B+L
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Posts posted by B+L
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Baggies get no respect. They should have dropped a film can.
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this cache by chance?
http://www.geocachin...a8-b62a26dadb5d
Oh darn, now I see the FTF reference. No FTF opportunities right there. Ah well.
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.
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I have two areas in mind for you all. The one I would like to recommend is "Wedge Mountain" and "Another Wedgie" This hike is only about a 3 mile round trip hike but it is quite steep and the path is sketchy in places. At the of Wedge Mt. you look down on a spectacular view into the Enchantments snow lakes area. But it just snowed up there a couple of nights ago and I don't know if it will be snow free in a week and a half. The other area is not so steep but will be close to seven miles or more depending on how many caches you want to go for. This is in the Twin Peaks area of Wenatchee. First cache will be "Fairest View" GC294H5 and seven or more caches along the way. (depending on your energy) Take your pick.
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.
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Groundspeak has realized that a significant number of geocachers are number-oriented, and they want to accrue the maximum number of smilies in the minimum time.
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.
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Virtuals don't get approved anymore for because a few people decided virtuals weren't geocaches and that was that.
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.
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Virtuals don't get approved anymore for because a few people decided virtuals weren't geocaches and that was that.
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.
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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:
And I'm not a virtual cache hater. I just don't think they ever fit within the concept of a "cache."
That seems to support my conclusion, does it not?
If that's not convincing enough for you, try this:
We're making a firm stand now that a virtual cache is not a cache because it isn't.
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Why are you so surprised that these "attitudes" go back to the start of geocaching. Why would you be surprised that Dave Ulmer's wondert idea got a thumbs down.
It should be pretty obvious to anyone that there would be some demand for a way to share "wonderts" without the need to place or maintain a geocache. And I believe that there is a significant number of people who would prefer to use their GPS to go to interesting location where there is no hidden tupperware to find. The question is whether this noble activity belongs on a geocaching website or is better served by a different mechanism. The only reasons I see for having these two disparate activities combined are 1) to count visits to wonderts as finds in your imaginary geocaching score and 2) to be able to load both onto a GPS (or smartphone) using a single query.
Originally, I believe, Geocaching.com accepted virtuals because people wanted to place geocaches in area where it would be impractical to hide or maintain a geocache. Groundspeak thought that having some kind of thing they called a virtual cache would allow this and would help spread the adoption of geocaching. IMO, it was never meant to open Geoaching.com to the wonderful activity of sharing interesting location without placing caches. But it proved difficult to define the line between something meant as s substitute for a physical geocache and a wondert.
Groundspeak is happy to support wonderts and does so at www.wonderts.com. Clearly this doesn't help those who want to the opportunity to have a geocache substitute at a location where it's impractical to hide or maintain a geocache. But until you can give a good definition as to where to draw the line, don't expects wonderts to make a comeback at Geocaching.com.
if we boil this down, we end up with this:
Virtuals don't get approved anymore for because a few people decided virtuals weren't geocaches and that was that.
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.
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You know, I just had this flash of the future, so I'm going to start my campaign now:
BRING BACK MICROS
It will never happen. I'm not that lucky.
They don't have a special icon, so there's no point.
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Groundspeak has realized that a significant number of geocachers are number-oriented, and they want to accrue the maximum number of smilies in the minimum time.
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.
Time will tell if this was a good decision in the long run, but I have my doubts.
ditto
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In the guidelines you post we see already see the "wow" requirement:
A virtual cache must be novel, of interest to other players, and have a special historic, community or geocaching quality that sets it apart from everyday subjects. Items that would be in a coffee table book are good examples. A flagpole, manhole cover, tree, etc., are poor examples (with a possible exception: A flagpole at a memorial or a particularly novel flagpole would be ok, or an especially unique tree would count). Conversely, a scavenger hunt posted as a virtual cache would not be ok. If you don't know what is appropriate, post a question to the forums first.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:
What I get from the folks who place these "on the fence" caches is either a pointer to some kind of precedent (i.e. This is the same as xx posted in the past, why can't I?) or some explanation on how it should be posted regardless of what I think. So in these cases, I say show it to the masses and let them decide. We're not in a courtroom and each cache is not "law," so precedence does not exist.
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.
I will publish any real stash, period.. A physical stash.. One that actually exists..
Geocaching was barely two months old and the already the attitudes had started.
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Prior to considering a virtual cache, you must have given consideration to the question "why a regular geocache – perhaps a micro or only a log book - couldn't be placed there?" If there is a good answer, then it may be a valid virtual cache opportunity. Also, consider making the location a step in a multi-stage cache, with the physical cache placed in an area that is appropriate.
There have been virtual caches approved in the past on the basis that "a physical cache could not be appropriately maintained" at the location, often by a user who is traveling through the area. This essentially "blocks" the area for later placement of a physical cache. Physical caches have priority, so virtual caches of this nature will usually not be approved.
Virtual caches should be geographically dispersed. New postings which are within 0.1 mile of an existing cache will generally not be approved, unless the poster provides a compelling rationale. Posting a virtual cache at every animal cage in a zoo is an example of something that will not be approved.
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.
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It was not the numbers cachers who complained about challenges counting as finds, but rather the puritans who felt that a challenge was too easy to "cheat" at. With no owner to delete bogus finds, the "cheaters" were certain to log challenges complete that they never completed. And for many challenges the only "verification" was the word of the cacher in the the log that they had completed the challenge.
Perhaps you are a unique individual who gets their knickers in a twist when someone hasn't signed the log in a physical cache but who doesn't care if the honor system is used to determine if a challenge is completed or a virtual cache was found.
Of course if you are now coming around to agreeing that the arguing over find counts and what should or should not count as find is a silly way to decide which caches are worthwhile or not then I salute you.
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.
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how is this site negative towards everyone else?
You should have a pretty clear idea of what I was referring to by now.
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Not sure if its been brought up (enough) but...
Virtuals (when allowed) were slowly being used as a grand excuse to ban physical Geocaches. i know this for certain as I watched it happen and then get reversed when virtuals were no longer accepted.
No thanks - I don't miss them.
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.
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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.
Yes. We complained, and complained loudly. And GS actually listened and made changes to the challenges right away.
Most people complained? Most people didn't care. Where are these dramatics you speak of?
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".
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It's also not surprising that a lot of the big numbers people saw challenges as a threat.
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.
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It's also not surprising that a lot of the big numbers people saw challenges as a threat.
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?
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It's also not surprising that a lot of the big numbers people saw challenges as a threat.
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.
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The arguments about the flack the reviewers got - INVALID - Applies to all types. - Simple answer, let the members decide, give virtuals a vote system, if a virt drops below say a -2, archive it. (write a macro to do it, no reviewer to bitch at then)
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.
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They must have thought D in GCD stood for Disneyland. On the other hand, they managed to stay quite dry considering their ordeal.
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The arguments about the flack the reviewers got - INVALID - Applies to all types. - Simple answer, let the members decide, give virtuals a vote system, if a virt drops below say a -2, archive it. (write a macro to do it, no reviewer to bitch at then)
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.
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That doesn't even make sense, especially when you are repeating almost verbatim what CathyH said earlier in the thread. The question remains: why the wow factor only for virtuals?
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
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That doesn't even make sense, especially when you are repeating almost verbatim what CathyH said earlier in the thread. The question remains: why the wow factor only for virtuals?
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.
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But its not good enough, as a genuine virtual ghost icon is needed.
Why??
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.
Were you on the user voice boards ever? about the Aug 18th time? We complained, dramatically so.
Mt Pilchuk - Purgatory
in Northwest
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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.