Hurricane Luke

Same here. I've been getting logs for *some* of logs on our caches recently. Now I just discover that two of our caches that were in the review queue were published 4 hours ago, and I received absolutely nothing! Is Groundspeak having some issues? (...and yes, I've checked spam, notification settings, etc.)

Eek! New maps look horrible IMO. While it may be all fine and dandy for American users (or maybe not in some areas!) other locations without as many contributors are simply useless. New Zealand for example, coverage is pathetic. They also look nowhere near as clean or sleek. Plus the entire geocaching maps UI has taken a step backwards in terms of its looks aswell. I'd pay money just to get Google Maps back. Until then, I can't see much use in Geocaching Maps. Bye Bye - they won't be missed in their current form. Sorry to be so harsh - but that's the plain truth.

Deleted. Whoops. Misguided anger once again...

Thanks all. Our earthcache was published recently by GeoAwareANZAC after working through a few issues with GeoAwareHQ (definitely appreciated - he's really helpful). (GC3A8H2)...

Hi All, Thanks for the helpful replies! Yes, we do know that a separate reviewer does do Earthcaches, and yes, we did enable it I probably should have clarified that in my OP. Judging by the replies, it seems as though we are in the 'middle of the road' for this review. Another Earthcache volunteer reviewer has very kindly stepped in and started the review process for us. Again, thanks for all replies! Cheers, Luke.

Hi All. We love Earthcaches. They're probably one of our most liked cache categories there is, so recently we decided to develop our first one - and we sent it in for review on 6 January. We've made totally sure that it's up to standard, that it matches all the GSA requirements, spellchecked it etc. we've even had it partly reviewed by a geologist! And we don't mean to sound rude or impatient, but it is now 10 January, and our local reviewer hasn't logged on for the past 10 days. We do understand they volunteer their time being a reviewer, and that's fine, but is there anyone else that can review it in the mean time? I'm not exactly sure if our region has more than one reviewer though. We are just really anxious about how this whole process works, having never done it before, and the GSA guidelines say it might take a few days - is this typical, or does it normally take longer than this? An additional problem is that we also have an additional 7 traditional caches in the normal review queue that are being held up by this Earthcache, which are located in the same area. It's a long, dusty trip to this remote site, and we don't really want to make people venture there twice (if the caches are published, and then the Earthcache is published a week later). So we are really left wondering how all this should proceed? How long is it normal to wait for an EC publication? Again, we aren't trying to be rude or have a rant here, we are just really anxious about how this all works!

Then why bring attention to it? While it may be fun for us to sit here and bash the idea and the site. Your just bringing it all more publicity that could get more people interested in the idea. I brought attention to it to attempt to promote a healthy discussion of the potential effects of having such a game be associated with geocaching. Obscurity doesn't really work when your on the internet, EVERYTHING gets discovered one way or another, so in the overall scheme of things, a discussion about it in a thread on a forum isn't going to propel it to the number one national fad over night.

I'm sorry, but you've made my day. I nearly just spat out my drink reading that.

The problem is, to put it bluntly, it's a stupid idea - no one is bashing for the sake of bashing. It's just not very well thought out. It doesn't take in any consideration for the environment, and it goes well beyond metal detecting. The website is asking people to systematically dig holes, place an object inside, and then for others to re-dig that hole to recover the object, then rehide it by digging yet another hole! It pays no attention to the environment or to land managers and park services - who we have tried for years to convince geocaching is okay. It's not a good idea.

Agreed. I also thought the website design was... uh... on the shoddy side, to put it lightly.

It seems another variant of geocaching has hit the market. 'Geodetecting'. Apparently, the goal is to dig and bury hidden treasure beneath the ground, grab the coordinates, and then let the next person uncover it, and then place it in a newly dug hole up to 20 metres away. Long story short, the soil of America may soon be covered with thousands of holes. There's a few problems I see with this, firstly, your ruining the landscape/environment in a much more permanent way. Secondly, I don't think its good if this gets associated with geocaching, I mean, relatively few people know about geocaching, and a book is nearly always judged by its cover. If they also see 'geodetecting', it could give geocaching a potentially bad reputation with some, be it land-managers or lawmakers. To be honest, I for one hope it doesn't take off.

I noticed this too on our new caches we own. It was really irritating for a few minutes while I tried to figure out what was going wrong. My method of getting around the problem was to click "edit" next to the image, and then click it directly to get the full sized resized image. I've also noticed a new variable seems to be appended to the end photo URLs: ...?rnd=x Where x seems to be a number between 1 and 0. Changing it does not seem to do anything. Odd.

How about we set a minimum of 10 placed caches before being allowed to place one. Oh, wait... All nonsense aside, there's a few arguments to this here: #1 says: "Openness and freedom on geocaching.com could be considered crucial to players of the game. Imposing such a basic limit or restriction is authoritarian and is not in the spirit of geocaching. It's ridiculous that we should restrain such a crucial, elemental part of geocaching." #2 says: "@1, You know what isn't in the spirit of geocaching? Bad hides. People who hide useless containers in useless places, with useless coordinates. We should set a minimum such as the OP agrees. Newbies are useless at hiding caches" #3 says: "@2, I've seen cachers with thousands of hides put out stupid caches, and those with only a handful of finds put out some of the most brilliant caches in the region. It's silly to set a minimum based purely on such a flawed number." #4 says: "#3, I agree: How about we think outside the box, and have a checkbox when you go to list a cache online that says 'Are you hiding this container to legitimately bring people to a new place or location?', if it is not checked, the cache listing is denied." #5 says: "@4, that's ridiculous because everyone will check it anyway." #4 replies: "@5, okay, how about a flag button on the cache page? Those with more finds and hides have a greater "weight" when clicking the flag button, say 500, and those with less have less "weight", perhaps 25. When the accumulated flag weight on the page reaches 2000, the cache is sent to the reviewer for a check or to be re reviewed".

The current 4000 character log limit implementation is a bit arbitrary don't you think? Why am I restricted to writing within the confines of a predetermined number? While I have not ever bumped into this limit myself, I tend to write longer logs than most, and will probably be writing a 4000+ character log in the coming month. Why the limit? It doesn't have any effect on stopping people writing longer logs, it just makes it the whole process inconvenient and cumbersome. Why do those who write long logs have to split their entry into a separate note? Why are such workarounds needed? If anything, I'd triple it to around 12,000. I've seen one topic on this issue before and I believe Groundspeak should reconsider their stance. I've heard counter-arguments such as "Brevity is the soul of wit". Well...? So what?... We aren't required to be short and sweet - a long log is a sign of respect by the finder to the cache owner, it tells them they enjoyed the cache. Much more than 'TFTC' does, anyway. Another counter-argument to long logs: "Keep It Simple, Stupid" - well, can't the same principle of simplicity be applied to the process of publishing a long log on the website with a single click of a button, instead of a (relatively) arduous process involving copying, selecting and pasting? Groundspeak do a great job in aspects around maintaining the logs and the cache listings, but this is one (small) spot I believe they fall short.

You can - per say. There's no technical limitation stopping you, but doing so is usually frowned upon and/or considered bad form. I don't do it. There can be exceptions however. For example, one day you may decide find another persons cache, but then a few weeks/months/years later it may encounter some trouble and need to be either archived or transferred. If you decide to take ownership of the cache through transferral, you may have *found* your own cache...

I like them. I mean, they're definitely a substantial improvement on the old maps. The map fills the entire screen (especially useful on a big 24 inch monitor - even better when there is two of them!) - but as mentioned before, this makes them useless on my iPhone. The only issues I have at the moment with them is: a) Sometimes Google location markers take priority over geocaching icons, which makes it hard to select caches. When hiding a selection of caches, they can still be 'hovered' over and this makes the maps 'sticky'. c) There is no tool indicating how many caches are currently displayed on screen. and d) It would be nice if the cache icons stayed 1 zoom level higher than they currently do. But - hey! That's why they are BETA maps. No doubt they will be improved on in the coming months.

YOU, yourself - are the privacy setting! If you don't want people knowing every detail of your day, don't write detailed logs. If you don't want people knowing where you went, log your finds out of order. If you don't want people seeing what caches you've found, log finds as notes. And most importantly, if you REALLY don't want people seeing what your doing, don't log caches online! No one forces you too and many people don't. By simply being on the internet, you are giving up a part of your privacy. Hundreds of websites RIGHT now have cookies (little scripts) installed on your computer that can and will track you and watch what you visit and do online. IMO, asking for a privacy setting to be implemented is just laziness. Privacy starts with the individual first.

There's a good portion of my caches gone! I think the current DNF, NM, & NA system works well. It's a simple three-tiered system which allows the community to decide when a cache becomes in need of maintenance, and in need of archival. Setting an arbitrary number or time period won't work because that means alot of the high difficulty and terrain caches which get lots of DNF's and not many visits will instantly be 'retired'.

And that's a good thing. Some of us view cache descriptions on smartphones, handheld GPS receivers with paperless features, etc. What looks "snazy" on a high-res computer display may not look so "snazy" in some other viewing environment. I'd say that's more of an issue for those who make the smartphone and GPS apps. It's the devs responsibility to test and ensure that a variety of cache pages can display well on said device. I don't think there's an excuse for not being able or wanting to do that. Otherwise you're forcing cache owners to stick with the plain old bland and boring - it restricts creativity. And seriously, with every second cache seeming to be a micro in a parking lot, creativity is something we desperately need. I'm not advocating the inclusion of more allowable HTML and CSS - the current allowable tags are just fine. I make good use of them and don't need any more. @Ryan: The standard markup you'd need would be (of course excluding the angle brackets) the h1-h6 tags, p for paragraphs, br/ for line breaks, hr/ for rules, sub and sup for subscript and superscript, the span tag if you want to mark up a small section of text, and the set of table tags always comes in useful if you want an image with a caption. Links and images are implied (don't try and resize images using the "width=" and "height=" attributes, use a photo editor). I also don't really think div tags are necessary. Some deprecated tags such as center, strike, b, and i - are still very handy because the CSS equivalent is either longer or isn't allowed. CSS support is where it gets slightly less precise. You (obviously) can't include a stylesheet in the description, nor can you place a CSS block in at the the beginning of a document. You're only allowed CSS inline, which can get repetitive. The most common tasks would be to change text colour, size, and font. Easily achieved through "color:", "font-size:", and "font-family:". I wouldn't try to 'decorate' text mind you, flashing and scrolling is just irritating. Programs? I use Notepad! It's so simple and honest. But if you are editing a convoluted entry, you can start getting confused about where you are. I have Adobe Dreamweaver, but it's expensive and too overpowered to just edit a simple cache description. If you don't know much HTML or CSS, you'll want a program which can hint, complete and highlight the syntax. The best bet would be Notepad++. It's free, lightweight, open source and easy to use. Good luck!

What will happen with all the existing feedback ideas on User Voice? The UserVoice site will remain live for at least a while, but there will be no monitoring or updating of topics there. Those issues that had a significant vote behind them have already been entered into our database. New issues and requests should be posted to the recently reopened and expanded "Notices From and Conversations With Groundspeak" forum. Why the change? I thought the request/bug/feature/support handling was going quite well.

I don't like thinking it, and I know they have good intentions with each update, but honestly - the first thought that always pops into my head when I see that yellow bar scrawled across the top of the screen is "Oh gawd no, what are they going to break this time?". But - hopefully, they'll deliver more useful functionality to the website. I think it's actually quite neat how they keep the updates a secret (sort of like how Apple doesn't announce their upcoming products), because when they do update the site it's always a surprise. I hope the update rolls out smoothly for them.

When we placed our first cache, we used an iPhone 3G - but we were lucky as it was on top of a hill and there was great satellite reception, and we visited the spot and took coordinates twice. Finders commented on the good accuracy of the coordinates. We were lucky! I upgraded to an iPhone 4 when it came out, but at the same time, we also purchased a Garmin Oregon. Now, 72 cache placements later, we are using the Oregon exclusively without any errors. Of course, you'll get the best accuracy with a GPS that's designed for outdoor handheld use as the software written for it and the antenna included will most likely be best at detecting small changes in the position of the device, whilst a car unit may have differently designed software and use a different antenna. I can't say with 100% certainty as we don't own a in-car GPS, but I would expect a handheld unit to *generally* be more accurate than a car unit. Good luck!

"The cache looked like it could get wet, so we added a plastic bag around it"

We find caching by bicycle is definitely the most fun way to go caching, we don't do it very often, and around 70% of all our find are by car, but when we can, we will. In both urban and scenic areas, bicycle caching can be superior. No petrol costs, alot more maneuverability, it keeps you fit and active, and it allows you to enjoy the area and more often than not appreciate the cache more. We still go by car for rural caches (5km apart or more...), but our 2nd biggest number run (only 24 though) was by bike. We parked at the Petone railway station in Wellington and took the train up valley with our bikes, and then biked back down! Good stuff. We will be driving to Auckland City with it's thousands of caches and will staying with relatives in about a month, we are taking our bikes with us, and we expect we can grab 100 plus per day on them.

I hate to say it, but... my first thought was "Oh gosh no! What are they going to ruin this time???". Now don't get me wrong, not everything they change is for the worse, but it can definitely seem like it. The last update showed that quite well. Good luck to them this time...