MKFmly
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Posts posted by MKFmly
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People report this kind of activity all the time, convinced by the "news media" that extreme danger lurks around every corner and by the "entertainment media" that psychopaths inhabit every neighbourhood and playground.
Somehow people consider "reporting it" as doing enough, and they are further convinced they are doing a greater good (not wasting resources).
They do this with "good intentions" however they very very rarely are concerned enough to:
1) investigate and intervene,
2) gather good intelligence (licence plate, physical descriptions, etc), or
3) stop and wait for emergency services to arrive.
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They might have already tried to do it through geocaching.com and were thwarted by the commercialism guidelines. Sadly, there are still lots of people who hear about this activity and immediately think "Oh boy, how can I exploit this game and the people who play it?"
Is there a particular reason that you've chosen to use this thread to vent about what, by all appearances, is a personal gripe about a random stranger unsubstantiated perceived transgression that has nothing to do with the op? I'm just not following your line of thinking here.
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Provides a list of your top 20 finders...plus the next 20...that may give you what you want
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I don't have sufficient access to every person in muncipal government to facilitate sufficient research to make that judgement about every community but even if there are individuals such as you describe who simply cannot be appeased I still can't see how referring to them as paranoid busy-bodies will yield anything useful at all.
TMD, I certainly agree that not labeling people and respectful discussion may go a long way to facilitate positive outcomes. Highlighting that unreachable (and unreasonable) people exist and may not be appeased no matter the amount of respectful dialogue and education is also a valid outcome and equally won't yield anything useful at all.
Based on my experiences you encounter the later more often than the former, in situations like described above.
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At the same time I can see how referring to anyone who does express concern as a paranoid busy-body probably isn't going to put them into a frame of mind where they'll be receptive to dialogue / education which might help them realise they have no need to be concerned in the first place.
Also with greatest respect, any person in municipal government will confirm that every community has a couple of "paranoid busy-bodies" that no amount of dialogue and education will alleviate their concerns or cause them to change their views. It’s likely you could already identify who they are in your community...
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I find it really weird that so many seem to think the online log is more important than the geocache itself. The geocache is the point of the game. It's the reason we're all here.If this happened to me, I would audit the logs and delete everyone who signed the throwdown.
I find it really weird (and inconsistent) that the black/white supporters of deleting logs of cachers who signed the throwdown in good faith, do not apply the same rigid scrutiny to themselves as the cache owner.
Cache owners are required to address the throwdown/maintenance issue immediately, right?
Wait, I as the CO did not know there was a throwdown until... I hear you say,
Well there’s the rub ... neither did the other cachers ...(other than the naughty throwdowner)
Our policy is that geocache owners are responsible for maintenance, so as soon as they are aware of throwdowns, the physical geocache should be checked and if it is still there, the throwdown geocache should be removed. If this is not done, there will be no way for geocachers to be sure they are finding the correct geocache container. If subsequent find logs indicate multiple or inconsistent containers, it can often be a sign that a maintenance visit by the geocache owner has not taken place. In these cases, it is reasonable for the geocache owner to allow finds of the throwdown to be logged online as found because the finder generally cannot determine whether they found a throwdown instead of the original container. The original geocacher who placed the throwdown does not have a strong claim to log the geocache online as found. -
I'd like to note that if nobody placed geocaches in parking lots there wouldn't be any debate over "No Trespassing" signs. ;-)
Please note, some parking lots may be "No Trespassing" areas but not all "No Trespassing" areas are parking lots... therefore it remaims a very valid discussion.
(But most get your point)
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Yah, I was happy with the outcome too
Spoiler Request. What was the outcome?
We were too busy getting outdoors and/or solving caching puzzles to watch...
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To see what the hullabaloo was about, I viewed some email in html. It gave me nothing I didn't have before. Can't figure what the advantage is.
Do people prefer HTML or TEXT email?To find the answer to that question, we conducted a survey.
First, I posed this question:
“Do you like this new format for the email newsletter? Instead of simply sending blog posts, we’re sending a more personal email with commentary + information about the blog post.”
Here were the answers:
■55.1% of the respondants said “Yes”
■19.7% of respondants said “No”
■25.2% of respondants said “Kind of…”
And then I posed this question:
“If you selected Yes, No, or Kind of…, can you please elaborate? What did you like? What didn’t you like? Be as specific as possible.
This is where the interesting information came out…
People said they LOVED the text email because it was simple and much easier to read. Here are some quotes:
■“Clean”
■“Much easier to read”
■“The new format tended to make me feel as if I were a tried and trusted confidant— and that was welcomed”
■“It’s clean and easy to read. Call to actions are also clean and easy to follow.”
(+1 for minimalist web designs that focus on readability instead of fancy graphics :-D)
However, there was also some backlash. Not much, but there was some.
What was the main complaint?
It seems that people DO want to read in their email client, and when they do, they’re okay with staying there.
They also want the text to be clean, and easy to read, which makes sense.
But here’s the problem with “full text” emails:
In my experience, when you send the full text, you get less comments, less social media shares, and overall, LESS interaction with your subscribers.
I’ve also noticed higher unsubscribe rates, lower click-through rates, and in general, a lack of responsiveness.
That makes sense, too.
It’s About What Your Subscribers Prefer.Seems like GS bought into some "marketing strategy" that in combination with unvalidated emails only serves to increase apathy and generate negative feelings of their brand with current clients. Obvioulsy, they are not reaching unvalidated email clients which they feel the need to market to, through email...
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Back to the OP
OK, Im not really puzzled, just wondering at what point are there to many.Pick a spot near your home and run a PQ on just ? caches.
How many ? caches are there within 10 miles?
How many ? caches are there within 25 miles?
How far to hit the 1000 cache threshold?
Me:
10 miles = 68 ?s and 498 trads
25 miles = 127 ?s and 788 trads
999 ?s = 267 miles
998 trads = 40.5 miles
Most of those are geoart and Power trail.
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Since we are not discussing my feelings on puzzles I'll reply.
Drive ups get you out of the house at the very least.
Biking a paved trail is an outdoor activity no matter how far you go.
Event caches are generally outside and those that aren't still get you out of your house and away from the computer.
I assume you have no clue how much energy it takes to do a power trail, if all you did was PTs on a daily basis you'd be one fit and healthy person.
No matter how close to a road an urban cache is, you're still getting off your but and outdoors.
Again this perspective is still based on the invalid argument that time spent solving puzzles are directly taken away from time searching for caches outdoors. It is not a one to one relationship or a zero sum system. Cachers may spend time indoors solving puzzles but they have the same opportunity for outside benefits (some pretty dubious) as you have outlined above. Perhaps, it’s even more as they have more caches to search for...
I'm quite confident most of Roman's self-described non-traditional puzzle solving techniques take place indoors...and likely take more brain effort than solving the puzzle as designed, in the first place.
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To me one of the best things about geocaching is that it gets you outdoors and walking .....if I wanted to sit in front of a computer and run search engines, etc I could stay at work.
Why do puzzles haters always use this invlaid premis as an argument?
There is not an either/or relationship between caching and solving puzzles. People choose what to do with their free time...some even solve puzzles rather than watch tv!
Some people do crosswords and word searches in the morning paper but are generally not called out for not getting outdoors...
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What issue would it resolve?
Don't get me wrong its not a panecea but off the top of my head...
Allowing multiple owners may possibly;
reduce the number of ill maintained caches by improving the chance of maintenance of caches and cache pages with co-owners,
reduce the number of orphaned/abandoned caches by having co-owners partisipating,
reduce the need (and/or request) for adoption by having co-owners partisipating,
reduce the need for "group" accounts to hide caches by having co-owners partisipating, and
make a few cachers happy.
Allowing multiple owners may also possibly;
mess up someones hidden "stats",
introduce he said / she said / philosphical isssues among co-owners
reduce the possible find count of cachers because they no longer "find" those "group" account hidden caches, and
ummm I got nothing else on the down side
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I'd think Groundspeak did think about that and wisely made the decision that one account would be responsible for a cache.
I think one cache one owner is a very wise well thought out policy.
When geocaching started it may very well been a wise well thought out policy, OR a database technology limitation that haunts GS (and the user base) to this very day...
Even though most cachers generally "like" the status quo, re-examining the status quo is not bad. There is the opportunity to reaffirm and reweigh the rationale of decisions and there is also the opportunity to see if those reasons and rationale still exist.
Certainly, the proposed change would cause some issues, and equally certainly it would address some issues.
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Technically you would be correct in deleting all of the finds. However, remember that all of the cachers who found the throw down after it was thrown down are also victims of the throw down. I wouldn't delete their finds.
"Victims" is a strong word. They were misled, and did not find the cache. Not the cache owner's problem.
In this hypothetical situation the fact that the cache owner allows a throwdown IS exactly the cache owners problem.
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A more likely solution is a 3rd party "adoption service" as a listing service to bring adoptees and adopters together, along the lines of the "tb-rescue" style.
I don't think a third party solution could be widely adopted enough to be effective.
Granted, its not easy to gain wide adoption, but GSAK, Project-GC, MyGeocachingProfile, cacherstats, TB-Rescue, and others are fairly successful at providing wanted/needed capability that GS does not, will not, or cannot provide. As third party options continue to gain traction and provide capability, GS will truly relegate itself to just a "listing service".
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A more likely solution is a 3rd party "adoption service" as a listing service to bring adoptees and adopters together, along the lines of the "tb-rescue" style.
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That's certainly the case if you're using a set of coordinates. However, if your hiding spot is identifiable on the satellite imagery (it sounds like the OP's cache is in a fairly open area), you can make a fairly accurate measurement using the imagery alone and not be affected by any mis-alignment.
Note that I'm only talking about distance measurement where no coordinates are used. Such maps are okay for checking that prospective cache coordinates are in the right proverbial-ballpark, but should never be used to retrieve coordinates for a new hide.
Note, I was suggesting a reviewer examining a cache submission in google maps etc, and being led astray. Are the reviewers not using coordinates?
I don't recall having to provide "4 paces SSE of the blue light standard in the middle bush" on my last cache submission... ;-) ...but it has been awhile.
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But it does happen. I know it does, because we have archived caches and have been pleasantly surprised by the great caches that were listed afterward.
To not open up an area by getting rid of an abandoned cache means that the possibility of another good cache (with an active owner) will never happen.
All too often, an abandoned cache gets in worse and worse shape. Or it goes missing then someone throws down a pill bottle....which also gets worse and worse until someone throws down a bead jar, etc. What so many people really mean when they call an old cache "good" is the old GC number is "good". The actual cache is probably in rough shape or long gone and replaced with something inferior.
The OP was taking about cache adoption. Dame Deco went on to say if we save all "good" caches, we won't have any new ones, which seems counter-intuitive. Archiving (not adopting out) a "good" cache for a chance that another "good" cache replaces it seems like a losing proposition. I certainly agree that it does happen, but much more rarely than the opposite.
As for a cache deteriating over time sure, but it then its likley not a "good" cache anymore...
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Google Maps have a map scale at the bottom, so going back and pacing the distances out isn't necessary.
Google maps is a great product but as is often mentioned does not necessarily align well with satalite imagery, thus why it is often mentioned to not use it for placing caches. In some areas it is very algnied and in some it can be 10s of meters out. Perhaps that is an issue in your local area and may give any reviewer an improper indication of your cache location, although most should be aware of the issue and consider it during the review process.
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I was only stating what I do and why, not that there's a consensus. Sorry for the confusion.
Understood, just presenting an alternative positon. Unfortunately, the "Weird, huh?" could be interpreted as a judgement upon and a "poke in the eye" at, those who do not share the position that you do, rather than a statement of fact.
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Undoubtedly, there is a key piece of information from the OP to share here, regardless if it's through a DNF or a note on the page.
If I go hunting a cache and Did Not Find it, I log a DNF. Weird, huh?
There are far too many subtleties (and hair splitting) of the definition of "go hunting for a cache" to form a consensus.
Reserving a "Did Not Find" for cases where ground zero was actually searched and the cache was not found is a reasonable start.
If ground zero was not searched (by choice or circumstance) and there is key information to share (especially with no suspicion of cache issues) then logging a note works as well.
Went looking for cache ABC. Scoured ground zero and no luck today. (DNF)
Went looking for cache DEF. The parking lot was full as there was a wedding being held in the park so we chose a different cache, and will come again another day. (Note)
Went looking for cache GHI. Ground zero was leveled and heavy equipment was sitting nearby. This one may be gone. (DNF)
Went looking for cache HKL. Security presence in the area due to an event, so we did not approach ground zero. Will be back when it is quieter. (Note)
YMMV
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If we save all good caches, there'll be no space for new ones eventually. Caches aren't meant to last forever.
Judging by empirical forum consensus there is a distinct lack of "good" caches or rather a plethora of "disliked" caches.
True caches are not meant to last forever, but there is no guarantee that an archived "good" cache gets replaced with a good cache, quite the opposite is likely.
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On the other hand, my husband and I have visited EarthCaches where the owner asks for separate logs. Even though we visited together, did the learning activity together, and discussed the answer together we still send separate logs.
We visit earthcaches and share a joint account. In that instance we assume the EC owner does not want an email from each member of the joint account (In our case up to four).
That means that owners (or is it finders) want/provide answers from each Groundspeak account that finds the earthcache.
Fair enough, but in light of the "shared account" vs a "group visit" is multiple (same) answer emails really achieveing anything tangible for the Earthcache owner?
Especially, considering they all should be writing a found log per account?
How do I deal with a cachet who seems to be very critical of my hides?
in How do I...?
Posted
QFT
In our area the local Explorist and Garmin GPSrs are close but can "emperically" differ by a bias up to 8 meters, so depending what GPSr you use to search and what GPSr they hid it with, allows "adjustment" for the search, if indeed required.