Team Hugs

Which is an impossible discussion to have, because The Frog hasn't told us why challenge caches impose a greater workload. I suppose we could just wait for three weeks and see what happens when the one-year time limit on the moratorium expires. But where's the fun in that?

That's not inherently a barrier to a lunar cache. I spend money to get to caches all the time ... entrance fees for state parks, admissions fees for zoos, and so on.

So, let me sum up ... We don't know what's going on with the year-long moratorium. We don't have any more information about why the moratorium was put into place than when the moratorium was announced. But we're quite happy to repeat every discussion we've had over the past eleven months about what is (or isn't) wrong with challenge caches and how we should fix the problem that we don't understand.

Clearly you've never seen me before my morning coffee ...

The 50 State Star project is organizing stars like this in many states. http://www.geocaching.com/seek/nearest.aspx?u=50+State+Star I did the Michigan star last September (centerpoint here: http://coord.info/GC4WG16). The Michigan star is situated along five miles of a ten-mile "rails-to-trails" trailway. It's not exactly a "power trail"; the trail is non-motorized and has few entry points, so you've got to do the trail by bicycle or on foot. (The other five miles of the trail also hosts a bunch of caches ... not exactly a "power trail", but still a lot of caches for those hiking the trail.) I had a fantastic time doing the trail, and then running around for some P&Gs later to hit my statistical goals for the day. I'd recommend the trail to anyone --- even the most cynical of cachers --- anytime.

I'm in a pretty good region here. While many of us (myself included) enjoy the thrill of a FTF, most of us are content if we find one a month. Of course, there's the one guy around here who intentionally pursues STFs. He just logged his 300th STF on some puzzle caches nearby that I've been watching. So, if you're annoyed by the FTF battle, stop fighting it. Make the STF the "real" badge of honor in your area.

It deals with Challenge Caches. By definition, it must create angst.

I suppose one can try ... but it's not like the D/T ratings are amazingly accurate for ordinary caches, much less challenge caches. Chiefly, I'm thinking about the fact that cache ratings change over time. A 1/5 island cache up here in the north can become a 1/2 cache for a few months when the lake freezes over, then reverts back to being a 1/5 when the ice melts. A puzzle cache that was a D5 can become a D2 when some fancy new computer tool that the owner doesn't know about suddenly becomes available. In my area, one local cacher had a set of challenge caches that required the qualifier to earn X different Groundspeak souvenirs (X=5, 10, 15, 20, etc.). Back when the only way you could get souvenirs was by visiting states or participating in the rare events like Leap Day or WWFMs, getting to 30 souvenirs was a D3. But then Groundspeak started handing out tons of souvenirs every year (like in August 2012, when you could earn 31 souvenirs for caching on each of the 31 days in the month). The owner archived their series of challenge caches and put out a new series with adjusted ratings (30 souvenirs is now a D2). Sure, there's probably some role for separating the D/T of the work involved to qualify for the cache from the D/T of the cache itself. But given how variable the latter is, and how much judgment comes into play in deciding the former, I'm not sure that two inaccurate ratings are better than one.

I think there were ideas presented that could affect reviewer overhead. For example, some of the suggestions for future "rules" for challenges might remove some of the need for subjectivity involved in reviews. (The ideas that I remembered from the survey: mandatory challenge checkers, pre-qualifying by the cache owner).

By the way, I saw nothing in this survey has anything to do with the approval process. Wasn't that the problem that needed to be fixed? The problem (as I understand it) isn't in the approval process per se, but in the considerable subjectivity in the standards regarding what is and isn't an approvable challenge. Notice that a fair number of questions seemed focused on things that would lessen that ambiguity (e.g. limiting challenges to certain well-known types, requiring automated qualification checkers, requiring owner self-qualification).

Agreed. After taking the survey, I have the following observations: I noted at least an allusion to the notion of de-coupling cache finds and challenge qualifications. While "challenge stars" wasn't explicitly mentioned, it seems that they've at least considered the idea. With the number of questions about the future (e.g. "what features would you like to see", "how should old challenge caches be handled"), it seems that Groundspeak is serious about allowing challenge caches to continue on in some form. Of course, that's what Groundspeak said from the beginning. But for the conspiracy theorists who wondered if this was just a way for Groundspeak to gently retire challenge caches, I think this is evidence to the contrary. I'll admit ... I'd never heard of some of the challenge types listed. You learn something new every day ...

Groundspeak didn't really say. Here is Groundspeak's statement on the subject (at least, the only one I could find): So, all we officially know is that Groundspeak thought that Challenges were "a cool feature" that "didn't catch on".

From the Help Center article regarding the moratorium: "Challenge caches can also be very difficult to publish due to the large amount of subjectivity involved relative to other geocaches." Very well. Then I'll note that the "challenge stars" proposal does little to address this problem. Arguments about whether or not the cache should be published would mutate into arguments about whether the associated challenge is legitimate, presumably leading to the same number of appeals that were being generated prior to the moratorium.

Well, that's because Groundspeak hasn't told us anything about why challenge caches generate so many appeals. And until Groundspeak gives us that information, all of this is just idle speculation. We can't be expected to solve a problem when we're not told what the problem is. Which would eliminate EarthCaches as a cache type, because there's no log to sign. I'm not saying that's a good or a bad thing, mind you .... but if you insist on signing the log as a condition of making a find, then you're presuming that there is a log to sign. But Groundspeak seems pretty committed to promoting EarthCaches, as evidenced by the number of souvenirs focused on EarthCaches in recent years.

That's a pretty accurate re-telling of my email to you. But I would never say "um." I'm glad I got most of it right, then.

Several months ago, I sent a message to Groundspeak asking about that. The courteous reply I received said, essentially "um ... we got way more feedback than we expected, and we're still trying to process it all ... we really want to read all of it before we proceed with the survey ... stay tuned ...". I haven't heard anything since then.

Nothing unusual. We have (had?) a cache like this in our area.

Others have chimed in, but let me offer an example from my logs. Cemetery cache posts. It's rated as a 3/1.5, because while the cache host is obvious, figuring out how to extract the cache is not (or so the description says). I get to the site first and, well, yes, I see the host, but I have no idea what to do to extract the cache. I muck about for awhile. Another pair of cachers show up, we greet one another, I show them the host, they offer an idea, and I use the idea to extract the cache from the host. Who gets the FTF? I got there first, I retrieved the cache, and I signed the log first, but I would've never have figured out how to get the cache out without their help. I say that the other pair deserves a co-FTF, and I stated as much in my log. In their logs, they only claimed STF. I've had it happen in the other direction as well. Once, I showed up second at the site of a cache to find another cache searching the area to no avail. He's searching only with his smartphone, so he's not sure if he trusts the coordinates. I have a handheld GPSr, which I power up and confirm that the site we're searching matches the coordinates. We decide to broaden the search radius ... I head south, he heads north, and a few moments later he finds it, in a place that's about 55' north of the posted coordinates. He's got the cache in hand first, but he tells me I'm co-FTF because I helped make the find possible. Again ... since "FTF" isn't an official statistic, anybody is free to claim it, based on whatever criteria they like.

And this is yet another reason why there are no rules about what constitutes a "First To Find". Too many weird edge cases like this that Groundspeak doesn't want to adjudicate.

Tether the cache to something more permanent?

There are folks who will do lots of finding of caches, properly signing the logs, but never log their finds online. There are a variety of reasons for them to do so, which I won't recite here. Also, it may just be that the original finder is just really behind in logging his/her finds. It happens to some folks. I guess I'm not sure what it means to "claim a find" if you're not logging it online. I can always tell all my friends about the tens of thousands of caches I've found, but if I'm not logging them, they'll just have to take my word for it (or, in this case, not, since I don't have that many finds).

Maybe we're thinking about the 'solution' to this problem backwards. Instead of punishing bad behavior (by both finders and owners), how about rewarding good behavior? Coincidentally, two stories this week from my caching adventures: Thursday, I found a cache that was in desperate need of maintenance. A NM log had been made a couple of months earlier, but without much detail. I posted a detailed NM log, describing the problem, along with my primitive attempts to deal with it onsite. (It was a lock-and-lock with two broken latches, hence no longer water-tight, with predictable results.) A day later, the CO disabled the cache, thanking me in the log for my NM log and pledging to fix it "soon". Just today (Saturday), I spent close to an hour looking for a cache from one of our local owners who has a penchant for unusual, re-purposed cache containers, in a particularly difficult spot. Eventually had to give up and move on. I logged my DNF when I returned home. The CO went out later that day to check on it (it was only rated a 2/2, so shouldn't have been that hard) and reported that the cache site had been trashed and the container taken. She immediately archived the cache, thanking me for reporting the problem. Okay, I'm blowing my own horn here a bit. But, dagnabbit, it felt good to know that these COs appreciated my "negative" logs, as it alerted them to issues. It makes me feel a little better about logging NMs/DNFs. I don't know how one rewards good behavior by finders. If cache finders can give favorite points to 10% of their found caches, could cache owners give favorite points to 10% of the logs posted on their caches?

Some cache owners react negatively to NM/NA being posted on their own caches. Depending on how negatively they react, this can make cache finders more reluctant to make NM/NA postings.

I take a slightly different approach ... if I find a cache I previously DNFed, I'll go back and edit the previous DNF into a note. That preserves the history (sort of), but it also keeps my stats a little cleaner in that my finds and DNFs never overlap. But that's just my approach; I'm not sure I know anyone else who does it that way.

What one person would consider "gentle teasing" might be insulting to someone else. Only you know the people we're talking about; only you can judge if quoting their go-to phrases will be flattering or insulting to them. (And notice that I didn't say anything about geocaching in the previous statement; I think it's pretty applicable to relationships in general.)