B+L

You have that backwards. People aren't blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. Groundspeak is summarizing what it is hearing from the community. The "wow factor" was imposed, IMO, because at the time virtual caches were starting to get out of control. COs were listing roting animals, old shoes and other things that would normally be CITOed. Geocachers companied about those items being listed on a website that was supposed to be for the listing of geocaches. Groundspeak's initial action was to make a "wow factor" requirement. 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? Yes except the long-neglected Waymarking ghetto is painful to use and the search function is nearly useless. Waymarking is not a solution, it is a punt. So there you have it. Virtuals are not geocaches. Why is that so hard for people to admit? That attitude is the reason the "wow factor" was imposed on them in the first place and also the reason they can't be listed any longer. Plus, it's much easier to remove something than it is to develop better search and filtering tools. BTW, those other listing service all allow virtuals.

I guess anyone can post some anonymous quotes and attribute them to whom ever they like. I'm sure that you can find quotes from Jeremy you can take out of context and interpret them as saying he has disdain for virtuals. I'll ignore the hypocrisy of that statement. I guess anyone could search using the those quotes and find their source, but that would mean it wouldn't be so easy to ignore what they are saying. Yes, the original intent was to convert all virtuals to waymarks and move them to Waymarking.com. That was not a popular idea, to put it mildly. Everyone seems to have their own idea about what signing a logbook means, but that has not resulted in the elimination of logbooks. I've given up any hope that someone was going to explain why a "wow factor" was imposed on virtual caches, but not on regular caches. What I really want is for people to think about what they are saying instead of blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. I haven't even been advocating in favor of the return of virtuals, but against all the pretenses, contradictions, misinformation, fear and hype surrounding them. This thread is full of posts from people who either don't like virtuals, or worry that they would proliferate and overwhelm "real" caches. To the first I say, too bad. To the second, I say if Groundspeak provided us with better tools, it wouldn't even be an issue. We could filter out out the things we don't enjoy, puzzles, LPCs, power trails, virtuals, Earthcaches, whatever. Has anyone ever tried to ignore a power trail? it can be done using third party tools (and some sql), but that's not why we pay Groundspeak. But the real crux of the matter is found in the standard fallback line for virtuals: "they only want the smiley". Pretty funny when you think about it. The uproar that started the second challenges were rolled out was over them beng counted just like "real" caches. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? To quote Jeremy again: "... [it's] resistance to change" (as well as elitism). Signing up for some website before someone else does not bestow any special insights, but people here sure do like to play that card as if it does. The entire history of geocaching is available online. And it's searchable.

I'm not sure that Jeremy has ever indicated that virtuals are inferior to physical geocache. I quoted him earlier. His posts on the topic are still available. It's not like he ever hid his thoughts on the subject. It would be much more useful to actually read what he's said rather than pontificating endlessly about what you think he might have said. It is disingenuous to rephrase something so that you can fashion a strawman out of it. It is also disingenuous to ignore or dismiss anything that does not fit into your existing narrative. Go ahead, cling to the non-sensical belief that adding a "wow factor" requirement was an improvement. The anonymous quotes I posted earlier were written by Jeremy and a long-time reviewer. The disdain they are expressing for virtuals is not inferred. Dave Ulmer might not be God, but he did invent this game and it would be a lot more interesting today if it had been allowed to stay truer to his vision for it.

Too late. His amateur status was revoked when he received compensation from the frog.

Now, what about that coin promotion attempted to take something away from another listing site? Secondly, to use your own words how is this site negative towards everyone else? If you view promotions as a zero sum game, then I guess you could say they were attempting to take something away. When I say site, I mean it loosely, as in the forums, the facebook and twitter feeds of certain high profile individuals, comments made my moderators, etc, etc. There has been a lot of negativity directed at that other site, as well as the other would be competitors, but that does not seem to bother you like it did when the other sites turned negative. Having said that, the biggest mistake that other site made was allowing it to become a haven for people who've been eighty-sixed from geocaching.com, as well as the union hall for the Axe Grinders, Shoulder Chippers, Sock Puppeteers and Malcontents, Local 01000111010000110100001001010101010011010100111101010101010101000000110100001010.

Other than fanboyism, Wow. I would never have thought anyone would call me a fanboy. My teeth must be getting dull. if you are a fanboy, you'd be the last one to know about it But i wasn't singling you out anyway. Well, except there is this: Was it cheesy to "bribe" people in exchange for a testimonial? I'd say no, not unless they called it an unsolicited testimonial. Groundspeak used to bundle a free month of premium membership with some GPS models (maybe they still do), but I neither recall anyone thinking it was cheesy or underhanded of them to do so, nor do I remember anyone calling it an act of desperation. BTW, why is it OK for this site to be negative towards everyone else, but it's apparently a problem for you if other sites turn negative towards Groundspeak?

Other than fanboyism, I'm not sure why offering incentives would be perceived as problem, or why anyone would object to a company pushing their own products on one of their own web properties. If they really want to offer a good incentive, how about a nice discount for early adopters of their beta quality handhelds?

Aren't they? Better move them over to Waymarking before anyone notices.

Cathy did bring that up (managers banning physical caches, and asking for virts) and so did B+L when he resurrected the discussion on her response. I've always said that issue has merit. I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching. Narrow-mindedness, bigotry and provincialism won the day.

I'm not so sure you can do that under the current guidelines for challenge caches. You would not be allowed to say some of The Jester's previous finds don't count because he was not participating in the old challenge, but those same caches could count for people who were participating. The qualifying caches have to be available to everyone and can't be restricted by date, or at least that's the way I read it. I guess we'll find out when you get the challenge published.

It would still be another couple of months before geocaching.com even existed, but within eight weeks of hiding the first cache, Dave Ulmer had already had it with all the squabbling about what a true geocache was. I think he got it exactly right. It's really sad, maybe even tragic, that mediocre web development was able to stifle his vision.

Ironic then that Dave Ulmer was already having second thoughts about placing physical containers only 5 weeks after placing the first one.

If Groundspeak is "just a listing service", shouldn't they avoid imposing their own standards of taste and just publish the caches as submitted? Missing caches don't actually exist either, but that doesn't stop people from logging finds on them. Some people think that's nuts.

The complete history is available to anyone willing to read through the forum archives. Someone's start date is not a very reliable indicator of their understanding of the issues. Groundspeak stopped publishing virtuals due to quality control issues, yet they continue to publish physical geocaches without any such concerns. Why is that? The obvious solution would have been to go back to publishing virtuals using the same standards applied to physical caches, yet that has never even been a consideration. As has been pointed out in these forums many times, the decision to halt the publication of virtuals was a policy decision. The stated reasoning given for that decision has always seemed pretty dubious: I suspect that the actual reasons for doing away with virtuals are hinted at here: And here: And finally, the nail in the coffin: Virtuals were not killed by lameness, they were killed by contempt (and possibly structural issues with the web site).

Usually. But here's two counter-examples: the Off-Topic forum and Google Maps. Here's another: when the Hiking forum got canned, one person complained loudly about it and it was reinstated, even though hiking has about as much to do with geocaching as automobiles do (less actually). Since it worked once before, maybe they think they can achieve a similar result with virtuals.

Not to pick on you Mr. Namboku, but you have touched upon something bothersome that's ingrained into the forum culture here: a lot of time and energy is expended trying to divine the motives for someone's post, rather than just addressing the topic directly. Similarly, a lot of words get written trying to explain the rationale behind the various guidelines, but no one seems to spend much time on the actual meaning of those guidelines. flyfshrgrl is not the first person to be disoriented by the inconsistencies in the guidelines, but three pages of questioning her motives and telling her what should or should not be doing is not really helping matters. I was not being facetious back in post #90 when i suggested adding a negating clause to each guideline. They really are easier to understand that way. Especially when you realize there's one guideline to rule them all: "Please be advised that there is no precedent for placing geocaches."

What was I just saying?

The guidelines are a lot easier to understand if you add a negating clause: All local laws and documented land management policies apply, except when they do not. Geocaches are never buried, except when they are. Geocaches are not placed on school property or military installations, except when they are. Physical elements of different geocaches should be at least 0.10 miles (528 ft or 161 m) apart, except when they are not. (Strike that. That one is enforced, except when it's not) Listings must contain accurate GPS coordinates, except when they do not. Commercial geocaches are disallowed, except when they are allowed. You get the idea.

What should I have done? and now What should I do? Pretty simple bait, but it seems to be working.

Trolling? How is it trolling to illustrate the absurdity of finding something that is not there? You are completely missing my point (not to mention your insistence on treating the metaphorical as literal). Finding some stuff that might have been part of your car is not the same thing as finding your car, just like finding some some stuff that might have been part of a cache is not the same thing as finding the cache. If the cache is not there anymore, there is nothing to find. What some owners may or may not allow is not the question. The question is whether or not a missing cache should be logged as found. There is an obvious answer and it does not start with Y. As for your accusation of trolling, I have seen you have admit to trolling these forums yourself, so it is more than a little hypocritical to accuse someone else of it. Not entirely unexpected, when hypocrisy is what this topic is about anyway. The issue is where you draw the line. If the police only recover the steering wheel and one hubcap, you may not think they found enough to say they recovered the car. But it may be enough for the insurance company to say the car is a total loss and make a payment. And it may be enough for the prosecutor to bring charges against someone for receiving stolen property. At what point is there "enough" car? What if just the stereo was removed? or the GPS? What it the car had no registration papers or license plates and had to be identified by the VIN number? Unlike the police trying to recover a stolen object, geocaching is supposed to be a fun game. Certainly someone claiming a find when they are sitting at home or even because they were in the neighborhood of the cache, is not what the find log is for. However many players choose to use it when they do find something they are pretty certain is or was the cache. You choose to have a definition that you find something only when you have signed the log. Just two extremes of what to call a find. I've personally not log a find three times when all that I found was a logbook - not even a baggie. I could have claimed that I signed the logs and taken a smiley, but I chose not to. On the other hand, I accepted the log of someone who found only the log sheet when looking for one of my caches. It's not worth getting one's knickers twisted over anyone else's definition of a find. You sure like talking about knickers, but you really will do just about anything to avoid a direct response. Take jholly's advice and report this thread as stolen.

You might be a tad optimistic about how much snow is still up there. It's on a South facing slope, but it's also at 5700', shaded by trees, and the coordinates are a little fuzzy. We saw what you did at SiHi last year, so you may mange to dig it out despite all that.

I used a metaphor to illustrate the absurdity of the situation. If metaphors are not to your taste, I think Post 47 should have been clear enough. You compared a light pole cache to an automobile. At what point are they the same? That was not a metaphor, it was a joke. No. I compared finding some stuff that might have been part of a cache to finding some stuff that might have been part of a car. The whole point was that it does not make sense. Allow me to quote what i said in post 47 that you've linked to, but are so studiously ignoring: Logging a find on some stuff found near where you think a cache was makes about as much sense as finding an old saddlebag in the desert with the initials "L.D." on it and claiming you found the Lost Ductchman mine. This has become a fascinating cognitive dissonance exhibition, but I think I've provided enough entertainment for the ever-present dwellers of these forums. You are now free to return to your regularly scheduled Thursday topic, which I believe was "Will it Log?"

Trolling? How is it trolling to illustrate the absurdity of finding something that is not there? You are completely missing my point (not to mention your insistence on treating the metaphorical as literal). Finding some stuff that might have been part of your car is not the same thing as finding your car, just like finding some some stuff that might have been part of a cache is not the same thing as finding the cache. If the cache is not there anymore, there is nothing to find. What some owners may or may not allow is not the question. The question is whether or not a missing cache should be logged as found. There is an obvious answer and it does not start with Y. As for your accusation of trolling, I have seen you have admit to trolling these forums yourself, so it is more than a little hypocritical to accuse someone else of it. Not entirely unexpected, when hypocrisy is what this topic is about anyway.

I'm afraid you'll confuse the people who'll wonder what a horse has to do with an LPC, cars and ice cream. I almost have to admire trotting out the dead horse cliche, but getting in a couple good whacks on that carcass yourself. As if anyone needed more proof, arguing just for the sake of arguing is most of what goes on around here.

Did you, or did you not, compare how someone might feel about whether or not someone found a portion of a geocache with how they would feel if the police were able to recover only a portion of some vehicle? I can't speak for anyone else, but I certainly wouldn't view those situations as being remotely comparable. I guess I don't understand your analogy. BTW, I don't agree with the OP logging the cache "found". I don't think he has amazing evidence that he found the cache, which I think was one of your points. I don't think describing what he found as "found" in a geocache log provides very useful information for the next person who might choose to look for the cache, were they to read the log first, or note the "found it" status with a database search like GSAK. I don't really see this as a big deal, either way, though. Perhaps Wikipedia can help: I used a metaphor to illustrate the absurdity of the situation. If metaphors are not to your taste, I think Post 47 should have been clear enough.