Wow, this is a sad update. I have personally spent hundreds of hours researching and finding over 200 benchmarks. I like the activity so much that I have one of my GPS units loaded and designated just for finding benchmarks. While finding benchmarks I have experienced meteor craters, beautiful open deserts, breath-taking mountain tops, secluded water falls and hidden rain forests - all places where placing a Geocache would not be appropriate and didn’t exist.
It’s been a shame watching this part of Geocaching being neglected as the years have gone by. I would have loved benchmarking to be grown and maintained by Geocaching COs on the site in some way. I have always wondered why COs couldn’t adopt benchmarks and maintain the listings to keep them in play? Similar to Earthcaching, why not allow the benchmarking community to unite to maintain them like Earthcaches?
To see the benchmarking challenges being archived is beyond sad for all of us that enjoy doing them. While on hikes up various mountains for numerous challenges, I have really enjoyed sharing benchmarks to new cachers and muggles. People like hearing about them and some have taken up Geocaching for just that reason. I will mourn the days where we can share the history of surveying to local scouts and then take them to a variety of benchmarks on mountains and desert areas nearby.
I’m not sure what harm it does to leave them in our stats or why there is a move to remove the challenges associated with them. As a premium member, I can’t remember being surveyed or asked about a move in this direction. I’m thankful for the ping from another cacher concerning this specific update. If this is around the cost of ownership of the data or database size costs are an issue, maybe offer benchmarking as an add-on option to our memberships. So many of us have great ideas. Please re-think this update. Offer premium benchmarking members alternate options vs removing the fun options that exist today.
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