Team Hugs

Well, the "3 Million Active Cache" global achievement was about ... wait for it ... active caches. Inactive caches didn't contribute to the achievement. I wouldn't call that being "shafted".

You do have the option of hiding those souvenirs from your profile ... after the fact, of course.

Stats from HQ on the current state of geocaching. Sure seems like it's not "dead" to me ... https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2017/04/3-million-geocaches-the-infographic/

I agree. Which makes it hard to take claims that "geocaching is dead" seriously. Geocaching is more active than it has ever been. Perhaps it is different than in "the good old days". (I wouldn't know; my first find was in 2011.) But "different" doesn't mean "dead". Interesting that I am posting this on the day when HQ is celebrating that there are now over 3M active caches worldwide. I am reminded of a quote from my discipline. CAR Hoare, in 1982, was asked about what the future of programming languages would be. He replied (paraphrasing) that "I don't know what the programming language of 2000 will look like, but I know it'll be named FORTRAN." I think that's part of what we're saying here; the sport we engage in today might not be the sport of 10 years ago, but it's still called "geocaching".

I wondered the same thing. I stumbled on someone else who had discovered we passed 3M, and came here to the forums to join in on the celebration. I was surprised there was no big countdown or anything. Maybe it's better when people aren't putting out a bunch of garbage caches in an attempt to be the 3 millionth. I was watching one of the discussions on Facebook about 3M. The problem that we observed was that getting the number above 3M was tricky, because it'd cross the threshold, then fall back under (presumably because some caches were being archived), then jump above, then back again, and so on. I'm guessing that HQ finally decided that the number of active caches seems to have stabilized above 3M, so it's safe to make the proclamation.

"Gee, I have no direct knowledge of the programs that HQ uses to run the website, maintain the master database, support the partner API, and run the officially-sponsored app. I have no idea what impact this change might have on those intricate systems. But I've done a little programming, and it seems pretty easy to me, so what could possibly go wrong?"

Many companies make changes without every explaining "why". When Apple stopped putting a floppy drive in computers, the world went nuts. Apple never solicited public opinion as to whether it was a good idea or not. The just did it. I don't remember them ever explaining "why". A lot of other companies explained the "why". And in the end.... the world moved on. Others have responded, but I'll chime in as well. 1. Apple makes hardware, which you only have to buy once. Geocaching is trying primarily to sell its subscription service ... along with all the other tangible goods, I suppose, but none of that makes any sense without the ongoing subscription. If you're selling a subscription, your view of your customer base is different that if you're selling a physical product. 2. As a service, Geocaching requires on the good will of its volunteers --- both its reviewers, and the thousands of folks who place caches. It needs to continue to cultivate that good will. 3. Yes, in the end, we'll all deal with it and move on.

But look at what happened. It was precisely the fact that the communication wasn't "about" the same time that created the first wave of angst. HQ communicated the change to the API partners, who then publicized the change on their own public outlets. Of course, the information that was relayed was incomplete and raised a lot of questions, which the API partners were unable to answer. This created a lot of unnecessary angst. HQ issued its official announcement a few days later --- with more clarifications, thanks to some of those discussions and folks like Keystone who relayed those discussions back to HQ --- but, by then, a fair amount of angst had already been created. Given that the announcement was made a month(?) before the effective date of the changes, I'm not sure if anything was gained by giving the API partners a couple of days lead notice. And, I'd argue, some good will was lost. Note that HQ still hasn't made any official pronouncements as to the "why" behind these changes. Which leaves us all to speculate as to the reasons. And, hey, long live the Internet, where speculation is king, but ...

Okay, I'm a little puzzled ... (excerpting heavily) So, is the problem with HQ, or with the community?

I see no evidence that the history of these particular exception caches has been "dismissed out of hand". We know nothing about the deliberations that occurred before this change was announced. All we know is the result. If HQ had considered these caches in its deliberations, publicly agonized over their role, and then still make the decision they did, would anyone feel any better about the decision? I'm not sure they would. In which case, knowing whether or not they debated this issue really doesn't matter ... at least from where I'm sitting. [Disclaimer: I don't have any strong feelings about these particular caches, one way or another.]

There would have been easier and less invasive ways to achieve that - like being asked "Do you really want to submit a second found it log?". Because that works so well when cache owners click on the box that says "I have read and agree to the Terms of Use Agreement and the Cache Listing Requirements Guidelines" when submitting a new cache placement ...

Since I was quick to criticize, let me also then be quick to say "thanks" to HQ for getting this official confirmation message out, including the expanded clarifications. I also am grateful that this confirmation message was posted today, rather than tomorrow. (Sigh. I hate this time of year.)

The official announcement (linked above) clarifies that event organizers can post "Will Attend" and "Attended" logs on their own event caches.

If that was HQ's reasoning (and I'm not saying it was or wasn't), then that reasoning is flawed. Informing some folks before the general public works right up until someone publicly posts the "secret", and then it's no longer a secret anymore.

Mounting my soapbox ... As much as I love this obsession hobby, I really wish Geocaching HQ would figure out a way to make game-changing announcements better. The return of challenge caches. When the one-year anniversary of the moratorium was near, a post was made to the forums indicating that the moratorium would be lifted "shortly", and then leaking several of the details of the new rules for challenge caches. Of course, those details were incomplete, which lead to massive speculation and confusion about what was to come, because no-one in the know would confirm or deny anything other than the incomplete details that had been leaked. Jeremy Irish stepping down as President. No official announcement, just a post to someone's social media account, which got massively copied around the 'net, leading to frequent questions regarding whether or not the post was legitimate (since many of us are skeptical about anything like this). Now, this change in logging policies. Pre-announcement news is sent to one of the users of the Geocaching Partner API, who posts it on their forums, which then gets copied to a thousand Facebook groups (that's how I saw it). Yet again, the brief announcement generates lots of questions (e.g. "what about adopting found caches?", "can YOSM be grandfathered?", "will old duplicate finds be deleted?"), which are going unanswered because no-one is authorized to speak officially to the subject yet. And so a lot of folks are getting worked up over questions that probably have answers that we'll have in a few weeks, but no-one knows whether to trust that the answers will make sense. I'd like to think there are better ways to let folks know about changes like this. P.S. For me, the specific change announced here is a bit of a "meh". I've only seen one cache in my area that had multiple finds --- and it was a mystery that was deliberately set up to allow for multiple finds. (Yes, it pushed the limits of The Rules a bit hard.) It's not going to affect the way I cache one way or another.

Project? Same as always. Keep the cache-a-day streak going. Serendipitously, if I make it into early March, I'll conclude five full years of cache-a-day activity with a trip to Geocaching HQ.

Y'know ... once upon a time, I thought about creating a challenge cache which would require the qualifier to log 10 NMs on different caches, in order to reward those people who actually use the tool to help cache owners keep the game strong. And then I realized how easily it could be abused and gave up the idea. I have no idea if it'd even work in the New Era of challenges ...

1. If you make logging more complicated, it stands to reason that you'll discourage people (particularly newbies) from logging anything. Unless they're crafted awfully carefully, the information gathered from the survey questions might not make up for the lost logs. I'm not saying it's not possible, but it's gotta be carefully done. 2. As you note, there are already simple feedback mechanisms available: DNF/NM/NA. The fact that even those mechanisms are under-utilized (and, alas, discouraged by some COs) makes me wonder how any other feedback mechanism could work. Maybe we could start by promoting the proper use of the existing tools.

It's also true that there are players that make the game unpleasant for other players. Some of those "business decisions" involve trying to manage those conflicts for the greater good. And, as we all know, it only takes a small number of people to foul the pool for everyone else who just wants a pleasant place to swin. Believe it or not, it's in the best interest of Groundspeak to keep most of its players happy, so that they'll keep spending money. This doesn't have to be about the business "versus" the players. I'm actually not expecting to see these "Quality and Health Guidelines" published. I think there are a very small number of troublemakers that Groundspeak is trying to address directly. There's an old saying that "bad cases make bad law"; trying to address the problems of these very small number of troublemakers with a published policy might be counter-productive. Far better to say "hey, you, Team Hugs, quit @#$!ing in the pool or we're giving you a timeout", as appears to have happened here. Let's not overreact to one person being butt-hurt and publishing their hurt across the Internet as a sign of the Apocalypse.

I'm in the (public) Facebook group in question ... the images were originally posted there without any context. Later in the discussion, the original poster states that he's a member of a private Facebook group where the recipient posted the copy of the message he received. The original recipient was not identified by name. Even later in the discussion, someone else suggests the name of a cacher who was likely the original recipient. I will not repeat the name, because I don't have confirmation of the person's identity. However, I looked up his profile online. The named person has over 32,000 finds, but also has over 2,000 active caches.

It might. But the problem might be from the non-reviewers side of things. I'm sure there are at least a couple of people who play this marvelous game who are a bit unreasonable at times.

I've been told by veterans that a DNF means just what it says: the searcher didn't find it. Any number of reasons could contribute to a cacher DNFing a cache that's actually there. Yes, some local reviewers have started using tools which generate automated maintenance messages on caches with recent DNFs. It's a well-meaning response to the problem of caches that seem to have gone missing, yet cachers don't want to make NA logs that would bring the cache to the attention of local reviewers. Whether those automated messages have had their parameters adjusted to flag only problematic caches and not merely difficult caches ... well, that's a matter of some debate.

Moving a discussion from cache pages into the forums. This is a discussion about Ancient Lake (http://coord.info/GC2DBE), its proper date, and the effect on cachers pursuing Jasmer challenges. For most of its life, GC2DBE had a listed placement date of 1/23/2001. Many veteran Ohio cachers believe that the early placement date was an anachronism, due to the relatively late GC-code assigned to it. See, for example, Shawnee Lookout Cache (http://coord.info/GC31A), with a placement date of 2/18/2001. In fact, the cache page gives a long and detailed explanation as to why the placement date on Ancient Lake was incorrect. Nevertheless, the placement date was allowed to stand for the last ... well, 14.9 years. Sometime in December, the placement date on Ancient Lake was changed to 12/23/2001. This probably more accurately reflects when the cache was placed. However, a number of people (including many in my Michigan online forums) have reacted negatively to the change, as the relative scarcity of 2001 caches creates problems for those pursuing various date-oriented challenges (in particular, Jasmer). A number of people were relying on that cache for their 1/2001 cell in their Jasmer grid and now no longer qualify. Various points that have been raised in the discussion include: The 12/2001 date is probably more accurate. Cache listings should be accurate. The fact that the inaccurate date has been allowed to stand for 14.9 years makes a change at this point unusual at best, and maddening at worst. Could the old date have been grandfathered? Challenges aren't an essential part of the game, so concerns about not qualifying for challenges are less valid than concerns for historical accuracy. Challenges relying on cache attributes have these sorts of problems all the time; there's nothing new here. (See, for example, the hue and cry that arises when a cache owner changes the D/T rating on a cache that someone needed to complete a Fizzy grid.) Do folks here have thoughts on the situation? [Disclaimer: I don't have a strong opinion one way or another. I'm slowly working on my Jasmer grid, but I have enough other holes in my grid that one more hole doesn't bother me a great deal.]

1) Unless there's secret information included in the cache submission, there's no particular advantage to the reviewer pursuing a FTF. 2) This is one of the reasons why Groundspeak doesn't recognize the FTF as an "official" statistic. 3) Most reviewers are also cachers; that's how they got involved in the sport in the first place. (Of course, some reviewers are also dogs.) 4) According to Groundspeak, there are only three rules for finding caches: sign the log, trade even or better, and log your find online. Everything else is "optional". 5) You "called out" a reviewer and then criticize that reviewer for responding in-kind? Yeah, that's gonna work out well. 6)

Deception can run the other way, too ... with delightful results. There's a cache in my area called "Micro in the Woods". Cache type is listed as "Other". You get there ... and discover that the cache is an abandoned microwave oven.