DanOCan

No. If the area is nice, I don't need a cache as an excuse to revisit. On the other hand, revisiting the same area just to find essentially the same caches again is kind of annoying. We had a local who did this to a majority of his hides a few years back. His motivation seemed to be to double the number of hidden caches on his profile. It was a bit of a joke in the local community because it was "What's the point?" He hid a 5-star Difficulty puzzle and I still haven't found anyone who knows how to solve it, but everyone knew where it was hidden because he had a Traditional in the same area and he recycled the location, container, and even the logbook for his "new" cache. Cache churn happens naturally anyway, there is no need to artifically accelerate the process.

We were just talking about this log on our local FB page and I was going to mention it in this thread. Glad someone saved me the work.

YOUR feelings? Hehe. Thousands of comments read over the years and only a couple are "signature worthy". Sometimes someone says something so well there is no point in trying to reword it.

I think my priority is to have fun (mission/strategic) but how I achieve that priority (goals/tactical )has certainly changed over time. For awhile, just getting out and discovering new parks and new areas was a goal. Then I had a period of time where I was about numbers. Then I was gunning for FTFs. Then I became a radius slave. Now? Caching is more done to supplement my other activities rather than being the activity unto itself.

I think my forum signature sums up my feelings quite well. Of course, I have hidden a few caches where I have used the "Stealth Required" attribute, but that's simply because they are hidden near a pathway. The finds themselves are all relatively easy so it should be possible to grab, sign, and rehide in between pedestrians. I difficult cache in a high-visibility location? Not my cup of tea.

Not at all. People could still hide caches in interesting locations and people could still hide caches in unique ways that make them difficult to find. If I'm doing a cache at the end of a long hike, the last thing I care about is an "interesting" search.

It's just mind-boggling that something could be so poorly designed. It's like they've made it bad on purpose. But, if a new email notification was sent every time a new message was sent in MC, the forums would be filled with people complaining about the number of emails notifications being sent. Here's another example of "You can't please everyone": After it was first implemented, one of the main complaints was "I get an email notification but it doesn't tell me the content so I have to log on to the site to see if the message actually needs a reply or not." That change gets implemented and then we see complaints that the content is being included. Maybe it's because I've worked in I.T. for so many years, but no one ever likes change so sometimes a service provider like Groundspeak just has to go ahead and drive forward with their plans knowing full well there will be a small minority of people who complain loudly but who will eventually accept the inevitable change.

This is one case where I think the "ignore it" alternative is the best one. Leave it up to the CO if they want to remove the items from their cache. Sign the log, replace the cache, and move on and don't worry about it.

For me, once I started noticing that I wasn't meeting my own personal standard for being able to respond to cache maintenance issues, I knew I owned too many caches. When I started feeling like cache maintenance was becoming a chore, that was also a really bad sign. What did I change? I adopted out some of the more historic caches I had previous adopted. I archived some of the caches I had hidden that didn't think really added much to the game. And, I decided to only place future caches in locations where it is really convenient to do maintenance on them.

My personal Geocaching motto: "Sweating., bleeding, crying. If you aren't doing at least two of the three, you aren't Geocaching hard enough."

You're talking my language! Would love to make it next year. We have a couple other trips planned and I'm not sure we'll be able to fit it all in (days off and money-wise) but you never know...

Agreed! Now I just wish I knew what to do about it. I'm trying to make quiet statements by not participating in power trail madeness -- I'll log a few of the caches at a time, or log every tenth one while skipping the rest. I'll write individual logs as if they were just another cache and not part of a trail. I'm trying to demonstrate a different way of caching to a generation of cachers who have "grown up" in the "more more more" caching world we currently seem to be stuck in.

Actually, if the next finder doesn't feel it is worth it, they are free to sign over my name -- I'm not "making" anyone do anything. And, a cache not inspiring me is hardly irrelevant -- my enjoyment of caching is actually the most relevant thing in the game to me.

The key word is "generally". Logging a Find in a case like this creates a false impression for the next finders that the cache is in place. Now, while I highly doubt anyone would go after a T5 cache without doing more in depth research, it isn't much of a stretch to see how this is an issue. Personally, I filter out any caches that have 3 straight DNFs so they never hit my GPSr. Multiple times I have been looking for a cache and after being unsuccessful, check the previous logs and discover the last "finder" decided to take the smiley even though they didn't find the cache. It's getting less unusual to notice a pattern of DNF, DNF, DNF, DNF, Found It (usually with a log that says nothing more than 'TFTC'), DNF, DNF, DNF, etc...

I only had the pleasure of meeting Joe once, and that was only briefly, but I knew I had met one of the true legends of caching. JoGPS was proof that respect from the caching community comes from your contributions, not your Find count. R.I.P.

For me, it depends on the cache. Yep, there are some caches that I just want to get it over with. Whether that's because it's raining/snowing and I just want to get back in the car (and to minimize the amount of time the cache is exposed to the weather), or a muggle is coming and I want to get the thing re-hidden, the cache is a micro and it would take too much effort to unroll the whole log sheet, or maybe the cache simply isn't inspiring. If the circumstances warrant it, I'll sign and date the log and maybe even write a small paragraph about the weather or my experience. Unfortunately, those caches are fewer and farther between now and often the physical logbook is a necessary bookkeeping exercise more than part of the caching experience.

The numbers game has won. It's not about showing off interesting places, it's all about "How many can I find/hide?" It certainly takes more work to find interesting caches now compared to when I started.

Back in the old days, I adopted a Mystery cache that really should have been a Traditional. No puzzle and it was right at the posted coordinates. I got a reviewer to change it for me. Ah, caching used to be so simply because no one cared if their stats changed since no one had thought challenge caches would become a thing.

Ditto for me. We now have three geoart series relatively near me. The first series was a mixed bag -- some of the caches were along a quiet gravel road and I did them over a series of days while walking the dog. Not great caches, but at least there was some benefit. The other part of that series was along a busy highway -- walking through the ditch so I could stay off the road? Not so much fun. The second series was published and I decided to go out and do some right away. It was OK while I was meeting up with some other cachers, but once I got to a section of the series they had done and I was left on my own? I quickly lost interest. Not surprisingly, we also had reports of local property owners being less than impressed with the sudden influx of people on their normally quiet roads, especially when those people are going right up to their fences and often in view of their houses. But, hey, why should a bad cache placement get in the way of making a pretty picture on the map? Third series? I can't decide if it will be less tedious to solve all the puzzles and pick them off a few at a time or go through and Ignore them. I'll never understand the numbers crowd -- I'll happily take a cache that shows me something interesting or unique over 1000 micros at the base of a fencepost any day.

The local community knows this is a sock puppet account but only a few people know who the actual cacher(s) behind it is/are. At the risk of going off-topic, regardless of outcome of the ruling from The Frog, I encourage the OP to wait before publishing another string of caches. Wait and see how many maintenance issues crop up with the current caches, especially after they have been out for a few months and have been found a few dozen times -- and especially after they have been through an Alberta winter. The last thing the area needs is more caches that have fallen into a state of disrepair. I also would encourage the CalgaryTowerCachers to consider putting their energy into hiding caches in interesting places, rather than simply because they make an interesting shape on the map, but that's a personal preference. There are hundreds of caches in our area already, and only the most prolific local cachers have found them all -- we really don't need a whole whack of "just for the numbers" hides. OK, editorial mode off.

Yep, agreed. The ads I'm seeing are now showing a lot of information about Maryland because I'm going there next month -- not for GeoWoodstock though. I don't mind ads because I figure they're subsidizing the site and keeping the cost of my premium membership low. And, hey, if I'm going to see ads anyway, they may as well be targeted towards me. I'm certainly not seeing any sleazy ads.

Geocaching is about finding things at specific locations, not bookkeeping exercises. My wife and I are out and find a cache that happens to be a challenge cache. I get to say I "Found It" because somewhere in my 6000 finds I happen to have found ten caches that start with the letter 'z' that were not found on a Tuesday in the summer, or some other such nonsense. My wife with her 100 finds can't say she Found It because she hasn't met some made-up requirement. That's nothing to do with earning anything. It's a cache that she found and she should be allowed to log it properly. With all other physical caches, if you sign the logbook you get to claim your find. If it's a tree climbing cache, you aren't denied your find because someone else climbed to the top and passed the container down. If it's a puzzle you aren't denied your find because someone else solved it and you just tagged along for the ride. If it's a cache on a summit, you aren't denied your find because you took a helicopter instead of hiking to the top. If it's a SCUBA cache and someone else dives down and brings the cache up to the surface for me to sign it? I get to call it a Find. Hey, I'm a stats geek and I have actually enjoyed going through my old finds to check to see if I qualify for some arbitrary challenge requirements. They've allowed me to look at my caching history in some unique ways that I never would have otherwise. (Some have just been plain tedious!) I've completed a number of challenge caches and even enjoyed some of them. However, enjoyment alone doesn't make something right.

It's so ridiculous that we're now seeing strings of challenge caches placed with super simple requirements -- hmm, almost as if it to help people achieve the "Log xxx number of challenge caches" challenge cache. I like someone's earlier "race to the bottom" comment. We've seen it with Virtuals, we've seen it with power trails, we've seen it with challenge caches, we've seen it with geoart. The first time it's done, it's cool and creative. Then the competitive nature of people take over. My PT needs to be longer, I want to create a geoart too, I want my challenge cache to be even more arbitrary...Oh, you put out a Fizzy challenge? OK, I'm going to put out a double Fizzy. At some point, creative ideas cross the line from unique to crazy. I'm glad Groundspeak is putting a pause on things to sort out where that "crazy line" is with challenge caches.

That's my approach too. It's a game piece, not an affidavit. Sometimes people take things too seriously.

I'll wait and see if some of the performance issues get ironed out and then try again. Right now it is too slow to be useful. I typed in a friend's handle. Nothing happened. Several seconds later I finally got the drop down box showing a list of names to pick from. After selecting a name, there doesn't appear to be a visual indicator to tell me that my selection actually was accepted. I didn't see anything happen for a few more seconds and then finally the box where I actually type the message appeared. Until then I was just randomly clicking around the screen trying to figure out where to type. And, then finally, the message sent. I think. It took a few more seconds again before the conversation showed up on the left side. Tried sending messages to a couple of different friends. One time I got a "Communication Error" when I sent the message, so I went back and entered the message again, only to discover there were now two messages to the same friend under Conversations. Also couldn't seem to find a way to message more than one friend at a time. It would be most useful to be able to have a group conversation when planning a caching outing, but I don't see how and it didn't seem to appear in the FAQ. So, initial reaction was "Cool. This looks like Facebook's messaging system so it should be instantly familiar to many people." Second reaction was "Well, maybe once the performance issues are ironed out it will be OK." Third reaction was "If I can't send a group message (or it isn't immediately obvious to me how to send to multiple people at once) then this really isn't an improvement at all." I'll withhold final judgement and fill in the survey later when I get a chance to use it for more than three minutes.