Pieman

I think my question got lost in all the to and fro. From what Beefy4605 says there is a strong feeling among Irish cachers that it's better to have all the caches in the North listed under Ireland. I wondered what the advantage is of listing them this way?

At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, of course; but I am happy to hold my hand up and say that I don't get it as I can't see any advantage in, just for Ireland, changing the way Groundspeak deals with islands. The downside is that you will get people complaining from time to time, and I can't see any upside. For instance, if Ireland was split along political boundaries it wouldn't stop you carrying out PQs or other electronic searches on geocaching.com for caches that are on either side of the boundary. I guess there must be an advantage as I don't believe people are just behaving perversely but I would be intersted to know what it is.

This question comes up regularly and the decision makes no more sense to me now than it did when it was made. I don't doubt that there was no political motivation in the decision but it encourages this accusation where using the correct country designation wouldn't. The geographical argument would make sense if this was how Groundspeak classifies other caches but they use political boundaries elsewhere. Haiti and the Dominican Republic seem to coexist on the same island as far as Groundspeak are concerned without the need to merge them into Hispaniola. However, it is possible to correct matters by downloading the caches into GSAK from where you can run a macro to get caches in their correct country, and it will also add UK counties rather than the uncontroversial but completely uninteresting regions used by Groundspeak.

Thanks, Chris, that works fine.

That's a good way of finding the folders. Now with everything in its right place, I just need to understand why all the waypoints are still blue dots and not the icons!

They tend to be hidden files. You'll likely have to change options for folders to display hidden files. Thanks for that. I found the files and put the appropriate files in them but still have the blue dots.

I am having the same blue dot problem. I have just got a new PC and installed as per the guide into new installations of Memory Map and GSAK. Then I saw the above post by Dakar4x4 and I had made exactly the mistake as described. However, I can't find any of these folders on my computer: C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\<user name>\APPLICATION DATA\GSAK C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\<user name>\APPLICATION DATA\GSAK\MACROS C:\DOCUMENTS AND SETTINGS\<user name>\APPLICATION DATA\GSAK\USERIMAGES I am running Windows 7, so I guess things may have changed. Anyone know what I should do?

I have a couple of caches where you need to phone a mobile number. The messages are relatively short and the cost likely to be small compared with the cost of driving to the cost. For the cache where you need to have a phone in the field, this is stated on the cache page. I did it because at the time I set them, I thought it was something a bit different. I have since done a couple of excellent caches that use a similar technique. I have so far resisted the temptation to harvest the numbers of the calls.

The TalkyToaster maps can be found at http://talkytoaster.info/ukmaps.htm. I use them on my Oregon and they are excellent. To quote from the website: "OpenStreetMap creates and provides free geographic data such as street maps to anyone who wants them. The project was started because most maps you think of as free actually have legal or technical restrictions on their use, holding back people from using them in creative, productive, or unexpected ways." They don't have every footpath on but in my experience they are of a high standard and are free!

In Cheshire I see a dip in activity on my caches in July and August because people are on holiday, I guess. Autumn and Spring are the busiest times with winter somewhere in between.

I was approached by the police outside Euston Station early in my caching days. When I explained geocaching he said, "And why would you want to do that, sir?" to which there wasn't really a reply. In the end I convinced him I wasn't a terrorist and he apologised for approaching me. I have had a couple of people approach me and then help me find the cache when I explained what I was doing and I once muggled two muggles who had just found the cache I was about to look for. They were highly amused that they had just found a strange box in he middle of nowhere and then a minute later someone appears and explains what it was all about. The strangest occurrence was when I was photographing a TB beneath Thelwall Viaduct to complete its mission. It was dusk and absolutely pouring down and I guess I looked quite odd taking a photo there. A lady drove up and asked me for my name- I told her and asked her for hers. Then she asked me what I was doing and I told her I was taking a photo and asked her what she was doing. She said that there had been horse rustlers in the area and that I might be one of them. In practise, it would have been a tight squeeze to get one in the back of my Audi A4. She spotted the logo of the company I work for on my coat and wrote it down, and the next day I got a call at work through the switchboard from my brother... which is odd as I don't have one. When I took the call they hung up so I guess she was checking up on me!

I did one that was very good when they first came out, although it has since been archived as it didn't meet the Challenge criteria- which to be fair it didn't, as it involved finding where the Superlambanana statues had moved to in Liverpool and so wasn't located at one specific place. Looking at the ones that are allowed, I don't find them of interest and some are plain stupid and attract high negative scores without being archived. I am an intrigued to know whether high negative scores will get a Challenge archived which I thought was implied when they were launched. I actually suspect that they all will continue to sit there in perpetuity whatever the score if they meet the listing rules.

Some people allow found logs on their caches if they have disappeared and the person had clearly been to the location. Cache owners in the past have offered to let me log DNFs as finds for this reason, although I have never taken them up on it.

I have always assumed that events were originally classed as caches so that TBs and coins could be dropped into them. Back in ancient times, we used to have a Cheshire "non-event" meeting for geocachers that wasn't a cache but people turned up anyway despite the lack of smiley and the odd name! We just used a nearby cache to virtually deposit trackables. I agree that events are not caches and shouldn't really be counted as such.

Must win a prize for the most inappropriate swap in a cache. Not seen anything like this. It's not recommended to sniff hydrogen sulphide which this liberates.

Now there are lots of challenges I wonder how Groundspeak are going to review which ones to archive? It seems to me that during the first few days some got archived immediately but now ones with high negative votes live on. I can see that this will eventually get completely out of hand (maybe it already is) and become way too big a job to police.

There was a thread about this some time ago, which I have to say I found a little weird to say the least. I have no axe to grind about the political situation in Ireland but somehow ignoring the current political boundary there is less political than accepting it. There was a distinctly odd argument about using geographical areas in Ireland rather than political areas, although I don't see that geography had anything to do with the decision that was made. I don't for a second think there was any political motive in the decision but it is just plain wrong and gives the appearance of a political decision. Fortunately, you can revert to reality by using GSAK.

I recently did a cache which states that if you want to see this cache archived post two consecutive blank logs. I think that's fair enough. I wouldn't delete a blank log and actually received my first this week, but I think it is a bit rude.

I suspect the check box "Enable cache listing" needs to be ticked. It's not far from the top of the submission form.

Not sure why the background picture was disallowed but You can ask for an explanation and delete it in the interim. If the cache is in a churchyard it will still be allowed as far as I am aware provided of course you have permission from the church. Reviewers are careful about caches placed in such areas (even if accessible from outside) for- in my view- understandable reasons. On the puzzle cache, putting in a waypoint for the final means that reviewers can see where it is when approving other caches. If you haven't had a reply I suggest a polite email to the reviewer who first looked at it. I am pretty sure that Groundspeak and its reviewers haven't got a vendetta against you so probably no need to get too stressed or morose about it.

Thanks for complimenting my opinions; and just to make it clear, I do respect yours and others who disagree. Having said that... To refuse a cache listing because it says "turn left at Park Farm", or "the footpath begins behind the Dog and Duck", or "the location was used in the film 'King's Speech'" might well elicit an immediate and uncomplaining rewording (in the interests of quick cache publication); but is likely to cause incredulity in the household. Because it would be...how should I put this politely...bonkers. So I guess we'll never agree to any middle ground, as there seems to be no compromise available. I'm not a reviewer, but if I was; then if this guideline is really so rigid I'd resign immediately. Despite the efforts of respected reviewers in this thread, to take the guideline literally still seems ridiculous. Anyway, I've said my piece. Apologies to Oofy for widening his complaint to include this sensitive ground! Blue Quasar clearly comes from the ultra conservative wing of the reviewers union! Initially, I thought it would make reviewing caches easier but after considering it for a bit I am not sure that adopting this extremist view doesn't make reviewing harder. Checking that references to, for instance, tupperware, all buildings that have entrance fees, and any pictures in the listing that show a business sounds like a tough job. I think Happy Humphrey in his polite manner sums this approach up perfectly.

I agree that whatever the reality of Grounspeak's position on this it is not a major issue but I couldn't put hand on heart and say that I know what Groundspeak's position is on naming pubs in cache descriptions after this thread! The quote above seems to me to be the exact opposite of what Graculus said (MissJenn not explicitly taking a position on a local issue), although it does fit with what Geohatter said.

There has just been a series of pub caches published near me. It's a minor thing but they are now just numbered whereas before the change in guideline interpretation they would probably have had the pub name in the title, which is a shame as I had to click through them all to see where they are. I had a wry smile on reading the listings as in some of them the pub name is mentioned, but subtely enough that a busy reviewer would miss it.

MissJenn must have a very good telescope to see the edge of the slippery slope related to mentioning the name of a pub in a cache description! I think this is very similar to the problem Groundspeak has with mentions of charity- they become very worried about problems that are never likely to happen. Having said that if they want to ban pub names, while I think it's an over-reaction and a bit silly, it doesn't affect the game and is a Groundspeak eccentricity that I can live with.

It looks as though there isn't an agreed position on this, as two reviewers are interpreting the guidelines differently. I think this is an area where common sense can apply. To disallow a cache for stating that parking is available next to The Rose and Crown/ MacDonalds/ WH Smiths is surely extreme. Disallowing advising cachers to go into any of them on other hand is reasonable. Similarly, there is no practical difference in setting a cache where the first stage is to, say, get a date from the side of a pub and saying in the listing that the date is on the Rose and Crown pub as anyone who goes to the cache site will soon see the pub name! This is similar to the approach adopted by the BBC.