Team Hugs

I'm not sure that the issue is "honesty" as much as "transparency". This announcement has raised questions ("how many DNFs / unfound months trigger a message?", "what are the consequences of receiving such a message?", etc.) that Groundspeak has not answered ... which, this being the Internet, leads to wild speculation regarding what Groundspeak's intentions really are. It's the same issue some of us have with the Groundspeak moratorium on challenge caches. We know that Groundspeak thinks there's a "problem" with challenge caches, but Groundspeak hasn't told us what the problem is (other than vague statements about "taking too much reviewer/appeal time"). It'd be much nicer if Groundspeak would be much clearer about how it's deciding to send out these emails. I suppose we'll just have to figure it out for ourselves.

Pretty much. If new cache owners fail the test, then they can just retake it until they pass it. I wouldn't expect anyone to need more than a few attempts to get 10 of 10 answers correct. In the meantime, they've been introduced to a number of basic concepts that are important to cache ownership. So, let's run with this. A newbie places a cache out there and creates the listing for it ... but somewhere along the way, being a newbie, they encounter the quiz that's supposed to either educate them about cache placement or confirm that they've already been educated about cache placement. Suppose that during that process, they learn that their cache placement is already invalid, because of something they just learned. Which seems more likely: the newbie stops the cache listing process and goes back out to the cache site to "fix" the problem (whatever it was), or the newbie just clicks "OK" and lists the bad cache anyways? I honestly don't know which result would be more likely.

Oh, you mean like the checkbox that you have to check that says "I've read the cache placement guidelines and agree to them."? Not sure how much of a difference it would make, but perhaps expanding the text for that checkbox to be more explicit would help. For example, "I've read the cache placement guidelines (ie, cache permanence, maintenance requirements, land permissions, etc) and agree to abide by them." That extra info might stir some thoughts in the CO's heads, instead of being just a rubber-stamp. Or it might have no effect at all. I suspect the latter. The longer you make the statement, the easier it is for people's eyes to glaze over and just mindlessly check the box. Don't get me wrong. I'm an educator, and I think education is the solution to everything. But in this case, I don't think there's any good way to "ensure" that new cachers know what they're doing other than by letting them do it and evaluating the results. I suspect that the number of new cachers who screw up is relatively small in comparison with the number of new cachers who get it right ... and a large percentage of those who don't get it right the first time will get it right in future placements. (Take it from a cacher who screwed up his first hide.) My dear old country patent attorney friend has a saying: bad cases make bad law. I think that's the case here. Of course ... your mileage may vary.

Oh, you mean like the checkbox that you have to check that says "I've read the cache placement guidelines and agree to them."? There's no fool-proof system. Occasionally, bad cache listings get through. As others have said ... that's what FTF hounds are for.

Welllllllllllll, that outlook leaves me with a major fur ball stuck in my craw. Many times I have been out in the hinterlands and do not get back to a signal for days or weeks. Am I not to log caches as found because my circumstances preclude logging on the day of a find. This curious mind wants to know The phrase "log caches on the day you actually found it" has two interpretations: Go to geocaching.com and make your log entry on the same day that you found the cache. When you go to geocaching.com and make your "Found It" log entry, choose the date for the log entry that matches the date you found the cache. I think you were assuming Dame Deco meant (1). I read Dame's statement to mean (2). (1) is nice, but is not always possible. (2) leads to a more accurate account of one's caching activities, and is what is being discussed here. And, of course, people will play the game however they want. But I always practice (2), and try to practice (1) as much as possible.

Doesn't that go without saying? A cut&paste might have words saying "thanks", but obviously it wouldn't be a sincere expression of gratitude Why not? Do the words one uses have to be original? How original do they have to be? Are we requiring that geocachers compose original works of literary brilliance for every cache found? How are we going to measure gratitude? (We now have an information-theoretic formula for "meaningful" posts thanks to fizzymagic ... anyone else want to come up with a formula for sincerity?) As far as I'm concerned, the cache finder has already expressed thanks to me simply by taking the time to find the cache in the first place, and secondly to log their find so that I know it's still out there. Geocaching has only three rules (and even they're debatable): trade even or better, sign the log, and log the find online. Everything else is extra.

Why not just cut the cut&paste and stick with the something special part? If someone is having too busy a day to thank the cache owners that gave them that busy day, something is amiss. You're assuming the "cut & paste" isn't expressing thanks to the cache owner.

When was the last time that Groundspeak created a new cache type? It seems to me that Groundspeak seems to be more interested in decreasing cache types rather than increasing them. Why that is, I don't know.

Isn't that implied simply by the existence of the "Found it" log itself? After all, the fact that they logged it means that there were there and they saw it --- more in fact, because they signed the log. At that point, any textual content is superfluous. Hey, don't get me wrong. I try to write "meaningful" logs when I make finds, and I appreciate "meaningful" logs when I receive them on my caches. But I'm not going to criticize anyone's logs; the fact that they took the time to find my cache and log it --- in any manner --- is thanks enough for me.

And so, we're asking cacher finders to leave "meaningful" logs for cache owners, when the cache finder has no way to know how the cache owner defines "meaningful". Riiiiiiiiight.

"Meaningful" is, at best, judged in the eye of the beholder. At worst, it's an ALR.

Sigh. Just ... sigh. If a cacher posts "TFTC", some cache owners will complain that they aren't composing a thoughtful log. But if a cacher posts a long, detailed log, other cache owners will complain that the long logs are hard to scroll past when looking at the cache entry out in the field. If a cacher posts a cut-and-paste log, some cache owners will complain about lack of originality. But if a cacher takes the time to compose a unique log for every find, other cache owners will complain that the cacher is taking too long to post their finds. Last time I checked, there were exactly three rules to this game: trade even-or-better, sign the logbook, and log the find online.

Five months now, and still no real word on this moratorium ... anyone on the inside care to comment on where we are in this process?

This would work, if lab cache creation were open to ordinary cache owners. As it stands, though, only the Frog can create lab caches.

Groundspeak knows. They're working on it.

Groundspeak knows. They're working on it.

Except that I thought that coordinates were always supposed to be accurate, right?

I have GSAK, but I can't figure out how to generate a map from the GPX file ...

I would like to generate a map of all of my cache finds. I know how to create a GPX of all of my finds (from the Pocket Query page), and I've done that ... but I can't seem to find any way to turn that into a visual map, even with the various offsite tools I know about. (The application: there's a challenge cache locally that requires you to have X number of finds in specific county parks ... the easiest way for me to figure out if I qualify is probably to generate a map of all my finds in the county, and then manually check over the map to grab the finds in the designated parks.) Help?

Disclaimer: wild rampant speculation follows. (Oh, wait, this is the Internet ... no disclaimer necessary. ) Any sort of ban that Groundspeak might put into place for publishing "caches for events" could easily be circumvented. ("No, seriously, this sock puppet account that wants to post a dozen caches on Friday has absolutely nothing to do with that other account hosting an event on Friday.") Trying to enforce an unenforceable rule doesn't seem like a good use of volunteer time. Publication of caches in synchrony with an event doesn't have to be a problem. I've attended a event for the last three years which coincided with the publication of several (usually six) new caches. But the event had other elements to it (a potluck and a prize raffle), no-one was obligated to head out for the cache hunt, and the caches are still in place today. (Well, almost all of them; a few have been archived after going missing, but with no greater frequency than "ordinary" caches suffer.) "Cache permanence" is an interesting phenomenon. One of our local caching organizations will put out a bunch of winter-friendly caches that satisfy the letter of the law --- they're kept active for 3-4 months, then archived when springtime rolls around. Next winter, a different set of winter caches will be placed. In a cache-saturated area, this allows cachers to have the fun of finding new caches without having to increase their travel radius year by year by year. This seems well within the spirit of the Guidelines. The same organization rotates many of their caches in the county parks, though with a longer timeframe (3-4 years instead of 3-4 months). To a certain extent, I think this will be handled after-the-fact by the Reviewers examining any other listings from this person/region with a skeptical eye. We've got a good set of local reviewers here in my region ... they're extraordinarily patient and helpful with cache owners, right up until the point that you lie to them --- at which point, they become far less friendly. That's probably all that can be done.

Ah-ha! That one seems to have it. Very nice. Thanks.

On my Dakota, Setup -> Geocaches appears to have the same counter. I just reset it to 0; we'll see how that works. (I don't see any count on the Geocaching Active dashboard.) So ... that probably answers the question. The Calendar on the Dakota only shows the calendar itself ... no additional information.

Another question about the Garmin Dakota 20 ... still prepping for my power trail run in a couple of weeks ... Is there an easy way to figure out how many caches you've marked as found? Sure, I can pull up the menu that says "Show Found", and then count them manually as I page down. I was hoping for something a little more automatic.

Just tried this now. Oh. My. Goodness. I had no idea it was so easy to log finds this way. I wish I'd found out about this years ago. If you ever find your way to Michigan, I owe you a few puzzle cache solutions. Thanks for the help.

My primary GPSr is a Garmin Dakota 20. I've stumbled my way around using it for geocaching, since there really isn't anything in the "official" Garmin documentation. I've found how to mark a loaded cache as found, and how to access all the loaded caches previously marked as found. This is fine for my logging if I've only done a "few" at a time. But if I have more than a few finds, it becomes somewhat tedious to walk through all the screens, since the master list doesn't show the GC codes. I'm thinking about doing a powertrail run in a few weeks (something on the order of 100 caches). With that number of caches, is there an easier way to access all of the caches I mark as found during the day? A more convenient display screen? A way to download the finds to some external file on my Windows laptop? Something else?