FrodeBS

Sorry for sidestepping, but I am in a bit of a shock. Coming from a country where you have the right to hike and camp about everywhere (private or government owned) in forrested area I am suprised to learn that you have to get a permit and pay a fee to hike in state parks in US.

My guess is that their hamsters have gone excessive in honoring the 420 day.

It adds at least one more level between the cache getting reported as having a problem, and the cache getting fixed. Probably more than one layer, depending on circumstance. We've already learned that Mom can't be bothered with reading NMs. So that leaves the job for the person who lives way too far away to take decisive action. In my world, NM = Go fix, post a maintenance note. In their world, NM = Call Mom, wait for Mom to fix, (Mom might have a life, so not sure how long that will take), get message that all is well, post a maintenance note. It's why I'm not keen on cachers who place stuff they can't maintain themselves. Also my mom has a life but when she agrees to take care of something for me, she follows up on that in a real good manner. I have once had a NM on a cache that she maintains for me. When I got the message for that, it took me about 1 hour to call my mother. 30 mins later the new log was in place and she called me back. The next day a owners maintenance was posted. I can not claim that she will be doing this as quicly every time. I could be unlucky. She could make dinner/ have visitors/ throw a christmassparty/ cuddle in bed/ be on vacation/ whatever. But so could I. This time I was the "lazy" one as I did not get to log that the new log was in place untill the next day. It is not wheter you maintain a cache by proxy or not that is decisive for how good the cache is mainained. It is if you can trust that proxy (most moms are trustworthy) and how serious you take the CO responibility.

If maintenance is needed, I do a really old-fashioned thing...call her! Sounds like a maintenance plan failure. How did you arrive at this will be a failure. I have a similar arrangement and my mother checks whenever she is walking in the area and I call to tell her to check if a "needs maintenance" log shows up. I do not think that my family is any more special than other so I believe that in most families this is something one gladly would do to help eachother.

I might be sidestepping this topic a bit, but how should I interperate point 6 from http://www.geocaching.com/about/guidelines.aspx ?

With an easy option to turn this on and of, I would love this. one thing comes to my mind thou: Many (or at least some) of the DNF caches gets archived after a short time. Do you think that those still should be visible as a frownie on the map?

Some of my point with this idea was to not bind the reviewer to sit by their computers at the specified time. As I understand the reviewers do as much as they can to accompany this but some CO's wants things published in the middle of the night or during their workhours. So the idea was to help reviewers do some "future publishing" at the times that suits them best.

CO's have no way (apart from "pestering" reviewers) to influate publicationdates for their caches. Is such a feature something we want or not? I think that sometimes CO's wants to publish a cache at a spesific date, for exampe an aniversiary, a holliday, when a team is together, leapday and so on. I have heard that at least in my area some CO's ask the reviewers for specific publicationdates and that they sometimes adjust their personal schedule to accomondate this. I know we are not guaranteed any time from we send a listing to it is published, but a feature to set a date at least one week in the future together with a warning that says that this date is not guaranteed because of the reviewing process and the chance the reviewer has to get in touch with you . The option might also be called "do not publish before date" to clarify this. If the cache is reviewed and approved before this date the cache leaves the reviewinglist for the reviewers and automatically gets published at that time. this might be helpfull for both CO's and reviewers. Anyone that sees pros and cons on this topic?