Team Hugs

I had intended to leave this alone, but people asked questions, so ... Does every feature here have to improve your personal enjoyment? Can't we have features that improve some people's experience while only marginally affecting everyone else? I can't use the Field Notes feature; my hardware doesn't support it. Should others with more advanced hardware be denied the chance to use Field Notes because not everyone chooses to purchase compatible hardware? That seems to me to be an alternative that addresses many of the issues. I don't know if it's preferable to the original proposal or not ... this debate got too heated long ago. Who said anything about everyone blocking their logs? People who are concerned will block their logs; people who aren't, won't. I suspect that most people will see the value in public logs and continue to post publicly. It's not like we're talking about re-inventing the wheel. Facebook allows users to block individuals from reading their postings, on a global or a case-by-case basis. I don't see Facebook falling apart because nobody wants to share anymore. And now that we've descended into name-calling, I'm out.

Of course. On the other hand, if I could prohibit you from reading my logs, then I would know whether or not you're reading my logs --- because I'd know you weren't. You mean like other vital game features like emoticons in the forum and user icon images in log postings? Not every expenditure of resources has to be about game enhancements. Some expenditures are made just to make this a nice place to live in. Frankly, I'd see privacy settings as a game enhancement. But I can see that I'm in the minority here, and I'll move on. (Sancho, hand me my lance, please ...)

Sure, we don't know anything. But what is the OP asking for? The OP isn't asking that the stalker be banned from using geocaching.com. All the OP is asking is for a feature to hide logs from another user. I'm not sure how the other person would be materially harmed by such a feature, regardless of who's at fault. With respect ... you're thinking too narrowly about what stalking is. Here's a definition: "a constellation of behaviours in which an individual inflicts upon another repeated unwanted intrusions and communications" (Wikipedia). Notice: a "constellation" of behaviors. Any individual behavior (a phone call, an observation on the street, viewing on a webpage) might be innocent. It's the cumulative effect that defines stalking. Precisely. And then they'll get yelled at in the other thread here for lack of creativity in their log entries, right? Hey, I realize I'm relatively new to this world. I've learned that one of the "rules" (if there are any) of geocaching is "play the game the way you want". The OP is asking for website features that will allow him/her to play the game in a different way. Honestly, is that so bad?

OTOH, the controls might be so poorly implemented that it drives other people away. Or leads people to bad assumptions about their actual privacy. And would the financial benefit outweigh the development & support costs? I have no way to predict this. Of course, one could ask the same thing about the new GC "challenges", or mapping features, or any other feature on the website. I doubt any single feature makes money for GC; it's the whole set of features that are seen as valuable (or not) to an individual user. I'm just pointing out that there are potential financial benefits to GC for doing something like this --- outside of the altruistic benefits of doing something that would help people. Whether the cost outweighs the benefits is a matter for wiser people than I to decide. If someone is really intent upon stalking you, this site is probably one of the less-informative sources. How about Foursquare checkins? Or the good ol' technique of following someone from home (address is public record/published in the phone book) to wherever they're going? Google Latitude? E-ZPass tags on your car? As others have pointed out above ... stalking takes on different forms. Besides, truly innovative stalking takes information from a variety of sources, not just a single site. GC can contribute to the problem, or not. Look, if people here want to just dump on the OP and assert that he/she will have to choose between online geocaching and hiding from a stalker, that's their prerogative. Seems awfully insensitive to me. Your mileage may vary.

It profits by not losing the participation of people who might need such a feature. Conversely, it profits by opening participation up to others who might like to participate right now but are not because of similar privacy concerns. It profits by not inadvertently contributing to a headline like "Geocacher Killed By Stalker; Victim's Location Published Online", which would certainly have an effect on future participation (and subscriptions). It might profit by making some privacy settings available only to Premium Members, perhaps encouraging more subscriptions. There are plenty of possibilities; one merely has to look at the issue with a little creativity.

I'm relatively new to this, but am finding puzzle caches to be quite fun. One thing I'm learning: often, the pages for puzzle caches have clues embedded on them. Seemingly innocent things like the name of the cache, or a seemingly unknown symbol or word or phrase in the description itself, are actually valuable clues. I haven't solved every puzzle cache I've tried ... but after you solve a couple, you may start to see the idea. A couple of times, I've gotten so obsessed by a particular puzzle cache that I contacted the cache owner. They were kind enough to offer gentle hints that allowed me to solve the puzzle without givin the whole thing away. Anyways ... hang in there. Good luck.

Are there other sets of curricula around?

So are you a Sociology Professor? No, but I did stay at a Holiday Express last night. Seriously ... I'm a computer scientist, with a heavy mathematical bent. What I think I find fascinating is how an exceedingly simple set of "rules" (essentially, "log your finds", "trade equal or better", and "play the game the way you like") ends up creating fascinating variations --- as this discussion illustrates for me. It's somewhat reminiscent of fractals. (It's also probably why I loved watching Survivor on CBS for many years ... extremely simple set of rules, leading to all sorts of interesting variations depending on who plays the game.) And that's a fair point, which I'm considering. Not just "subtlety" -- I'd say it's more of a complete lack of agreement of what the rules are, or whether there are any rules at all. There are plenty opinions, though. Agreed. That's part of the fun, I suspect. And that's a fair point as well. After this discussion ... I'm thinking of adopting a slightly different practice. If I find a cache that I logged as a DNF, I might edit the old DNF into a note and log the find. It still preserves history, especially for those reading the log ... but it fits my intuitions as to what "found" and "did not find" mean. I'll try it for awhile and see what I think ...

I'm sure there's answer to this on the site somewhere, but darned if I can find it ... Is there a FAQ that describes what the difficulty/terrain ratings translate into in words? I've seen a number of the "rules of thumb" around ... T1 means "wheelchair accessible", T1.5 means "accessible on crutches", T5 means "special equipment needed, like boat". I remember seeing something similar to this when I created my first geocache ... but that may have only been available from the creation pages. Pointers to existing lists would be most welcome. Thanks.

Your first sentence makes perfect sense to me, but the next one seems to contradict it. I'm a professor; I contradict myself all the time. Perhaps what I didn't say is that, as a novice geocacher, I'm not sure that my DNFs ought to be weighted as highly as those of veterans. (For example, I'm still struggling with micro-in-a-tree caches ... slowly getting better, but they're still much tougher for me than they ought to be.) If I log a DNF after a reasonable search, then go back and find it in one of those "doh!" moments, I feel like the previous DNF is more a reflection on me than the cache hide. I don't want to skip logging the DNF initially (in case the cache is really gone, for example) ... but I also don't want to mislead someone if the DNF is more due to my novice skills than the cache's inherent difficulty. I can see the point, though, in leaving the DNF alone and logging a later find, if that turns out to be a better description of the cache overall. I do appreciate the overall geocaching ethic that's being espoused here ("DNF" just means you didn't find it, play the game the way you want to play it, etc.); it certainly makes for a very friendly overall environment for newbies like me. Even within those heuristics, though, there's some subtlety to the rules that belies the obvious simplicity. (Which is somewhat stimulating, actually ... learning a new set of cultural conventions is fascinating ...)

Admittedly, I'm relatively new to this sport ... but I think I can make an argument for deleting DNF logs after a subsequent find. I've been using my automatically-generated DNF list as a sort of "to-do" list: a reminder of the caches I tried to find and failed, but might subsequently turn into finds. I'll go back and look at old items and see if there were subsequent successful finds, new hints, maintentance reports, etc.. If I didn't deleted the old DNF reports after subsequently finding it, this technique doesn't work as well. (Admittedly, I could probably do the same thing with a private bookmark list.) The other reason I delete old DNF reports ... I look at the found-versus-not-found statistics on a given cache as another indicator confirming/contradicting the difficulty rating supplied by the CO. In that case, it seems more reasonable that I should delete a DNF if I find it later. I can certainly understand the "one-visit, one-log" theory in terms of preserving history, but I don't think we hold to that principle universally. If I revisit a found cache several times (say, for travel bug movement), existing protocol seems to indicate that you shouldn't log multiple "finds" (i.e. only one "find" per cache). Also ... for me as a newbie, I've had several caches I've had to visit several times until I found them (especially when trying to hit urban caches while heading to/from work). Should I really log five DNFs on a cache before I log the one find? I think that'd clutter up the log unnecessarily.

Hard to say. The puzzle as you've given it could supply one digit of a coordinate solution: give each prisoner a number, and ask which prisoner answers the question correctly. But that's only one digit out of several needed for a puzzle cache. There are, of course, many "prisoner and hat" problems out there ... I suppose you could ask 6-8 of these puzzles, with the correct answer to each giving one digit of the final coordinates. That eliminates the "guessing" problem, but makes the puzzle much more tedious to solve.

My brother-in-law just got me started into geocaching this spring, and I'm quickly becoming addicted to it ... at least, as much as time and circumstances permit. I'm wondering if there's a list (or perhaps we can develop one?) of classic cache types to learn about and be aware of while searching. In my few months, I'm aware of many of (I think) the "classics": lamp post guard rail bison tube hanging in tree lock-and-lock container ammo box magnetic nano pill bottle film canister What other types/locations am I missing, that I should learn about? [Ok ... the real reason I'm asking ... there's a local cache that I'm trying to find that's a 3.5/2. Terrain isn't an issue ... but the cleverness of the find is. Several reports in the log are saying "wonderful hide, I've seen this type before", while of course not giving away the hide. I'm trying to play nice and not beg the CO for hints ... but maybe if I can get to a list of other types of caches, I'll have some other things to look for the next time I try ...]