B+L

It's about 7 or so miles up Forest Road 42. Right just past the blue bridge on the MLH. You need a NW Forest Pass and if I remember correctly, the sign saying pass required past this point is down the road quite a ways.

Baggies get no respect. They should have dropped a film can.

that isn't it It's on the way to one of the over 1000 places given names by AH Sylvester. That should help narrow it down a little bit.

There's still some snow now, but if it warms up at all it should return to a state of melting rapidly. The road sounds like it's becoming a problem for regular vehicles. Here's a recent trip report. Check out those views.

Significant, or vocal and unrelenting? Easing the reviewer's pain is the most likely motivation for eliminating the "don't go cache crazy and hide a cache every 600 feet just because you can" guideline. Removing that clause certainly did nothing to ease the reviewer's pain. Yeah it was subjective and a bit of a pain to enforce. But imagine working three or four hours on Sunday night to process the weekend queue and going to bed happy that it's all taken care of. Then waking up the next morning to find a 500 cache power trail waiting for you. THAT's pain. That it backfired doesn't mean it wasn't the motivation, or a least a part of it. If the reviewers are getting overrun, throwing more volunteers into the trenches is always an option, well that, and giving them better tools. The pain I was referring to is not the pain enforcing something so vague, but the hostile reaction some people have when they think they've been the victim of selective enforcement. Anyway, it does seem like a pretty short-sighted thing to do, unless the goal is simply to grow the numbers in the short term.

You left out a few things. The sequence of events which was the catalyst. The constant debating over what is a cache. The arguements with reviewers. The geocides. The sneaker in the woods. The attempt to build Waymarking as a replacement. The smiley debate about keeping Waymarking separated from Geocaching. The subsequent creation of Challenges. The dead hooker in Reno.. I's all been covered in this thread already. The myth of virtuals has become more important than what actually happened.

To a degree what you are saying is correct, but I believe it's an oversimplification to say that TPTB did away with virtual caches because they didn't like 'em and decided they weren't really caches. ... You may want to look at the sequence of events as evidence that Jeremy hates virtuals. I prefer to see it as an attempt to support both the users who want to share locations without hiding physical caches and the users who believe that the core of geocaching is to find hidden containers. The reviewers detested them. Jeremy said he doesn't know what one is. I'm not aware that he ever said he hated them. In fact, he has said he does not: That seems to support my conclusion, does it not? If that's not convincing enough for you, try this:

if we boil this down, we end up with this: If you'd turn down the word faucet for second and actually read what I've said in this thread, (maybe) you wouldn't be telling me what *I* need to do to fix virtuals. I'm not interested.

It will never happen. I'm not that lucky. They don't have a special icon, so there's no point.

Significant, or vocal and unrelenting? Easing the reviewer's pain is the most likely motivation for eliminating the "don't go cache crazy and hide a cache every 600 feet just because you can" guideline. ditto

Groundspeak was concerned that the virtual caches were no longer being reserved for where a physical cache truly couldn't be place and they knew by then that no guideline could be enforced based on that restriction. The guidelines you see do treat virtual caches differently than physical caches, and reason for them was to have some constraint on the number of virtuals published to preserve the core idea of geocaching as hunting a physical caches. Thanks for all that, but I really don't need any help interpreting the old guidelines. Plus, you are starting to repeat yourself. It's a sure sign that the zombie stallion will be bursting out of the ground at any second, still angry about the flogging it got the last time it appeared. Do you remember the old "Survey Says" forum topic? The place where people could discuss caches the approvers were not sure about? Sadly, it does not seem to be archived anywhere, but some of it can still be dredged up. The unfortunate combination of asking leading poll questions and poor reading comprehension by some of the participants limited the usefulness of the topic. It is more interesting for how low the traffic was. And this: The rationalization for the no precedence rule. Virtuals don't get approved anymore for because a few people decided virtuals weren't geocaches and that was that. Geocaching was barely two months old and the already the attitudes had started.

Yes, virtuals and locationless caches created more guideline headaches than traditionals, which is why they took up 2/3 of the page. Perhaps, but that was not the reason I brought it up. The 0.1 mile proximity restriction only applied to virtuals and the much referenced "wow factor" is so vague that it is incomprehensible, but since virtuals are "blocking" regular caches, the intention is obvious. It's quite clear from reading the old forum posts that the reviewers are to blame for some of the flack they were getting. There is some serious attitude being dished out in that topic I linked.

There you go with the knickers again. I'm not going to agree about who was doing the complaining. There was some of what you insist on calling puritanism, but you can't simply ignore the motivation behind it. This whole game is based on the honor system and I'd like to think that most people are honest enough to play it straight. I really don't care about find counts, ours or anyone else's, but I do care about the integrity of the game. Who wants to be involved in a game where casual cheating is the norm? But what really bothers me is the culture that defends and enables the people who are seemingly incapable of playing a such a simple game without claiming they found something they didn't find, or pretending they never looked for something when they couldn't find it. If there were any actual Puritans playing this game, their logs would be honest. But none of that has anything to do with this topic. It's not about what constitues a find. Then again, when you have an axe to grind, every thread is a potential grindstone.

You should have a pretty clear idea of what I was referring to by now.

Sounds like a nice story to scare the kids with. It is not at all unusual for a fringe, poorly understood activity to get banned until various groups can form to advocate on its behalf. See mountain biking for an example. Today it's just as easy to say traditional caches are slowly being used as a grand excuse to ban physical geocaches in some places. Scapegoating virtuals is easy, but it completely ignores the antipathy and ill will caused by rubbishy, badly placed, poorly though out traditionals, hidden without the permission or knowledge of land managers.

Yes. We complained, and complained loudly. And GS actually listened and made changes to the challenges right away. Ha! Were you on the user voice boards ever? about the Aug 18th time? We complained, dramatically so. It.wasn't.a.pretty.sight. No one said no one complained, however, the tiny number of people participating on uservoice, these forums, etc, is a vanishingly small percentage of geocachers and is not even remotely close to "most".

How do challenges present a threat to the big number people? I can't imagine them being anymore of a threat than whymarking, they are basically the same thing. The perceived threat ended when challenges were removed from the finds count. So if they weren't what would prevent the big number guys from doing challenges and keep their numbers up? Maybe the problem with challenges most see them as lame and don't want them included in the count? The forums for challenges are basically dead, perhaps that is an indication. Most, big and small number folks, complained and Groundspeak responded. No need for dramatics. Most people complained? Most people didn't care. Where are these dramatics you speak of? So what prevented the big number guys from doing challenges to keep their numbers? nothing that I can see. So your premises that it was the big number guys felt threatened by challenges seems a bit weak to me. Except they were apparently more concerned about other people's numbers, not their own, otherwise they would have been content to just ignore challenges.

How do challenges present a threat to the big number people? I can't imagine them being anymore of a threat than whymarking, they are basically the same thing. The perceived threat ended when challenges were removed from the finds count. So if they weren't what would prevent the big number guys from doing challenges and keep their numbers up? Maybe the problem with challenges most see them as lame and don't want them included in the count? The forums for challenges are basically dead, perhaps that is an indication. Most, big and small number folks, complained and Groundspeak responded. No need for dramatics. Most people complained? Most people didn't care. Where are these dramatics you speak of?

How do challenges present a threat to the big number people? I can't imagine them being anymore of a threat than whymarking, they are basically the same thing. The perceived threat ended when challenges were removed from the finds count.

Were you a reviewer when the site accepted virtual cache submissions? I was. As a statement of fact, virtuals were the single biggest source of aggravation, flames, insults and threats out of any activity that's been part of my volunteer work. The day that Groundspeak asks me to start reviewing virtual caches again is my last day as a volunteer for them. They know this, so systems like Waymarking and Challenges have been designed around that fact of life. For an illustration of how community-based voting works here, look at the first week of Challenges, when they counted as geocaching finds. Users were shooting down Challenges just for sport. I'm sure you are a valued and cherished contributor, but allocating so many resources to keep one volunteer happy is a strange way to run a business. Community based voting? That was anarchy. The botched Challenges launch was a good example of what happens when you completely misread your customers. It was not really surprising when the initial revulsion immediately turned hostile. It's also not surprising that a lot of the big numbers people saw challenges as a threat. By no means are my views on reviewing virtual cache submissions a minority or singular view. They're shared by many (if not most or all) veteran reviewers, including those who participated in the GWX Reviewer Panel. Thanks for the chuckle, though. Glad to help. Thank you for confirming that the veteran reviewers have such an outsized influence on the shape of the game.

They must have thought D in GCD stood for Disneyland. On the other hand, they managed to stay quite dry considering their ordeal.

Were you a reviewer when the site accepted virtual cache submissions? I was. As a statement of fact, virtuals were the single biggest source of aggravation, flames, insults and threats out of any activity that's been part of my volunteer work. The day that Groundspeak asks me to start reviewing virtual caches again is my last day as a volunteer for them. They know this, so systems like Waymarking and Challenges have been designed around that fact of life. For an illustration of how community-based voting works here, look at the first week of Challenges, when they counted as geocaching finds. Users were shooting down Challenges just for sport. I'm sure you are a valued and cherished contributor, but allocating so many resources to keep one volunteer happy is a strange way to run a business. Community based voting? That was anarchy. The botched Challenges launch was a good example of what happens when you completely misread your customers. It was not really surprising when the initial revulsion immediately turned hostile. It's also not surprising that a lot of the big numbers people saw challenges as a threat.

Good question. Let me snip this out to address it. The "wow factor" was implemented in response to the use of virtuals by lazy cache owners to list caches. They would find the most mundane items to list fence posts, manhole covers, a sneaker in the woods, rotting animal carcasses, a nail in a tree, it got to the point of absurdity. The introduction of the "wow factor" was an answer to the absurdity. That didn't work (the reason has been documented in this thread) so TPTB decided that geocaching should be about geocaches. That meant that locations were not geocaches and that is the end of the story today. Yes, what you are saying agrees with everything I've seen, but it still does not explain why the wow factor was only for virtuals. It's not like there's never been a dearth of mundane and even absurd regular caches. if there was a concern that there were too many lame virtual caches, a better solution would have been to make it easier for people to find the types of caches they like, not to make some sort of arbitrary distinction about what a cache is, disallowing one type but then doing nothing while rampant lameness overwhelms the other types. Perusing the forum archives I see a lot of posts in support of virtuals and very few complaining about them (excluding the people who merely repeat ad infinitum what they think Groundspeak wants). If the lame virtuals were really so mundane and absurd then people would have ignored them until they went away. Or maybe not. They should have at least been given a chance to choose them or not, just like they are with film cans tossed out car windows every 528 feet. Groundspeak's motto is "The language of Location". Perhaps that's why they wandered off-script and forgot they shouldn't add challenges to geocaching.com

I will agree that the reason for the "Wow" factor is not the one that is officially given. The official reason was "Since the reward for a virtual cache is the location, the location should "WOW" the prospective finder. " This clearly is a narrow-minded, prejudice, provincial attitude. Perhaps the reward for a physical cache is finding the cache, but certainly there was reward for visiting the location as well. And who is to say that reward for the virtual cache wasn't finding the the answer to the verification question or even getting that photo of the target with your GPS included to prove you were there. I personally believe the reason for the wow requirement was to control the number of virtual caches. For those for whom the core of geocaching is finding that hidden container, uncontrolled virtuals are a real threat. There is no reason for someone to get permission, prepare a container, fill it with swag, hide it, and maintain it; when they can simply post coordinates, ask people to post a picture or to count the number of vowels on a sign and call it a virtual cache. Were some virtuals fun and entertaining? Sure. And the "wow" requirement ensured that the ones that did get published were more likely to be that. But look at Waymarking and challenges and you will get an idea that without a "wow" guideline they would be in the same locations that now have lamppost hides and power trails. You can moan all you want that physical caches are placed in less than "wow" locations, but the idea is to allow each hider to decide what is worthy of a cache - and not be dictated by narrow-minded, prejudiced, provincial Groundspeak lackey or volunteer reviewers. For some people simply having a cache to find is reason enough to bring to a place. Wouldn't that apply to containerless locations as well? The attitude of Groundspeak was that finding a cache was at the core of geocaching. This was pretty much what Dave found out when he proposed Wonderts. People didn't care that it was Dave Ulmer, the inventor of geocaching, suggesting that some locations might be interesting enough to be a reward just to visit and that a physical cache wasn't necessary. The let him know that they wanted geocaching to be about finding containers. So he pretty much went elsewhere. In the meantime, it was discovered that there were some places you couldn't get permission to hide a cache, or where leaving a container would be inappropriate. As an experiment, Groundspeak created a new cache type that didn't have a container, to allow people to go geocaching in these areas. And while this experiment was successful in meeting this goal it came at a cost of threatening the core idea of geocaching - in part because these virtual caches were too easy to place. In my opinion "Wow" was meant to control the number of virtual caches. When enforcement of "wow" proved to be too big a burden on the reviewers, and once Waymarking existed to provide a way to share locations without hiding geocaches, virtual caches on geocahing.com were grandfathered. At long last we are getting close to something we can agree on. However, I will note that when Dave Ulmer spoke of leaving, geocaching was two months old. It's not like there was an active geocaching community at that point. The "people" you are referring to above, was a guy with a website.

Impugning other people's motives always seems like such a good fallback position. Since this topic has come up a jillion times already, why not just let the new kids hash it out? Maybe someone will actually come up with a good idea. Instead it's always the same old pile-on and you drive out the all the people who might actually have something to say that is worth listening to. But then again, if your goal is to preserve the status quo, shouting dissenters down is an age-old recipe for success.