toadfrommars

What if the people started on public land (say a Management Area, State or Federal PArk, etc) and then became lost in the woods? AS the negotiated their way out, they wind up on someone's private property? I'll concede that point, however every Missouri State Park I've been to has been very well marked(same with STL county parks), but can't say anything about other states. The National Forests aren't very well marked though, and property owners near public areas concerned about this will probably mark/paint there property anyway. I guess they could use that fancy GPSr they were using to get themselves back to civilization, otherwise probably shouldn't have left that trail in the first place.

Interesting. What do you specifically mean by "less than hospitable" and, save from the fact that you might have signs posted, what if someone is lost? I own property in a couple of other states, nothing in the several hundred acres range, and there are actually geocaches placed on some of my property and I was never asked for permission, but I don't care. It's not hurting me. I actually find it amusing to read the logs of these geocaches. In so many words, told to get off and never come back. We've been robbed once(by turkey hunters), and the area has seen more than it's fair share of crime. It may be an unfair comparison, but I view geocachers(including me) very similarly as I view hunters, people who are notorious for pushing the envolope on how far they can go. If someone is walking our property, we automatically assume the worst because, well, that's the experience we've had with people(and haven't been wrong yet). Your second part is interesting, in this day and age, how could one be 'lost' wondering private property? If your car broke down on a country road, why would you leave the road and wander aimlessly in the woods? This is off topic though, my point is Groundspeak should focus on investing into educating reviewers on state laws in order to ensure geocaching lives a long life, and not ordinanced out of existence.

If you're going to be evil, you need to go all the way and have fun with it. Aside from that, though, the big idea for Groundspeak is to think of positive features to add that would encourage basic members to purchase premium memberships. From the conversations I've had and heard, they're quite against the idea of raising the premium member price. That's funny, back when I was a premium member Groundspeak sent me a survey that, among other things, asked if I would pay something like 35 dollars/year for premium membership.

I didn't say they were completely inept. Just think poorly focused and are greedy. Of course, for as much as Groudspeak makes, I believe all the mods on the forum are unpaid! This^^^ is well said, I touched on it earlier in this thread. Ultimately a cache is approved by a fellow member of the community of geocachers and not by a paid lackey. I understand that it would be impractical to pay any sort of wage for all the reviewers out there. but it adds to the whole topic of this thread. Poorly focused also, as in challenges and Waymarking?

Isn't that what these forums are for?

I find it more likely that Groundspeak has opted to place Google AdSense on specific pages as a revenue stream. I could be wrong (I was wrong once in 1988 and again in 2003, so I'm due). Have you looked at the specific pages I referenced? BTW, I get it in both IE and Firefox ^^^This nicely done

Not sure if we're talking about the same thing, but I have noticed ads that are "local" to me within just the past week or so. Obviously, this is done by IP address, and I've seen "local" ads directed at me on distant websites all over the internets for years, just not here until last week. No cleavage yet, but believe me, I'll be looking for that. Just saw one with major cleavage yesterday for the first time, maybe its been there before but I never noticed, definately wasn't expecting to see anything like that on geocaching.com

Agreed. Maybe they should be paid, or at least taught/given the resources to know the laws of the area they are reviewing. They can approve a dangerous cache on private land but they think is public. I'm not blaming the reviewer necessarily, I'm blaming Groundspeak for not educating them. It seems money is thrown in the wrong areas. I would hate to be the cacher who got caught on private property in the boonies trying to explain he's trying to find something placed by someone else and was approved by yet someone else who lived potentially hundreds of miles away, both of whom assured that the cache was on an easement that in reality doesn't exist. BTW, we own several hundred acres, with zero caches on any of it, and we are less than hospitable to tresspassers.

IMO the biggest reason I kind of feel it's all about the money is the lack of knowledge that reviewers seem to have. I have on numerous occasions had to direct reviewers on there lack of knowledge when it comes to public vs. private property and laws regarding things such as river rights and abandoned personal property on public land (all involving cache placement). It made me wonder what Groundspeak did with all that money, and was one of many reasons I quit paying for membership. I don't mind a decent profit, but it would be nice to see some money is being invested in things outside of site updates and useless games (i.e. challenges).

This ^^^ many thumbs up And as said if done correctly they can all be quality hides

Directly from my profile page:Premium Member only caches make NO sense! So stop placing them! Your cache is JUST as likely to get muggled if its PMO. Animals are JUST as likely to destroy it. The FIRST THING many cachers do after there first cache outing is sign up for premium membership, so experience and keeping the 'riff raff' away is a moot point. Why limit the amount of people who can find your cache?

Honestly I didn't, I sometimes have a hard time navigating through these forums since I do this exclusively on my almost-but-not-quite-smartphone, and didn't realize it was a frequently asked question. Thanks for the helpful answers though.

Interesting link thanks for sharing! Caches can be archived for so many reasons, many are still out there. It seems many in the beginning of the game would quit playing after a few weeks, after placing a few caches. Those caches soldiered on until one or two people dnf'd it and the reviewer archives it or a 'needs maintanance' log catches up to it. Many are still out there, however, just a matter of finding them.

I checked on some of the GC codes before GC138 they are close to being in order, with older caches having smaller numbers. There were a few exceptions however, but its safe to say GC138 is in the first 140 caches placed. Oddly, several GC codes indicate the caches were never published O.o Thanks for the above answer also!

How are GC codes assigned? Is there some sort of order as to how they were assigned. I looked up Mingo and it is GC30 or something, not GC7 as would be expected, but older caches do seem to have fewer numbers and letters. There is a reason I ask this. I search for archived caches on occasion, and will be searching for I believe it is GC136 (Greensfelder_1) tomorrow. It may be GC138 i don't remember exactly. Will I be searching for the 136th cache placed? Before anyone says it's definitely not there, I found GC15B a few weeks ago, and it hadn't been found for over ten years. Last summer I found so close, yet so far by spinner and it hadn't been found for over nine years, so it's completely possible. Thanks!

got it to work! thanks for all the help. it was the .gpx .loc file confusion

Ha! wow, can't believe i spelled it like that! Thanks all for the help, i'll report in tomorrow whether just dragging it or using the .gpx file worked.

So me and teaFREAK13 are trying to make a new pocket queery to have all the new caches that have been published in our area recently, and delete the archived ones. For some reason, we can get the cache name and waypoints, but not the description, terrain/difficulty, or the hint. The first time we did it we got all the information, so I'm wondering what I'm doing wrong. We use a Garmin oregon 450t and easygps to download them. The only thing I can think of is that we were using the .loc format. I'm generating another pocket queery using the .gpx format, hopefully that will fix it. Any other suggestions?

I think the point of preludes arguement is that it seems to be a double standard. Obviously there is a difference between hunting and geocaching, but both may involve climbing a tree. The tree in question(I'm the other climber, and the one in the picture in case your wondering) to me seems to be in a perfect location for this cache. Its secluded, yet in the middle of a town. I also realize it is the city that shot this down(no pun intended) not the state, but how many kids have climbed this tree without anyone knowing? You know what your getting into when attempt this kind of stuff.

While caching in a local park, we stumbled upon a fantastic old rock shed that would have been perfect for a cache. Unfortunately, a tupperware cache was about five hundred feet away, up a hill, sitting in a stump, no relation to the old rock shed. To me the tupperware cache was just another cache in the woods. Nothing interesting was around it, it was easy to find, no good swag, no puzzles to solve, just a numbers cache. I would much rather see a micro placed on or near the shed than the tupperware container placed in the middle of the woods.