mimaef
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Posts posted by mimaef
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On 7/25/2018 at 12:47 PM, fox-and-the-hound said:
If you're still looking, there are some new Bigfoot coins coming up Geocoinfest 2018 in Seattle this year.
I am! Thank you for letting me know I'll look into them.
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Maybe it's the jock from Revenge of the Nerds
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- In your mind, what is a high quality geocache?
An appropriate, quality container for the location. (Water tight. Ammo can in hot/dry areas, sturdy plastic containers in wet/cold areas) An active CO who is not overwhelmed by the number of caches they own and maintains it. Dry with a not moldly logbook. Anything else is just a bonus and raises the quality and experience further. (A beautiful/interesting location, a good puzzle, a creative container, a challenge to find.)
- In your mind, what is a low quality geocache?
A poor container for the location and viability. (Pill bottles are not water tight, for example.) An unresponsive CO or one that has left the game. Caches that have been hobbling along for years because people keep "maintaining" them for the sake of having a cache there, but the maintenance is just tossing down a worse container than before. Wet and moldly insides. An inaccurate description, attributes, and D/T.
- What steps can the community take to improve geocache quality?
Log your NMs and NAs if it needs it. Stop placing throwdowns for caches you don't own. It's nice to replace a bag or add a new log (not a ripped out scrap of paper that helps no one) now and then and being kind. Replacing containers that will not be looked after and are last-minute thought quality is helping no one. Please choose better containers. A container that is not water tight isn't going to give anyone a good experience after a while (for your maintenance issues to deal with and cachers who have to find moldy, wet items later.) Stop placing more caches than you can handle, it shows in the quality. Try to actually trade up/even. Maybe try to make slightly better logs than an emoji reply. Even a sentence and a thank you will do! A bit of kindness goes a lot way to encourage our COs to continue placing and maintaining the caches we all love.
- What steps can Geocaching HQ take to improve geocache quality?
When a new cacher joins the game, give them a mini tutorial to show them how the game works. Right now they have to search out the information for themselves and forcing it in their view right off the bat via the app and/or website would at least help some of the issues caused by new cachers who don't understand certain aspects of the game, which causes cache quality to suffer. More specifics on what makes a good container that will not be a quick maintenance problem would be helpful for new COs, as of right now it's very vague. Cache owners who have a certain amount of maintenance issues with their caches should not be allowed to place more until they are fixed (I am not sure how best to implement this with time frames, ratios, etc to consider.) After an account has a certain number of caches that were forced to be archived by a Reviewer, they should not be able to place any more caches as they clearly have no intention of maintaining them. COs who have left the game and not archived their caches should be looked into. (I am not sure how to deal with this issue either, as there are some where their caches are doing just fine and are being actually properly maintained by the community, while others are just being left to rot.) I also think some more volunteers to help out would be lovely. With all the new proactivity, it seems like they could use a little more help.
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On 6/18/2018 at 2:14 AM, dprovan said:
Now let me ask you a question: If you knew about problem caches with NMs from years back, why didn't you post NAs?
I started Geocaching in August. I read the logs of a cache before I visit so I know what to expect, which is how I know they have had years of issues. And I do every time I run into one that is basically trash. I'm not going to post a NA on a cache I've never visited to see its condition for myself.
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Someone on the forums here introduced me to Locus Map for the android. It has an addon that can import Geocaches. If you turn your phone on to airplane mode, you can still use it as a GPSr and find the location of the caches and even save your logs to upload later. I use it in the woods here a lot, where signal is non-existent.
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21 minutes ago, dprovan said:
There will always be owners that don't take care of their caches. That hasn't changed since the beginning of geocaching, so I don't see how you can associate that with the recent trend of NMs being treated like NAs. NMs are now treated as NAs because seekers no longer post NAs -- or at least a perception that they're not posting NAs -- so GS is taking up the hypothetical slack by telling reviewers not to wait for NAs.
I've found this discussion interesting because I'm seeing the two camps more clearly than I did before. One camp imagines a bad cache will always get worse and will never go away unless GS does something. The other camp imagines caches getting fixed and assumes that a cache that isn't fixed will be NAed soon enough. Unfortunately, the dominance of the first camp, especially in the eyes of GS, has led to a self-fulfilling prophecy, so it's no longer realistic to expect anyone to post NAs anymore.
NM aren't being treated the same way, though. They're only taking a proactive move on unresponsive COs, which as you said as been an issue since the beginning. The NM won't change anything for owners if they're active and I am happy to leave a NM on caches in hopes they will be fixed and do if the situation calls for it. I am curious of your thoughts about why that isn't the case? In your area do people properly post NAs where this isn't an issue? Here there are quite a few caches I've found that have NMs on them from years back that have been hobbling along getting worse with no one posting further NMs or a NA.
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10 minutes ago, Team DEMP said:
I'm not sure how we would know if the CHS is working since we don't know which caches were identified and archived or appropriately maintained due to it. All we can go on are the caches we find and from what I can tell, there's no less missing caches, no less throwdowns and no less caches with mushy logs. I attribute that to a lack of DNFs being posted when someone doesn't find a cache because they don't want to cause a CHS email to be triggered which I find utterly bizarre that people think that, assuming they even know the CHS exists. The other is that NA & NM logs are even more hidden from users so they aren't being flagged much. Oh well!
I have noticed the NA & NM logs are super hidden to the point i don't think people notice how to log them. "Report a problem" on the app makes me think more of reporting someone for bad behavior, rather than the cache needs some TLC, and its in a strange position. It still doesn't stop them from putting in a piece of paper and writing their name on it anyway though if they do find the container and it's destroyed. For the smiley.
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6 minutes ago, Touchstone said:
Cache with active Cache Owner = Geocache
Cache with inactive Cache Owner = Litter
Agreed.
Which is why when I see a cache on its last leg and know the CO has abandoned it (we have one in particular in the area, though I'm not sure what happened to them. Either way they've not interacted with the community since 2013) I type out a NA and just take the litter out with me and note that I've done so with a picture of the container remnants and that if they want the log I will keep it for them. I've found ripped open plastic bags with only a quarter of the container left outside that was one of theirs and people still did not leave a NM log for years (Yes, years) but all mentioned the same container problem I saw.
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6 hours ago, barefootjeff said:
A real life example from my caching today. One of the caches I found was an Eclipse tin exposed to the weather (it's within 100 metres of the ocean so the weather gets pretty salty there too) and, as expected, is starting to rust and, after the rain over the last couple of weeks, the log is pretty soggy although I was still able to make a legible mark on it with my pen. I thought I'd do the right thing and log an NM since none of the previous finders who've mentioned the damp log have done so (maybe it wasn't as wet then). But, the cache is still findable and, after a spell of dry weather, the log will probably dry out enough to be reasonably servicable for a good while yet. This cache doesn't need to be archived even if the CO doesn't respond to my NM.
So here's my dilemma. I want to draw the owner's attention to the problem with an NM, yet I don't want the cache archived. That used to be possible when NMs just went to the CO, not the reviewers, but apparently not anymore as it seems they're now just an NA with an extra month's grace for the CO to respond. Somehow I can't help feeling the game has lost something important from this change.
I'd rather the cache be archived instead of limping along for years until its a disgusting mess and replaced by throw away drop downs that will continue to be a problem (and then moldly logs because they keep getting wet and drying out in your case, on top of a rusted poor container). The problem is COs who abandon their caches.
I still don't understand your dilemma other than you just don't like caches to be archived? If the CO is responsive, it won't matter if you sign a NM and it won't be archived. If you don't want to sign a NM on the off chance the CO won't respond, then start bringing your own replacement containers, log sheets, plastic bags and writing equipment, where you go and taking care of them yourself. We both know the second one isn't a logical step for everyone and per Groundspeak's rules, we shouldn't have to.
If you want caches long abandoned to keep going, then that's how you feel. I'd personally rather the space be open for someone else to be given a chance to be a good CO if they would like.
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5 hours ago, barefootjeff said:
Two things come to mind. If NMs now operate like that (and I must say I haven't seen any reviewer action on ignored NMs here), what's the point of having an NA log? The only difference seems to be a matter of timing - with the NM the CO gets a bit more time to respond before the reviewer disables the cache.
And secondly, what about minor maintenance issues that you'd like the CO to know about but definitely don't want to involve a reviewer or potentially have the cache archived? As an example, I'm thinking of where the cache page says there's a pencil in the cache but it's gone missing. If it was one of my caches, I'd like to know about it so I can take a replacement pencil on my next visit, but if that didn't happen for a couple of months I'd hate to see the cache disabled or archived. And remember, from the reviewer's perspective, the cache isn't being archived because of a missing pencil, it's being archived because of an unresponsive CO. So now, when logging an NM for any reason, you have to consider that the cache could be archived as a consequence, and to me, that greatly reduces the usefulness of the NM log.
If the reason for doing this is because people were seen to be reluctant to log NAs on caches that really needed to be archived, they're now going to be just as reluctant to log NMs. The same goes for DNFs if you just want to say you couldn't find it without inferring that the cache is missing. Distorting the meaning of logs isn't the solution to the problem of poor cache health.
Writing a note on the cache page to say you will get to it would signify you are not an unresponsive CO and then your cache wouldn't be archived over a pencil when the Reviewer looked at it. If a CO can't take the time to even write a note on the cache page saying they'll be going out there at the time they are able, then it will be archived. I don't see the issue here.
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3 hours ago, Team Christiansen said:
Yay!! TaleBlazer just got approved as an AR cache app. See the updated Help Center article here. Hopefully, my cache will now get approved, soon.
Woohoo!
Now to find a good location for the cache. I've been having a hard time around here since its so rural.
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On 6/13/2018 at 4:06 PM, The A-Team said:
I wouldn't like that. I'm one of the few people who selectively visits trackables to appropriate caches. For example, I was recently in possession of a small bee trackable that wanted to visit areas with flowers, so I took lots of photos of it with flowers and visited it to the nearby caches. I guess I could have taken the photos and then just uploaded them all to my eventual drop log under your proposed system, but I feel that having the photos attached to visits in the relevant areas adds more value, especially if those areas are widely-separated and/or in different geopolitical regions.
I'm the same way. I've started taking pictures of the locations and the trackables in them to post on the visit. I think it adds a really nice touch, especially when a lot of trackables with requests for pictures never get them at all. In the very beginning I did visit them to EVERY cache because that's what I saw being done, but more recently I've decided to just log them in interesting/beautiful/requested locations as a visit unless specified in the trackable they want lots of logs.
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I don't think it would be that big of a mess for GS. The cache locations are automated, and while I'm no programmer, I'd assume they would need to adjust the area and give it a new name. The souvenirs would probably come in short order, since GS is a US based company.
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TaleBlazer seems like the best overall to me for what it offers, though the camera 3d character overlay would be very welcome. TB would work best out here too, since a lot of areas have minimal cell reception so it can be used in the forests. A lot of these seem best suited to urban hunting and their branding appears to hint toward that goal as well.
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4 hours ago, The A-Team said:
Can you post the URL you're trying to use? If you browse to that URL, do you see the image correctly?
Yeah it works just fine in the browser. (And apparently here on the forums too haha. Here's the link since it embedded itself)
I'm just scratching my head over why the stat bar would work, but the trackable display won't. Especially since Tumblr.com supports full html, css, java, etc.
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2 hours ago, noncentric said:
Could the problem be associated with the page where you are trying to display these stats?
And what exactly is not working? Are they not displaying at all, are the stats not updating, something else?
The image that should be showing up just shows as broken. I've double and triple checked that my html is good and not missing any quotes or dashes.
I don't believe it's the site, since I have used dynamic links for images in the site layouts before (It's tumblr.com) and have had no trouble, like with the stat bar. The only thing I've noticed is that it tends to like .aspx links, rather than the Groundspeak version, which ends in an array of numbers and letters for the trackable itself.
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1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:
I asked my reviewer about other AR apps as well, and he said the same thing; it'd be denied because it's not one of the two approved apps, but that HQ would be the people to ask about the app and whether it could be approved. I want to set up an example AR to fire it up to HQ so they can look at it.
Which is odd, considering one was already published using TaleBlazer, so I would assume that would denote its acceptance already by HQ so long as its covered in the guidelines.
2 minutes ago, Team Christiansen said:I submitted a cache using TaleBlazer and was initially rejected by my reviewer. We have discussed, and I am currently waiting to hear back from him, and he is currently waiting to hear back from HQ.
Crossing my fingers for you. TaleBlazer was going to be the app I used after toying with it and seeing how well it worked for others.
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On 3/10/2018 at 11:22 PM, WarNinjas said:
I've also noticed if they make it to another country they have a better chance!
I was hoping my first trackable I released would do well after it immediately jumped from the US to Ireland, then had a lovely trip with a cacher who sent me images via private message after I thanked them for taking care of him. Not a few days later he was already missing from the cache. I'm crossing my fingers it was just someone not logging their visit yet because they're a foreigner with no access to internet.
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I'm trying to use the method from here to display my trackables, but no matter what platform or site I attempt to post them on they don't seem to work. The edited stat bar from devfolio works like a charm. Has anyone else had this issue or is there another method I could use so I don't have to hand edit the stats for my favorites?
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23 hours ago, The A-Team said:
^This
For those who aren't aware of the issue, it's the case where multiple objects with the same code are travelling from cache-to-cache where the problems arise. Since there's only one trackable listing page, you get conflicts between different "holders" of the trackable who need to retrieve it and drop it, since it can only "reside" in one place at any given time. Having the code available in multiple places for the purpose of discovery only doesn't have the same issue.
I had this issue with a trackable last month. There was a lot of grabbing from inventories of other cachers and grumpy posts written on the TB's logs about people nabbing from their inventory when they clearly didn't have the trackable in hand. They did of course. There were at least 3 of them floating around I could count just from the logs, and probably more.
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2 hours ago, Team Christiansen said:
You have the option to use live Google Maps (using data), or a screen-captured custom map. You as creator can select which characters, including the player, show up on the map (and AR overlay) and when. You can also set up whatever proximity you are to a character before it's interaction automatically pops up.
Thank you for the tip on the Overlay! I was playing with the creation software and didn't notice this was available. Taleblazer seems like the better of the two, despite its inability to overlay fun characters. I really like that you can make a "create your own adventure" sort of deal by hiding the Agents until the player does certain things.
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1 minute ago, Rathergohiking said:
Webcams are not for just any CO. Perhaps Groundspeak could let COs get on a list and then reward webcams from that list based on a selection criteria similar to what was used for virtual rewards.
I like this idea. There would still likely be hurt feelings, but I doubt they could do anything about that aside from just opening up Webcam caches again to the public. I'd prefer they not do the latter for various reasons.
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Are they planning on giving the AR caches their own cache type or is the AR in front of it just for testing purposes and ease of deletion later?
I'm very excited for this. I've been building several field puzzle caches for a series and a few have a "create your own adventure" style multi, so an AR aspect of that would actually make them that much more fun!
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I'd still love to see more webcam caches again, even if it's just wishful thinking. The one closest to me is quite fun and quite the little scavenger hunt to get to it.
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Image Hosting - Searching for High Quality Option
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