MAPANZIGAN

...your mom! http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/public/style_extra/post_icons/icon12.gif

Yeah, okay. Whatever... I tried to contact the so-called acct. holder with no response. There was no clarification of intent, nor were those names ever scrawled into the logs of the cache in question. I understand that it's possible that someone was just splitting & backlogging, and realize that there's some potentially less-devious intentions at play. Fine. Cool. My initial reaction to what appeared to be a false log was to ask the "cacher" what they were up to and to delete the logs. I didn't hear back, either way. Admittedly, I got a little worked up about it at first, but really, it's pointless. I'm not too concerned about it. Anyway, thanks for the feedback. I appreciate the different points of view.

...I recently stumbled upon two artificial members in the Portland OR area when I rec'd notification of a find on one of my archived caches. The impostor, under the monikers Maxwell6336 and mxwhite484, just recently logged an inordinate number of sudden finds, all of which were post-dated to a one-week period in August of 2012. I can't imagine why anyone would go through so much trouble to set up a ghost-cacher, but it's occurred to me that the threshold of absurdity in this little hobby of ours has been crossed, and that it might be time to re-assess the ways in which we waste our time...

"When you go to hide a geocache, think of the reason you are bringing people to that spot. If the only reason is for the geocache, then find a better spot." -briansnat

I'm a little disheartened over the enormity of the flaws that challenges present... for example, the inability to prove completion of any given challenge; the inclusion of challenge-completions in your total finds; zero accountability in a self-scoring system & the lack of any solid means of quality control... My initial reaction is to just personally boycott the challenges by refusing to accept or complete any of them until the mess has been mopped up a bit. From another perspective, suppose that there are actually some challenges worthy of attaining- All it takes is a certain number of anonymous naysayers to strike it down and have it archived? How can the emphasis on quality and creativity in geocaching be promoted while simultaneously opening the floodgates for mediocrity to spill over into every avenue?