Fur and The Boys

I have tried a few different web browsers, and they all give me similar results... not working. I'm trying to hide a cache, I type in my coordinates, hit the "Preview on Map" button, and the I can see all the nearby caches, as well as a pin for mine, but no map tiles actually load. Clicking the Continue button does nothing, and I can't get past this part. When I open the Chrome Dev Tools console I see this error message: Uncaught TypeError: L.Google is not a constructor I know we just recently changed mapping providers on the site, but I thought that was all said and done with last week. Am I missing something, more changes done today? Help!

So, you are equating the guidelines of a privately owned company, (guidelines which the vast majority feel exist for good cause), with a human rights violation? Wow... I suppose you see yourself in the role of Rosa Parks? Honestly, I wasn't aware that hubris as large as that could be expressed by the written word. You have proven me wrong. About the "guidelines which the vast majority feel exist for good cause" Maybe the majority does... but the proximity of caches as well as their interaction with puzzle and multi-stage, seems to be the largest complaint as well. Does a private company which consistently ignore it's #1 complaint remain successful? Look at the first page of this forum category: Proximity rule should not be affected by a multi-stage Cacher dominating area Well, that sucks 528 feet Almost cleared out the area near hom already! with 50 finds Unpublished Cache When to Archive? That's just the first page. When do you stop and say: "this is becoming a problem that needs to be addressed"?

So, you are equating the guidelines of a privately owned company, (guidelines which the vast majority feel exist for good cause), with a human rights violation? Wow... I suppose you see yourself in the role of Rosa Parks? Honestly, I wasn't aware that hubris as large as that could be expressed by the written word. You have proven me wrong. No I used a popular historical example of someone standing up against the "norm" and asking for change, based on what reality is. Don't try to word it any other way or read between the lines. You only do yourself a disservice. ALso since I "pay" for my membership, I should be entitled to ask for change as well. Private or public makes no difference in this. The gov't is really just a massive private company, funded by it's membership (tax payers).

Re-read my previous message. I did propose something. Like a simple screen on your smartphone which says YES/NO you can place a cache here based on your location. Could be easily built into the geocaching app. As for how much would I relax the rule: 100' separation between caches for traditional caches. I would think 100' is sufficient for all caches. If your cache migrates 50' or more, there's something wrong with the original hide. But what do I know. I would also completely remove the guideline for later stages of a multi-stage cache to affect traditional caches. Remember this is about trying to get more people involved, and having fun while at it. By increasing the difficulty level all you do is make the hobby more underground, not mainstream. Case in point... Nintendo Wii took the gaming community by storm in 2006. It appealed to the casual gamer, and re-invigorated an industry going sideways. Since then, all other console manufacturers have added "casual-gaming" functionality to their consoles and portfolio (ie: Kinect, PS Move). Today, casual gaming, also known as your smartphone gaming is replacing consoles, whom are now only regulated to the "hard-core" gamer. What Nintendo did back then, and was continued by Apple and Google today, is make it easier for anyone to pick it up and enjoy. If all you do is make it harder, you will be pushed to the underground. In other words, I'm trying to help, by making it easier for the casual to get involved.

So what you're saying is that it's a long drive to the area where the multi's hidden and you don't have alot of spare time? OK, so if you place a cache in that area, how do you plan to do cache maintenance??? You wrote about 'spontaneous cache placement'. Cache ownership is much more involved than just 'My kids and I took a walk in the forest and we decided to place a cache'. Expect to visit GZ many times: when you do regular maintenance checks, when someone reports your cache damp or needing a new log or when the cache goes missing. Your kids will probably not be that interested in these maintenance visits, but, in placing the cache, you are committing to them. If you can't handle the hassle of doing the multi, you probably won't be able to handle the hassle of cache maintenance either. We have had a few hides for a couple of years now. I know what's involved, and my kids do come with me to maintain them. Like I mentioned in another post, we had to archive one of our hides, because it was continuously muggled, and we weren't going to keep on replacing the container, contents, and log. My kids came with me to replace the container the few times we did, as well as to return to the spot to finally archive the hide. I like to think with 400+ finds, we're getting pretty good at knowing what containers work in what situations, as well as the weather patterns in my area (no snow), and therefore am quite capable at creating nice hides that will be well protected from the elements. The issue is that the location in question, was infringing upon a later stage of a multi-stage cache. The initial location of that multi-stage is many miles away. The only way to know I was infringing was to place the cache, and contact the reviewer. And that's what's taking away from spontaneous caching. Perhaps what we need is a way to either 1) relax the guidelines when a traditional bumps into a multi-stage, or 2) provide a means for a potential geo-cache hider to get all the offending waypoints at their location. Something as simple as a YES / NO screen on a smartphone app based on your current location would go a long way here. This isn't rocket science, and looking at the responses here, as well as other threads, I'm not the only one complaining / affected by this. All others saying, you should talk to the reviewer BEFORE hiding a cache is missing the point. I don't eat, breath, and poop geocaching. I have a family and life outside of this hobby. I don't plan my vacations and free time around geocaching. This is a family hobby we do, so we can spend time as a family, doing something that the kids enjoy, and ensuring everyone has a healthy lifestyle (outdoor walks+trails suitable for young children). PS: The CO of the other cache got back to me, and well there is no moving my hide by a few feet. Looks like I need to move it about 200' or so. So my great picnic spot where families like mine can take their kids to have a great afternoon, and maybe find a few caches will not happen, because of a later stage of a multi-stage cache, where the waypoint is not visible to anyone on the site... the only way to get that way point is to solve the puzzle (with a difficulty rating of 5) associated with the multi-stage. Reading the logs of that multi-stage, some people spent over a year searching for all the stages.

From the OP... Thank You. Very Well Put!!! Thinking outside the box (ie: a way to see all waypoints on a map) to allow for spontaneous family geocaching to work.

Very true. Bad rules should go away. We get that. Good rules should not go away. So, how would one define a rule as either good or bad? Who decides? The person who pouts the most? Or the company that runs the site? One method would be to wait till an entitlement junkie complains about it. Cacher XXXX doesn't like this rule. Ergo, it must be bad... Or, we could look at the history of the rule and its effect on the game. Has it had a positive or negative effect for most players? In the case of the proximity rule, I would tend to lean toward positive. An interesting analogy, seeing as how you refuse to adapt... I was not aware there were any functioning democracies on the planet. I'm curious how you managed to get your 5 vacation caches published? Since the country they reside in is a Republic, not a Democracy, one must assume you live somewhere outside the continental US? So, along with teaching your kids to give up at the first sign of difficulty, you can now teach them the joys of being spiteful & petty, just so you don't have to overcome a relatively minor obstacle? Awesome parenting skills... Our society is sliding ever closer to the "Gimme! Gimme Now!" state. You have an opportunity to teach your kids something other than instant gratification. And you stubbornly refuse to embrace that opportunity? And for some reason, you are unwilling to apply this philosophy to geocaching? Looks like a way kewl cache! Too bad it's on the other side of the Republic. I wasn't aware that educating children was a bad thing... The stuff you learn on the forums... They were created precisely to consider the situation you face. I take great offsense to this, and can't help but see your complete ignorance of the country you live in. Perhaps you're republican, and still upset about the democratic process which elected a candidate from the democratic party. You insist the USA is not a democracy but rather a republic. Obviously you have never traveled to other countries which are indeed a republic. You claim the world is into this gimme gimme gimme, state, yet you can't appreciate the fact that you live in a country where you are free to speak your mind, and challenge the status quo for the better of all. Before Rosa Parks it was a guideline that black people sit at the back of the bus. BUt she wanted her gimme gimme gimme, and a few years later we realized that guideline was short sighted and indeed incorrect. Her right to free speech, living in a democratic society helped her to her cause, and today we are better than where we were 50 years ago. Society's guidelines change when a person with strong conviction sees they are wrong, and fights for that change.

You win some you lose some. If you aren't willing to work with the reviewer to find out how far and in which direction to move your cache and return to move it then you probably aren't willing to go back and maintain it. Maybe post the coords here and someone who has solved the puzzle can tell you which direction to go and how far. I have tried working with the reviewer... he/she is not helping me here at all. I have also contacted the other CO, I just sent my second message, although I now suspect my first one never actually went through since we didn't get the confirmation email.

I must say, many people here make far too many assumptions, and try to read too much between the lines Slightly off topic: StarBrand is correct. Each cache (and physical stage) has a 528' circle around it, and no two circles can touch. Not 1056' as some have pointed out When we go caching since it is a familly event we do pick saturated areas as much as we can. Best bang for buck. We also carry a few containers with us in tow. Like mentioned before we tried a couple multis and the kids hated it, since this is about spending time with them we want them to enjoy it, and myself and wife have no problem disabling all but traditional on our phones. I should also mention my son has an iPod and I will enable hotspot tethering on my phone so he can use the app as well The cache in question. During this afternoon we packed a lunch and found a great picnic spot along the trail where we were finding other caches. Looked at our smartphones made sure no caches were within .1 miles (including non-traditionals) my kids picked a great spot, marked the coordinates and added the hide when we got home. It's not like we pre-planned this before and would email the reviewer for guidance. It's not the first time we hid a cache like this. In fact of our 6 (now 5 because of muggles) hides only one was pre-planned where we used the website to mark the location from home. All others were hidden spontaneously via smartphone.

I also forgot to mention this. The cache in which we are offending is this: http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?wp=GCWQ3B If your read it you will see this is not a cache for a family event, nor is it something I would call appropriate for my kids to try and solve. Last I checked, teaching your kids about witchcraft isn't exactly smart. I did send a note to the reviewer asking by how much we offend, but this should be a great example of why the guidelines do not make sense. That other cache is miles away from my location, so I wouldn't even of considered having to look at it. The cache is of the upmost hardest difficulty. I'm not sure which stage we offend upon, but the guidelines when put into place, certainly did not consider anything like the situation I am faced. So not a hardest difficulty, 5 stage cache is stoping me from hiding mine, even though I can only see the physical location of the first stage. Given the description of the cache mentions 13 total miles to find all stages, I'm guessing this one extremely difficult cache has a virtual lock on multiple areas.... shame! I'm curious to those that know the history. When were these guidelines originally published with a 0.1 proximity? Were multi-stage caches available back then?

TLDR (everything - but did read most) So a couple of comments on this. 1) The Geocaching app from Groundspeak has an option to only list Traditional Caches. We have this option set on our phones. I would assume that perhaps the rules should be reviewed, so that traditionals get their own proximity, not affected by other types. Just because it's a rule doesn't mean it's a good rule. We live in a society that adapts daily, and changes our rules on a daily basis. heck there are some states that forbid you to have sex with the lights on. It's a rule, it's law, but it's outdated, and no longer applicable today. Likewise, a rule created at the onset of the activity, if it doesn't make sense, and it seems to me that many others are also not keen on it, perhaps it needs to change. I read a comment that said "we would never dare to ask Groundspeak to change it". Wow... we live in a democracy, and that screams of communism. WOW!!! 2) As long as its listed on a site and discoverable makes it not-trash. So I have a few internet domains, I can easily add a side menu for geocaching and list it. To make it more legit I will also list the other caches we have hid as well. I'm certain one of the few daily visitors I get to my site will see it, making it discoverable, and no longer trash. 3) We have found a couple of non-traditional caches. Each one was done when going out with other geocachers, whom were really poised to do it. 4) My children 9, 4, and 1 do not have the stamina nor the attention span to care for a multi-cache. They want the instant gratification to find a cache. I'll be damned if I threaten them to play or lose some other toys, that has got to be one of the worst parenting techniques ever. If your children do not enjoy something, you need to find a way to get them to enjoy, or look for something else. Threatening them is foolish at best. 5) The cache in question actually takes about 1.5 hours of my time to get to and back. And that would be straight there and return. I work long days, and do quite a bit of business travel for work. When I'm home, every waking moment is spent with or for my kids.

We do maintain our caches. We treat geocaching as a family event, thus the myself/spouse with 1 or more kids goes out and maintains the small handful of caches we own. In fact we have already replaced the container multiple times on our first ever hide (Pinky and the Brain), and are about to archive it tonite due to continued muggling (as soon as the site comes back online).... but again this is a family afair, and as such my kids would certainly come along with us, where I would need to explain to them why we can't even bother hiding a cache anywhere near here, because I'm sure that multi-stage covers the area fairly well. 6noisy - from my point of view, having to find every stage of a multi-stage which originated outside of my range, but one of the destinations is within the 0.1 mile range of my cache, I need to move it. What if I'm unable to actually find all the stages of the multi-stage involved? As for the scuba reference: It would be pretty funny to see someone in scuba gear looking for a cache on a beach

And for the record, if I go back and retreive my container, I will take my kids, and will need to explain to them the awful rules of why our cache is rejected... In turn this would likely discourage them from doing more geocaching, since the rules don't make sense, and in turn make the game much less fun for them.... but I should lead by example right?

So my container is trash... but all the other geocaches are not... because they are listed on a website makes them not trash vs my unlisted container?

We do Geocaching as a family, and we are premium members. We also hide caches, the kids get involved in this process. One thing we don't do is multi-caches (or puzzles, or virtuals, or anything but traditional). Simply put, it's not interesting to the kids. So the other day we find a good spot to hide a cache. Check on our phones, and no other caches are nearby (we only show traditional caches on our devices). But as luck would have it, the later stages of a multi-cache is within my cache's proximity!!?!? Seriously, now I need to go find all the potential multi-stage caches that are nearby just so I can hide my cache? Does anyone else see a problem with this rule? What if I'm unable to solve the puzzle, or the multi-stage cache, and therefore can't find all the later stages of it? We are not interested in finding the multi-cache, my kids would get bored very quickly of finding "clues" that lead to more "clues" that might eventually lead to the actual treasure. Although it is just 1 in over 2 million, it's 1 that will not get re-hidden. I'm just going to leave it there, and so be it. If someone else stumbles upon it, great. Ultimately the powers that be, need to really re-think this rule, and understand that not everyone looks for every type of cache. Certain types (puzzles, multi, etc) are not for the casual, but the hardcore. And now the casual user suffers because of the hardcore... good way to promote yourself to the new cachers in the world! #fail