Alan White

This post gives an indication.

Not Your Mission.........., I hope? Undoubtedly the best, most enjoyable, most challenging yet achievable cache I've done or heard about. Archiving it would deprive caching of one of its greatest assets. If it's not "Your Mission.........." then which is it? Sounds good .

I think you miss my point. It already has happened: Groundspeak is the only listing site which uses employees to review caches. If one doesn't like the way Groundspeak works, use another site .

The only thing which is enforcing Groundspeak's "monopoly" is the cachers. I'm often amused by comments about how Groundspeak won't publish such and such a cache. If they won't, look elsewhere . Back to the OP: using professional reviewers would simply entrench the business aspects of geocaching even further. I'd like to see a return to the days when caching was performed by a friendly community of like-minded individuals and caches were published by members of that community rather than by employees paid or unpaid. This is the model used by other listing sites.

A further search reveals a Mk7. He's much smaller than the others though would still struggle to fit in modern caches .

I think it's been obvious for many years - even before Pete and Dave resigned - that Groundspeak regards reviewers as employees of the company, with all that that implies, rather than representatives of UK cachers. It used to be the case that reviewers were well known and highly regarded in the caching community and were seen as leaders and guides in everything to do with caching. Those days are long gone and we must now see reviewers as no different from employees of any other organistion that one comes into contact with in daily life. They're just like a customer service representative of, say, your ISP. You present them with a piece of work - a request for more disk space or to publish a cache - and they'll do it within the constraints set by the company they work for, as they understand them. As the function of representing and supporting UK cachers is no longer with the reviewers then who should do it? Surely GAGB. Sadly, as you - a former committee member as I recall - say, it does a very poor of it. GAGB, if it can't get satisfaction from Groundspeak, should be saying to UK cachers: "Sorry, we tried. Why not have a look over there?". But that's a new thread, and one better placed on GAGB's forums. ...and not be able to publish many that you can. Better the devil you know...

I wonder if there are any pigs?

A 61-stage multi? I don't think so . The countryside around Compton is lovely and I'm sure I'll be walking this series when the weather improves and the days lengthen. I do agree that a blank cache page isn't very inspiring or useful.

And not quite so small either. They wouldn't fit in most of today's caches . We have a Mk5, Mk6, and one of unknown vintage as he's lost his packaging, possibly a Mk4.

It's undoubtedly true that multis have declined as a percentage of caches placed: Year Placed Trad Multi %Multi 2000 2 2 0 0% 2001 265 218 25 9% 2002 1156 803 150 13% 2003 1559 1150 275 18% 2004 2674 1883 537 20% 2005 4658 3134 897 19% 2006 7600 5316 1272 17% 2007 10847 8180 1362 13% 2008 16199 13077 1515 9% 2009 23560 19910 1493 6% 2010 30373 26158 1348 4% 2011 43249 38272 1498 3% However, I don't see that that decline or the rise of series/circular walks/rings/whatever distorts the figures in any way: a cache listing is a cache listing. I don't see that caches are "only logged BECAUSE they're part of the series". They're logged because they're caches. A lot of people don't visit all the caches of a series in one go: the full walk may be beyond their endurance, or they don't have the time. I don't know what the weakness is you refer to but the caches of a series are standalone caches because that is what the cache owner wanted them to be. If the owner wanted a multi then presumably he would have placed one. I'm afraid I still don't understand your point .

I bet drsolly has never had an experience like this .

OK, here's an enhanced version: Year Placed Archived Nett increase Population 2000 2 0 2 2 2001 265 14 251 253 2002 1156 100 1056 1309 2003 1559 258 1301 2610 2004 2674 579 2095 4705 2005 4658 851 3807 8512 2006 7600 1369 6231 14743 2007 10847 2109 8738 23481 2008 16199 4033 12166 35647 2009 23560 5939 17621 53268 2010 30373 8620 21753 75021 2011 43249 11976 31273 106294 E&OE As I expected, a graph of any of the columns follows exactly the same line

The numbers are simply those caches which have a placed date in the appropriate year. Subtracting archived caches would take a long time to run because the archived date is stored only in logs. In other words, the numbers aren't the "cache population" because dead caches are included. However, I'd expect the number archived to roughly track the number placed. I'll have a look... I don't understand any of that . In the numbers above a cache is a cache. Perhaps more accurately, a listing is a listing.

The second question is difficult to answer but we can have a go at the first. There are 14500 owners of active caches. Let's say that an active cache owner is one who's placed a log of any type on any cache in the last three months. That's 8844. So only 60% of cache owners are active cachers. Usual caveats about data quality and interpretation apply.

Year Count(*) 2000 2 2001 265 2002 1156 2003 1559 2004 2674 2005 4658 2006 7600 2007 10847 2008 16199 2009 23560 2010 30373 2011 43249 2012 3287

Well done, Peter. And thanks to Andy for the suggestion.

I've lost track of how many reviewers there are and what areas they cover but as I understand it they review by "state" and so it's easy to see where the greatest volumes are. Northeast England 2262 2% London 2528 2% North Wales 2832 3% South Wales 2936 3% Southern Scotland 3941 4% South West England 5884 5% Northern Scotland 6611 6% Yorkshire 8715 8% West Midlands 9791 9% East Midlands 10670 10% Northwest England 10863 10% Eastern England 10926 10% South East England 11841 11% Southern England 18737 17% Total 108537 Of course, this is active caches rather than publishing rate but I expect it gives a good indication.

I wish I'd read your post before I spent two hours wondering why I couldn't get it to work . Everything else works quite happily from the SD card, and that's the obvious place to put high volume requirements like images. Hopefully it's just an oversight and will be fixed sometime.

I'm sure my request was perfectly clear: I'm seeking the official, legal definition of the meaning of the terms, not simply what someone with a website has decided to place online. I have my own website: if I place on it a statement that black is white I hope you wouldn't use it as a source to support such an argument . I had already looked at all but one of those sites and the one I hadn't supports the view that Great Britain is England, Scotland & Wales and therefore includes all the islands which make up those countries. Also, I doubt that the residents of the Isles of Wight, Anglesey and Skye, to name just a few, are precluded from membership of the Geocaching Association of Great Britain, the Radio Society of Great Britain, Team GB, or the august Royal Institution of Great Britain, to also name just a few. I suggest it's evident that far from my understanding being a "common mistake" it is, at the very least, common usage that "Great Britain" refers to the countries of England, Scotland & Wales and all the islands which make up those countries. Nevertheless, I think we agree that for the purposes of resolving the United Kingdom and Ireland question the term Great Britain is unhelpful, so let's move on. I agree entirely, but Groundspeak calls Ireland a country and the country of Ireland does not include Northern Ireland. If the field were labelled "Geographical area" and contained entries such as Malay Peninsula, Western Plateau and Tidewater Virginia* we would not be having this discussion. It's not designated as a geocaching region but as a country, however, yes of course the view of the Irish cachers is important but the views and understanding of cachers everywhere else is also important. Most important is commonality of understanding: anyone who doesn't know about the strange divisions in use on the island will have great difficulty in finding (in the organisational sense) caches in those areas. Especially in Northern Ireland. And yet it is so easy to accommodate both requirements: simply list Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland & Wales. That there is such opposition to this by both Irish cachers and by Groundspeak gives a strong implication that the decision has more to do with politics than geography. * Here's an analogy which may help Groundspeak at least understand why this is an issue. In 1861, in the height of the Civil War, the residents of what was then the western part of the state of Virginia voted to secede from Virginia and formed the state of West Virginia which was admitted to the union in 1863. I'm sure that if Groundspeak insisted that caches in WV were listed in VA then not only would there be much confusion but there would be an outcry far greater than this mostly calm and reasoned discussion .

I sincerely apologise for omitting Cumbria. Mind you, I've never quite got used to Cumbria: it's still (mostly) Cumberland and Westmorland to me .

Do you think that my great(x3) grandfather having been the chief constable* of Castletown and killed in the Brig Lily disaster in 1852 would help? * This isn't as grand as it sounds. What was then called chief constable was simply the most senior constable. Perhaps equivalent to sergeant today.

In that case, the only other explanation I can offer is that there is or was a bug in the API. I know that during beta testing of GSAK v8 many problems were reported of caches being returned which shouldn't have been. And the opposite: caches not being returned when they should be. I myself discovered and reported that if a bounding box is on or crosses the prime meridian no caches will be returned. As far as I know that bug remains unresolved. But we digress...

Aside from the suggestion I offered earlier about using a radius, you do know you can select more than one country in a PQ? If Groundspeak listed countries of Ireland and Northern Ireland then your PQ could select both and you'd have all the caches on the island. This is why I suggested the option much earlier in the thread (and have done so previously) that Groundspeak should list Ireland, Northern Ireland, England, Scotland & Wales as separate countries. It's much more flexible, easily understood both locally and internationally, and avoids any suggestion of politics.

It's very easy to say to someone "you're mistaken" but personally I prefer some more concrete evidence than that . I can find lots of references to agree with your statement that "Great Britain" refers to the big island, but then "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" clearly includes all the islands (in UK). I'd like to think that there's an official, legal definition of the meaning of the terms but I'm struggling to find it. I think the best that can be said is that "Great Britain" - and indeed any term including or implying British-ness - is at best ambiguous and is therefore unlikely to be a part of the solution to the problem under discussion. Which leaves just the two options as previously discussed: a single "country" of United Kingdom and Ireland separate countries of Ireland, Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland & England

Yes, that could be it. Unlike PQs, the API has no means of selecting caches other than by coordinates. Whereas one might choose to restrict caches in a PQ by selecting the country, that's not possible in the API. So an API circle or rectangle in Lancashire, Galloway or Northern Ireland could easily return caches in the Isle of Man, and vice versa.