This decision to remove benchmarking is a major disappointment to the Druids and obviously, many others. In my opinion, those that benchmark with some frequency are among the most dedicated geocachers. I think the reason there is a relatively low percentage of geocachers that actively pursue benchmarking is the special effort involved. Basically, as any benchmarker knows, the coordinates given for benchmarks (other than landmarks) are very inaccurate. This requires studying the Documented History in detail then using GoogleEarth and Street View to come up with accurate coordinates. And then posting these coordinates in your find logs so that everyone doesn't have to make this major effort for each benchmark. The Druids joined geocaching in 2005 but only started active benchmarking in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. And as noted elsewhere, there are several puzzle caches and challenges that are benchmarking related which closely ties benchmarking and geocaching together. Assuming Groundspeak doesn't change their mind about this, the Druids (and others that I have spoken or written to) would hope to complete challenges such as the Jack Rabbit Trail challenge to find 500 benchmarks so hopefully the cutoff date when benchmarking can no longer be undertaken associated with geocaching is out there a ways and not suddenly imposed on benchmarking geocachers. Like others, the Druids sincerely hope and believe that benchmarking should continue on indefinitely in the future and not be shut down as is currently planned.
Release Notes (Website: Benchmarking retirement) - October 17, 2022
in Geocaching HQ communications
Posted
This decision to remove benchmarking is a major disappointment to the Druids and obviously, many others. In my opinion, those that benchmark with some frequency are among the most dedicated geocachers. I think the reason there is a relatively low percentage of geocachers that actively pursue benchmarking is the special effort involved. Basically, as any benchmarker knows, the coordinates given for benchmarks (other than landmarks) are very inaccurate. This requires studying the Documented History in detail then using GoogleEarth and Street View to come up with accurate coordinates. And then posting these coordinates in your find logs so that everyone doesn't have to make this major effort for each benchmark. The Druids joined geocaching in 2005 but only started active benchmarking in 2020 at the start of the pandemic. And as noted elsewhere, there are several puzzle caches and challenges that are benchmarking related which closely ties benchmarking and geocaching together. Assuming Groundspeak doesn't change their mind about this, the Druids (and others that I have spoken or written to) would hope to complete challenges such as the Jack Rabbit Trail challenge to find 500 benchmarks so hopefully the cutoff date when benchmarking can no longer be undertaken associated with geocaching is out there a ways and not suddenly imposed on benchmarking geocachers. Like others, the Druids sincerely hope and believe that benchmarking should continue on indefinitely in the future and not be shut down as is currently planned.