Cathy

HQ is aware of the problem and our Engineering team is working on it. As soon as it goes live, everyone who has already logged an EarthCache today will get the souvenir and subsequently it will be awarded when an EarthCache is logged. EDIT: We will run a script early next week to make sure everyone gets their souvenir. Sorry for the delay!

The souvenir will be awarded for logs posted on Fri, Oct 8, 2021 at 11:00:00 UTC until Mon, Oct 11, 2021 at 10:00:00 UTC

This has been fixed. Happy Caching!

Matt provides some good guidance for creating EarthCaches in this new video: EarthCaching Insights with Matt Dawson of the GSA - This is Planet Earth

Check out the new update in today's blog: https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2021/03/experience-geology-on-mars-and-other-planets-without-leaving-earth/

Check it out! https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2021/03/experience-geology-on-mars-and-other-planets-without-leaving-earth/

4. Please note that Geocaching HQ is giving explicit permission as the owner to log this trackable virtually. Normally, logging trackables that you have not personally seen is strongly discouraged. It is up to the trackable owner to state if they allow this. Read more about virtual logs in our Help Center. 5. For so much more on NASA's Mars missions, including news about not just Perseverance but also about Curiosity, Insight, and the orbiters: https://mars.nasa.gov/ Here's another thing to do while we wait. Check out today's blog for an update on new EarthCaches featuring Planetary Geology on Earth! What kind of geological features exist near you that might become part of the Planetary Geology on Earth series?

Submit it like a regular EarthCache, and make sure to name it Planetary Geology on Earth: ___________________ More information is in the Help Center here: Planetary geology on earth

With the Perseverance Rover more than halfway to Mars equipped with a tracking code trackable on Geocaching.com, Geocaching HQ and the Geological Society of America are excited to give geocachers the opportunity to view and learn about geological features on Earth that also exist on Mars. Therefore, we are introducing a new series of EarthCaches: Planetary Geology on Earth. Read more about this cool new variety of EarthCache: The Geological Society of America has a new web page for Planetary Geology on Earth going live today: Planetary Geology & EarthCache Sites The Geocaching Blog just introduced it last week. New EarthCache twist: Planetary Geology on Earth In the Help Center: Planetary geology on Earth Some of these new EarthCaches have already been created and you can see them here: Planetary Geology on Earth. More will be joining them in the coming months and beyond. If you're interested in contributing, use the resources linked above, especially the Help Center page, for guidance. It's really cool that you can visit geological features on Earth, and learn that the same geological features exist on other planets!

I think the problem here is that logging tasks 6 and 7 are way beyond the 14-year age level that EarthCaches should be written for. If they were at that level, there wouldn't be any problem with people being overwhelmed by the math. I recommend you modify those two tasks to something that a 14-year-old can do.

I am pleased to share the good news that 4 new languages have been added to the EarthCache Guidelines. Geocachers in Czechia, Italy, Catalunya, Spain and other Spanish-speaking countries can now read the EarthCache Guidelines in their own language. More languages will be added in the coming months as they are translated.

If you add a photo requirement to an existing EarthCache, it is completely unfair to require a photo retroactively. Logs posted before the change should be grandfathered. No doubt there will be people who find an EarthCache before the addition of a photo requirement, but don't log it online until afterward. When the EarthCache was actually found can't be proved one way or the other, so all I can say is Be Nice during that transition period if you add a photo requirement to an existing EarthCache. Step back, take a deep cleansing breath, and remember that you created your EarthCache to show people an impressive geological feature, not to micromanage their behavior. There is no perfect solution to this. Regarding screaming bold red capital letter fonts on EarthCache logging tasks: They may not look as friendly as logging tasks in a regular font, but I understand why cache owners do it. Many of them started as regular fonts and gradually got bolder and screaming bright in response to finder after finder not reading the logging tasks. It's natural to make something more prominent if it is important and not being seen. If it bothers you, "vote with your feet" and bypass an EarthCache if the cache page hurts your eyes.

Yes, you can change your existing EarthCache listings to require a photo, following the guidance in the original post above.

Geocaching HQ, the Geological Society of America, and the EarthCache Reviewing Team have worked together to bring you a new update to the EarthCache Guidelines, for logging tasks. We have updated the Help Center with this guidance too. Effective immediately, photo requirements are permitted, but can only be included as an addition to well-developed logging tasks. A personal item must be an option for those who do not want to photograph themselves. The same high standards for EarthCache logging tasks still apply. This task is acceptable only as an addition to well-developed logging tasks, not as a substitution. This update should make it easier for cache owners to monitor the integrity of the logs on their EarthCaches.

Fixed.

Bots are not permitted to check and respond to EarthCache logging tasks. You must monitor the logs and answers to logging tasks yourself.

Sorry, it was removed from the GSA site and no longer exists.

Virtual caches do not move from location to location without review. Brass Cap was a locationless cache incorrectly listed as a virtual.

HQ has been monitoring this discussion, and we feel some clarification is needed. The misunderstanding here is based on two separate unconnected causes that occurred weeks apart, each with separate effects. The first cause was changing the logging system to allow only one find per cache. This is the way it should always have been. But in the early days, no one at HQ anticipated anyone would want to log a cache again and again. If we had known it would be misused, the system would have been updated long ago to allow only one find log per cache. After the change to the logging system, many people who enjoyed Brass Cap and YOSM wrote to HQ with concern that the caches had been ended, which was not the case. As the emails quoted in previous posts said, finders could continue to visit them and log subsequent visits with notes. We did not have any plan to archive them at that time. The second cause, which happened weeks later, was the coordinate update log being limited to 0.10 mile or 161m for all geocaches. This made it impossible for owners of moving caches to maintain their cache page with accurate coordinates. With the cache owners unable to do this necessary ongoing update and the other problems detailed in the history of traveling caches, the decision was made to archive them all rather than to prolong the pain. Caches like Brass Cap and YOSM are locationless caches, but were listed as the wrong cache type when published. They only existed for this long because of that error, and should have been archived at the end of 2005 with the rest of the old locationless caches. Those locationless caches can still be listed and visited on Waymarking.com. See U.K. and Ireland Trigpoints and Canadian Benchmarks. Moving caches have always been a confusing mix of common cache types, with nothing to unify them other than appearing on some bookmark lists. As a group, they caused an inordinate amount of issues for caches that represented less than .003% of active geocaches, and added nothing unique to anyone's statistics. Changing them to a unique trackable series allows them to continue traveling without the problems, and provides HQ with an opportunity to give them something they have never had - a unique icon that would only appear on the profiles of people that moved or discovered them as trackables. A winged ammo can seemed like the perfect image to honor their previous existence as traveling caches. We love the new icon.

That feature has been removed from the EarthCache.org website.

We are closing this thread. There are many different perspectives on this unfortunate situation, and no one perspective can provide a complete view. Supporting the community and the game of geocaching in Poland is very important to us at Geocaching HQ. Please understand that we do not publicly comment on the reasons for retirement of community reviewers. This policy is based on respect for all parties involved. However, we understand the community's need for a Polish speaking EarthCache reviewer. HQ is committed to adding a Polish speaking EarthCache reviewer as soon as possible. We understand and respect that this will help to support the community. It is essential for any new EarthCache reviewer to work cooperatively with the rest of the reviewer team, both publicly and privately. The current reviewer team (Silesian Reviewer, Kashubian Reviewer, Galician Reviewer, Masovian Reviewer and Posnanian Reviewer) have the full support of Geocaching HQ. We wish Leo well and thank him for 3 years of serving the community as a volunteer reviewer. His contributions to EarthCaching in Poland have been appreciated by Geocaching HQ and by the geocaching community. https://translate.google.com/#en/pl/

Thanks for the early reports on this spammer. We have several engineers working today to resolve this issue. We are actively banning the accounts so there is no longer a need for geocachers to post usernames in this thread anymore. Geocachers will receive email notifications resulting from these messages for a longer period of time. We will be discussing ways to prevent this sort of automatic messaging of geocachers. Now it's time to go outside and find some geocaches!

The link has been removed. Thanks for the heads up.

The link has been fixed. Thanks for bringing it to our attention.