land manager and re-obtaining permission or pulling those geocaches. There is a network of trails that the public uses around the area but I'm taking an abundance of caution to avoid geocaching leaving a bad taste in anyone's mouths. Also this will avoid any geocachers looking for my caches getting into trouble.

 

Here are my controversial and cheeky thoughts for your area:
If you were a friend/guest of one of the community then you could appeal to the community managers. Better still, convert one of the many muggles in the community, get them hooked on geocaching and then see if the community manager would be comfortable considering all geocachers the 'guests' of that person.

Vague language could possibly be used, like, "Hey Diane, I'm going to have some mates from all over coming and hiking that forest to see some old landmarks, is that ok?" There were these things called geocaches out there long before this property, can you believe that!? We wanted to check them out. Is that ok?"
Once that is accepted, perhaps incrementally it could be opened up to geocachers going on their own as unaccompanied guests. It could list in the cache page to announce yourself as a guest of [converted muggle] if challenged on the property.

[Bad Cachers]

Around my community there is a type of bad geocacher - the muggle. It is a wild creature that can be domesticated and indoctrinated, but the muggle species without training can remove and destroy many caches. Just one multi of mine has had stages replaced 9 times due to muggle activity. 
But for real, I hear stories but haven't met anyone who was a bad geocacher yet (knowingly armchair logging and such).

[Can I hide a cache here?]

2 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

• Get accurate GPS coordinates.
  • GPS usage is an essential element of hiding and seeking caches.
  • The cache owner must visit the geocache location to get accurate coordinates with a GPS-enabled device.
  • For at least part of the search, the cache must require finders to navigate with a GPS-enabled device to specific coordinates necessary to finding the cache. See this article for examples.

So true. traditionals inside don't really work because of this. My indoor caches are all multi caches with GPS used in earlier stages. GPS coordinates would lead to a pretty accurate spot in the building but earlier stages in the multi cache use GPS far better.

[Can I hide a cache here?]

I worked on hiding a similar cache on a university climbing wall I worked at. I backed off the plan, thinking it breached the commercial rules. It was free to students/staff and accessible to public but for a fee and would be bordering on too commercial.
Other than that, just like other indoor caches in libraries and such, you need to describe where to go once inside because of unreliable GPS (where the climbing wall is, which rope /route to climb, how high).
Returnability is an issue. I had a magnet built in to a custom climbing hold that also had a bison tube imbedded within. Instead of being bolted to the top of a bare patch of wall, the magnet held it in place and a cord that went from the hold, through the t-nut in the wall, and down to the ground inside the wall. That cord could be used for to easily replace the hold if needed (by climbing wall staff as a last resort if the geocacher cannot get back to hiding spot).
 

[What Irks you most?]

This isn't something that Irks me, but could hardcore troll/irk others, I will never do this: Daft distances travelled from posted coordinates for a cache.
So Puzzle caches need to have their final within 2 miles of the posted coordinates but could a troll have intermediate stages further away? If so it could be a pricey journey internationally back and forth across countries.
A multi cache or letterbox cache at the moment doesn't have that 2 mile distance rule as far as I can research so you could totally do that long distance punishment across countries. This wouldn't be so bad as part of a teamwork cache but is still a special type of evil.

[Challenge Caches - Time for an Upgrade]

I see good points from both sides on this one. It'd rather frustrate the games history to split mystery caches into two types (people who've completed challenges involving numbers of mystery caches compromised, for example). But it would increase visual convenience and help avoid the premature logging of challenges.
I'm glad I'm not HQ having to manage that decision. I'll be happy to play the game either way it goes. If I were a gambling man, I'd imagine the challenge attribute is their best effort to compromise and that is what we'll have going ahead.

[Pictures - Cool Cache Containers (CCC's)]

Another view of it in the field.

[Pictures - Cool Cache Containers (CCC's)]

This birdhouse swings open to reveal a sheriff key puzzle guarding the altoids tin cache. GC8WY8J good nimble hands required

[My wishlist of improvements]

If they were to ever have an option to display an unknown cache at the physical location on the map, it would have to be user provided solution coordinates, not the ones in the system by the cache owner. Otherwise people could claim they found a cache and then walk to the suddenly provided solution coordinates. 

[Some basic member restrictions in Geocaching App counter-productive?]

So there are work arounds like other apps, using the website, but back to the original question, is it counter productive?

We need to consider the goals. We the users love the features and would like all non premium caches shown but there is a bigger goal to keep geocaching alive and that needs HQ funded, writing code, overseeing, and making extra events like 

- wonders of the world

- memory lane

- mystery at the museum... 

Sure it'd be nice if our newly indoctrinated friends could see everything but i'm sure we'd see a significant decline in premium memberships and the budget for HQ would get really tight (layoffs maybe?).

 

IMHO I would prefer all D/T ratings shown but I understand. It sure beats having ads everywhere since there are so many workarounds. So for the goal of keeping geocaching alive and funded I do not think it is counter productive, even though I dislike it.

[The Big Blue Switch]

On 1/13/2021 at 11:26 PM, colleda said:

I took it metaphorically as the Big Blue (Sky) Switch.

I thought of the blue switch as a classification term. Green switches often refer to companies becoming economical and carbon neutral. I always thought the "blue" switch refers to the releasing of technology, turning on that technology with regard to the public's eye.

 Why blue? Outside of the matrix trilogy blue seems to be the primary media depicted color of computer based technology, possibly thanks to windows using blue a lot.

[Most Finds in 1 Day]

22 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

... my genuine best caching days have been when I've found just one cache or even none.

Quality, not quantity. Love it. I agree, some of my best days I only found a cache or two.
My current goal is to build those sorts of caches.

[Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer]

One option would be to have a spot within the forum (maybe this thread) where people can list totally illegal challenges that cannot even fit within 'optional cache' guidelines, especially ones that have a highscore element, and people could post within here. It wouldn't count as a find or have any impact on your numbers, but you could do some fun stuff...
Then you could have complicated challenges that function almost as a gameshow or board game, like geocaching Yahtzee using the five digit minutes of coordinates....

[Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer]

4 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

8 hours ago, mustakorppi said:

But in case it can't, I think you just articulated rather well the flaw in the "no online checkers for optional challenges" rule. It just kills optional fun.

 

Again, nothing stopping a CO from creating a checker. A reviewer may not allow it to be listed in the description, but you can still create it. (unless you can't get a scripter to make it, or PGC tells them they can't even make it, which I highly doubt)

I cannot find the rule of "no online checkers for optional challenges" in the guidelines and am trying to understand it. I totally get not having an absurd online checker plugged into any old traditional cache. It drains the processing time at PGC and opens peculiar doors. Though searching for that rule, I came across a suggested workaround by rragan four years ago on the PCG forum: https://project-gc.com/forum/read?11,5580,5603,printview
He suggested, "the unchallenge would be in the description of a simpler acceptable challenge which would have to have a normal checker. Unchallenge checkers would be built just like normal checkers but could use checks not allowed by GC challenge rules. The base challenge would have to be qualified before the associated Unchallenge could be claimed. Claiming would be done by writing a log note showing the output of the Unchallenge checker."

Would rragan's idea work with this 'no online checker for optional challenges' rule?

[Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer]

4 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

 

You can't have a challenge based on the order of logs posted to the website. 

Audible gasp! I had no idea. I can't find that in the challenge cache guidelines on https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=127&pgid=206 but perhaps it is somewhere else with more comprehensive rules.

So picture I created this hypothetical easy and  lamesauce challenge: Find a micro cache, then at some time in the future find a small cache, then regular and finally a large size cache. (This would only be requiring temporal order but allowing non contiguousness with other caches found inbetween and no time limit or time proximity restriction). If I understand you right, even that easy challenge wouldn't work because it's based on the order of the logs?

[Not Available in Winter]

1 hour ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

 

 

And there's no inherent conflict of interest?

That's too funny. I chuckled on that one for a while. I am a first responder as a required qualification for one of my jobs as an outdoor instructor doing field trips since a lot of places we go we are 50+ miles from medical care, but I carry that training mostly in case I find someone injured while outdoors.

But you have sparked my curiosity so I looked it up:
In S.E. Idaho, anyone requiring funeral care that isn't already connected with a funeral home gets assigned to the 'funeral home of the month' on a rotating basis across the various ones in the state so if someone tried to conflict those interests, it wouldn't work very often for them thankfully. It'd have to be someone with no assigned funeral home AND be during the month of their funeral home's assignment.
That was off topic and that full answer should hopefully satisfy that side conversation. Back to the good stuff, availability in winter!

[Animated GIFs don't work]

SOLVED! Barefootjeff's link to approved hosting sites is great, but pulling the gif from google drive to your cache page needs some tweaking. This is how.

1) Upload your gif to google drive and set sharing so anyone can view

    A) With gif open, top right there will be three white dots for 'more actions', click them and open up 'share'.

    The bottom box shows 'get link'. Within there click the blue text "change" and select "anyone with the link".

    C) To the right, open up the dropdown box and ensure 'viewer' is selected instead of commenter or editor. 
    D) Copy the link, though it needs some work.

 

2) To adjust the link, paste the link you just copied so you can make edits. It will look something like this:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KftZsgelK-CGpoWDRsEB3ezCCyYZP5Wf/view?usp=sharing

Whatever you have after drive.google.com and before the long string of numbers and letters, remove it and replace it with "/uc?id="
Also chop off the end portion including the forward slash, "/view?usp=sharing" in my case.
In my example I'm left with https://drive.google.com/uc?id=1KftZsgelK-CGpoWDRsEB3ezCCyYZP5Wf
This doesn't end with .gif, but worked for me. 

3) Insert it using the same HTML you would normally, <img src="link entered here" > and you're good to go.

[Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer]

You can definitely tell my explanation is a patchwork. It is snippets of my explanation to the math community trying to find help. No luck there, didnt get traction or attention.

 

Mustakorppi's definition is MUCH better and is what you'd expect to find on the cache page. Main modification would be keeping finds in order. (The next link in the chain has to have been found later, though it can be  months later and with other finds in between.)

 

The challenge checker is indeed the hardest part. I have started trying to learn LUA for exactly this challenge. 

[Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer]

9 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

Intriguing idea! You could program it with a recursive iteration.

Conceptually I understand the idea. It would take an awful lot of computing and would need some efficient code. Now I just need to figure out how to do that. Would this be done in LUA?

[Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer]

On 2/23/2018 at 4:22 PM, Cacheism 500 said:

Anyone else had any good but unpublishable ideas?

Quite a few. The one i'm contorting to make publishable is breaking my brain.

Let me tell you about my bigger better challenge, inspired by the game of the same name where you start with a penny and trade with people for bigger and better things.

I've been working on a type of sorting I've never seen before and don't know if it has ever been done. I'm not sure if it is best solved with lua coding only, set theory, logical 'if then' statements, or some sort of numerical analysis. I'm terrible at all of them and don't even know the toolkit needed to crack this nut.

 

 

We're looking at the sequence the geocaches were found as the backbone, they might as well be numbered one up to 'n'. Other columns are size, cache type, terrain and difficulty. The idea is to cherry pick caches you have found to make the longest chain in order where each next link in the chain is bigger or better than the last. If you pick a size small cache in your chain, every link below must be small or larger. Same with the others, no regressing. Here is a short snippet of a live dataset of mine I'm looking at:

Sequence	size	cache type	difficulty	terrain
293	1	5	1	1.5
294	3	2	2.5	1.5
295	1	6	2.5	1.5
296	1	3	1.5	1.5
297	3	1	1.5	1.5
300	4	2	1.5	1.5
301	2	6	2	2.5
303	5	2	1.5	1.5
305	3	2	3	3
306	1	3	2	2.5
307	3	2	2.5	1.5
308	3	2	5	1.5
309	1	2	1.5	1.5
310	1	2	3	5

The longest chain I can pick out is three long (297, 300, 303) or (297, 307, 308) and it took me a while by hand to be sure. That was just fourteen rows. The thousand plus rows the challenge checker would need to process to see if someone has a chain of 'x' links long yet make it pretty hard and I'm trying to automate the process to not just find a chain, but the longest guaranteed. 

 

 Traditional, multi cache, mystery cache, letterbox cache, and Wherigo cache are the available types. We'd need to skip virtual, webcam, earth, and event caches since they have no size. My current chain is about 19 long with room to grow. 

 

What do you think? Has this been done before? Am I starkers mad? Either way I would love to hear your thoughts on how to solve this.

[Fastest 81]

5 minutes ago, Bundyrumandcoke said:

Been caching since 2006. I still have 20 spaces to fill. I didnt even know this was a thing. Meah, Im not worried. 

Perfect. You totally shouldn't be worried and neither should anybody. There's so many aspects to the game, chart filling is just another side to it and some people never look at or think of it. I think that the diversely varied gameplay is part of the brilliance of geocaching; you find your niche and make it your own. 

[Suggested feature: "Revisited" log type]

Nobody has mentioned streaks yet. If revisits became doctrine it would kerfuffle the current balance of streaks. Glad i'm not in HQ's challenging shoes laying down the rules. I'd be happy either way but i'm convinced it'll remain single find only per GC code per user account.