medoug

No, I am not and was not a Premium member. Don't know why I would see a "Renew" button when I don't/didn't have a premium membership. It just seems that they shouldn't just put boxes like that on the screen without any explanation given.

I see a "Renew" button on my main page header. (See screen capture below.) There appears to be no explanation of what I would be renewing if I were to click on it. Could someone please explain what this is for?

I agree. Maybe next time they will focus more on the % favorite instead of the points.

.... and if your cache is in an area with geocache saturation (spaced right at 0.1 mile apart), you might not be able to move it even 1 foot from its original location. I ran into this on at least 2 of my geocaches where they needed to be moved to a new hiding spot due to repeated muggling, but couldn't because someone else had placed their cache exactly 528 feet from mine essentially blocking me in the desired direction. On a trail series of caches, you could be blocked into the current location from both sides. That's just one of the reason I really dislike cachers placing their caches at every .1 mile increments just because they can. If it doesn't bring you to a location of interest, why place a cache just because you can.

What is a "myst"? Is it a new geocaching term? An internet search for the term comes up empty.

For short distances at a given latitude, you can get really close if you know the change in N coordinates for a given number of feet in the north direction and change in W coordinates for a given number of feet in the west direction. Then you can use a couple very simple trigonometry formulas to convert a distance and heading to the projected coordinates. This makes the assumption that the earth is flat and on a rectangular grid which is close to true for a small area.

I'm not sure if this fits what you're looking for. I've used this hide technique a few times which especially fools newbies. It is a way to hide a container the size of a peanut butter jar when it appears that there is no hiding place at the coordinates for a container of that size. Some geocache hiders damage the post lid by drilling a bolt through the top. Others try to use glue/adhesive that fails over the season. Instead, I've devised a thick wire hanger that is secure and causes no damage or no outwardly visible attachment feature. See pictures below for more detail. The non-destructive hanger in the post cap: In it goes: Ground zero with no apparent place to hide a peanut butter jar-sized container:

Now, copy and paste that to several other forum topics to add to the number (and size) of your posts to keep in the spirit of things.

I received a log on one of my geocaches that included the following text (abbreviated and redacted to provide anonymity) : Do such word-count statistical challenges really exists? Is the blabbering on in a cache log to pad the word count for such purpose common practice by some geocachers? Obviously, all the extra text was all cut and paste so it seems that one can easily cheat on such challenges. Thanks, medoug.

I am aware of that other post concerning Virtual caches, but it analyzes where and when they were placed. I'm interested if the cachers who did place their virtual rewards caches put them in locations of interest to others. Afterall, there was a lot of discussion here as to the algorithm that was used to select these cachers and whether they were more or less worthy than others. Much of GC's goal was to select cachers who they thought would place good quality virtual caches. So regardless of if these selected cachers were worthy of receiving such a privelege, did they deliver?

I'm curious what people think of the new virtual caches that were placed by the cache owners who were granted virtual cache rewards to place from August 2017 to August 2018. Do you think that those cache owners met the expectations of bringing geocachers to unique, interesting places worthy of visiting, or did they disappoint the general caching community? From what I have seen in my area, they seem to be getting a lot of favorites points and high percentages from premium member. Does anyone have any statistics on this? I'm especially interested in the favorite percentages which I feel are a better indication of of the cache's quality. (Raw number of favorite points can be deceiving depending on if the virtual caches are placed in heavily populated/visited areas compared to those in more obscure locations.)

Yeah, that's sad when the cache density is so thick (spaced 0.1 mile apart) that you can determine where the final is located on a mystery or multi-cache just by looking for the only available gap on the map.

The snowflake attribute is currently labeled as "Available in Winter". Based on the lengthy discussion found here: The "Available in Winter" attribute icon , its use is confusing to some members due to its current name. The common consensus, however, is that most people understand it as meaning that "the cache is hidden in a manner such that it can be found without digging into the snow". It really has everything to do with snow cover and nothing to do with the actual winter season. In Iowa, we have some winters with little snow. I'm sure that Florida and Texas have nearly every winter without snow. Winter time alone does not make a cache harder to find, but snow cover most certainly does. In fact, most caches are actually easier to find in the winter time with no snow cover on the ground as vegetation obscuring it is at its minimum that time of year. As a result, this attribute should be renamed as "Snow Friendly" or possibly "Snow and Ice Friendly". That would make it match the most commonly understood meaning in words that actually match that meaning.

We had a cacher in our area who succeeded in finding at least one cache everyday for 365 consecutive days one year. He followed that by finding no caches (0) for the following year (and then some). Lesson to this story is : Be careful about your goal as it could make you come to despise what you used to think was an enjoyable activity.

You omitted the following line which precedes the winter tip in the help center from your post: "Follow these tips to make sure that your cache is visited all year." Because these are "tips", it means that you don't HAVE to hide your cache above snow level, but rather it suggests that you should if you expect to experience winter finds regardless of snow cover. The cache will still be available (as others have mentioned above), but will likely require use of a metal detector to locate and a snow shovel or ice pick to retrieve. Sometime it is just more practical to hide the cache on the ground. With a few exceptions (fake birdhouses), it's pretty difficult to hide regular- or large-sized caches above snow level.

I agree that the intent by most geocachers is the second one listed in the OP ("A hide that is usually hanging and is found above the snow line so that it can most often be easily found in winter without digging down into the snow.") Moun10bike and arisoft's comments above support this. In Iowa, we have some winters with little snow. I'm sure that Florida and Texas have nearly every winter without snow. Winter time alone does not make a cache harder to find, but snow cover most certainly does. In fact, most caches are actually easier to find in the winter time with no snow cover on the ground as vegetation obscuring it is at its minimum that time of year. PLAIN AND SIMPLE: The snowflake icon should be renamed on the geocaching website from "Available in Winter" to "Snow (and Ice) Friendly". That would make it match the most commonly understood meaning in words that actually match that meaning.

AnnaMoritz, once again, where did you get the worldwide data to create the charts that you provided above? Also, I suspect that the data for Vienna, Austria is quite different from the rest of the world, especially since your numbers indicate that less than 40% (open to all) or less than 32% (PMO) of Vienna caches are traditional caches. In comparison, I would guess that it is more like 70% to 90% of caches are traditional in the USA.

AnnaMoritz, where did you get the numbers to create the charts that you provided above? Were they actually retrieved from geocaching.com? It seems like it would take some serious computer equipment to interface with their website to retrieve the data for all 3 million geocaches in the world. ...and if so, then calculating the average number of favorite points earn by each type of cache would be a fairly straight forward calculation once all that data were collected.

Curly_McWurly, where do you live? It'd be interesting if your differring results are due to being in a different country, a specific region of the country, or a very localized situation. Although 100 caches each is a manageable number for gathering data and making simple calculation, it seems unlikely to be a big enough sample to get more than a very local measure. For example, the closest 100 caches in my town occurs in less than a 2.5 mile radius. Only 2 of those 100 closest caches are PMO. Extending out even farther to the closest 200 caches only takes me out to a 4.5 radius with still only the same 2 PMO caches.

Excellent analyses, AnnaMoritz! This is the kind of data and detailed discussion that I was hoping to see. I'm curious as to the source of this worldwide data. With data showing this level of detail and completeness, I can't help but wonder why it is that you wouldn't also have access to the raw data to either substantiate or deny the original claim: That PMO caches earn twice the FPs compared to non-PMO caches. Thanks again!

So, once again, does anyone on here (particularly those in the "it's about the numbers" crowd or statistical types) have a method or tool for doing a real calculation of this? Even if it can't perform a worldwide calculation, it'd be very interesting what the results would be in a regional area with a larger size than the couple anecdotal examples already posted above involving only a 10-mile radius or hundred or so closest caches. Maybe the numbers listed by Groundspeak are true worldwide, but vary greatly from region to region.

I understand that it is a marketing ploy. The problem is that it appears to not be a truthful one. If the worldwide numbers really show that the PMO caches do NOT result in twice the FPs compared to AMA (all-member-available) caches, then it isn't just deceptive marketing, but rather an outright lie. I had expected a higher code of ethics from Groundspeak. I suspect that there is no easy method for determining the true average FPs for both categories of caches worldwide so Groundspeak can make such a claim without worrying that they will be proved wrong. So, is there any chance of their claim being true, or is this just another example of FAKE NEWS?

With 3 million geocaches worldwide, it only takes 2000 PMO caches to make that a true statement.

Also, can someone tell me if there is some statistical/calculating tool available to quickly run the numbers for a group of caches (perhaps for the closest thousand caches to my address) to see how the favorite points are distributed among basic and premium caches?

I actually have a hard time believing that the averages are as high as 4.5 and 9.0 for basic and premium caches, respectively. Yes, there are some highly-favorited caches, but for every one of those, it seems like there are tens of caches which have 0 or maybe 1 favorite point. Once again, perhaps this is just my observation in the local area where I usually geocache.