hukilaulau

On first read, I was ready to dismiss you as an over-eager newbie and let it go at that. And then I looked at some of your hides in AK and realized you've actually put some work and thought into this. And you've avoided following the trend of pointless "powertrail" type caches, which seem to be everywhere now, even way up North. I'm guessing the reviewer in Georgia noticed this too, and that is the ONLY reason he/she did not just reject your cache submission immediately. Consider yourself fortunate that you have a way to get your cache approved and just do it! What's so bad about having to find a few caches? It's supposed to be fun! I, for one, am looking forward to seeing what you come up with. One more comment: August 31st and it was too cold for the glue to set up?!? Dude, you must be nuts to live up there!

I did a bucket cache years ago. It was a 5 gallon bucket in a patch of woods behind a baseball complex. It was spray painted with a random green and brown pattern. I stocked it completely with baseballs, softballs, and golfballs I found beyond the fences. I covered it with some large leafy brances and it lasted for a few years. I called it "Have a Ball!" (Of course)

I just read the first chapter of Death Row and I am hooked already! The book begins with a couple of cachers looking for a 4.5/5 cache and everything about the hunt, including the cachers, is totally believable! I enjoyed Cached Out a lot, but I think this one is going to be even better. I downloaded it to my Kindle from Amazon.

I don't trust your response, as your find count is greater than 4022 But yes, I find that some high numbers players are among the least respectful in the game. It appears to me that most of the blatant unauthorized throwdowns are by high numbers folks. Of course there are some high numbers folks who are shining stars for excellent standards and ethics. Offhand I think of MortonFox (Stayfloopy back in the day) and Macatac1961 as high numbers cachers that I try to emulate.

Get rid of power trails. Nothing else even comes close for me. I'm too embarrassed to introduce anyone to geocaching now, because I'd have to explain the ugly geocaching maps. I just looked at a map of Albuquerque in preparation for a trip there, and I wanted to throw up.

I agree as well. I guess that means it's time to go...

I agree. And one of the small realities is that you won't always find the cache. Why should you sweat that? By your logic if you go hiking in a park, there's really no reason not to log every cache in the park, even if you didn't really find anything. You could also leave containers here and there as "replacements." The original container might still be there? So what. Why sweat it? More plastic food containers for others to find. Maintaining some integrity and following a few simple guidelines helps slow the gradual deterioration of the game. None of this relates to my post. What was mentioned was replacing cracked or damaged containers and adding dry logs...you can re read it. If you can't find it its a DNF and ,I might add, not a NA or NM which is often erroneously logged these days. " but I've had as many as 3 containers at GZ...so what, log the one you want or all of them, doesn't matter to me...when I get around to it I'll pick up the extra's. Its just a simple little game folks, enjoy it and as someone said, don't sweat the small stuff. " Isn't that pretty much exactly what I was talking about? Maybe I should have clarified, I'm not criticizing anything YOU did. You just seem more forgiving than I am when others do questionable things to pad their numbers.

See above. if you haven't already, do a "my finds" PQ and download it to GSAK. Then you can sort your finds in any number of ways. I can waste hours of time looking at the same information in a bunch of different forms!

I agree. And one of the small realities is that you won't always find the cache. Why should you sweat that? By your logic if you go hiking in a park, there's really no reason not to log every cache in the park, even if you didn't really find anything. You could also leave containers here and there as "replacements." The original container might still be there? So what. Why sweat it? More plastic food containers for others to find. Maintaining some integrity and following a few simple guidelines helps slow the gradual deterioration of the game.

I like that you're trying to think of creative ways to make travelers more secure. I've come to the conclusion that any idea that makes people read the cache page is a good thing, since that blocks the intro app users from taking a geocoin without having any idea what it is. Years ago conventional wisdom called for leaving travelers near interstate rest areas or airports for easy transfer, but I don't think that's a good idea anymore. My latest experiment has been making very easy puzzle caches in spots unlikely to be found by muggles, but that's not been working out too well either. I have two new caches that have had bugs stranded for a few weeks now. I might have to pick them up and try something else.

I would tend to disagree with the "not my job" responders, but you asked why people are not more helpful to each other and I guess you found out, right? I think if you had asked this question a few years ago you might have gotten a different, more cooperative tone in the responses. There has been such an enormous influx of totally irresponsible wannabe cachers over the past few years that some oldtimers have just gotten fed up. Or maybe some of them just never did help out anyone else, I don't know. It looks like you have very few hiders in your area, so you're going to run out of easy finds very soon. I agree with the suggestion that you just place a couple and see how that goes. There's no need to place 20 or 30 in a short time. I'm glad to see you're going to an event next month, that will give you a chance to get ideas from others. And totally off topic, did you know that Crossville is the headquarters for the U.S. Chess Federation?

I would. If I'm out in the woods and see that the next cache I'm looking for is a micro, the first thing I'll do is look for something hanging, the second is something on the ground that moves. Add me to the "log holder defines the size" school. The fake rock is definitely a micro to me, no matter how big the rock is. I can't believe someone with Brian's experience would spend more than 10 seconds figuring this out on any given cache.

Update: after considering a lot of possibilities, I did this. Thanks for the idea! I also changed the name of one of them from "ANTI INTRO" to "SAFE HAVEN" and changed some of the language to avoid saying anything negative about the intro app. The reviewer never said anything about agendas, he only had a problem with the "not really a puzzle" aspect. But after reading the posts on this thread I realized that my concern was not with the intro app per se,but only with making caches a little safer for travelers. I think it is perfectly reasonable to have only part of the total number of geocaches available to the intro app. I want to also note that, while I may not agree with the reviewer's interpretation of "?" caches, he/she worked with me throughout the process of getting these caches up and running, and I am happy with the result. The caches were published within a few hours of my final revisions. Thanks everyone for your contributions! I truly appreciate them all!

Thanks for all the great replies! I realize now that I really do have an agenda and it is completely transparent. I DO NOT want these caches to be "available to everyone." There are simpler ways to accomplish that without bringing my personal bias into it. The reviewer did not mention this aspect, only questioned the puzzle part. If he had said it sounded like I was pushing an agenda I probably would have just changed them to PMO caches (and changed the names) and moved on. I guess it's clear that my thoughts on the INTRO APP belong in the forums and not on my cache pages!

there has been a lot of discussion about how to keep your caches invisible to Intro App users. three ideas are 1) PMO caches 2) multi-caches 3) mystery/puzzle caches. I tried an experiment by placing two mystery caches where the caches were not at the listed coordinates, but the real coordinates were printed clearly on the cache page. One was called "READ THIS CACHE PAGE" and the other "ANTI INTRO". On both pages I made it clear that my main goal was to keep TB's I was leaving out of the hands of Intro App users, and the only "trick" was that you have to read the cache page. This was intended to be an experiment to see how the idea was perceived by the community. Like it? Hate it? Indifferent? The reviewer temporarily rejected both of them, saying, "This is not a real puzzle, the coordinates are right there on the page." I couldn't find anything in the guidelines that said a puzzle had to be hard. sometimes it's just a matter of choosing "view elements" or something. I've found several easy puzzle caches where the solution is staring right at you. So I'm interested in what the community thinks: 1) Do you like the idea? 2) Whether you like it or not, do you think there's any reason to not publish it?

I know of one cache that still has a favorite point from a person who logged a Found It, awarded a favorite point, then deleted their log. Maybe the code has changed since your experiment. Or maybe a DNF has a different effect on favorite points than a log deletion. Hmm... I delete logs on my webcam cache that do not meet the requirements of a photo taken by the webcam. I still have the favorite points... Are you able to give us the caching name of someone who gave it a FP but later had their log deleted? I was under the impression that this could happen for a short time a while back, but that it had later been fixed. It would be interesting to hear that it's possible again. This is getting OT but very interesting. The reason I did the "favorites" experiment was because there WERE a couple of caches I could not find, but I enjoyed the hunt so much I wanted to give the point. Now it seems there were a couple of ways I could have done that. 1) just delete the find, and maybe post a DNF on a different day 2) email the owner and have him/her delete my find, and post a DNF on a different day. Sound about right?

Thanks for all the great responses! That clears it up quite a bit! 1. I'm guessing it's like acquiring stolen artwork and keeping it in your basement. 2. I thought that's why they are published? For me it's just one aspect of this fun hobby.

While looking for an event I could attend in August, I noticed two different cases where someone had logged the event as "attended" a couple of weeks before it was scheduled to take place. In one case the CO deleted his smiley, but several days later he still has both the "socializer" and the "achiever" souvenirs. (No he did not attend any other events, in fact he had exactly one of each type of find for the souvenir, each with "tftc" logs) Aside from the irony of cheating to get a badge that says you are a socializer, I wondered about why the souvenir doesn't disappear. In a similar situation, I remember when favorite points came out I did an experiment where I logged a cache as found, gave it a favorite, and then changed the log to DNF. The favorite point disappeared! OK, I don't know anything about computer programming, but couldn't this work the same way for corrected souvenirs?

I'm not elitist, I'm just better than ordinary cachers and I need to have that acknowledged in some way. Also, PMO caches are slightly safer for travelbugs and geocoins.

One of my favorite logs said this: "Couldn't find the cache. All I saw was bucket hanging in a tree." Guess where the container was?

Can I get fries with that?

I agree this is very annoying, but it's been happening basically forever. I still get caught sometimes. There is a group nearby that occasionally swoops in like a storm of locusts, dropping throwdowns on missing (or not missing) caches and the entire group posting individual "found it" logs. The FUNNIEST bogus find log I ever saw said this: "Couldn't log a DNF, because it wasn't there to be found!" That was just so ridiculous that I couldn't even find it annoying...

Exactly. And as I stated in the recently revived duplicate thread, this makes PMO caches slightly safer for travelbugs and geocoins.

Since this has been revived I'll give a new reason: PM caches are slightly safer for TB's and geocoins. If you've found a cache with the beginner's app it's likely that you don't even know what they are, and will keep the pretty baubles without even knowing that it's wrong. I've been urging people to ONLY move geocoins to PM caches for this reason.