indnajns

Being a paying member of this game, and seeing as it's being DUMBED DOWN for the numbers players, I shall take my membership $$ elsewhere. If there isn't an "elsewhere", I MAY CREATE ONE. I joined because I wanted to get outdoors, not just in a parking lot by a lamp-post, but OUT - go see THINGS. Changing ALR to ALS removes the incentive for cache owners - why bother creating a challenging cache if the numbers guys can just drive by and SL? My team just found a neat cache called The Biggest Liar's Cache in Oak Ridge, TN. I was so intrigued with the idea, I was hoping to put out a similar cache here in VA. Never mind now. If no one's going to have to dream up a good lie to get the smiley, then my cache becomes another boring container by the side of the trail. Yes, they'd at least have to walk down the trail to find the cache, but it's not that exciting a trail. (it's the only one in our small town) A liar's cache would've been just the (simple) thing to liven it up. My team talked for days about what to put in our lie. If our idiots in Congress can maintain law and order using the same English Groundspeak has access to, I don't see why a reasonable set of "Acceptable to Publish" rules couldn't be arrived at. Movies and video games have PG/M/E ratings. Caches could have a similar system. And I have never understood why Groundspeak doesn't change their category/search system so the TRUE different types of caches (Lamp Post, Ammo Box, ALR) could be distinguished with a quick search. This is the sort of thing computers are great at. My subscription runs out in October. I doubt seriously I will bother renewing it. I'm not in it for the numbers. The rules keep getting changed and I personally don't think it's for the better.

For Muschtang, who DID miss the point, I DID NOT SAY BAN LAMP POST CACHES. I said tag them, not ban them. Pay attention. What is saddening and disheartening is to see the vitriolic replies over such a simple request. I have never posted on a forum and been treated so RUDELY. Anywhere, ever. I'm sorry, but you all are a bunch of elitist snobs. We have people leaving the game because they no longer enjoy it, and rather than be concerned and ask, "What can we do to help?" we have a bunch of people screaming, "NO! You can't change anything!" Where I'm from, you HELP your neighbor, you don't beat him down with insults. Aside from all the snotty denials, I have yet to have anyone explain to me how labeling Park & Grabs negatively affects anyone or keeps them from caching. I never said ban them. I just asked could we not call a spade a spade. And don't go dragging out that moronic "then label all ammo cans under a pile of sticks" crap. There is no comparison. For one, ammo cans are almost always labeled as such. "You will be looking for an ammo can full of goodies." is usually the phrase. How about YOU ALL use the filters if ammo cans bother you so badly? I have yet to see a lamp post hide labeled "You are looking for a lamp post" and hence the issue. There is no good way to distinguish lamp posts (or guard rails, or newspaper boxes, or whatever your local P&G is.) from other types of caches. You all said "filter". One would have to filter "guardrail", "EGGS", "SAD", "P&G", "Park and Grab", who knows what other words; you still wouldn't have caught them all and would also filter out more interesting hides . Very inefficient, and certainly not K.I.S.S. I’m supposed to miss out on caches I might like to find, just to keep a couple of whiners happy? Considering that most hiders admit their cache is some sort of quick grab in the description, (just never using any sort of consistent phrasing that can be filtered) I don't see the problem with actually officially labeling them as such. For two, ammo cans "in the woods" are pretty easy to recognize in the listings. They are the ones in the unpopulated areas (read parks or green areas) of the maps. There is no way to so distinguish P&Gs, in town or elsewhere. Three, there aren’t posting after posting after posting complaining about ammo cans. Can’t say the same about the Lamp post P&Gs. “Me thinks thou dost protest too much.” It’s as if those cachers “racking their numbers up” are afraid some dirty little secret will be exposed if we label lamp post caches. I will say this. The absolutely rude and snotty behavior of posters here sure does dampen my enthusiasm for being a member of the geocaching community. Good Day.

Well, it's obvious why this argument keeps going round and round. The "we love P&Gs" group doesn't want to hear one word the "we don't like P&Gs" group has to say. I tried to write a post as unbiased as I could, while pointing out that many of us don't like P&Gs. I tried to offer a reasonable solution, but it's apparently unacceptable to the P&G crowd. I don't live in the middle of NY City. I don't live in a town with 2000 people in it. I live in a county with lots of wilderness and only 50,000 people. Yes, there are other caches besides LPCs. Many are MILES out in the boonies. Which is fine, when I want to spend the entire afternoon looking for only one or two caches in the woods. But SOMETIMES it would be nice to get to hunt near civilization and be able to do more than one or two in an afternoon. I'm not against pavement, but why do all the "near civilization" caches have to be P&Gs? I mean, really, caches in general are actually nick-named the Tricities Standard or the Bristal Standard up here. Doesn't that tell you something? Most of the replies to my post were not any help. They missed the point entirely. Mushtang needs to come up here and cache awhile. He'd get bored really quick and understand why people are leaving the game. The old "don't let them bother you" quote is really that - getting old. It DOES bother one when one has gathered the kids up in the car with the hope of exciting hunts (micros are fine, trading not required, just adds to the fun for them) and then winds up pulling up into yet another parking lot and the kids don't even want to get out of the car because it's "another one of those". I mean, if even the 12 year olds are bored, when it was their desperate wish to go geocaching in the first place, then IT"S BORING. As for "walking up to it" being "geocaching", try reading the FAQ page. http://www.geocaching.com/faq/ It definately implies I am going to need a GPS to play this game. Using a map and compass can be done, but personally, I'm not that good, and also, technically, that's called Orienteering. Different game. Mostly, what I saw in the replies to my post were people trying to deny that there could be anyone who doesn't like Park and Grabs just because there's plenty of people playing this game to rack up numbers who do like them. What I think might be the best answer is instead of hiding the types of caches I like (and still never getting to find any) is I start a new website, where there are NO Park & Grab type caches. That would settle this argument once and for all. And, NO, I've never seen where the first cache was hidden. That's in Portland, Oregon. I'm in Virginia. There's a few miles between here and there. I was going by Groundspeak's own description of the original cache "On May 3rd he placed his own container, a black bucket, in the woods near Beaver Creek, Oregon, near Portland. " The key words there being In The Woods. Not on a guardrail, not in a Walmart parking lot, Not even in his own front yard or neighborhood park. No replies needed to this post. If no one is going to listen then I'm going to return the favor. Geesh, and they wonder why people are leaving this game.

Back to the original topic: Most of you posting here have never cashed in the SW corner of VA. Or the far NE corner of TN. LPCs are about 50%+ of the caches here. I know of one exit (Exit 7 on I81) that by this point probably has over 50 caches just at that exit. Guess what the majority are? For those of us more interested in the hunt than the smiley count, yes, that quantity of LPCs ruins the game. Not to mention, how do you stick a travel bug in one of those things? (by necessity, we now have micro swag that we take with us. we keep leaving it, but the idea hasn't caught on yet.) For all the banter on here, I see lots of talk, but no actual answers. "Hide what you like" isn't an answer. If I hid it, then I don't need to seek it, do I? That solves nothing. Somebody besides me would have to hide something for me to go find it, otherwise, I'm not getting to particpate fully in this geocaching game. Throwing all micros out of your queries isn't an answer either. You would miss some really neat hides up here (in spite of the deluge of LPCs there are a FEW really thoughtful hides) if you did that. I like micros that are fun. There's nothing fun about hides that don't even take a GPSr. Techincally, if it doesn't require a GPSr to find, it's not even geocaching. That's just walking around looking for the expected. Even my 12 year old is over those kind of hides/finds. Why can't they be labelled LPCs? When we mentione tagging LPCs, someone invariably (and sarcastically) thows out a label "ammo can under a pile of sticks". I'm afraid I don't see the point there. Ammos are given away by their size. "under a pile of sticks" is kind of a given if you're headed to a wooded area. The difference is the hunt. As soon as you turn into a parking lot, you can practicaly point to the LPC. You can't do that in a wooded area. You can't just pull up to several acres of fields and trees and point to a tree and say, "There, behind that one." The difference is in the challenge. Unfortunately, too many people (at least up here, it seems) don't take the time to mark the true size of their cache and it's real difficulty. Of course, an easy find in a parking lot is not the same as an easy find in a wooded area. I really don't see the problem with labelling "routine" caches. Label them PaG if need be. (Park and Grab) Make a whole PaG category if need be. The actual complaint here is that many people DON"T want these caches showing when they look for caches to find. LPCs and their ilk have actually ruined geocaching for some, as evidenced by posts on here. I hate that, as this is a great game. But I know from experience that it ruins the afternoon if you take the neighborhood kids out geocaching and all you find are LPCs. As was pointed out, you don't know until you get to the cache whether it was actually a LPC or not. Yet there are plenty of people who WANT To find these caches. So, the obvious and simple answer is label them PaG. Any small, average, magentic or sticky container, difficulty < 2 cache can fall into this category. Then, those wanting to rack up numbers can do so by running a list of just PaGs. Those who want to avoid those "unchallenging" caches can list everything but. All micros don't have to be filtered out, just the "routine find" ones. The size filter should accomplish this, but in reality it doesn't. A label indicating PaG would solve this problem. Or, a better filtering system (hint hint Groundspeak). For those not aware, people actually travel to my neck of the woods to rack up their scores, we have SOOOO many of these Park and Grab caches. There are entire series of these things with all sorts of interesting acronyms. SAD (Sign and Drive), PG (Park and Grab), EGGS (Easy Grab Gaurdrail Series), LTL (Loop to Loop), and more that I can't remember at the moment. Just as there are those who collect smileys as their reason to play this game there are those of us who play to get out and see things we hadn't seen before. ("Oh, look at the cute puppy! ... that's no puppy, that's a SKUNK! AAAGGGHHH!") To solve a small puzzle. To unwind without backpacking and hiking 10 miles. To learn about the neighborhood. A lamp post in a parking lot does not fit this description. A way to designate between the two types of caches is the logical answer. Remember the K.I.S.S. principle. Also remember, the very first cache was hidden in the woods, away from lights, and pavement, and guardrails. (begs the question: was the finder wearing Birkenstocks?) JMTCW

The map in the top corner (at least that's where it is today) would be useful if it would scale. Why does that map not scale?

New or not, none of them do what they used to and I can't find a way to make any use of them. I take that back. The one towards the bottom now scales, but the markers are so huge that they not only cover street names, but entire town names when you zoom. I know not all of us have 20/20 vision (I'm one of them!) but the markers could use a little scaling of their own. Indy

New or not, none of them do what they used to and I can't find a way to make any use of them.

I'm afraid I have to agree with the others who say the new maps are useless. For the "view close caches" map, I get a green field zoomed in with these huge "bubble markers" marking each cache. The problem is the markers are so big you can't see the road name half the time, no matter how you zoom it. As for the little maps further down the screen - they no longer scale. What's the point of that? I get a star and a single road stretching across the map. Nice. What county is it in? What state? What other roads is it near? Where am I? It's zoomed in to the ultimate resolution with no way to zoom out. Yeah, that's pretty worthless.

Re: TBs. I know exactly what the writer was talking about. You've got a TB to drop off and everything even remotely near you all of a sudden became micros! Re: Lame micros. I love micros. We've found them in tree knotholes, bricks, even pretending to be the period at the end of a sentence. But I took a bunch of kids caching a couple weeks ago and 3 out of the 5 caches we found were those *&^%* lampost hides. Lampost hides need to be banned if they are as common as is implied on here. Or have their own notation that lets you know before you even click on the link what they are. By the third one even the kids were bored and went straight to it. The "hunt" is supposed to be part of the fun. There's no hunt and no fun if you know where the thing is before you even get pulled into the parking lot. That's not geocaching, that's geojunking. Re: Swag. I always figured the SWAG was for the kids and never expected it to be of any great use. Trade McD toys for more McD toys. My little geo-buddy (aka Number One Son) doesn't like micros nearly as much as regular caches because it's that whole "treasure chest" feeling. The cache could be full of gravel and he'd Ooooh and Aaaah over every stone (and want to take them all home with us). I do take issue with owners who don't pay attention and won't clean up their caches when someone logs that their cache is soaking wet. Maintenance, People! My two cents worth.