drewmm

Does adding a small coin to a film can suddenly change it from a traditional to a puzzle? Multi? Wherigo? How can doing something to expand the enjoyment of others change what type of cache it is? Har har. You know what I meant.

Wow! less than two months in the club and you know the motives of members who've been here for years! That would be impressive except for one minor detail. You're wrong. WAY wrong. I am one of many members who got a premium membership soon after they joined just to support the site. I knew within a few days that this was perfect for me and I wanted to support the people who make it work. buying a premium membership was the EASIEST way to support the site. That's it. You would have known this if you had done even a cursory check of the many, many threads that have addressed this issue. unless you think we're all just liers. I'm not saying you're wrong in any way to wait and see if you are going to continue in the game. Just don't make snap judgments about the motives of others. So you would have no problem emailing Groundspeak and asking them to take away your Premium Membership and/or changing your forum profile back to how it looks for a basic member? I never denied that supporting the site was a part of the motivation to get a Premium Membership. But if it were actually your only motivation, you would have just donated rather than getting a membership. By the way, "you've only been here xxx months so you're not allowed to have an opinion" wears thin rather quickly. What I'm saying really has nothing to do with geocaching, it's just a basic understanding of Econ and human behavior. Please let me know when I'm old enough to come into the clubhouse. As I made clear in the first post you read and quoted, I don't know whether there are people who've actually donated to Groundspeak. In fact, I guessed that there probably were. But a Premium Membership does not equal just a desire to support the site. It's like people who pay way more for a product at a fundraiser than they would normally. Wanting to support the organization is part of the motivation, but it's not the only motivation.

Is your goal to make every cache the type of cache you enjoy? In a group activity like this, different people will enjoy different types of caches. Trying to make them all the type *you* enjoy is extremely selfish.

I paid for the app on my phone to use in addition to my gps that i also use for other stuff. Instead of buying a more expensive gps I am able to use my existing tool in my phone for the paperless aspect if the sport. As I stated before there are many ways to support this business. I choose to buy the app and tangible items from the store to support their business. Reading this makes me regret even doing that as it seems many believe you're not giving enough money if you don't throw into the website membership alone. Where did I say I needed to give more money to the site?? Where did I say you or anybody had to be a PM?? I was just trying to say that $29.95 vs $2.50 to avoid a pm seems silly. Especially when cells don't work everywhere. The reason why your argument makes no sense is that no one gets a smart phone in order to "avoid" getting a geocaching membership. In 99.9% of cases (yes, made up statistic) people already have a smart phone and it's an added benefit. So the real comparison isn't $30 a year vs. $30 a month. It's $30 a year vs. $10 one time.

I doubt there are actually many PMs who pay solely to "support the site." If that's your only goal, why get a membership? Why not just donate $30? And why is $30 the magic number if you want to support the site? Why not $20? Or $40? Even if you don't use the PM features, you're still in it somewhat for the recognition. You not only want to support the site, you want everyone else to know it. If there's anyone out there who's just donated money to Groundspeak, I'll stand corrected. But I doubt there will be many, especially among the self-righteous people in this thread. P.S. I'm considering a PM but I'm waiting to see whether this becomes a long term hobby or just a passing interest.

If nothing closer turns up we'll try to get it going that way!! Thank you.

Thank you!

As a 17 year old planning to plant a cache, I think this would be a bad plan. There's no "magic age" at which someone becomes capable of maintaining a cache. If it's not being maintained properly, just report it.

I've been told that mailing them isn't kosher. I'm in Michigan, but if no one says they're going to be closer I'll try to get it started towards Miami. Not sure how well that would work, though. Thanks for the offer, though! I really want to help this coin along.

+1 This is already somewhat possible with bookmark lists.

Is anyone from Finland going to be visiting the Midwest region of the USA anytime soon? My girlfriend has a geocoin that wants to make it out to Finland and back. Also, of someone bilingual could translate this, that would be great!!

Are there any Midwestern cachers out there who are going to be travelling to Finland any time soon? My girlfriend picked up a geocoin that wants to get to Finland and it'd be nice to help it along it's way.

There's no way that could end badly.

I thought I recognized your name! Have you done much caching in the Ann Arbor area?

My girlfriend and I are still pretty new to this. Sometimes we'll trade plastic toys for other plastic toys, with no intention of keeping them: just moving things around between caches. I also just bought $3 worth of stuff from the local dollar store to add to the SWAG piling up in my car. Personally, I drop the cheap things that might be fun for kids in the caches that kids are likely to find. I see swag as mostly for them. If a cache is low we'll also replenish it with cheap but fun things, just so there's more to trade.

As a fellow resident of southeast Michigan, I would appreciate you letting me know if you find any more cool night caches!

I've heard both that people like new batteries and hate new batteries. Anyone else have an opinion on this?

I've never used Geosphere. I use the Groundspeak app on my iPhone. I don't have a premium membership but I know that the Groundspeak app can download PQs. Can't say whether Groundspeak or Geosphere is better, but Groundspeak should work for you.

Congratulations! It sounds like you've made a real find.

Thanks for the advice and pointers. I'll check those old threads out.

Obviously, people who hide caches are supposed to get permission for the places where they put them. And oftentimes, the description says "cache placed by permission of ___". But what about when it doesn't? Do you just assume that it's placed with permission? Has anyone ever gotten in trouble for trespassing while hunting a cache that they assumed was placed with permission? What happened?

You've got some good points there. This isn't a competition, and when people are honest about how they got a cache, I guess it's up to them as to the method. The reason I don't like it when people don't get a cache in the manner intended by the CO is that when someone else does, they have the same cache credit as the person gets who didn't do the hard work. As you said, though, it's not a competition. When I started caching, I had the impression that people played the game the same, and got credit for equal effort. I'm starting to see that obviously there are lots of different kinds of people, and they play the game in a way that they enjoy. I'll just keep doing things the way I think is right, and be proud of what I've done. To each his own! "Credit" is very subjective, obviously. Find counts are a bad way to see how good a cacher someone is, I think. Anyways, yeah. Everyone plays the game their own way. Be honest to yourself and be honest about what you post in a "found" log. Everyone wins.

Taking the ammo/condom discussion to PM.

I see geocaching as part of my life. As such, I do it the same way I do other things -- responsibly. If I say I got a 5/5 cache on top of a 300 foot high cliff by climbing a multi-pitch 5.10 route to get there, then you can believe that I did the climb, not someone else who brought it down for me. Why do you ask? Do you think people should get credit for something they didn't do? Because it's a game, and not your job, or a class project? What's the difference? Honesty is honesty. I doubt people are "[saying they] got a 5/5 cache on top of a 300 foot high cliff by climbing a multi-pitch 5.10 route to get there." If they are indeed saying that, we wouldn't have any reason not to believe them (assuming their name was actually on the log.) I was under the impression that we were discussing people who log a "Found it!" and say "so-and-so climbed up and brought it down, we all signed it." Yes, they're logging a find. But they're not lying about what they did, unless you consider the "Found it!" log to be itself asserting that they in fact went to the location it was hidden rather than just signing the cache. Maybe that's what "Found it!" means to you. If it does, all power to you. But unless you see geocaching as a competition, why do you care how many "Found it!"s people log? People attempt caches with all different types of aids. Some people think it's unsportsman-like to drive to urban caches, and will only do them via bike. Some people think it's cheating to use satellite maps to help narrow down the location, others use them all the time to help find caches. Some people might think it's cheating to cache as part of a large group, others may rarely actually find the difficult cache and just sign it after it's found by one member of their group. All of these situations could probably be covered by rules or guidelines, and would be if this were a competition. But unless you see it as a race to the most smilies, I just can't understand why you would care what other people mean when they log a cache as found. Be honest to yourself about what "found" means. But that doesn't mean other people need to think about it the same way you do.

That's fine, and I never said it wasn't their perogative. But in a discussion about asking them to change their rules, it's legitimate to point out that their policies don't really jive. They're favoring one type of hardware over another. Their perogative, of course. But that doesn't mean people can't ask them to change. It's also incorrect to claim that the ability to download and save cache information is a PM benefit. In reality it's a PM and iPhone and (I would guess?) Droid, etc benefit. Grounsspeak's right to set it up that way? Obviously. But again, when discussing it, people should admit the truth, not just claim it's a PM thing. But didn't you "Pay" for the app? With making a purchase to support a product that GS produced, they gave you a little taste of something that you could have more of if you purchase a membership. Maybe that's the reason. It would make a lot more sense than the "huge" distinction between GPX files and downloading it in other formats that's been proposed. But if that's it, then there's merit to this bit of the OP's suggestion: "Or maybe have a one time fee for FULL paperless geocaching (info, hints, and all)." It'd be similar to buying the app. $5 or whatever for lifetime, full paperless caching.