TheAlabamaRambler

What Castle Man said. The FAQ for Challenges makes it pretty clear that Challenges do not conform to the Guidelines for hiding a Geocache. I think it may take quite a while for us cachers who have had the Guidelines be fundamental to the game to realize that Challenges are a whole 'nother animal.

Groundspeak made a request. They followed that request with reassurance that there would be no repercussions if you chose not to take them down. A simple email response to them "I have considered the issue and will / will not be leaving my videos online" would have resolved the entire matter. Bringing this non-issue to the forum is just trolling for attention. And MPH...that's Naziism? Go read your history books before using words you clearly don't comprehend.

Yes

theres a challenge here to find a cache thats already a virtual. i guess if the ghost type virts go away, they have the spot. Someone placed a challenge at a virtual I have, giving away the answer to the virtual. I immediately got an arm chair logger from the Netherlands. I deleted their log, because they did not fulfill the requirement. They argued with me and logged it again, telling me to check the page, the requirement wasn't necessary. I argued back, and told them "Is too!" and deleted the second log. The challenge creator actually wrote to me and asked if I minded, then thought about it and realized they had stepped on the toes of the virtual, (they were new and had done the virtual 3 weeks before) but they couldn't archive it. Between them asking, and me asking, Groundspeak archived the challenge. Deleted their log? Planet appropriately deleted the couch potato log to her virtual cache. Ah, got it, sorry, I read that to mean that she had deleted the Challenge log. My bad. Oops.

Waymarks are reviewed. Each type of waymark has it's own set of reviewers. Challenges are reviewed too, by all of us via the vote and flag system. Be the Reviewer!

Ahhhhh, I see. I suppose quite a new market has opened up with the new technology. I would suspect more people have smart phones than the old hand held GPS. Folks should pay attention. Jeremy has posted about his interest in Foursquare and social media on (I think it was) Facebook for quite some time. When one of the principals of any company expresses a personal interest in something it probably shouldn't be a surprise to see such features appear in the company's products. I'm guessing that Challenges are designed to move the company (and thus the game) in that direction.

theres a challenge here to find a cache thats already a virtual. i guess if the ghost type virts go away, they have the spot. Someone placed a challenge at a virtual I have, giving away the answer to the virtual. I immediately got an arm chair logger from the Netherlands. I deleted their log, because they did not fulfill the requirement. They argued with me and logged it again, telling me to check the page, the requirement wasn't necessary. I argued back, and told them "Is too!" and deleted the second log. The challenge creator actually wrote to me and asked if I minded, then thought about it and realized they had stepped on the toes of the virtual, (they were new and had done the virtual 3 weeks before) but they couldn't archive it. Between them asking, and me asking, Groundspeak archived the challenge. Deleted their log?

Is this a 'photo challenge'? Do I need to provide a picture? At least we aren't being asked to sign the log. I guess it isn't a Star Trek challenge, anyway. You aren't being asked to go where no man has gone before. Or get a photo of yourself wiping out Klingons. As opposed to wiping... well, yeah. Sorry Ash, but that's just plain lame. The good part is that we don't need rules or community standards. Folks are free to create whatever Challenges they like. The rest of us are free to vote them up or down as our individual perception of them dictates. Geocaches, because of their physical properties, will always need guidelines and Reviewers. Challenges and other non-physical types lend themselves nicely to community evaluation. Sure, you will see silly Challenges posted, but as soon as they come to the community's attention they will be killed. This, I suspect, is why Groundspeak encourages everyone to look at and vote on them whether they are local or not. You hear "How do I become a Reviewer" pretty often... here's your chance! For Challenges you ARE the Reviewer!

never mind

Yep, mine just went through without a hitch. Thanks Groundspeak! Moderator, this one can be closed, thanks.

Host some events, get to know the new folks who show up, you'll have a new or revitalized club soon!

Hey, any Challenge featuring chicks in trees is a good one! But you're right... I know the redhead in the pic below and know when that pic was taken! Yes, I think it's perfectly acceptable. My one created challenge even tells folks to. I can't see making folks go back where they've been just to get a new picture.

TPTB know that they are broken and have put them on the round toit list for the next hotfix.

Now there's an idea!

Not just a bad thing, it violates the geocaching.com terms of use: Well sure, but some are enforced and some aren't. That's not the question. My curiosity has more to do with whether many folks want the final / solution without doing the work.

Sharing the final coords for a multi or puzzle has many times been discussed and is generally thought to be a bad thing. This morning a Google search for something entirely unrelated turned up this site [link removed by moderator] Evidently it's a database where folks can post the final coordinates or solutions to puzzles. Is anyone using it, or something like it?

Bring flowers home from work, compliment her a lot, make her laugh, light a lot of candles in the bedroom, have soft music playing, etc. Or try alcohol. and hide a micro with jewery in it under the pillow. If she needs a GPS to find your pillow then geocaching is the least of your problems.

File a needs archived note. It doesn't have to be on the man's property, if it irritates him and may cause unpleasantness for future finders it should be archived.

Sure, I totally understand the value and issues with rumor, but this whole thread is predicated on one. If Challenges are in fact only 50% of what they will become and the community has input into that remaining 50% then I can see the things that you (and I) like about geocaching will come to Challenges.

I think the new Challenges virtuals will be everything Waymarking could have become without the huge management structure and difficult interface. Challenges virtuals exemplify the KISS concept.

challenges are like ice cream. geocaches are like steak. I like both. I don't want them mixed. You asked for it. Steak-flavored ice cream, yeah, I could dig it! If they come out with bacon ice cream I'm done for!

I think the whole thing wiith the tie-in to benchmarks was that the USGS had no way over time to accurately track their benchmarks. Many had been lost. Then comes geocaching where a whole bunch of people with GPS receivers who liked to look for things are out and about in the world. It was a godsend to the USGS - let geocachers find and update our database! Plus it gave geocachers who didn't have a lot of caches around them a chance to get out and find things. A win for geocaching.com and the USGS.

Further, I see Challenges virtuals as a service Groundspeak could sell to map publishers. Like Points Of Interest you put in a coordinate into Street Atlas or MapQuest and see all the virts within x number of miles or along a route.

LOL, no, this isn't another 'the end of geocaching' rant, just a consideration of how the game might change. Caching as it exists is in no danger any time soon!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the current "competing sites" all support virtual caches and some locationless caches. The vast majority of physical caches are still to be found over here and the vast majority of cachers aren't getting caught up in some emotional drama-fest and running off to other sites. True, but the key to that is the phrase "vast majority of cachers". Those of us who are already geocachers are pretty loyal to this site, but we're only a fraction of the population. Virtuals (because I hate the name Challenges) in the form of a PQ, a guidebook to the world as it were, might very well draw a much larger crowd. That other sites aren't succeeding may just be a factor of how they have presented or supported them, or the fact that they have almost no audience yet established. Combine virtuals with some Facebook-like features and they may explode in popularity far beyond the pool of us geocachers. As I said earlier, geocaches in their current form are messy, expensive to list and maintain, and appeal to a narrow audience. Virtuals are FAR less expensive, you don't need a big staff of programmers to publish them. I see this as Pandora's Box opened.