Tilhet

Yep. Event stacking is strictly forbidden with new and new rules creating event blocking problems but still, at the same time, Groundspeak promotes special event or Cito days around the year and encourages people to organise as many events as possible on those particular days. Not seeing the contradiction here requires some very special skills. As far as your problem is concerned I suppose that it'll be local reviewers who will decide what is OK and what is not. These kinds of uncertainties as well as this kind of guessing and anticipating will continue everywhere until someone in Seattle in particular will make the rules properly public. Anyway, tremendously joyful and hopefully not so hot Australia Day for you!

In mid-December I've sent a separate inquiry to Groundspeak urging them to reconcider event stacking and blocking rules (and to publish all of them). I especially pointed out this thread and asked them to contribute here. This far the only response has been an auto-generated message on Dec. 15 telling that " We’ve received your email and will do our best to respond quickly so you can get back to geocaching! During the week, it normally takes us approximately 24 hours for a reply. On weekends, and especially holiday weekends, it will likely take longer." And also "Thank you for your patience." Well, you're pretty welcome, then.

I think you should ask it from your local reviewer. In an answer from the Groundspeak HQ they told that "it is not possible for one CO to have a sequence of events that happen at a pace of one event per day over so many days" and further referred to the published guidelines which state that "Submit events as one single event if your event has one of the following - - A sequence of events". A Finnish reviewer has summarised the new rules like this (my translation): "Events of an event series should each be organised in a different location and in an event series a single geocaching nick should submit max. one event per week." Whether two events constitute 'a sequence' or 'a series' or not, I honestly haven't got a clue. I hope someone who does have a clue and sufficient authority will inform us soon. However, the "over so many days" part in the GS response suggests that two or three events / CITO events shouldn't be a problem. The main problem is, of course, that a major part of all event organising rules and guidelines have not been made public and many of them are local interpretations of the rather vaguely put official guidelines.

For reasons I have never completely understood Groundspeak has tried for some time to restrict organising Event Caches in a given region. Since then various kinds of rules regulating so-called event stacking have emerged. In the Nordic countries, for instance, any event should be either 5 hours or 30 kilometers apart from another event. Thus, if an event is organised in the Helsinki city centre from 4 p.m. to 4.30 p.m. it blocks all the greater metropolitan area from any other event from 10.30 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. during the same day. This has created a new problem known as event blocking, and new rules seem to be needed however hypothetical the problem may be. (New rules in stead of modifying the event stacking rules which cause the blocking problem...) As far as I'm concerned, these new rules have not been published properly. I have, however, learned that according to them a single geocacher cannot hold a series of events, such as one imitating Christmas calendar. Why? Because it is thought that such an effort by a single geocacher would effectively block all other cachers willing to organise events in the same area (within the 30 km radius in the Nordic countries). Unfortunately in Finland one such series was partly published before all of the reviewers were properly aware of the new rules. As a reasonable conclusion this geocacher archived the published events since the idea of Christmas calender was gone. For the Porvoo region the result has been that there will be only one event during December. Evidently there was no one to be blocked! (Porvoo region is famous for the succesful Mega-Event in 2017 as well as for a splendid GeoTour. Previously it has also been known for a very active event life.) According to the new rules any single geocacher/geocaching team shouldn't be allowed to organise more than one event per week, at least when an 'event series' is concerned. Whether two or three events in a week by one geocaching nick will be treated as a series remains totally unclear. For sure, it is not necessarily a totally wrong idea to encourage geocachers to work together when creating a series of events. In some areas, it may, though, be difficult to find six other geocaching nicks willing to cooperate in such a forced manner. So. Rules forbidding event stacking have created problems of (unintentional!) event blocking. And rules forbidding event blocking create again new problems and surely a lot of events won't be organised because of these new rules. And more potential event organisers will be frustrated even further. Is the result more or less fun and social activities for geocachers? In deed, the underlying objective seems to be less fun and less social gatherings for geocachers. This is really really difficult to understand. I suggest that Groundspeak could, in contrast, publish more relaxed recommendations or rules for event stacking. The new more relaxed rules would, for example, make it easier to organise two separate events during one day in one city. That would solve most of the assumed event blocking problems. Then we could ask are any new rules concerning event series or event blocking really at all necessary?

You've just earned an old fashioned blue ribbon for your post. In this case I'd guess that a wide enough premium members' collective refusal to use the hearts could do the trick.

It is SO true that it isn't all about the numbers. It's all about the alphabet, as well Still a few to attend...

Have the nicest geocaching weekend in MEGA Finland 2011! The event's programme full of entertaining activities has been published at http://megafinland.fi/?p=programme Comment by an attendee: There's so much fun to do during the event - will I be able to do any geocaching at all? Register before it's fully booked and join the Polish friends who have already registered

Mielestäni gc.comissa premium-sanaa käytetään juuri Bombur1:n tarkoittamalla tavalla substantiivina ja viittaa maksullisuuteen (lisäpalvelujen ostamiseen). Tämä on sanan yleisin ja tavanomaisin merkitys. Premium-sanaa ei siis gc.comissakaan käytetä adjektiivina, joka viittaisi ensiluokkaisuuteen tms. Suomen kielestä ei tahdo löytyä sanaa, joka sisältäisi tuon ylentävän adjektiiviulottuvuuden Premium-jäsen -käännöksellä on kaksi heikkoutta: 1) Se ei ole suomea. 2) Suomenkielisellä lukijalla adjektiiviulottuvuus painottuu paljon enemmän kuin alkukielellä. Täysjäsenyyttä en kannata sitäkään Bombur1:n esittämillä perusteilla. Se olisi myös mielestäni huono eli merkitystä kovasti muuttava käännös. Ajatus siitä, että Basic member ei olisi yhteisön täysivaltainen jäsen, on mielestäni vahvasti ristiriidassa sen kanssa, miten gc.com itse suhtautuu jäsenyyskategorioihinsa. Maksujäsen puolestaan olisi erikoinen uudissana. Kannatan läpimästi muotoa "maksava". Maksava jäsenyys (Premium membership) ja maksava jäsen (Premium member). Näistä varsinkin jälkimmäinen on ilmaisuna yleisesti käytössä ja tavoittaa hyvin http://www.geocaching.com/membership/comparison.aspx .

As a potential (group of) script writer(s), I'm looking for a coder... Haven't found any signs of a mechanism of the mentioned kind during my search... Simply put: Is there anyone interested in coding a couple of relatively simple Wherigo caches to be published just before the Mega-Event in Finland in 2011? I'm pretty sure that the same storylines would be of some use in some other locations, as well.

It didn't take too long to convince Signal the Frog. The Frog has spoken and the first Mega-Event status given to any of the Nordic countries went to.......Tampere!

Signal the Frog has spoken: The Tampere event got last night the Mega status & icon

Oh, interesting. You should contact the organizers to change the listing date to match the date in the description (which you're telling me is the correct date). Currently, when you access the page, at the top it claims: Unfortunately the date cannot be fixed until Groundspeak gives Mega-Event status. Here are the rules: 1) An event cache may be published 3 months beforehand. 2) A local/national cache reviewer may extend this period of time up to six months. 3) The cache listing form simply does not accept any dates which are further than six months in the future. 4) An event cache with Mega Status may be published up to 12 month beforehand. Of course, we requested that GS would give us a Mega Status in advance. Well, they did not, but they allowed the Finnish cache reviewers to publish this event "too early". It was published roughly 10,5 months before the (actual) event date. GS promised to watch the situation (read: follow the development of the number of Will attend logs). There are now more than 450 Will attend logs, which is more than any of the published Mega-Event Caches has, with the exception of GeoWoodstock, though. At this point I'd like to remind everybody that the Mega status does not need 500 nicks but 500 people. 450 Will attend logs in a family and children friendly event means more than 700 people. We have asked the Headquarters to (i) acknowledge the amazing popularity, (ii) give the Tampere event a Mega status and (iii) fix the date. This far we have not got any answer but we certainly do hope that GS would take some action soon. Milka Sunell GeoEvent Finland

Thank you so much for the translation!

MEGA Finland 2011: Geocaching in Tampere, 12 to 14 August Dear fellow Polish cachers! The first mega-sized geocaching event ever organised in Finland will be held in Tampere next summer, 12 to 14 August. Geocachers and their families and friends from all over the world are warmly welcome to join this extraordinary Nordic adventure! The main venue of the event will be a unique Geocaching Village just a few kilometres from the centre of the city. In the village, there are several accommodation options for up to 1000 participants. Please visit the cache listing at http://coord.info/GC2G855. Groundspeak has wished that people would send their Will attend logs as soon as possible. Then they are able to change the cache icon to a Mega-Event Icon. Once again and on behalf of the great organising teams and all the volunteers: Welcome to MEGA Finland 2011! Let's meet and geocache in Tampere! And let’s start with sending the Will attend log It would be of great help if someone of you could provide a Polish translation of the short ad-like found above and post it to this thread. We'd be very grateful!

The Finnish Mega-event was published only 22 hours ago. Nevertheless, it seems to have already hit a new Nordic record as far as Will attend logs are concerned. This is going to be great, if not the greatest ever, and surely worth of also a long journey

Mitähän vielä sieltä löytyy eli vähän saisiko tarkennusta. Ja hintapyyntö? Paikkakunta etc?

The middle one of the Waxwing juniors has the TB Iso Omena ("Big Apple"), which wants to travel to North America (and eventually to New York, as well). It has been stuck at the cache T2 (GC262M3) for more than a month. The boy would be extremely happy if some one would take it across the Atlantic! Keskimmäisen Tilhosen Iso Omena -TB on nyt odottanut kätkössä T2 jo yli kuukauden, että joku nappaisi mukaan yli Atlantin (kohteen ei tarvitse olla NY). Voitte kuvitella sitä 9v riemua, kun joku tämän palveluksen tekisi!!!