Where's George?

Ok, I know the other thread is huge, but if you scan it for my comments, you'll get the gist of my points which I would rather not start all over again here. It's all well hashed out in that thread. http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...pic=108361&st=0

nevermind. (wrong thread)

Those bills sent to me in the mail are spent without being re-entered.

Yes, a bill with or without a WG mark is not going to skew the data much... But the issue that this thread is about is not about whether a bill is marked or not..it's about the un-natural circulation (as far as my website rules are concerned) of bills in and out of geocaches specifically for the purpose of logging geocaches, and not tracking natural circulation, as defined on WG. Therefore, WG bills that travel in this manner DO skew MY data, as I HAVE defined it.

Just to clarify (and on my FAQ page because people ask for it all the time), I never had a "farthest" or "fastest" bill report, specifically because people would attempt to spoof the report. I do have a "most entered bills" report, though, and occasionally people attempt to send a bill around to get on that list, and I usually delete all the entries and block the bill from further entry. But spoofing a "furthest" and/or "fastest" bill is easy to do, so therefore it's not tracked or reported. And thanks for your better example of a GC rule violation. Since I really don't do GC, I had to punt for my examples.

Where does Geocaching come off telling me where and how I place or remove caches? If I find something in the woods from geocaching, why should I leave it there, sign the log, trade some items, log it on the website, not throw it out..whatever? Becuase those are the rules of this game. I'm not telling you where you can and can't put your money...I'm only telling you that if you choose to play the Where's George? game, then you must play by the rules or don't play. It's really quite simple. And Where's George? doesn't own any stamps, so I'm not sure what that has to do with your argument.

You can give a WG bill to anyone you want... it all depends on what they do with it. If it's friends/family that you directly handed a bill to, they can't enter it. Or they can enter it if you haven't entered it first. Just ask yourself this question: "Do I need Where's George? to tell me where this bill goes next?". If it's obvious, then the answer is "No, I don't.. I gave this bill to my brother as part of a bet." If you are curious how natural circulation works and where your bill might end up, the anwer is "Yes.. I spent this bill having no idea where it will end up next.. I'd like WG to let me know the next time it surfaces". Common sense, people. Common sense. OK Hank, I love WG, just got a stamp yesterday as a matter of fact. . .I love geocaching too. I have no geocaching friends (sniff, sniff) so just let me know this: If I leave a WG dollar or 3 in a cache so maybe the next cacher can get batteries, gatorade, a beer or these days a whole gallon of gas and I don't know them then that is OK??? I'm just checking because if I have to give up one hobby I have to go with the one that gets my big ole booty off the sofa. . .for the love of George I just want to be in compliance!!! Ok, I think I've explained the rules about 15 times already in this thread alone. For the final time, it's about the SPIRIT of the rules, not specific and infinite scenarios you can dream up. I'm only going to be repeating myself at this point. If you're still not clear, re-read this thread a few times. Unless anyone has a new question not already answered, I'm pretty much done with this thread.

You can give a WG bill to anyone you want... it all depends on what they do with it. If it's friends/family that you directly handed a bill to, they can't enter it. Or they can enter it if you haven't entered it first. Just ask yourself this question: "Do I need Where's George? to tell me where this bill goes next?". If it's obvious, then the answer is "No, I don't.. I gave this bill to my brother as part of a bet." If you are curious how natural circulation works and where your bill might end up, the anwer is "Yes.. I spent this bill having no idea where it will end up next.. I'd like WG to let me know the next time it surfaces". Common sense, people. Common sense.

Geocaching is the biggest organized hobby that causes these issues. As I mentioned earlier, about once a month, I find a bill that people on some random internet forum/board get the not-so-original-idea-but-they-think-it-is idea to send a bill around to all the members of the board, and use WG to track it. I have to remove all the hits, and register on their forum to explain why I did it. There's also the occaisional blog entry of someone who posts, "I found this cool 'Where's George?' bill with serial number Z55555555Q - check it out!".. and twenty people from the blog all rush to WG to enter the serial number. Then there's the occaisional new story where they publish a photo of a bill with the full serial number displayed.. and people run to WG to enter those. About a year ago, there was a very prominent $20 bill on "The Sopranos", and I've had hundreds of people attempt to enter that bill.. but of course, it, and hundreds of serial numbers in print, online, movies, billboards, TV, are all blocked from entry.

Am I the only one who finds it very funny that there actually is a specific legal definition for "Treasure Trove" (in that state)? That just seems bizarre to me. I'd love to see if anyone actually used that as a defense for a found treasure (although one can deduce that there must be at least one case that generated the legal definion).

Hi Jeremy, I hear what you're saying. Here's a snippet from the User Guidelines on Bill acquisition and bill distribution: I had to create these two rules because alot of people were doing #4 - getting straps of bills, marking them, then depositing the entire strap or multiple straps right back into the bank. This is obviously not natural circulation, but worse yet, the banks and their customers and merchants were complaining to the Secret Service and Treasury about getting entire stacks of stamped bills that they did not want to distribute to their customers. This is what triggered the first Secret Service visit. So in order to preserve the viability of the site, and my freedom, I created rule #4, to specifically forbid any bill dumping at a bank or merchant (since a large stack of bills dumped at a merchant are most likely going to just get into the nightly bank deposit anyway). I can assure you, that any of the users on the Top 10 list do not dump bills anywhere, as they all have a huge vested interest in the long-term existence of the website, and don't want to (a) contribute to getting it shut down, or ( have their own Secret Service visit. The #1 person on the site runs several cash business, and distributes the bills to customers - directly into circulation - and not bulk dumping at any merchant. So since I had to create rule #4, people quickly started asking about getting straps of new bills at a bank to spend naturally. While this too can be argued to skew "natural circulation", I'm more concerned about where the bills go AFTER being entered into the site. Where they came from, especially if all from the same place doesn't really matter. And of course, even if rule #3 didn't exist, people would do it anyway. But I have no way to enforce that rule if it said bulk bill acquisition is not allowed. On the other hand, it's happened several times where a user goes into a bank to get a strap or two of bills, and they are all marked/stamped. Of course, I can identify the user who did it and in all cases, I've either disabled or terminated their accounts. I hope this makes some sense.

"They're concerned," said Hank Eskin, the site's owner... There's a number of issues that we're talking about it.... Officials at the Federal Reserve told Eskin bills have to be worn out, ripped, torn, or taped together to be pulled from circulation". There seems to be some discrepancy here. Yes, the discrepancy is that dkwolf doesn't know what he/she is talking about on both issues. As stated, and backed up by my discussions with the Treasury and users evidence, WG bills are NOT automatically destroyed when they reach the FRB. All the bills returned to the FRB are fed through a machine that grades dirt, tears, tape, and extreme markings. A bill would have to be completely stamped or marked over (or torn, taped, or ripped) in order to be rejected by the FRB and destroyed. Many WG users have gotten sealed straps of used $1 bills directly from the FRB (this is how they are distributed to the member banks).. and they OFTEN find WG bills in these straps - proving that WG bills can make it into, and out of, the FRB without being destroyed. Just because bills are sent back to the FRB for being marked or dirty, does not necessarily mean they are destroyed... and most of them are sent right back out into circulation. In addition, the FRB charges member banks for sending back too many suspect bills that aren't actually "unfit to be re-issued". Secondly, saying it is a "federal offense to deface US currency" is a common mis-conception. It's only illegal to deface currency if you have "intent to render the bill unfit to be re-issued". Read the law here: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/usc...33----000-.html (also posted elsewhere in this thread). And anyone who wishes to question any of this, please keep in mind that I HAVE spoken to the Treasury and Secret Service about the website. If they have a problem with it, I'm sure they would have told me. Anything anyone else claims concerning the law, WG, and currency is either pure speculation, fabrication, or ignorance of the actual laws. I choose not to post this clarification earlier, since there were several other discussions going on at the time.

I actually never said that. I said GC was a pain in the rear when it came to Where's George? being improperly used. I actually like Geocaching. I've even thought about going and finding a few caches in my area, and muggling them. (JOKE!) If I hiked more, and got outside more, I would probably have a number of caches logged, and might even have placed a couple of my own.

OK. I've modified this page: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/wrapper.php?page=top10bills_dgc to be a more general discussion of using Where's George? with geocaching. Feel free to add a link it on your site next to the existing Where's George? link. Thanks again.

The site wide "hit rate", or the chances of any one bill getting hit, is 9.79%. Of the 69,140,127 unique bills entered into WG, 7,701,138 of them have been found and logged. I have no idea why you think that is "close to zero". If it were, in fact, "close to zero" the website and entire game just would not work.

You raise a good point. It is put in there along with "other hitchhikers" which may give folks the impression that a Where's George bill can go into a cache. I think just listing the sites under "Other Organizations" would work just fine. I think if we try to include a disclaimer or rules, it might needlessly confuse people. Just taking them out of the "hitchhikers" and moving them to "Other Organizations" would be good enough for me. Thanks.

Yes, my point is this: You made the following assertion on page 1 or 2: You tried to bully everyone into thinking, somehow, someway, under the perfect set of scenarios, that stealing a single cache would be a felony. When you were challenged on that point, you came back with an argument that the total value of all caches stolen from your area would be more than the limit of a felony. My point is that that logic doesn't really matter according to the law. I'm not belittling the magnitude of the problem, nor the seriousness.. just stating how the law would actually be applied in my "misguided reality". So your argument went from 'stealing a single cache would be a felony' to 'stealing alot of caches might add up to the value equivalent to a felony'. The law simply would never be applied in that manner, so what's your point? I believe that's how the law works and is applied in those cases. But if a pickpocketer is caught multiple times, and has multple convictions, then he could face more serious charges due to multiple convictions, not because he picketpocked 10 times the same day. There's a big difference there.

Of course I know it's there. It shows up in my referer logs about 30 times a day. I'd bet Jeremy has even more links back to GC from WG in his logs. It might be better if they were moved out of "Hitchhikers" area and moved to "Other Organizations". And RK, seriously, each (unfortunate) theft of a cache is a separate incident... you can't "add up" all the individual stolen caches to get to some limit where it becomes a felony or grand theft. It can't even be proven that the same person or persons stole all of them, much less convince the police they have any significant value.

Can you please elaborate?

Thanks for getting more detail. What you posted makes sense. But what I (and others) jumped on a few pages back was when you called my statements "misguided reality" and how cache removal could be a felony. Maybe if a cache was worth more than $1000 it would be grand theft (a felony). And if caches were worth that much, I doubt anyone would be leaving them unattended in the woods. And if they did, there would probably be a beaten path to the cache by people wanting to remove them. What makes geocaching work so well is that the caches have little or no value, and therefore aren't the target of petty thieves. Like you say, enforcement is a different issue, and highly unlikely to be prosecuted, which IS the reality. So while the letter of the law may support your arguments, I don't think my "reality" of cache removal was so "misguided". -Hank

What are you trying to say here? What statistics? Which is exactly why I registered geogeorging.com/.net. I'll have to talk with Jeremy about logo usage and such, but it's possible to create a separate site that allows people to enter and hit GC bills to their hearts content, with a separate and distinct URL, and I can remove all that noise from WG. The back end engine already runs both Where's George? and Where's Willy? (Canadian version of WG), it shouldn't be too hard to expand it to handle another site with separate rules, reports and database.

Where have I shown "willingness to harm"? The only thing I've referred to is removing seemingly abandoned Tupperware in the woods. Petty theft, as a purely theoretical argument, I can see. How that coverts to a tort or personal injury is beyond me. On the other hand, RK has already threatened to hit me in the head with a shovel. Who'se torting who?

Thanks, Jeremy.

Here's the current highest-hit GC bill - 26 hits. http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key...63a85aeced7da0a Someone please explain to me how this is what I created WG to track. edit: Here's are other examples - 17 hits: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key...9dd75ffc020f670 20 hits: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/report.php?key...b7dab99b16271ff

No, you can (currently) enter them and the hits register. And for people arguing that bills in geocaches are still "natural".. the current "highest hit" bill on WG has 15 entries.. the next has 13 entries, and then a few at 12, and a few more at 11 entries. The current highest hit geocache bill has 26 entries. Another has 25 entries. And these entries are mostly "in and out" of the same cache. It's people hitting bills in a cache, and putting it back.. Does Where's George? *really* need to track activity already being tracked on Geocaching.com - where it was meant to be tracked? For you folks still beating this to death, isn't it enough that I simply request that geocaching bills not be tracked on Where's George?. Can't you just respect my rules and wishes, as stated, and leave it at that? Like I've said now several times, yes, you can create infinite scenarios that challenge my rules... that doesn't mean YOU HAVE TO.