Roman!
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Posts posted by Roman!
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That cache you found, was it a nano with a mushy log?
I've had bad days of caching, but nothing like that, at least none that lost me $50. I remember going out one time in the pouring rain, in the dark, and getting 6 DNFs in a row. It was still fun.
3-hour wait: endless.
Ferry ticket: $50.
FTF dreams: priceless!
I barely fared better last month when I went to Galiano, that was $85 but at least no three hour wait.
Two new caches, one I DNFed, the other I found about 45 meters out after an hour.
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That cache you found, was it a nano with a mushy log?
I've had bad days of caching, but nothing like that, at least none that lost me $50. I remember going out one time in the pouring rain, in the dark, and getting 6 DNFs in a row. It was still fun.
Nah, it was an ammo can with a mushy log.
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You cant hate geocaching. Its about the fun, the experience and the stories to be told after.
Today ranks near tge bottom of my stories to be told, 3 hours sitting in a car waiting for a ferry sucks.
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You cant hate geocaching. Its about the fun, the experience and the stories to be told after.
I have much better stories such as driving to Alaska to find a cache and have lunch then heading home.
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Am I hearing this right? Geocaching gave you a great excuse to go on that fabulous adventure described in the OP, and you hate it for that??
Yup.
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Too me it wouldn't make sense not do some caching, if your job is to create programs for caching or socialize with other cachers, it would be nice if they experienced it themselves so you can relate with what we as cachers do.
It should be a requirement to meet the requirements of at least one of my challenge caches before being hired by GS.
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I appreciate, Roman!, that you may have wanted this in OT so that the discussion could possibly be a bit more relaxed, but the topic really is about geocaching. So I'm going to have to move it to Geocaching Topics.
What if we change it to an optional topic, why I hate geocaching and/or my lunch today?
I had a stale snickers bar and a warm coke for lunch while sitting in a three hour ferry lineup today, I hated my lunch.
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I placed this in OT because it's not really about hating geocaching, just about hating it today, just about sharing your experiences and having fun doing so while leaving yourself open to all the ridicule and off topic posts this forum has to offer.
So a new cache came out on Bowen Island, a roughly 20 minute, $50 ferry ride from Horseshoe Bay. Saw it come out on my way to work last night, checked ferry schedules, first one at 6 am so after work off I went.
Got to GZ and could not find the hint or the cache, after an hour and further review I saw it was a new cacher, first hide, no finds, I left for the ferry back home, oops 3 sailing wait (1 ferry/hour). Figured it was locals going to the mainland to work and as there were other caches on the island went to look for those. Found 1 of 8 and after 3 hours got back to the ferry, 3 sailing wait, some kind of major camping thing going on and everyone was headed home.
Wasted $50 plus gas, no sleep for 24 hours, no FTFs and 8 DNFs and a 3 hour wait, I hate geocaching today!
Did you hate geocaching today? If so, why?
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The find counts for Lackeys range from 6 to 14484, with an average of 933, a median of 222, and a standard deviation of 2714. As you can tell from these statistics, the values are spread out over a wide range.
Is the Lackey with only 6 finds nicknamed "Slackey"?!
Ha, funniest thing I ever heard from you.
Heard he always calls in sick and he's the one working on creating the challenge cache icon.
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Makes everyone happy.
No it won't
Fair enough. Why?
I can see the challenge lovers happy as they can still find challenge caches and everyone else happy as they get their finds.
Pretty much the same as for a puzzle cache.
I spent 9 days on a bus travelling from Vancouver to Maine and back so I could show my reviewer i qualified for a challenge cache I wanted to place, no chance I'd let anyone not qualifying log the cache and it would cheapen my cache if I did.
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cron may have hit on why some love the challenge cache, and others hate them. The exclusivity of the find. I qualify and others don't. You can't log my cache because you don't qualify.
Different people like them for different reasons and different people hate them for different reasons and some people are indifferent.
Some may like them because all those entitled people who think they don't have to work for anything can't log them.
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The CO would be perfectly right to delete every found it log of the cachers that did not sign the official log which means their found it is not legit thus the first person signing the official log is FTF.
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Another thought, all of this may end up just being Groundspeak allowing challenge caches to be marked as 'found' by anyone who signs the log and a separate 'challenge completed' mark for those who meet the criteria. If challenges are to remain as caches then this is what probably should have happened all along. You find a cache, you sign a log, you found it.
I hope the goal is more along the lines of what I have already posted.
Now, there is an idea that I can sink my teeth into! And the "Challenge Completed" flag gets counted on a separate counter (or with badges or whatever). I like it, and it seems like a simple, workable solution. I wonder if the challenge cache devotees would agree with something like that.
Wouldn't do the challenges and wouldn't publish challenges, last thing we need is a second scoreboard, haven't we learnt anything from the last time?
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And just who's going to put out these challenges and create the what ever it is to be collected and monitor cachers are meeting the challenges, sound like a lot of extra work, for what?
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Ground speak is American
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I've been keeping up with the Challenge Cache feedback. The thing that strikes me are the many comments like "I think it is a great shame and a sad day for the game that challenge caches have been cancelled for so long".
It hasn't been cancelled. There are still challenge caches out there to work towards and go find. Plan a trip to Ontario, Canada. We have 100s to qualify for. Here's a comprehensive bookmark list - over 700 challenge caches. Many challenge seekers are big on challenges that involve travel. This is an opportunity.
It seems the biggest lament about the moratorium are from people who want to hide challenges, not from people who want to find them.
Do challenge caches mostly appeal to people who own, or want to own them?
I think it's more about feeling like big brother is controlling us.
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Most of the non forum regulars say they do not like ... challenges that require a lot of travel.
This is one of my favorite parts of geocaching, the travel, be it local, regional, national, or international. I like the idea of possibly completing a challenge based on travel. Our state's 92 county challenge, DeLorme challenge, virtual challenge, and history (caches placed in the first year of geocaching) challenge took me to parts of Indiana I wouldn't have gone had it not been for geocaching. Why would you limit a challenge based on travel and keep things local when there's a big world out there to explore? Heck, there's a big world to explore in most towns, cities, and states. You don't have to go too far to find unique and interesting locations and I have geocaching to thank for that.
You are so fortunate. I would love to do a lot of geocaching travel, but circumstances are not in my favour. I bet that's true for most geocachers - limited money, time, priorities, and the support of family.
So your answer is to take it away from everyone?
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Something that hasn't yet been pointed out (and really doesn't bother me... just tossing this out there) is that most, if not all, challenge caches are biased against the new geocachers. Most have been created for cachers with thousands of finds. (stopping short of saying that challenge caches are elitist
)I'll dispute the "all" claim above. Many of the challenges in my region can be achieved by someone with "merely" hundreds of finds. (Some of the simpler ones: find cache names starting with A-Z in the county, find 5 of the 7 oldest caches in the county, earn 20 souvenirs, find 5 caches in 5 different states/territories.)
Then again, I'm not in a region with challenge-crazy cache owners.
Fair enough, but given your examples, I would still say that a new-ish user would have had to work specifically toward one of your example challenges in order to log a find with merely hundreds of finds. Highly unlikely that they would have qualified purely by chance. Agreed?
Again, so what?
The majority of feedback of what people like about challenges is something to work towards, would be pointless if newbies had to qualify for a challenge to be published.
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Not that I'm surprised but in this thread, where almost all the post are from forum regulars most have problems with challenge caches but in the feedback thread where most the posts are by non forum regulars most enjoy challenge caches.
That thread is going remarkably well.
Most of the non forum regulars say they do not like streak challenges, xxx finds in a day challenges and challenges that require a lot of travel.
That's good information.
It also looks like many would be happy with a badge or souvenir type of challenge system.
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Not that I'm surprised but in this thread, where almost all the post are from forum regulars most have problems with challenge caches but in the feedback thread where most the posts are by non forum regulars most enjoy challenge caches.
Maybe it's just the "I'm a grumpy old man, get off my lawn" syndrome with the oldtimers.
I started paragliding when it was a new sport and we shared the launches and airspace with hangliders, they were convinced this new way of flying would destroy their way of flying, guess what, turns out there's room for both and many pilots now do both.
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Odds are the more caches you found the more apt you will be to qualify for a challenge or at least be closer to qualifying than someone with less or no finds, so what? The one with more finds already put in the effort the one with less finds will have to do, in the end the effort will be similar, heaven forbid someone has to work to earn something.
Geocaching is about finding things at specific locations, not bookkeeping exercises.
My wife and I are out and find a cache that happens to be a challenge cache. I get to say I "Found It" because somewhere in my 6000 finds I happen to have found ten caches that start with the letter 'z' that were not found on a Tuesday in the summer, or some other such nonsense. My wife with her 100 finds can't say she Found It because she hasn't met some made-up requirement. That's nothing to do with earning anything. It's a cache that she found and she should be allowed to log it properly.
With all other physical caches, if you sign the logbook you get to claim your find. If it's a tree climbing cache, you aren't denied your find because someone else climbed to the top and passed the container down. If it's a puzzle you aren't denied your find because someone else solved it and you just tagged along for the ride. If it's a cache on a summit, you aren't denied your find because you took a helicopter instead of hiking to the top. If it's a SCUBA cache and someone else dives down and brings the cache up to the surface for me to sign it? I get to call it a Find.
Hey, I'm a stats geek and I have actually enjoyed going through my old finds to check to see if I qualify for some arbitrary challenge requirements. They've allowed me to look at my caching history in some unique ways that I never would have otherwise. (Some have just been plain tedious!) I've completed a number of challenge caches and even enjoyed some of them. However, enjoyment alone doesn't make something right.
It's also not about sitting on your butt in front of a computer and solving puzzles.
Earthcaches on average take me longer to complete the "paperwork" than do challenge caches.
Actually who are you to decide what geocaching is to me or anyone else?
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I find it good to make challenge, that require to make at least 30 multis with attribute 'hike more that 10km', however, the problem is, you can put that attribute even on 1-stage 100-m multi, and there's no way to force CO not to do that.
The same goes for all other requirements. D/T ratings sometimes don't make sense, attributes are sometimes not correct. There is no fool proof way to make sure the requirements are 100% met. Even challenges that require cached in xx countries (statistics kept in your gc profile) can have logged "armchair" virtuals in countries you never set foot in. There's no way you can be 100% sure about anything as people even log caches online they never found.
Exactly!!! And these, I believe, are some of the issues that Groundspeak is hoping to address during this timeout. Challenge caches encourage such shenanigans.
Here's another way to look at it, challenge cache owners are a lot more vigilant in making sure there are no shenanigans going on.
As a CO I verify all claims of achieving the challenge and check the log book as well.
As a cacher having done many challenges I have been on three occasions contacted but a CO due to the fact I made a mistake documenting and asked to fix it.
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I find it good to make challenge, that require to make at least 30 multis with attribute 'hike more that 10km', however, the problem is, you can put that attribute even on 1-stage 100-m multi, and there's no way to force CO not to do that.
The same goes for all other requirements. D/T ratings sometimes don't make sense, attributes are sometimes not correct. There is no fool proof way to make sure the requirements are 100% met. Even challenges that require cached in xx countries (statistics kept in your gc profile) can have logged "armchair" virtuals in countries you never set foot in. There's no way you can be 100% sure about anything as people even log caches online they never found.
Exactly!!! And these, I believe, are some of the issues that Groundspeak is hoping to address during this timeout. Challenge caches encourage such shenanigans.
so do travel bugs, there are way more shenanigans involved with them.
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Something that hasn't yet been pointed out (and really doesn't bother me... just tossing this out there) is that most, if not all, challenge caches are biased against the new geocachers. Most have been created for cachers with thousands of finds. (stopping short of saying that challenge caches are elitist
)So the real problem with challenge caches is that they challenge new cachers to find more caches?
Isn't more cachers finding more caches beneficial to a company that makes money from geocaching?
Please go back and re-read my post, Roman!
Odds are the more caches you found the more apt you will be to qualify for a challenge or at least be closer to qualifying than someone with less or no finds, so what? The one with more finds already put in the effort the one with less finds will have to do, in the end the effort will be similar, heaven forbid someone has to work to earn something.
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50,000+ caches- how possible?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Better not point him to Alamogul's profile.