Pink Paisley

The trackable is to all intents and purposes, dead. Groundspeak have no concern about TB safety - they can just sell more tags if anyone is daft enough to buy them. Geocoins? You would be mad to put them in a cache. There are enough dishonest or ignorant cachers out there to make it inevitable that a coin WILL go missing in time. Nano and micro caches dominate - they are just so easy to throw down without thought about the hobby's roots and without any thought about what happens when you fill up space and give new cachers a narrow experience. I've heard old hands complain that they have given up with trackables because they can't find caches big enough to take one. And set predominantly micros themselves. Groundspeak COULD control access to the site and ensure that unregistered users can't access. But they don't. A large proportion of my TBs are missing. I'm not giving them any more money. PP.

I have a missing TB. (TB1REXN - actually just one of several unfortunately, so this is a 'for example'.) I have the copy tag of course. So if I send the copy out as an entirely new item, say a toy car or whatever, with a new name, what happens to the original finds when I edit the page? Do cachers who found my 'nuts' years ago suddenly find that they didn't but found my 'toy car' instead? Can I re-set the mileage etc without messing up other cacher's records (you know what we are like collectively). I would rather re-use the 9 copy tags than buy more. But of course, Groundspeak on the other hand.......... PP.

Thanks for advice folks. I had a facebook account once but it was very demanding and attention seeking. PP.

I have mountains going through my head. I need to get on some and look out and do some geocaching too. I'm considering a trip to Kili in Jan / Feb 2016. Anyone out there had experience / want to come? I have preparation to do. It would be stupid to consider going sooner. PP.

And the game has taken another step into the surreal and daft. We now have a series 'A Nice Pair' where a red telephone box and a red post box are within 20 feet of each other. Neither are particularly rare in the UK. So now it's time for 'Drains where you can see a blue garden gate', 'Traffic Lights where you can see a church with bells, 'Police stations within a stones throw of a roundabout' and Bus depots with big doors'. The hobby being increasingly popular is only a good thing if:- a. You are Groundspeak and your income increases, or b. It doesn't make it crappy. PP.

Railway stations, village signs, churches, lay-bys, supermarkets, milestones..... We are getting so many 'series' emerge that geocaching is going to reach saturation point as pointless and dull geographical and man-made features become 'series' just because there is a space. Public toilets anyone? Random bus stops? Will the world ever run out of film cannisters? PP.

MnM contacted me pretty much straight away. Of course it should be logged as a find. MnM also described exactly where this cache was replaced and knowing the area very well it is clear that it is exactly where it should be. Why post a maintenence log for a cache that really doesn't need it AND there has been finder / owner correspondence for? PP.

Thanks Keystone. PP.

Maybe the answer is staring me in the face, but I am stuck. I am submitting a new multi which will cause seekers to pass a number of other caches en route. I would like to maintain a bookmark list and add it to the new cache page so that cachers can download other caches that they may - or may not pass. How do I do it? PP.

It leads to nonsense like this. GC50AXC. It's a nano. It gets you ONE smiley and to everyone around, it looks just the same as just another film pot chucked into the bottom of a tree. On your page it looks as though the CO has just stuck a nano on a bit of railing. But he hasn't. This takes a lot longer, it's a bit of an adventure and THIS one will get a favourite point and a film can thoughtlessly thrown down won't. PP.

Sorry, I suspect two nations divided by a common language here. Something being described as 'a bit of a trek' can a long and not very pleasurable journey here. Yomping is a Royal Marines term for a long distance march in full kit. Microyomp - long distance walk broken up by nothing more than a stream of film cannisters. PP.

Sorry. Yomping is slang for a trek - dull and repetitive. PP.

And cut and paste logs for the reasons already noted here. PP.

Thoughtless setting of microyomps and pointless micros in general. I know this has been done to death and back, but that doesn't stop it irking me. And I live on a small island where we are rather crammed together. I have no doubt that this has set this game on a downward spiral. There are a lot of new cachers joining us every day and the most likely first experience that they will have is finding a micro which will almost certainly break the setting guidelines (no GC number and no cache note - yes I know this isn't a requirement. But many - most? are placed without land owner consent.) New cachers enthused with the game simply repeat what they have seen and so it goes. And film cans placed every 500 feet just use up space forcing new cachers into less and less inspiring locations. New series anyone? 'Pointless Micros in Pointless Places. Number 42 The Dog Mess Bin'. Perhaps microyomps belong in a new section of the site in the way that locationless caches ended up being Waymarking. How about excluding a larger container from the 500 feet rule where there are micros in the way? Perhaps it is time to explore what other geocaching sites have to offer......... PP.

Just because it's a church, it doesn't HAVE to be yet another micro / film cannister. PP.

Certainly my priorities have changed. After all, the game has changed hugely. When I started, my 20 nearest home would have taken me about 15 miles from home. Most would have been good sized caches, ammo cans and no film cannisters. All in places that were worth visiting for one reason or another. Now my 20 nearest home take me just 0.9 miles away. Half are film cannisters, 2 are ammo cans (and I suspect that 10% is an over-representation of ammo cans) and the rest are small. Mostly the locations are unexceptional. The cache that was at the bottom of my page 1, now appears on page 95. So in the space that used to occupy 20 caches, there are now 1900. The majority will be pointless micros. You bet my priorities have changed. I wonder what all those film cannisters would look like in a pile? PP.

Thank you for the big letters. However, there were some big words which I had to look up in my big book of words. And yes, I am at it again. My point remains (and it isn't such a big deal other than a bit of a quirky discussion point and a though that Groundspeak might consider some user friendly features) that on a website that concerns itself largely with geocaching, geography and locations, it ignores my location and offers cacher unfriendly results. Yes, strictly speaking correct ones. But if I enter Frankfurt into Wikipedia for instance, it recognises that there is more than one Frankfurt (in fact, the main article heading is just plain 'Frankfurt', but it goes on to say 'Frankfurt am Main....commonly known as Frankfurt', so it would seem that I am not alone in my ignorance of there being more Frankfurts). And to my eternal shame, I failed my geography exams at school. More than once as well, which may account for me not knowing the region of Germany, Frankfurt is in. There's still hope though, since I knew that Frankfurt IS in Germany.. And STILL like many people, including the airline AND the hotel chain that I have booked with, refer to the place as plain old 'Frankfurt'. Unless I have unwittingly booked to go to a tiny hamlet in Bavaria. Now there's a thought. Perhaps I should double check. So when I enter 'Frankfurt' into the search box, wouldn't it be reasonable to offer choices to me? Perhaps ranked by distance from home? Or perhaps by density of caches because I may change my mind and go to a different Frankfurt. As mentioned previously in this thread, other sites manage to do it. PP.

And it's at it again. Frankfurt. I'm going to Frankfurt. And perversely, when I search for Frankfurt (even searching for 'Frankfurt, Germany'), in maps (reasonably expecting to find the German city pop nearly 700,000), GC maps chose to introduce me to a tiny settlement closer to Nuremburg than Frankfurt the city, consisting of about 3 dozen houses with one cache just beyond the village. I didn't even know there was more than one Frankfurt! I do now. PP.

And that is whole reason why this whole debate and the idea of favourite points is flawed and pointless. One man's good, is another man's pain in the arse. Smiley monsters are not likely to think that a cache that takes 2 hours to complete is good. Those of us who are thrilled to find an ammo can half way up a mountain after trekking through streams and bogs, won't think that a film cannister chucked into the bottom of an urban tree is good. You don't need favourite points to tell you which is which. PP.

The fact remains, that FPs mean different things to different people. The result is, that as a guide of any sort they are pretty useless since you have no idea what prompted the awarder to award the point. Was it awarded because it could be grabbed without straying far from the car and another smiley was earned for minimal effort or because it required half a day trekking through stunning countryside? Pointless.

http://www.rushcounty.org/barbedwiremuseum/ I suppose everyone needs a hobby! Mine is now in my bin and was not part of the hint, there's a proper wooden fence within a foot. PP.

Indeed, I'll concede that care should be taken when retrieving, but the CO needs to take some responsibility for picking the location too. An excited child for instance (and I should know, being a 54 year old excited child) will eventually stab themselves in the head, cut fingers on glass, or fall foul of whatever hazard is present. We are trying to make this a pleasant game aren't we? PP.

Today, I removed barbed wire from a cache site. It was the remains of what had once been a fence but had been cut off and left rusting, embedded in a tree. The cache had been placed in the 'V' of the tree in such a way that finders are likely lean in against the barbed wire. I removed 4 bits, 1 was at head height an 2 at knee height. I am vacillating between believing that the CO could easily have overlooked it and wondering how they could possibly have not seen it. However, I have to say, I have failed to notice the stuff when retrieving caches - until it was too late. PP.

I have e-mailed veganbexx. Swift archiving (a good thing) means thst Veganbexx can't see it on maps or lists now (a bad thing). Have sent a link to assist with bagging it. PP.

Hats off to Veganbexx though as a new cacher for making the effort to put this right. But good advice in subequent posts. I fear that too many new cachers find caches like this early on and it kind of sets the scene for their expectations and also practice in the future. PP.