dogbreathcanada

Well, then ... who are the volunteers from geocaching.com? This would be the place to ask that, correct? I'd like to know. And I believe that if we're to be represented by them, then we should know who they are. As well, why is an AMERICAN company involved with the Canadian government in defining any sort of policy? I'm deadset against that. Geocaching.com should not be involved at ANY level. This is an issue for Canadians, not for an AMERICAN for-profit corporation.

So, who are the individuals from the BCGA involved in the process? I know everyone from the organization isn't involved. What about BCers who aren't apart of the BCGA? Is there a <name removed> involved in the process at any level?

Some folks at the LMGA are trying to address this very issue: Caches In Need Of Adoption (Discussion) http://lmga.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?803 Trash Cache Removal http://lmga.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?702

Who are all these provincial reps involved in the discussions? I think it's important to know who's representing all of us on this issue. Thanks.

Living in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia? Want to know what's going on in your local geocaching community? Come visit and sign on with the LMGA (http://www.lmga.net). We're the only geocaching organization in the lower mainland is free. Even our forums are free (unlike other local area organizations which will charge you to use their services). The LMGA is tentatively planning a CITO event for March. Know what a moving cache is? No? Check out the LMGA moving cache. Try to grab it if you can, and move it somewhere else of your choosing. We're 55 members are growing. BC's newest and fastest growing geocaching organization.

I think Ibycus hit the nail on the head. It's not whether a cache has been visited or not in a specific period of time, it's whether the cache owner is still active in the hobby. That should be relayed to BC Parks so that adjustments to the policy can be made. If a cache owner goes AWOL, then it should be the communities responsibility to remove that provincial park cache (or have it adopted). I recently adopted a park cache from an owner now living in Thailand. Last summer I helped in the removal of a defunct cache from one of the parks. I withdraw my two year timeline proposal. I was uncomfortable with it anyhow. I was beginning to lean towards what Ibycus wrote above. Glad he did it. I was having problems with expressing the idea properly. Anyhow, the problem is with AWOL cache owners, not the caches themselves, even if they don't see visitation activity for long stretches. The BC Parks proposal SHOULD be updated to reflect this difference between cache owner maintenance and cache visit activity.

This poll is bordering on the ridiculous, unless you're looking only for information concerning caches located in provincial parks. Do you have any caches in any provinical parks, CoC? Have you even found any provincial park caches that require 4 to 6 hours of hiking? For someone who only has caches within urban city limits, this poll is going to present skewed results, unless you limit it to only provincial park caches. Anyhow, I know there's a cache in Pinecone-Burke Provincial Park that hasn't been visited in close to two years. The last entry was a DNF. I intend to locate it this summer. I intend to place more provicial park caches this summer, in areas that will see far less geocaching activity than my current park placements. I expect those caches to see 4 to 6 visits in their first year, and then only a couple a year after that, perhaps with year long or more stretches of inactivity. My suggestion of 2 years is simply because it's a nice round number, and always falls in the same season in which the cache was placed. 18 months, as you suggest, makes the cache fall outside the guidelines in an off-season (likely when it can't be retrieved for archival anyhow).

I'm not suggesting that the BCGA create a new policy from scratch. As I said before, I think most of the policy as presented by BC Parks is acceptable, even good. I just hope that the BCGA isn't going to just lay down and accept this policy as is, and will work on clarifying, perhaps even working at eliminating, certain elements of the policy.

Three of my very recent favourites in the area are: Non-Elected Minister Cache The Emerson Self-Serving Cache Hidden Agenda Cache

Which is why I'm concerned. I have three provincial park caches that haven't been found since Sept 10 and Sept 11 2005. I don't expect them to be found until at least May 2006 again (maybe later). Which is why I'd want to see either this part of the proposal scrapped, or have it's length fairly long, as in 2 years since a visit before the cache would have to be removed. Besides ... it almost sounds as though the BCGA isn't really putting forth proposals of their own. They're just being a conduit for proposals from BC Parks. I'd like to see the BCGA oppose this section of the BC Parks proposal, rather than simply offer up reasons and understandings on why BC Parks might implement it. One further question ... if I visit my own provincial park caches once per year, would that count towards the visitation status? As long as I'm actively maintaining my own caches, then they really can never be seen as trash, right?

Sounds like a good potential proposal to me. The only thing that concerns me is the section about "permanent caches" and removal of caches if they are not being visited any longer. I suggest that if BC Parks goes through with that, that the time period of inactivity be 24 months since the last visit. Anything less than a year is not enough time, especially since some caches will sit under snow cover for 6 (sometimes more) months of the year. The "season" on some caches is only 6 (sometimes less) months a year.

This thread is messy and negative (a lot of it to do with me ... I'm cognizant of that fact), and has been pointed out isn't particularly helpful to the cause. I'm going to shut this thread down (and a mod can unsticky it). Someone else can start up a fresh, positive thread in its place. EDIT: I know I'm not supposed to reopen threads after I close them ... but I originally wanted to add the source of a lot of the negativity, but forgot since I was in a hurry to get somewhere. Hopefully the mods won't mind me adding that little addition to the end of this thread. Thanks.

Thank again for all the feedback. I'll refrain from any UNSOLICITED hints in the future, even if the intention of those hints is for good, not evil. Closing thread.

Whereas I shouldn't have sent a hint to the cachers I did (without them asking), it honestly looked like the cache was missing (http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=39ef260c-f0f6-4bbc-8af1-2f441e25a9f1) and that the owner wasn't going to do anything about it (this is a reviewer who lets his caches go disabled and unmaintained for six months to a year at a time), my intentions at the time were to simply help out two people I thought were reasonable folks, and so that the status of the cache could be more quickly determined. (Read the January 27th log entry and tell me you wouldn't want to help those folks. And considering I'd met them caching before and knew them to be quite kind and personable, doubly so.) I don't regret giving a hint to Berz. He sent me an email and specifically asked for one. And the hint to the other lady (via a local website and as described in posts much further above) was half-solicited/half-unsolicited. I told her I would be willing to give her a hint. But ultimately she had to ask for it. If she hadn't asked for the hint, she wouldn't have got one. I'll refrain from the UNSOLICITED hints in the future. I'll continue to use my own judgement on the SOLICITED hints. Thanks for all the feedback folks.

That's BS. I only told them what side of the trail to look on. And a hint about what sort of object it might be. Lots of searching would still be required. I only offered them the hint because someone else had asked for one that day (Berz), and while I was looking at the cache page, I decided to help out a couple more people. The hint wasn't offered to peeve you off at all. It actually looked like the cache might be missing, and since you rarely maintain your caches, I figured having people tromp around the cache site destroying vegetation (as described by another cacher on Jan 28) might be bad for the area. And at least this way it could be determined a lot quicker whether the cache was present or not. My intentions had nothing at all to do with you. It simply had to do with the cachers in question and the area in question. I'd like you to link to THAT post, please. Oh you can't ... that's right ... because it doesn't exist. The post you're referring to (http://lmga.net/e107_plugins/forum/forum_v...?255.0#post_446) was one in which I offered a hint to a single person on a particular cache (as explained previously in this thread). I have never stated what you describe. Ever. You've set your email server to bounce all my mail back to me. So getting into a conversation with you is impossible. Of course your response, even before emailing me, was to post the following IP-specific image on your gc.com userpage (http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/criteriondvd_lj/NonCriterion/bobsuserpage.jpg).

I have. Glad to hear that giving hints is not against Groundspeak policy, so I have no worries in that regard. I won't reply further. But I do hope that Groundspeak will remove the offending PHP image placeholder. I don't think he should be using the geocaching.com site to attack me. There are plenty of public forums locally in which he can do that.

That is certainly true. But as a 2 star hide, I doubt it was supposed to result in 50 minute searches and lots of DNFs. Again, normally I wouldn't have given a hint for this cache, but a three year old child was involved and I didn't want him to be disappointed on his first caching adventure.

I hiked with him several times last summer. He tends to brag about anything that will place himself high upon the geocaching pedestal he feels he deserves to be on. (I use the words "implied", "intimated", etc. so that I'm not guilty of libel. Whereas he didn't explicitely state a threat, if you knew him for any length of time, or knew some of his history around here, you'd know exactly what he meant.)

The implication in this email was a closing sentence that read: "Conduct yourself accordingly." Conduct myself accordingly, or what? I took that to be the threat. But I've received them in the past, such as an email that only contained the words "Tick, tick, tick" (which came after an argument about a local cache and whether it was a legal placement). From the same guy? Yes. He's been reported about such behaviour before by me and others. (I'd post his reviewer identity, but I have a feeling that would get me a weeklong (or longer) ban.)

The implication in this email was a closing sentence that read: "Conduct yourself accordingly." Conduct myself accordingly, or what? I took that to be the threat. But I've received them in the past, such as an email that only contained the words "Tick, tick, tick" (which came after an argument about a local cache and whether it was a legal placement).

Normally I would ... but this guy receives 5 or so phone calls per weekend (on average) from cachers out in the field, asking him for hints to other peoples caches. I just think it's very hypocritical for him to be engaging in an acitivty he finds distasteful when it comes to his own caches. I hiked with the guy a few times last year before I learned about who he really was. (You can only hear stories about the time(s) he was at Groundspeak headquarters hanging out with Jeremy so many times before you want to stick your fist down your own throat.) So that's how I know about how in-demand he is in the local community, etc.

Well, since this is the path to the image http://www.geomatics.ca/spacer1x1.php, if it is an innocent little image, one wonders why it was linked to a .PHP (executable code) versus a standard image format (.JPG, .PNG, .GIF). Because it isn't. The PHP file is serving up an IP-specific image. As I've shown in the screencap.

On a local forum I offered a local woman a hint on a cache if she wanted it. I didn't post the hint to the forum. That would be BAD FORM. It was ultimately her choice whether to take the hint offer or not. He must have seen the offer in the thread. She contacted me later via a private message and said she'd like the hint. I then gave her the hint via private message. She has a three old child, so I didn't want her to disappoint the child with a DNF. The cache can be a difficult find due to heavy tree cover. But it's a really nice area for a child. All this began in a thread called "What are some nice kids caches in the area?"

Just go to his userinfo page here on GC.com. It's the big blank graphic in the middle of his page. That graphics loads differently based upon IP address. I don't care if you think it's suspect or not. It's an actual screenshot. No alteration. If you don't beleive me, that's your problem.

Apparently he was so upset that he's stuck a banner on his page telling me how upset he is. Apparently offering hints to people is stalking. How odd. Unfortunately, he thinks he's very sneaky. The graphic is only viewable by certain IP addresses (mainly mine). The rest of you will only see a large blank image. Here's a link to a screencap: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/cri...obsuserpage.jpg Whether ot not his sneaky little image is viewable by me alone, I still saw it via his gc.com userpage. Is this becoming behaviour for a geocaching.com reviewer? Someone who claims to represent Groundspeak? EDIT: changed link to image. Fullsize screencap. (Image server resized the last PNG file.)