streudelz1222

True, but the small percentage of cachers with over 100 finds: Have been loyal customers for years and would be more likely to be repeat customers. Hide the majority of caches Organize the majority of events On the other hand, cachers with less than 100 finds: Are more likely to not be repeat customers Are more likely to hide a cache and then stop playing the game shortly after Are more likely to not put a cache back correctly or to take a travel bug and not circulate it They should try to keep the loyal customers they have AND figure out ways to keep newbies that try it for a season and then stop.

@Geocaching HQ I have someone who would be willing to host an archived, read-only copy of the geocaching.com/mark pages in the cloud if we were to get permission through the appropriate channels. We understand the reasons for removing the pages from the website, but at this point we just want to preserve the logs and photos that so many cachers worked so hard for so that future individuals who decide to hunt for benchmarks through different avenues at least have this valuable information at their disposal. Please feel free to message me regarding this. Merry Christmas to all!

In all seriousness, what would it take in terms of money, time and resources to set up another site that has all of the geocaching benchmark logs copied over (with Groundspeak's permission of course)? I'm guessing many cachers who benchmark would be "okay" with the benchmark retirement if all of the logs and photos could be archived or migrated somewhere. That way cachers who choose to continue to look for benchmarks through other websites would at least have past cachers' logs as helpful references. I personally don't know what it would take, but I know we have a lot of tech-savvy people in the caching community and several on this forum have said they'd be willing to pay extra to keep this alive, so perhaps with some collaboration we can come to a reasonable compromise: Groundspeak gets to de-couple benchmarking from geocaching.com, and the 20+ years of priceless logs and photos don't get deleted.

Exactly. I don't know why that's so hard for some people to understand. Switching over to Waymarking doesn't save all the logs and photos that geocachers have posted. Even if active users save their logs, there will be inactive users from the early days that won't save their logs. And even if everyone saved their own logs they would no longer be available for others to view, which would make it harder for future benchmarkers to find them. As some people have pointed out, some of those logs probably contain the only photos in existence of certain benchmarks.

Could someone please help me understand what a Wilson Score or a Fun Score is?

Thank you; that is good to know. But unfortunately that means that if a geocacher didn't log it on NGS that information may be gone forever in a couple weeks.

Exactly!

I believe you're talking about submissions on the NGS site. I was referring to logs from geocaching being fed back into the database. Below is an example where the geocaching log has pictures but that same log on the NGS site does not.

Unfortunately not all of them. I didn't do an exhaustive search, but right off the bat the two closest benchmarks to my home coordinates are not on the Waymarking website.

Great points regarding giving back to the community! I'd be curious to know how much money/resources would be needed to save all this. As others have stated I would gladly increase my premium membership fee (or have a benchmark add-on fee) if it meant this could be saved. Paying $30 a year for a hobby I enjoy is hardly anything - people pay far more for far less in my opinion.

You hit the nail on the head with the "good citizen" thing. Even though the NGS site has notes for recoveries from Geocaching, it doesn't include the photos or other details which are often helpful in locating them.

This is one of the most well-said posts. It definitely is a punch in the gut. I completely agree that some of the most worthwhile accomplishments are worthwhile because they are difficult - just like some of my favorite caches that I've found are ones that are difficult and/or are in hard to get to areas; just because a cache may not be found often doesn't mean it's not a great cache.

To lose all those photos forever would be so sad and such a huge loss. Some posters keep pointing out that we can download our logs in the next two weeks. While that is true it is also enjoyable and educational to read the logs that others have posted, and one individual probably can't download every log that every other cacher has posted. This is such a disappointment.

I too would like to see this fixed.