team tisri

If the eight people came in a single group not necessarily. So the cache owner can decide for themselves based on the text of the log. If 8 DNFs appear all at once and say something like "out hunting with some friends, eight of us looked and couldn't find it but we only had a few minutes before we had to move on" that's very different to 8 DNFs appearing over the course of a month where many of them suggested the seeker had spent considerable time looking. I guess noone would expect that. I happen to end up with DNFs however quite often for easy caches and as I said I often stop searching very early onwards. I've a serious issue with the idea that a DNF for an easy cache by someone with 1000+ finds is always significant and should alert the owner. Which is why I said it's best to let the cache owner decide for themselves when to go out and look. If they've had dozens of DNFs spanning several weeks with no finds I'd be ready to log NM against it. If they have one DNF after a string of finds there's no specific need for them to check but if they decide they want to, for whatever reason, then I say leave them to go and check. It's really no different to going to check on a cache that has no DNFs but a load of finds to see if it needs a new log book yet.

In case of many of my DNFs it isn't a good thing, but rather unncessary and I would feel bad if a CO felt prompted to go for a maintenance visit in those cases. Why would you feel bad if the owner decided to go and check out a cache? How is it ever a bad thing if an owner checks on a cache because they are concerned it might have gone missing? It's not as if anybody forced them to go. If they were going to check on it anyway, or thought it was a sufficiently easy hide that there should be no DNFs, or merely saw that someone with thousands of finds couldn't find it and wanted to make sure. What's the problem with a cache owner making a free decision to go and do something? It's not bad to know one's cache is in place and in great shape, it is bad to alarm the Cache Owner for no reason. I don't want them thinking the cache must be gone, and so they make a special trip to check on it, all because I can't find it. It's there, as always. The CO already went to the extra effort to place it in a spot that is maintenance-free. But in none of my four DNFs have I specified “...and I often can't find anything. I'm really, really bad at this”. The Cache Owner knows it's a super easy cache, nobody has ever logged a DNF until I did (and there are whole topics with really great rationalizations to NOT log DNF, and this topic where ones glance at a cache counts as an OM), because he's pretty sure it's gone. But it's fine. It's also bad when the CO knows the cache is so easy that he has no choice but to log “Have you considered a different hobby? It's right there, dude. Dude.” But that's a whole other subject. So why is logging a DNF "alarming the cache owner for no reason"? If a cache owner decides to check on their cache after a DNF that's for them to decide. Implications that a cache owner is somehow "alarmed" or "pressured" by a DNF are frankly ridiculous - if anything they create pressure to not log a DNF in case a delicate owner feels under pressure to check. I'm sure a cache owner can decide for themselves whether a DNF means someone looked and couldn't find it, or that they need to go and check it out. And maybe they were passing that way anyway and figured they'd just swing by on their way through? Bottom line, if you look for a cache and don't find it then log a DNF. The cache owner can make up their own mind what to do with the information that you couldn't find it. It isn't rocket science.

In case of many of my DNFs it isn't a good thing, but rather unncessary and I would feel bad if a CO felt prompted to go for a maintenance visit in those cases. Why would you feel bad if the owner decided to go and check out a cache? How is it ever a bad thing if an owner checks on a cache because they are concerned it might have gone missing? It's not as if anybody forced them to go. If they were going to check on it anyway, or thought it was a sufficiently easy hide that there should be no DNFs, or merely saw that someone with thousands of finds couldn't find it and wanted to make sure. What's the problem with a cache owner making a free decision to go and do something?

I wouldn't expect a CO to go out and check on their cache if mine was the only DNF - it's always possible that the cache is there and I just couldn't find it. If my DNF was the latest in a long line of them I'd log NM and ask the CO to check on it, and if they didn't do anything within 4-6 weeks I'd log NA on it. If I DNF-ed a cache and nobody else had then I wouldn't worry if the CO hadn't been out to check it. If I happened to be passing that way again and had enjoyed the hunt I might stop back and have another go. If I saw the CO had made a maintenance visit in the meantime I'd regard it as a good thing. For me, unless there are obvious problems with the cache then a CO making an owner maintenance visit is a good thing but not making a visit isn't a bad thing. So if the CO is responding to a few DNFs (or even one DNF) by going to check on the cache they might as well log to confirm it's still there as expected. If nothing else it's nice to know that it's worth a repeat visit because the problem was with my looking rather than the cache's presence.

You can already hide caches that are 'unlocked', in a manner of speaking, based on the number of caches someone has found. It's called a challenge cache. ... except that doesn't hide the listing from people who don't qualify.

True, but any new visitors to the page could see a string of DNFs followed by a log from the owner (whether a Note or an Owner Maintenance) to say that they had checked it out and confirmed it was there/replaced it. At least then they would know the string of DNFs had been addressed and a visit wasn't likely to just add another one.

Yes, but that's not really relevant for many reasons. First, it suffices for many puzzles to run through a limited number of candidates (in particular in combination with a date base of all other caches someone has already found in the area) and moreover one just needs to change the IP address in between (easy to do). True enough but it comes back to having a well designed puzzle. If your puzzle is the sort of thing that can be sensibly brute-forced by just trying dozens of permutations maybe the problem is with the puzzle rather than the person trying to brute-force it. You could write a mail before starting to solve the puzzle in such an exceptional situation and if the owner assures you quickly that a quick check is available, then you could start solving the puzzle. What's the problem with that? There isn't a problem with any of these things, but neither is there a problem with the owner providing some form of checker so people can find out whether they've got the right answer. All the alternatives involve some form of interaction between seeker and hider, and given how some hiders don't respond at all I personally wouldn't bother with anything that required me to contact the hider unless it looked particularly interesting. As my own caches are regarded, I do not have a single one that is well suited for someone who is short in time. All my msytery caches involve several stages. So one needs to plan ahead anyway. Sometimes my caches are visited by non locals, but never spontaneously as this does not work out anyway. Given the kind of my caches I rather have someone stay away that might have enjoyed the cache than getting 10 visits by people who end up disappointed. If someone asks for me for recommendation, I typically never promote my caches and rather tell them as many facts as possible and if they are not local point out the issues they have to turn into account. I do not want to have many visits at my caches, but aim to maximize the number of those among the visitors you do not end up disappointed because they expected something else. If a cache will take a while to finish the attribute that shows it can't be done within an hour seems like a good way to make that clear. If people decide to go for it anyway then any disappointment caused by not being able to finish it in time is on them. Giving an indication of what to expect is a good thing - while I'm very much in favour of having a checker so a puzzle solution can be verified before setting off I'm also in favour of cache pages giving decent information regarding what to expect while attempting the cache. The key thing is, it's one thing to know that it's going to take 2-3 hours from the first stage to the final stage and another thing entirely to know whether or not the calculated coordinates for the first stage are correct. If you've got a few hours in a particular area and figure a cache looks like a good one but then can't do it because it turned out you'd made a mistake calculating the starting point that's just a waste of time. And for the sake of including a checker that particular frustration can be resolved. If you can do that without effecting difficulty of the puzzle, go ahead. Often this is not possible. Moreover, there is another aspect that makes me decide against automatic checkers. If cachers contact me with their solution, it allows me to see where they make mistakes, have difficulties etc (in a much higher extent than I could deduce from the wrong solutions entered in a checker) and that also helps to adjust the D-rating and to decide whether to add a hint or change something in the description. Human communication is unbeatable in this respect. If people are looking for a hint to solve the puzzle they can still contact you even if there is a checker. The checker doesn't take away any of that communication - if someone doesn't see a checker and decides not to even bother you'll never know; if you see wrong answers coming through the checker and someone contacts you for help they can still tell you what they've done and where they are stuck. The checker makes it possible for them to know they got it right without taking away any of the options for direct communication for those who are struggling.

For many puzzles automatic checkers help in obtaining the coordinates without solving the puzzle completely. I'm happy to make it easy for those who deal with my puzzle caches to verify their solutions by mailing them to me. That way they can either send me complete coordinates or tell me they have troubles with a part of the solution. What they cannot do is trying out many solutions and then creating the illusion in their log that everything was trivial for them. They can but most of them have built-in measures to slow the flow of trial-and-error checking. I remember one puzzle I solved years ago had enough information in it, and a two-stage checker, that meant it was easy enough to try multiple permutations through the coarse checker and as soon as a "close enough" answer was found to try a much narrower ranges of precise options through a fine checker. Obviously if you're going to provide a checker you'd need to consider whether the checker itself made the puzzle easier to solve. Good point on the solvers but at the same time if you're going to be visiting an area you may be spending time on a boat/plane/train solving puzzles, or solving things a short time before travelling. There's no way of knowing from the cache page how fast the owner will respond to emails, and so if there's no way I can be confident I've got the right answer I'll just pass by and look at a different one. I don't want to take the time solving a puzzle only to find I can't verify my solution and to find the owner gets back to me once I've left the area to tell me whether I was right or not. So folks like narcissa who comment that "they provide a timely response" really don't help because there's no way of knowing from the cache page that this is the case, and also no way of knowing what they consider "timely". It's also possible that someone would have part of the solution ahead of time and only realise much nearer the time that they could finish the puzzle, only to then find they couldn't verify the result. But again, if you can't verify that you have the right answer it's easy to see why people might not bother even starting to solve it. Ultimately if owners don't want to provide that sort of facility it's entirely their right. Personally if I thought I might get people from a long way away visiting my cache I'd want to make it as easy as possible for them to know they were in the right place, even if they did happen to visit while I was offline for any reason.

That is always the correct decision when you aren't certain that you'll be able to complete a geocache in the amount of time you have, whether it's a tricky puzzle, a lengthy multi, or a difficult hide. The owner's responsibility lies in making sure that you have the information you need to make that decision. The owner is not responsible for making sure that everyone is able to do the cache. Nobody ever said the owner was responsible for making sure everybody could do the cache. Personally if I'd taken the time and effort to create and hide a cache and then create a puzzle I wouldn't necessarily want the puzzle to be easy but I would want to make it easy for someone who had successfully solved the puzzle to know they had the right coordinates. If you're not hiding caches so they can be found, why hide caches at all?

Utterly pointless. If someone finds 1,000 film pots along a 105-mile-long guardrail they are still a less rounded cacher than someone else who has found 81 caches and filled their D/T grid. It would also encourage armchair logging - it's not hard to find caches with inactive owners and it would be daft to create "awards" (as they would inevitably be seen, sooner or later) that encourage people to log finds they never made. There's also nothing to say a user with 403 finds isn't still a very serious cacher while another user with 15,000 finds might just be getting to the end of their tether and developing a grudge against another cacher or against the game in general. If they can see these "platinum caches" have a lot of time and effort put into them they've got an obvious target if they want to launch their own vendetta. And on top of all that, putting a lot of time and effort into making a cache and hiding it doesn't offer any guarantee that a passing muggle won't find it, an animal won't turf it out of a prime nesting spot, or the council won't cut down the tree that it was hidden in.

I provide timely responses to emails about my caches. ... and that's great. But the people out in the field don't know when, or even whether, you'll reply to an email they send you. And if they send an email one evening when you're out (I assume you have a life outside of geocaching) then however timely you may consider your response it might not be timely enough for them. So from the perspective of the would-be seeker of your cache, they can't be sure whether they correctly solved your puzzle and can't have any assurance that you'll reply to their email fast enough to be of any use. If I were in that position I'd just skip over your cache completely and look at someone else's. ... which goes back to whether you care about missing out on visitors from out of the area.

All sold, thanks again to those who bought them.

I disagree with you here. I think a "north five one three six..." cipher is the perfect case for a checker, since it would be nearly impossible to use to help solve the puzzle, yet it provides an easy way to catch minor transcription errors and such for someone that has solved the intended puzzle but then makes some unrelated mistake. I see what you're saying but sooner or later we have to accept that people doing something boneheaded will fall over their own shoelaces sooner or later. I forget how much time I once wasted solving a particular puzzle. Everything worked out, the answer dropped out perfectly, the coordinates looked plausible (based on a satellite view and being close enough to the posted coordinates), but it failed the geochecker. So I went back and recalculated, and every which way I worked the answer came out the same, but it failed the geochecker. After some amount of time I realised the problem was that I'd put in N50 xx.xxx rather than N51. Had I passed the geochecker and then put the wrong values into my software, or mistranscribed them into the GPS, no amount of checking will catch it. If the puzzle answer is as clear as "north five one three six..." the checker offers no value in confirming the solution, so still doesn't protect people from their own ineptitude.

It's not a feature offered by Geocaching.com. Why should cache owners feel pressured to use external websites for things like that? If it's so very important, get Groundspeak to produce something. Good luck with that. Some of the suggestions that have been submitted are still in the queue after two years with no indication of when, or even whether, they are going to be implemented. I'd rather not be looking for a cache if I've got the coordinates wrong. If it has a high difficulty rating I'll already be expecting to take a while to find it, and I'd really rather know in advance that I've got no chance of finding it because it's half a mile away from the coordinates I've got. And you're still complaining about being pressured. If you don't want to provide a checker, don't provide a checker. The community can vote with their feet. My vote would be to not bother attempting your cache. Others may go for it anyway. If you're happy with whatever outcome you get, do whatever you want to do.

I doubt they would go for this. They are making money out of letterboxes by selling the "clue" sheets in the shop, if the exact co-ords for the letterboxes were available on GC.com for free they might sell fewer info sheets. Interesting if they would object to something because they can make money selling clue sheets. All it would take is one person to buy the clue sheet, find the letterboxes, and then post the precise GPS coordinates on Some Website Somewhere and their income dries up. Especially if whoever did it was able to do a bit of search engine optimisation so anyone looking for letterboxes on Lundy saw their site in the first page of results.

Hi castagnari, I started a separate thread so people can see directly what's on offer. The "For sale" thread seems to be a bit of a ghost town where stuff gets listed and very little happens in there. I'm not expecting anything else of interest to geocachers to appear for sale, so once this one is done I'm not expecting any more. I know this bit is off-topic, but perhaps it would be better to have a subforum for UK-specific items for sale? It would make a lot more sense than trawling through a thread that just keeps growing where items for sale are interspersed with questions and items that have long since sold. It could also be a good place for UK folks to post their Wanted requests, while not cluttering the discussions related specifically to geocaching in the UK. ETA: The "car boot sale" thread says it's for secondhand items, maybe that should be changed since unactivated TBs are arguably not really secondhand.

It's just a shame that so much of geocaching these days seems to revolve around third party solutions because Groundspeak can't get it right in the first place. If we've got the chance to correct coordinates on things like puzzle caches, why can't we see which caches have corrected coordinates? It's a half-baked response, half a solution, that doesn't really solve anything. If they've got the code to send HTML emails, we know they had the code to send text emails, why can't we have a choice which we receive? Many people like the HTML, many people hate it, so why can't both groups have the format that works for them? It would make far more sense to introduce one feature and get it right than introduce two or three half-baked things that end up requiring more processing to be done in GSAK or other software. Someone more cynical than I might speculate about the existence of an agreement to keep GSAK alive by not implementing anything properly.

It's just a shame that so much of geocaching these days seems to revolve around third party solutions because Groundspeak can't get it right in the first place. If we've got the chance to correct coordinates on things like puzzle caches, why can't we see which caches have corrected coordinates? It's a half-baked response, half a solution, that doesn't really solve anything. If they've got the code to send HTML emails, we know they had the code to send text emails, why can't we have a choice which we receive? Many people like the HTML, many people hate it, so why can't both groups have the format that works for them? It would make far more sense to introduce one feature and get it right than introduce two or three half-baked things that end up requiring more processing to be done in GSAK or other software. Someone more cynical than I might speculate about the existence of an agreement to keep GSAK alive by not implementing anything properly.

Three sold, three remaining. £10 for all three, postage is £1.83 for second class signed for, £2.03 for first class signed for. Don't miss out, grab yourself some cheap TBs!

They could be getting stolen because people fancy a free nano. They could be getting removed because people hate nanos and want to discourage them. They could be getting knocked out of place by someone strolling past and running their hands along the railings where they are attached. They could be getting put back badly so they are more likely to fall off, or fumbled and dropped as they are put back. Hard to know for sure.

Is it so much to ask for a bit of text in the cache page to know roughly what to expect? If the answer is obvious once you've solved it there's no need for a checker (like the ones where you solve a cipher and the text says "north five one three six" etc). If the puzzle has multiple solutions and part of it is to make sure you've got everything right, does it hurt to make that clear so that people visiting the area with limited time can make an informed choice whether to attempt your cache at all? On the times I've been looking for a cache based on just passing through an area or having a short time available it's good to have some sense that the cache is probably still in place, and you've got the right coordinates. If I can't find the cache that's the risk you take but it's annoying to choose one cache over another and then find that it wasn't there at all, or the coordinates were wrong, or some such.

All the more reason to eschew them, as far as I'm concerned. All the more reason to eschew your caches, as far as I'm concerned.

Heavens to betsy, you mean you might have an unsuccessful attempt and have to try again to get it right? Lord have mercy! I completely understand why some cache owners might choose to make use of these third-party tools, but it's not appropriate to demand this of cache owners. Who said anything about demanding it of anyone? If I'm visiting an area and solve a puzzle I may go and look for the cache. If I can't be sure that I've correctly solved the puzzle, chances are I'll look for a different cache. If you'd like to get found logs from people from further away, make it easy for me to confirm I got the right answer. If you don't want to, that's fine, I'll just give someone else the log from half way around the world. Either way is fine for me.

Following the much-faster-than-expected sale of my various trackables in my previous thread I had a nagging feeling there were more unactivated TBs lurking somewhere. Sure enough, as I cleared out some unrelated stuff I found some. Six of them in fact. As before anyone interested can have them for £4 each, or three for £10. I'll charge postage at cost, or anyone local enough is welcome to collect (SW London area). One of them is missing the sticker with the activation code but I can tell you what it is, and if for some reason the code doesn't work I'll refund the price of the bug as soon as I can verify it doesn't work. Paypal is fine as long as you pay the fees. A Paypal gift is the cheapest way for those willing to trust me. Anyone after some cheap TBs just drop me a message through the site and we can take it from there.

This whole post (including the parts I cut) make a whole lot of sense. I've seen a small local airport in the US with a multi cache there - the first stage is to read a plaque in the departures area (open to anyone regardless of whether they are flying) and then the cache is a fairly short distance away. I don't know how far, I never got around to finding it, but given it's been there for years I assume it's far enough that it doesn't cause the "sense of humour failure" incidents you describe.