dprovan

I would be quite annoyed to encounter found it logs for a long distance hiking cache of cachers who did not go for the hike (and actually such a case already happened to me and I was not the owner and felt annoyed nevertheless). In the case of such caches the hike is the only reason for the container to be there. I guess we just look at it differently. I'd might be embarrassed for someone claiming a find without actually properly completing the work, but it wouldn't annoy me. In fact, a more absurd claim such as one for http://coord.info/GC1FPN1 would strike me as amusing. In my opinion, the accomplishment itself is the reward. The log entry is just to tell about my experience.

I don't see any issue of fairness here. They did it their way. I guess you didn't like how they did it, but I don't really know why you care. The one thing I'd object to is if they weren't honest in their logs about how they did it, but it sounds like it was precisely the honesty in their logs that upset you.

Yes, for sure. What I would do is post my own note about the issue and disable the cache if it is a significant problem. I'm not worried about conscientious COs such as yourself who will inform the world of any problems. I'm worried about COs that aren't paying attention. If someone that encountered a problem assumes the CO will react to private mail and he doesn't, the rest of us will be left clueless. Agree again that a NM is appropriate if the cache needs maintenance. But again, some people are hesitant especially if bitten once by an angry CO who takes an NM as an insult. If a note makes them more comfortable (or even a PM) then I'm all for it. I'd prefer you as a CO encourage NMs where appropriate. That will show the other side of the coin to people that have had bad experiences with nasty COs. And it might even strike a chord with a CO that has until now reacted negatively to NMs. That's why I wanted to mention the option explicitly in a positive light.

Personally, I'd prefer the CO log an OM to explain why the flag's being cleared even when -- perhaps especially when -- the reason isn't because the CO has personally inspected the cache. I'm not sure where this idea came from that owner maintenance can only be logged if there's been a physical visit to the cache by the CO.

I enjoy city caches that surprise me by being hidden just like anywhere else, but such that I wasn't expecting such a place in the city. Someone already mentioned parks and fences, for example. I find it particularly fun to be walking toward a cache, turn a corner, and find a completely unexpected pocket park with a nice hide in it. In SF, the standard hide is inside newpaper boxes. Naturally they always pick a free paper's box, but those boxes typically still have coin boxes that a cache can be hidden behind. The downside is that these boxes can and do disappear at any time... The important thing is to work hard on your coordinates and hints. GPSrs are typically useless in cities, so check your coordinates via space view and triangulation to try to make them really right, and take pity on people by giving them some solid clues about where it is if they manage to get to the right corner. One cache in SF is a traditional written up like a letterbox hybrid, giving precise directions about where to start and where to walk to find the cache! (It's a bad example, though, because it really is a letterbox hybrid, with the final a block and a half away from the posted coordinates, but I still find the basic idea an interesting solution to the city's signal problem.)

If you don't mind, other seekers would like problems posted in the log, not sent privately. And if the problem really is bad enough to require disabling, a Needs Maintenance log would be the most appropriate, so I'm not sure why you don't mention that alternative. On the other hand, I do think people with only a few finds might want to think twice about posting a DNF. Very often DNFs by new cachers appear to be caused by inexperience. "I don't suppose you thought to look under the lamppost skirt?" In any case, be sure to log what you really know: with only 2700 finds, it's very rare that I think not finding a cache automatically implies it's missing, for example, so I very rarely say, "It's missing," because I don't really know that.

That's true only as a general rule. Allow me to BLOW YOUR MIND. Click on the link below and then zoom in. Tell me what you see. http://maps.google.com/maps?q=34.614328,-86.979991&num=1&t=h&z=20 Looks like an abandoned railroad spur. And it looks more like an easement on the playground's property rather than the playground infinging on railroad property. Interesting counter example. I assume reviewers would need to look this case differently than any rote 150' rule.

Unusual? Alas, no. Undesirable? I'd say.

75% of the statistics you see out there are made up...the other 1/2 are just plain wrong!!! I know! In this case, his made up number is obviously way low: it would be at least 99.9% of all caches.

No.

No.

"I had permission to remove each and every one of those TBs from your cache. I'm sorry if the TB owners' desires are not in line with your wishes, but the TBs do not belong to you, and I must defer to their rightful owners."

I think the best plan is for one or more of the TB owners to send him a polite note explaining to him that he shouldn't take TBs if he won't be able to hold them until he finds a suitable cache to put them. Although it sounds like your relation with him is already shot, it might help if you point out that his 2 inches demonstrably made all the difference, causing two DNFs. I think the explicit examples -- DNFs and a lost geocoin -- are the important things to stress rather than trying to argue with him about external transfers in general. I've done a couple successful external transfers and grabbed one. I even launched a TB encouraging people to try external transfers with it; it was quickly lost, but not because of an external transfer. Although they're dangerous, they can work out OK. So don't focus on whether they can or can't ever work, but, rather, with the fact that they didn't work in these cases, so perhaps he shouldn't try again until he knows more. Then, hopefully, when he knows more, he'll know enough not to do them. With 100 caches, my guess is that he caches very rarely and had some TBs burning a hole in his pocket that he felt he had to get rid of at all cost else they'd be in his pocket for another 6 months. That's why I suggest, more than anything else, he being encouraged to not pick up TBs to begin with if he finds himself in that situation so often.

It clutters up the cache page with irrelevant bookmark lists. If I'm looking at a cache description page, then I don't care if someone used the cache for some challenge, or if it was a milestone for someone else. Such bookmark lists on the cache page are clutter. If I'm looking at a cache description page, the bookmark lists that are useful are ones that relate to the cache itself (e.g., lists of night caches or other caches of a given type, lists of caches in a series). I agree with niraD, but to present the other side of the issue: there are two distinct advantages of making a challenge bookmark list public. The first is that it draws attention to the challenge. I think this is why many challenge COs like it, and I've discovered several interesting challenges I didn't know about by seeing such lists. But with so many challenge caches now, I think this has become overwhelming. The other advantage is that a public list can be temporarily attached to the challenge cache for the purpose of verification by adding the challenge cache itself to the list, something COs typically request. When the list is later discarded, the link just goes away. If, instead, I put a pointer to a shared but not public bookmark list into my log entry for the challenge, when I later delete the list, the link in the log becomes stale. I'm not saying those are reasons to take that approach, I'm just pointing out why the approach is used, perhaps getting people to think of new solutions to the basic problems.

Me, I hate it when a NM is posted, and the CO posts a note or even an OM that says "I'll check it this weekend", then nothing. Often for months. Those are the times I'll post a 2nd NM. BTW, I think you're being silly to complain about someone saying something perfectly reasonable even though you happen to find it redundant. It shouldn't be a surprise to learn that not everyone reads all the old logs before posting each and every find.

You learned a lot of lessons, but there are two I'd like to stress: Avoid making the cache the point. The point here is a nice walk which, joy of joys, happens to include a cache. If looked at in this way, you would have parked in the logical place for people walking in the park instead of trying to park as close to the cache as possible. In most cases, the cache will tend to be hidden with the walk in the park in mind, too, so that attitude normally puts you and the hider on the same wavelength. Yes, if you're planning a walk in a park for a cache, check out the park in advance: on-line trail map, space view, tips in the cache description. You don't have to go crazy, just spend a couple minutes taking a look. Many times this will help you understand the hider's intentions for the most enjoyable way to get to the cache. Oh, I suppose there's a third lesson, but you appear to have already taken that one to heart: enjoy the trip and remember to have lots of fun even if things go wrong.

I'm way more comfortable when I'm working with a weird contraption because they'll think I'm doing something weird that they wouldn't understand, and that's fine with me. Even reasonably accurate. When I just come out from behind a bush with nothing in my hands and a smile on my face, I'm sure they have a very specific idea exactly what I was doing, different, of course, depending on whether I come out alone or if my wife's with me...

From my experience as a seeker, yes, it will help those two issues somewhat. Other responders that disagree with me have also made good points: One reason it will help is simply because fewer people will visit. It will not eliminate those problems. The harder it is to get to your cache, the less difference it will make. And while education is a great idea for reducing these issues, and I'm all for it, I think one of the advantages of PMO caches is that they aren't found by people that hear about caching and take it up for a few months before forgetting about it (typically with a TB in their pocket). They're not in the hunt long enough to get any education. With all the new blood, I think we forget about how much of that new blood is not a permanent addition to the community.

The most important thing is that if you do eventually have to grab a TB -- you can't wait forever for someone to log it, 'cuz often they've forgotten all about it -- make sure to have the TB visit the cache where you found it. That gives it the correct mileage, and also adds a log entry for the TB that you can edit to explain what has happened. While I understand the desire to have me wait for the drop, it's not always possible. I rarely hold a TB for more than a few days, and I'm not going to delay logging my drop waiting for you to log yours. So do try to log your drops as quickly as you can, even if you're on vacation. I've been known to go into libraries and use their computers to log drops when I'm away from home, for example. Oh, one more thing: if you do decided to wait for a while for the TB to be dropped, file a "discovered" log explaining that you have it, where you found it, and why you're waiting. That way when you forget about the TB, people will have a fighting chance to figure out where it is. (To me, the most interesting part of that advice is that when you try to explain why you're waiting, you might discover that you really have no good reasons, in which case you should grab it right away.)

First of all, of course lots of people do this, so it's hard to object. The issues we've been discussing here are complaints an owner might have, so since you're the owner, those aren't a factor. On the other hand, I have found this a little annoying because it clogs up the past trackable lists on all the caches. Sometimes I look at the past trackables list because I'm trying to determine what TBs were in a cache when, but this is useless on a popular cache because there are so many mileage TBs dipped. From the past trackables list, it's impossible to distinguish TBs that were actually in the cache from TBs that just passed by. (Admittedly not quite as bad as it sounds: you can spot mileage TBs because they're normally in the owner's hands.)

Wow. Really? The description clearly tells me to go to that location and just answer some questions, so since it's an older cache, I don't think it would have occurred to me to look for a log to sign, too.

Eh. If desired, the entrance could be conceptually the first stage even if the description proudly calls the conceptual second stage "Stage 1". Although because of this objection, a few of us have been proposing minor changes to make the entrance the first stage in all senses; I agree that would make more sense if it is, indeed, the posted coordinates. Edited to add: LOL! I just went to look at Post #4 and see that it quite clearly says the exact opposite of what you claim: it calls the entrance "stage 1" while explaining that there's no question to answer there. On the one hand, that's just funny and no big deal, but, on the other hand, it kinda unscores that there's no hard and fast rules for the relation between the posted coordinates and the stages.

Yes, the line is blurred, and sometimes a cache's type is just plain wrong. In this case, however, I'd say these two caches are typed correctly. The difference is that for The Place to Be, you have to go to the specified location to get the information that leads you to the next stage, making it a classic multi, while for Atlanta History Cache, you don't go to the posted coordinates; instead, you have to research the questions on-line to get the answer, making that a classic unknown. Notice also that Atlanta History Cache is quite old. Sometimes in the early days, the difference was even more blurred, so very odd things happened. In this case, for example, Atlanta History Cache appears to be a virtual cache labeled as an unknown, so (if I'm reading this correctly) there's no physical cache, just questions to answer.

"Oh, shoot: And I forgot a pen, too!" It would make a great log entry...

The tradition is gone, but that doesn't mean there aren't still nice COs that keep a working utensil in their caches. Nor does it mean there aren't seekers that need and appreciate them.