Chris n Maria

Neither of these are actually correct - the coins are produced by The Royal Mint in Wales which has nothing to do with the Bank of England. Bank of England banknotes are produced here in Essex. They used to be produced by the Bank of England but in the last few the production has been contracted out to De la Rue limited. Guess who i used to work for Chris

Well its not been quiter here. Fireworks "night" started about a 4 weeks ago with air-bombs being let off at 3 or 4 in the morning...on a school night. Since then its increased every night - this week its been almost constant from 30 minutes before dark till about 12:30. Tuesday night I took the dog for a walk - it was lashing down with the rain cmming at me horizontally. Yet still people were out letting of rockets - heaven knows why it was important to let them off in that weather but people obviouly felt it was. Chris

Nope - not alone. you can count us in that group too

Well all I can say is get in there,get yourself voted in and change things

I wouldn't say "are" - I would say there were other issues. Do a forum search on the formation of GAGB and you will see that there was an awfull lot of rows that occured when the GAGB was set up. There was an awfull lot of bad feeling at the time - mostly due to the missunderstandings that occur all to easily on forums. After that GAGB went off and did its job and life carried on pretty much as before.

So what you are saying is announcing an election in the way its been done the last two times is suddenly not good enough? Ho hum. I think you will find that most people couldn't give a monkeys cuss about the point, are fed with all the rangling that goes on about GAGB and just want to carry on caching. Chris

Here we go again...... I always find it amazing the amount of energy people are prepared to expend in getting upset about the election processes of GAGB. People seem to act like the positions involved hold huge amounts of power and responsibility, when instead all they mean is hardwork and expense for the people involved. AFAICS people have had from the 28th September to stand for election, but no one apart from bill stood. So Bill got the job of chairman. End of. Chris

well as you have been nominated for a comittee position why don't you stand and then you (if elected) can sort out this "sham" from the inside.

Yup I think most people prefer caching here With 8000+ caches in the UK it strikes me that very few people will bother combining it with waypointing as there is enough to do already. Waymarking seems to be a "one size fits all" solution. Compare the trigpoints on WM.COM with those in www.trigpointinguk.com and the UK site looks a hell of a lot more interesting as there is a community who are all playing the same game, on a site that is tailored for it and who have a forum dedicated to discussing it. WM.com looks pretty pale in comparison - you can collect trigpoints but what would you have in common with people who collect mcdonalds? If WM is succesfull it will need a whole new influx of players who are not cachers already I recon. Chris

Because TPTB have decided thats where they should live! but if you look at the way the site is constructed its all about a replacement for locatinless with the others tacked on as an after thought. Its realy all about appeasing a vocal group on the forums who recon "if it aint got a box it aint a cache". Bet they don't Waymarking just seems to have so much dross on it already that I can only see the standard going down and few people bothering to creat really interesting quality waymarks).

"Whats the point" refers to Waymarking as an activity. There may be many worthwhile locations/"virtual experiences" but they seem to disappear in amongst the rest of the dross. As Jeremy is at pains to point out its a different game - one that many here don't want to play. Waymarking is basically a replacement for locationless which was a game I was never interested in. Caches are a different idea that I am interested in. Chris

The thing with a virt is usually the surprise element when you get there, with the classifications in Waymarking all surprise would be lost. In addition the sheer quantity of rubbish waymarks (mcdonalds,bloggers etc) make it difficult to seek out any real gems worth finding. Waymarking seems to fit locationless well but they have tried to squeeze virts and earth caches into the same site and I like them where they are. I have always felt that the point of a cache (whatever type) was to say "here is somewhere/something" interesting/beautifull/unusual etc. and most caches in the UK seem to reflect that view. Waymarking seems to be about collecting locations of anything at all AFAICS the game is totally different. Chris

It may just be me but... I keep seeing Children in Need adverts on the BBC and they keep reminding me of the man whos dedication perminantly linked the event with fox hunts in my mind. I am of course talking about Mark (The Cat) who did so much for caching in this country. His legacy lives on in GC:UK and for that I think we all have a lot to than him for. Chris

We often fill our large ammo box caches with paper back books (brand new, read once). We were chuffed to see Took book, Left pebble in the log book. Fare warms the cockles of my heart it does.

Or if you have Excel try Waypoint Workbench.

I met Ken Campbell whilst checking up on our lost pond cache and A week later he was behind me in the queue in Sainsburys. I think hes stalking me to be honest. Chris

Judging from this thread it looks like all our virts will end up arcived anyway.

While it certainly would be less heartache in the short run, what about confusion down the road with newbies seeing just about the same things split between the two sites? Personally, I think a clean break would be better. One site for physical caches. One for the rest. There are plenty of virts over here that are interconnected with physicals and disentagling them would ruin some great cache clusters. Also why not allow newbies a glimpse of our history.

The question up in the air is whether or not virtuals will be archived or just left grandfathered on the site. I'm leaning towards the latter. Please, please keep leaning towards the latter.

I probably shouldn't say anything, but this "justification" for eliminating virtual caches was (and remains) completely bogus. The stated reason for the 0.1 mile rule is to prevent the possible confusion of two caches. It seems obvious to me that nobody is likely to confuse a virtual with a physical cache; thus, the fact that virtual caches "blocked" physical caches was strictly a policy decision on the part of Groundspeak. There was never any physical (or, for that matter, rational) reason for it. So the use of this invented "problem" to discriminate against virtual caches was pretty lame. There are 2 virts in central london that are in excactly the same place (to the inch). Noo ne seems to mind....

It would be nice if TPTB made an anouncment as to where this sort of cache/waypoint would fit in the new scheme of things. as it is a lot of virt owners feel their carefully constructed virts will disapear in amongst a see of Mcdonalds and coffe shops. For many that is precisly the problem with the new site. With a cache the idea is that someone is inviting you somewhere they feel is of interest. With Waymarking they seem to be inviting you absolutly anywhere at all - personally I have difficulty seeing the appeal of this. Though I am open minded enough to be prepared to be proved wrong. Chris

The thing I have never understood with the whole WOW factor argument was why GC introduced quality control for Virts but never bothered with Physicals. I still don't understand why I'm allowed to stick a magnetic micro in an awfull location but I cant create a virt in an interesting location. We are told that with the new site the rating system will allow us to sift the good from the bad. This I see as a good thing. So why move virts to the new site? Why not bring ratings in for caches? Once ratings were introduced for GC.com then it should be easy to filter out bad caches wether they are virts or not. I can't see most of our virts being succesfully moved to Waymarking. The point of most of them is that the location is a surprise, categorising them would mean completly spoil the point of the "Experience". So I still don't understand how these are to fit in on the new site and TPTB don't seem to have explained it anywhere to my knowledge.

Ok, I'll guess that you are talking about is what London Transport refer to as "The unfortunate incidents of 7/7". If that is the case then I would not worry too much as very little has changed since then. You may see a few more police about and they may ask to search any bags you are carrying but that would be increduibly rare. I travel into london every day and I have never been stopped or searched. As for caching, I doubt you would atract much interest unless you look reallly suspicious. HTH Chris

AFAIK Jeremy has said that no virts will be moved over to the new site. For the moment they will be allowed to stay but new ones will not be allowed. He has said at some point in the fuure they may all be archived but this has yet to be decided. I cant see the point in Archiving them myself ...but then I cant see the point in the new site ether FWIW our feelings are the same as CT&E and our virts will ether stay here or disapear completly. Chris

I thought it might have been - the main difference between the two is that "Surprise" will aloow new virtuals as well. Apart from that they have the same intention.