narcissa

No. Caches are exposed to unlimited amounts of moisture every time the cache is opened and exposed to water vapour in the air. Also, most caches are not airtight. The silica is quickly saturated. After a while the packets can get soggy and worn out. Then they tear open and make a mess inside the cache.

Yes, if you used a cache page to to do that, it probably would be.

Philosophically, I agree that geocachers really ought to maintain their own caches, but that's not really relevant to the topic.

I think the only remotely feasible option would be an annual or seasonal subscription, with the hope of building a client base that would make it worthwhile. It would make the most sense to have a schedule of days devoted to maintenance runs, say three days a month to start. Guarantee something like four visits a year for routine check and maintenance, and then put all of your client caches on your watch list and add them to the schedule when things come. You would need to also guarantee that NM logs and other issues get dealt with in a specific time frame.

I am not sure what is unclear. The service that is proposed in this thread seems to be aimed at other geocachers. The services that I have seen, that failed, placed caches on behalf of small businesses, not other geocachers. Perhaps that is a small distinction to you, but I felt it was worth noting.

There have been some attempts at businesses that place and maintain caches on behalf of others, but now that I think about it they have all been in conjunction with outside businesses and organizations. It just never seems to take off. I can think of three off the top of my head. There was one around here that sold subscriptions to small businesses all over the region. They just kind of disappeared one day, their website went dark, and the caches got archived. I recall another group trying to organize meetings for a similar venture. I think they were looking for other geocachers to get involved in placing and maintaining. Again I think they were trying to get small businesses and organizations to subscribe and it just wasn't feasible. And there's a small community a couple of hours away from here that tried to arrange some sort of non-profit geocaching project to boost local tourism and last time I looked, it wasn't doing very well either. The cache placement guidelines make it pretty much impossible to really link a business to a geocache, and most geocache visitors just grab the cache and keep moving. I don't think I have seen anyone with a business that attempted to sell maintenance to other geocachers. I don't think I have ever heard another geocacher earnestly express a need for such a service, either.

Unfortunately, any time I have seen someone running a cache placement or maintenance business, it's come to a bad end.

What opinion? The reviewer simply asked someone not to put posted coordinates in someone's yard.

I guess accepting that it's a one-off request from a reviewer regarding a particular cache doesn't provide much of a springboard for conspiracy theories and irrelevant rambling about the good old days.

Reviewers often point out specific things that are cause for concern with a particular cache listing. That doesn't mean there is a new secret rule or that Groundspeak is deliberately trying to ruin things out of malice. Moving posted coordinates out of someone's yard is a reasonable request.

I am not sure why your perception of our past interaction is supposed to be relevant as I don't really bother to differentiate between individual forum users. My main concern is the nag email, which, to me, is very problematic. The forum's insistence on denigrating those who take exception to it is not interesting or persuasive. There have always been forum users with silly ideas about the way people should user certain logs. Unfortunately, now, those silly ideas are being reinforced by Groundspeak's recent site changes. I have spent years trying to be patient with the TFTC people, the power trail people, and the number hound people, i the belief that there was value in letting the game expand and change. I could keep playing my way, which included the relatively benign practice of logging DNFs quite liberally. Now those logs are being used against others in a way that I find very upsetting. There is no getting around that for me. You forum people can be as dismissive and insulting as you like, but calling me names won't change my valid perception of the email. I see there is now a thread devoted to re-writing it, so surely my perception is not complete lunacy if some others are similarly dismayed by the email.

If that was true, then there wouldn't be endless threads discussing the false positive issue. The system only sees DNF and is incapable of determining context. I write DNFs largely for my own benefit as a record of unsuccessful attempts, and yet the forum assures me that I have no business posting DNFs unless I believe a cache is missing. That means that it is nearly impossible for me to qualify to log a DNF by the standards repeatedly underscored by other forum users, since I would never presume a cache to be missing just because I didn't find it. Since I don't want to cause hassle for cache owners by triggering the email, and since the forum assures me that I was using DNFs incorrectly anyway, I see no point in logging them. The new logging system also seems to be designed to discourage detail in logs in general, so I think I should take the hint.

Oh, I didn't even look at anything closely enough to see what I have. I shut down all the notifications and intend to thoroughly ignore it. I can tell if someone's comment is valuable by reading it myself.

There's that "legitimately" word again. I am not going to complicate things by trying to categorize my cache attempts as potentially relevant / legitimate or not. That's too much work and I won't get it right anyway. If DNFs are important for the content, then Groundspeak shouldn't treat them in a manner that makes the content irrelevant.

I see no majority or consensus of opinion here. On one hand I am being chided for changing my logging process to something that alleviates my personal distaste with the new system. On the other hand I am being chided for the way I logged DNFs to begin with. Since I'm going to be personally criticized either way, I may as well go with my gut instinct on this. I don't like the new system and I don't wish to contribute to it. I am not asking anyone else to change what they are doing, so this nonsense about me being any kind of warrior is completely needless. We are all just trying to make sense of things and keep up with the moving goalposts. I don't think everyone will land on the same conclusions and processes. There is no need to insult people who are just trying to do their best.

This isn't relevant to me. I don't know when or if I have triggered the email and it isn't my place to counsel other geocachers to ignore missives from Groundspeak. Social justice warrior? There is no need for this nasty, political name-calling in a thread about geocaching. I am quite certain the world won't stop turning just because my DNFs are going away. I am assured by several others in the forum that I had no business writing DNFs at all anyway because they are only to be used when a cache is missing.

The email isn't harmless if it causes undo alarm or distress in other geocachers. Most geocachers don't read the forums and the email is not worded in a manner that suggests it can or should be taken lightly, even when it is sent in error. Since the system now reduces my DNFs to DNF = bad, I just don't feel comfortable with an action that might trigger that email. I can track my own DNFs. The potentially useful information in them may, unfortunately, be a loss to some other geocachers (though many voices in this thread have indicated that it's wrong to post useful, yet non-dire DNFs anyway). For me, weighing these consequences, the thought of triggering these emails for other geocachers makes me too uncomfortable and I see nothing to indicate that Groundspeak cares about false positives.

The email doesn't address a major issue of concern that people keep bringing up, which is the issue of so-called false positives where the context of a DNF is being totally ignored by the new system. It just underscores this false notion that DNF = problem. Since what I have to say in a DNF is clearly unimportant, why bother logging them?

Did you apply any tests to see if the difference is statistically significant?

It is nice that you are confident about that, but I am not and that's why I am changing my logging process.

It's fine visually, but I was hoping to see more useful features added. The notifications are a nuisance and I have no interest in the reputation system.

Already did this. I still receive notifications for quotes and the reputation thing. It's quite distracting.

I would like an option to entirely disable all notifications of any kind. I have shut them down as much as I can but I am still receiving intrusive messages about being quoted and this repuration system that I have no interest in. Does anyone know if the new software offers better protection in terms of blocking problem users? Ignoring low quality commenters isn't very useful when they can still see my comments.

Did someone at Groundspeak tell you that it's okay to ignore it? I am just trying to connect the dots here, since several forum users have indicated that ignoring it is an option. If an email came my way, i'd read it then look at all the facts i had at hand. I'd check the logs to make sure i didn't miss anything, note the difficulty of the cache, and think about how it was hidden. With the info i had, i'd make a decision as to whether any action was required at the time. If i had a good inkling the cache was fine, then ignoring the email would be the option i would use. If something else came up later, maybe a reviewer post to the cache page, then i would look into it further. Pretty much the way things work now... That's very nice, but I still can't find where a regular, non-forum reading geocacher could verify with TPTB that it's okay to just ignore the email. I understand that approximately half of the forum mob thinks that the email is no big deal and that it can be ignored, but some geocachers are bothered by it and others will be bothered by it in the future. Frankly, I am not convinced that ignoring it doesn't have consequences even if it is the result of a false positive. Now it's just dandy to go around denigrating others for finding the nag email kind of rude and confusing, but that likely won't stop some people from perceiving it that way some of the time. Since I happen to find the email pretty bothersome (in theory, though my personal cache ownership is minimal), I think my best course of action is to avoid participating in the actions that trigger it, i.e. DNFs. I wouldn't want to receive it and I don't want to inflict it on others. Since the forum assures me that my DNFs are stupid anyway, I am not really certain as to why the forum is now shouting at me for not logging them anymore.

Did someone at Groundspeak tell you that it's okay to ignore it? I am just trying to connect the dots here, since several forum users have indicated that ignoring it is an option.