Sagefox

The lessons are indeed problematic but it is the geology that is fatally wrong on both of them and that should not happen. The initial reviewer would likely not have known that the descriptions are wrong because of the local nature of the geology. It was Geoaware who is no longer reviewing ECs. When I posted the NMs in May I sent a copy of the short version of my specific concerns to GeoawareHQ as is suggested on Geoaware's profile page. I would like to handle this with a GSA rep rather than bugging Groundspeak. I don't really want to bug anyone about this but I can't just ignore it when the geology is so wrong.

I posted Needs Archived logs on two earthcaches on June 4th and second NA requests on July 4. There has been no response so I am wondering who looks into earchcache NAs. It seems that regular volunteer reviewers don't handle ECs. These NAs were preceded by Needs Maintenance logs around the first of May including specific notes in private mail to the cache owner and a geoaware member. In early March I sent pre-visit letters to the cache owner with specific concerns but there has been no contact and they apparently have no interest in finding out what the problems the caches might have.

You and others have said this before but I still am curious how this has been an actual problem for you (and anyone else) much less it being the "biggest" quality issue of the game currently. I have found as many as three containers for a single cache, and I'm only in the hundreds of finds That's not a problem? I'm not sure just how multipule containers at one site are a problem for finders. This leaves me so baffled I'm not sure how to reply. Multiple containers at a single location are, in an of themselves, a problem. Still not the point I often try to make and the one people rarely respond to, including your two replys. To me it is the number of times something happens to a substantial number of searchers that makes it a problem. Finding multiple containers a few times over 600, 2000 or 10,000 finds is a yawner of a problem. I don't think I've had it happen more than 20 times over 14 years, if even that many. It is so below the radar... Reading about it 30 times in the forums makes it sound bad but is it, really?

Maybe you feel this way because you keep your caches maintained. I don't think this feature is directed at people who keep their caches maintained. How many of these emails do you expect to receive? This problem has been around since the beginning of the game and way before power trails. Cache maintenance problems are common across the board. I doubt many, if any, poorly maintained non-power trail caches are due to the influence of power trails. The bulk of bad maintenance caches where I look at owner stats are from people who've probably never seen a power trail.

You and others have said this before but I still am curious how this has been an actual problem for you (and anyone else) much less it being the "biggest" quality issue of the game currently. I have found as many as three containers for a single cache, and I'm only in the hundreds of finds That's not a problem? I'm not sure just how multipule containers at one site are a problem for finders. The problem should be fixed but in the mean time you got the find and a story to tell in your Found It log. Now if you are going to next say that some COs might delete your Found It because you didn't actually find the correct container then I will revert to the main point of my post that you have not responded to: How many times does this happen to cachers over the broader spectrum? What percentage of their total finds involve throw-downs that present an ACTUAL problem. Your one example is not one I can get worked up about because you actually found a cache. If you've had 30 of what I might call real problems, which is more than double what I was suggesting, then maybe I would perk up my ears and watch for a trend that might be developing. I just don't see those kinds of numbers (percentages) as likely for throw-downs. Problems take on a life of their own when shotgun blasted across the forums but unless they become a significant portion of a significant number of find counts then I don't see it as a real problem. The issue in this topic is a REAL one. The high number of caches with maintenance problems and one specific attempt by HQ to do something about it. Maybe there are many other things that could be done but why whack on any attempt to provide some help. The game has always been experimental. Give this experiment some time. EDIT: plurals problem.

You and others have said this before but I still am curious how this has been an actual problem for you (and anyone else) much less it being the "biggest" quality issue of the game currently. This issue always seems to carry an emotional punch but until people start reporting that throw-downs involve more than a one or two percent of their total cache finds I won't feel much empathy for them. That would be 100 throw-downs per 5000 finds where the cache replacement presented an ACTUAL problem for the finder. I can't recall even 10 throw-down problems for my 8000 finds. And whenever I ask this question... silence. EDIT: To keep it on topic, though I don't have specific memories of ACTUAL throw-down problems I've had huuunndreeds of maintenance problems. I think the automated maintenance emails are a plus for this game.

Cache maintenance. more specifically the lack of it, has always been a problem that people gripe about here (and for many good reasons). People seemed to want HQ to do something about it. This one feature has been added and the automated notice seems quite harmless to me and it doesn't involve volunteer reviewer or staff time. Everyone here who complains about this feature clearly will not have any problems with this feature because they keep their caches meticulously maintained - as in when was the last time someone here claimed that cache maintenance is not important or that they don't do maintenance when NM logs are posted to their caches? So no one here should see this "spam" email notice more than once or twice in a... year? decade? Fizzy suspects that these notices are relatively ineffective but Keystone has reported in another topic that the benefits are measurable. I don't see how this feature is worth much angst.

Depending on time of year and other conditions about 50 to 90 for most folks and the fast movers maybe 100 to 120. We attended three of those four and were in the 50 to 80 range. CMs are more of a social day of power caching rather than personal one-day record setting events although that also happens for some people including me. (Edit: Pesky pronoun.)

RP is no armchair cacher. He has been a very active cacher for over a decade. We've found many of his caches. 521 in a day can be and has been done by many cachers using "power trails" or other high-density cache areas.

Of course, that only works for the first pick up of your trackable. After that they travel like any other trackable to PMO and non-PMO caches.

When our Volkswagen Vanagon camper needed engine work I put a Subaru Legacy 2.2 liter engine in it... 16 years ago and still purrrrrrring all the way to the Mojave desert every year. Love that Subaru power!

This is interesting. The CO made a visit last October and there have only been six visits since then. Someone likely moved the cache to the tree after the CO visit. It is quite exposed in that tree so I doubt what you found was an older archived cache. Given that very clear hint which leaves no doubt about where it should be I would have put it back under the skirt and simply made a comment in Found It log. An NM log would not have been necessary in this case given that hint. It puts a red cross on the cache page and a red wrench on the search lists which, in my experience a couple of years ago, does not go away if you delete your NM log. The owner has to post an OM log. This is not a big deal in the grand scheme of the game. You were being conscientious and that's a good thing. Thanks for that.

I went through a visit deleting phase a while back, maybe two years ago, and the the people doing the visiting did get those notices. I didn't mind but in your case it might not be what you want.

Wading through 10 to 50 pages of "took it to" logs when I want to see where a trackable has "actually" been and if it has been to its goal location or not.

Deleting off-topic response to one of my major pet peeves.

We visited Santa Fe by train last fall and stayed eight nights and visited several of the SFNHT caches. We learned a lot about the trail along the way and really appreciated the little bit of this tour we could get to. Thanks for putting that tour together.

You know, I don't really recall just what percentage of the Virts were ho-hum. Possibly even a low number could be skewing my thinking. Two thirds of mine I should never have submitted and that's probably about right for the entire group. Can you imagine a Volunteer Reviewer having to reject that quantity of new submittals. Around the time of the Virt hold I was also getting a bit annoyed at Locationless caching. Certainly my wife was not happy at the sudden stops on blue highways to photo and waypoint a flag pole or smiley face. Certainly these caches, if they were still around, could be ignored but I am a geocacher and caches MUST be found. Since these cache types were closed down so many years ago I'm still in agreement with the Prime Directive: Hunt for a physical object containing a log to sign. I like to find something!

I've said before, the day they do that is the day I retire as a volunteer here. I lived through the wild wild west days and have no desire to return to them. Your retirement would be a big loss to this game. I remember the Virtual whine-a-thon. I started out, quite vocally, on the Save the Virtual side but when I learned of the problems they posed for the Reviewers and took notice of how many of the later Virts were so ho-hum I switched over. I often pop in on these recurring topics just to say Let the Dead Dog Rest in Peace.

The new style shows up very nicely on my iPhone 4 and on my desktop computer. I'm not going to try to figure out how to do a phone screenshot at this point but it would be interesting, though, to see one from your phone that you don't like. New style doesn't work so well on my netbook unless I change the Outlook preview view to a configuration I don't care for. The white space seems to work out o.k. for the phone and desktop and I don't have vision issues. The old style worked o.k. for me and I liked the compressed lines but I can live with the new if it helps others.

I think, ahh, yes. One of these activities is typically not a social game...

Interesting article. I haven't found this to be true at all for my participation in this game and I have been keeping track of our stats since day one. I view the stats to be a measure of our fun and experience and not primarily as a comparison to others. We started in November 2001 and find 500 to 800 caches per year and the pace has been steady for these 14 years. Power trail caching has been about 2% of our total and at least half of those have been on foot or bike. I created a spread sheet in early 2002 that I have kept continually maintained. In this spreadsheet I track finds by month, year and running total; finds by state; century marks; two categories of dnfs: cache in place and cache missing; Locationless caches; benchmarks; high find-count days, and more. On our profile page I post nearly up-to-date maps that show the number of finds per county in our primary caching states. The counties are colored coded for number of caches found and a side goal is to get each county to the next color. The page also has a map of the US by county showing where we have cached and the side goal here is to color in new counties. We had a counter at the top of our profile page that showed dnfs where cache was in place but that recently fell blank with changes to cache page formatting. I will try to get that back. Through the years we have focused on and completed six state DeLorme Challenges and the County Challenges for those states. And... I still enjoy the game! And, I have not noticed any decline in the enjoyment of tracking our stats. But the numbers are only part of the fun. Preparing for cache trips, driving to the caches, "the hunt" - found or dnf, and logging caches online are equally fun. During logging online I usually read the pages and some past logs and then write a unique log for each cache, even for a 100 cache find day. I have met many cachers over the years that eventually dropped out of the game or took it way back to minimal levels but I don't know if quantifying their caching contributed to the loss of interest.

Whoa! I see that recent changes to the profile pages has hidden our DNF count. Will look into how to get that back up on the page.

Hey, we did that cache! It is one of the Washington State Park Geotour caches. (We've done 67 of the 104 so far.) The final used to be only about 30 or 40 feet from the fence you climbed over and in the brush but now I see that they moved the final since we found it last March. I guess I can't be of any help with that. (I really liked that you climbed in there but you should have gone all the way down! The ghosts there sleep during the day.) Loved your video. Girls rock! I will make a suggestion that you log caches that you don't find as Did Not Find rather than as a Note. Be PROUD of your dnfs! I keep track of all our dnfs and post the count on our profile page. Cache on! Ed Team Sagefox

Prior to about 2008 or so, we used to have big performance problems with geocaching.com. However, they did a complete redesign and have been migrating to a more and more scalable system. In the past few years, performance problems have been nearly nonexistent for me (here in the USA). IMO, geocaching.com does an incredible job of keeping their service up and running. They deserve accolades! Thanks for your comments. This is my experience too. We were patient during the growing pains and have been thoroughly rewarded with a very smoothly operating site.

Very nice! We couldn't do this walk either this CM or during WICM1 because of ankle problems. In between, the problem got solved but then got unsolved again last year. (Sadly, the problem initially happened during the two-day 2004 Portland CM with all those steep park trails.) We plan on doing this hike some warm spring or fall day in the future. Thanks for this inspiration.