Team Microdot

No apology needed. I know that pessimism only too well. Thanks for the encouragement

I've been invited by the employee who archived the EarthCache to submit a request to appeals. Fingers crossed we can reach some understanding that will allow the archival to be reversed ?

You may have misread the information you're linking to here. If it's correct it means that 92% of all men could answer the questions. Of the remaining 8% who may have difficulty I imagine a tiny fraction are active geocachers. Of that tiny fraction I would hope that the even tinier fraction who might choose to visit my earthcache would be able to take someone along to help them.

I'm hopeful that there will be room for discussion and a way back to having this EC unarchived. It was one of my favourites of mine for a number of reasons. I first started to learn about the rocks in the location from a guide produced by the owner in association with a local geological society. There were two editions of the guide and the author of the first edition has since sadly passed away. I had the pleasure of a tour of the location with said geological society in the company of the widow of the original author. The floor which features in my EC hadn't been in place when the first edition of the guide was compiled and the group paused to study the floor and to work out what the rock was. Nobody bothered us, nobody was offended by the products on display - because there was no reason to be. Fred's widow certainly wasn't phased. In a way, to me at least, the Earthcache brought Fred's work to a new audience and I was proud to be even a tiny part of that. Fingers crossed that Groundspeak will be prepared to discuss the matter further and we can come to some agreement which will allow this EC to persist

It's definitely worth my time. The geology that's on show in those rocks goes way beyond my EC. There's enough interesting material in there to make three more EC's at least - not that I'm planning to. A lot of work went into putting it together and a lot of people have enjoyed it and there's never been a single complaint. And it's clean and wheelchair accessible and provides an ideal environment for a fruitful learning experience and an enjoyable and successful outcome for even novice Earthcachers. To allow it to be hastily consigned to the dump for a questionable issue of unknown origin would be a pointless loss for everyone. The fact the management have produced not one but two geological guides focused on these rocks with the support of the local geological association is a sure sign that they are proud of this aspect of their premises and keen to have people learn from them. Not having an Earthcache be part of that would be a sad and sorry situation.

Who do I lodge an appeal with when it's Grounspeak themselves who have summarily archived my Earthcache for a completely different reason to that which gave rise to it initially being disabled by the same reviewer who published it? At this point my confidence in the hierarchy is at an all-time low.

That's a few years back but how things have changed: But now looking at a beautiful rock floor in a high class retail mall is archive-worthy because the store sells underwear?

In my experience they don't really have time to notice who might be checking out the floor - they are too busy serving customers and there's a constant flow of people passing the front of the huge open entrance in both directions for anybody in particular to stand out. It's also worth remembering the open, friendly attitude to the project by the representative of the company who own the mall and the thought they gave to the experience and any potential impacts. In fact it was they who asked me to make sure that people were fully aware that permission had been granted and that in the unlikely event anyone enquired as to their purpose they should freely disclose that they were geocaching i.e. playing a harmless game - hence the statement on the cache page reflecting that sentiment / request:

What's more curious though is the odd way in which issues were raised leading to archival. 1. Reviewer disables on basis of commercial guideline contravention 2. CO explains why this EC has never contravened the commercial guidelines and reminds the reviewer that any such issues were openly discussed and addressed between the two of them prior even to requesting 'landowner' permission. 3. The cache is archived by a Groundspeak Lackey, not on the basis of the original 'complaint' but on a new basis of not family friendly. I don't understand why the issue taken with this cache switched part way through the journey to its archival.

Note one of the locations - still archived though despite an issue with just one of the locations. I've asked the sender to clarify why, two years after publication, this one location is considered not family friendly. I expect families walk past this same store front on the way to visit the other attractions in the building every day - the 20 screen cinema, the various eateries, the seawater aquarium, the 18 lane ten pin bowling alley, video game arcade, laserquest and the popular plastic building brick attraction aimed at kids age 3 to 10 years.

Was this recently?

It does seem odd. If we were talking about some sleazy, back-street adult shop I would completely understand. But we're talking about what might be considered an up-market shopping mall - especially given the fact they've spent at least tens of thousands and more likely hundreds of thousands of pounds paving the place with granites, marbles, limestones, serpentinites and even a quartzite which by itself can cost thousands of pounds per square metre. The annual footfall in this particular mall is quoted as thirty million. With that number of people passing through every year I would expect that anything considered not family friendly would have been ejected long ago - assuming it had ever been allowed there in the first place. Perhaps if the store in question had changed ownership / been repurposed since the Earthcache was originally published I could appreciate a change in sentiment by the reviewer / the mystery complainant / Groundspeak - but the ownership and purpose of the store were the same when the EC was published two years ago as they are today.

Just to be clear, your EarthCache requires finders to look in the window of the "secretive" store to inspect the floor? I can see why some could interpret that as less family friendly than other examples here like being outside in the parking lot. No - not at all. The store has a doorless entrance which must be over twenty feet across. You could turn your head to one side and walk past without stopping and see enough of the rock to answer the one related question. If you had to stop and press your face against the glass and fog it up with your breath that might be different - but that's absolutely not the case. If it was such an awful experience I think the 50 people / groups who've completed the Earthcache during the two years of its existence would have expressed some displeasure. Nobody ever did. In fact most thought it was a giggle.

Go figure! Rest assured there was nothing pornographic about my Earthcache. The store sells underwear. Most people wear it and aren't, to the best of my knowledge, offended by it.

In what way was yours claimed to be not family friendly?

Today I've had one of my Earthcaches forcibly archived by a Groundspeak employee for supposedly being not family friendly - with no dialogue whatsoever. The cache was first disabled this morning by my local geoaware for a different reason - a complaint apparently, claiming that it contravened commercial guidelines by requiring people to enter the store. I posted a note confirming that there was no need to enter the store and that the rock floor could be observed by anybody walking past the store and enabled the cache. I also politely reminded the reviewer that the two of us had engaged in extensive dialogue before I ever approached the owner of the shopping mall in question to ensure that the cache would comply fully with commercial guidelines. I closed by apologising to said reviewer that he'd had his time wasted. A few minutes ago the cache was archived - for being not family friendly - which hadn't originally been mentioned. An earthcache that, based on the logs received, has clearly been enjoyed for over two years with no issues whatsoever, that required a lot of hard work to put together and that brought people in contact with some fantastic, geologically fascinating rocks - gone. The store which seems to be an issue now is owned by an American designer, manufacturer, and marketer of women's lingerie, women's wear and beauty products The company has traded since 1977 and has over 1000 high street outlets in Hungary, United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Ireland, Poland, Serbia, Russia, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Lebanon, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Colombia, Panamá, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Japan, China, South Korea, South Africa, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Iran, Taiwan, Thailand, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. Does this mean that now any geocache which causes a person to walk past a shop selling women's underwear is at risk of being archived?

Yes. You hit the nail squarely on the head. which, to me, confirms that something which looks grainy can fairly be described as granular - even though it's made of crystals. I don't have a BS in anything.

You beat me to it. The bags need to be slightly larger than the log they contain to facilitate extraction that doesn't result in the side seams getting ripped, rendering the bag useless in an instant. If I find a cache with a log that's a tight fit in its bag I usually fold the log double to make its surface area smaller before putting it back in the bag to save the next finder wrestling to get the log outta the !£'* bag.

You sound like the sort of person I used to create puzzles for. Sadly, you're a rare breed.

Well if we're being completely PC should we even be assuming the gender of the cartoon characters? ?

Excellent analogy ?

It's also entirely possible the OP has nothing to do with GS and we're all wasting our time trying to second-guess the OP who is long gone and could no longer care a fig.

And this is why handing out solutions for puzzles is a bad idea - because the CO never gets the feedback they need to be able to tune their puzzles to a state where they are solvable by logical means by those willing to invest the effort. We have puzzles now in my local area where the only finder(s) have been handed the solution by the CO who classed the situation of zero finders as silly and so decided to hand-hold someone to the solution who then claimed FTF and praised the fantastic puzzle. People who complain bitterly about impossible puzzles often have only themselves to blame for undermining this feedback loop.

Yeah - me too - it's a joke.

And therefore you have to click the link to see where it is coming from. Actually you don't. You can just hover your mouse pointer over it and your web browser will display the destination.