Dud&Plato

Why would that make a difference? Speak your piece. I believe I did speak my piece. My question is what difference does your post make? Guess we're both wasting valuable letters on the internet. I heard they are going to be charging per letter soon. Sorry to support you. I should have said that TB conversation needs to be in that forum only. It won't happen again. I am sorry BlueDuece, being somewhat new to the forums, and rather a lurker, I took that as an attack. I was mistaken. Will be happy to admit I was wrong, and thank you for the support. - Edit: Going through your profile, it should have been MORE than clear you are a TB lover. I had no right to be concerned with an attack, and a very personal THANK YOU for your efforts. I sincerely apologize for the assumption.

This topic is also of interest to our current situation. We are working on a multi cache - it has three -physical- locations as well as three physical caches. Each stage DOES require solving a puzzle to reach the next physical cache location. The guidelines as they read currently really could apply either way - to it being a mystery or a multi. Looking for some examples from around the area, and what do we see... situations that justify both. So going along with original question, we present the other end. Just in case anything wasn't clear as sand already.

Why would that make a difference? Speak your piece. I believe I did speak my piece. My question is what difference does your post make? Guess we're both wasting valuable letters on the internet. I heard they are going to be charging per letter soon.

Absolutely! You did the right thing in correcting the inventory to the best of your ability. The worst case situation is the person that dropped it off, haven't gotten time to log it yet. It's personal preference how long you wait to log your discovery / find / etc. It doesn't hurt anyone that they personally didn't get to log the drop off IMO. Last time we faced this situation, we found a coin that wasn't logged as dropped off. Set the owner a message we would give them some time to log it themselves if they wish, then would log it as taken from them, and dropped at the cache. Never heard back from them in a reasonable time, so posted as retrieved from owner, placed in cache, then retrieved. Just be careful not to get those (placed, dropped, retrieved, etc) mixed up, otherwise it can mess with the TB's mileage. Just use your own best judgement. Thank you for being one of those that care enough to work toward a better inventory listing.

In before this gets moved to the TB section. Sadly, most people seem to have 'gotten over' the trackables issue, and expect that the inventory listing is going to be inaccurate. There's a few reasons for this, not only the site. Some new cachers will grab a TB and either not know how, or not care how to log it. Hopefully in that situation, it actually gets moved on.... The general feeling is that cache owners are not and should not be responsible for the listing of tb, and it's up to the owner of the trackable if they want to mark it missing or not. Other cache owners think that altering the TB list is a disservice to the owners, sending their bug into oblivion (this is not true at all, but the belief seems to remain.) On top of that, most feel that it is not their responsibility in the first place to even maintain the TB listing, and will not do so. So, it's a system that's flawed for a number of unstoppable reasons. You can do what you can to make it better if you are willing to put in the effort. In each log that you write note what TB are not present. If a reasonable amount of time has passed, you can ask the TB owner to mark the trackable as missing on it's page. Following that, you can ask a CO to consider marking the TB's as missing, but they are NOT required to do so. It's simply a courtesy, and it's asking the CO to go above and beyond what they have to. (I sure wish more did myself.) I for one wish there was a better system, but even with the perfect system, there's still going to be issues. Human nature is a tough problem to solve.

some poeple don't post their finds online for a lot of different reasons. That is one thing I would not let get to you since there is absolutely nothing you can do about it. Agreed and agreed. Still can be a pet peeve though.

Seen that blank logs has been mentioned. What about NO online log? Recently did maintenance on one of ours and noticed that it was about 50/50 written log to online log ratio. It's understandable that people get busy and don't log for awhile. It's beyond that though, and it's pretty clear they are never going to log it online. Heck, we would take a TFTC in stride! Lucky for us we get over such things quickly.

I didn't cache today, but wrote a fun log (Not even a find!). Recovery after work is needed sometimes, however sharing with others is always cool. 'Workin', caching, possibly recruiting new cachers, music, festivals, all rolled into a long weekend? http://tinyurl.com/4yruk9o Yup. That'll do.

z0mbieCache, that simply terrible. We are able to relate to your situation, as we had our first hide this summer. We went to some effort to produce a good hide, ammo can cache, that was stocked well with swag. We would simply be crushed to find out that a FTF would clear it out that like. We know that a cache like the one you created takes a lot of work to put together. The money it took to stock it that well was little in comparison to the work you put into the hide. You took the extra effort to really put something out there that people would enjoy. In return for your effort, you got the short end of the stick. Boo! We'll just try to help take a step back from that. NO, that's clearly not the norm. You more than have a right to be upset about it. We all know when we place a hide, that it's somewhat outside of our hands after that. We know it's possible for the first person to find it to simply clear it out completely. I suppose that sometimes, we should be happy that there's ANYTHING left. (/sarcasm) However, just to try and lift your spirits, we've seen the other end of that. Our cache has only been found a few times, and nothing but a geocoin has been taken. Only new items left. I'm sorry you have to be on the short end of the stick this time, and hope it doesn't discourage you from future hides. It's certainly not the norm, and that the person that cleared it out should be ashamed of themselves. Try to keep some faith. One bad apple doesn't make us all bad.

We actually feared this. We got excited at first after a few finds, and wanted to add to the enjoyment. It's almost unquestionable that this is a pretty common thing to happen. We know it wasn't a requirement, but we did take the tossed around idea of getting to 100 finds before placing our first hide. We actually take pride in that, and it made our first (and still only) hide better than it would have been. New test and requirements scare people. In reality, we can only hope that people start regulating their own area better. We can't stop bad hides, specifically as we can't agree what a bad hide is in the first place! However, we can work within our own community to produce a better overall outcome. A lot of areas have a local geocaching community that is more active than people would think. There are people out there with the same passion as you and should be a first stop. It's refreshing to talk to others in your same area. Next would be the old found power of posting your log as you wish. We at first where extremely afraid of posting a needs maintenance log for a wet log, or the like. No longer. That's what it's there for, use it when needed! Otherwise, if the hide is just mundane or not that great, we just post a TFTC and move on. Otherwise, a good log does wonders to encourage others. A bad hide will see lots of TFTC, and not much else. A good one will (hopefully) support more involved logs. Finally... be the change you want to see. If your hides are unique and involved some work, of course it's natural to erm... see others as less involved. Keep in mind those people with 'bad hides' really did just want to add to others enjoyment and didn't think of the long term frustration. Good hides, good caches are the best way to combat this. People seeing how great a set up is, or how involved a hide is, etc, are more likely to see how a dump a random cache anywhere isn't the best play. Keep on enjoying the good caches. Keep your head up on the not so good ones. The next magic experience is but a cache away!

Proposition to amend schedule as follows: [insert topic] <-> [insert joke about it being on the schedule] [insert anything] SCHEDULE! [No new discussion.] [END] I'm sure many of you old hats have talked everything over a billion times. I'm aware 'clogging up' a forum with the same talk is at best... boring. However, shutting down any new discussion because it's happened before? Seems strange. If there's a specific topic for a subject, by all means point people that way! If not and you are only willing to add 'THE SCHEDULE' to a topic... you are as guilty as the people simply repeating. A curse on our team - I hope I look back on this post a year from now. That seems fair.

I love when people get all up in arms trying to ruin a good idea. Tons of people could have ruined geocaching by the way that you describe it. Someone could have placed KP photos in an geocache ammobox or instead of inflicting damage to a computer they could have rigged something up to a geocache to cause bodily harm. But people don't cache to cause harm or destruction, we do it because it's fun and we find different varieties every time. That's why I plan on creating a dead drop style cache. Instead of having a PHYSICAL logbook and PHYSICAL trade-ables it will all be digital in a very well camo'ed container, placed on private property with owners permission. I have yet to come across a well hidden cache that has been full of illegal products or images. At worst the cache would get muggled and I'd be out an old $0.99 flash drive and a $0.20 usb extension cable. Which is alot cheaper than what goes into most caches. There is no reason this should be any different. "End Rant" VERY well said. In fact, I was willing to come out of lurking to support this. The specific style and idea that is originally presented as dead drops may not suit everyone's taste. Does every cache? There is little to be said of the dangers presented beyond what we have now. Don't own scuba gear? A UV light? Etc, etc, etc. Being aware of the dangers and risks is to be expected. There is nothing more presented here than what we already deal with. I'm a little shocked with the amount of tech that goes into this sport that people are so put off by another device. <Really silly example here...> OH NO! VIRUS ON MY GPS! Viruses on my paperless tech! Viruses on my erm... log book? I feel it's best to simply keep an open mind. Don't be shocked when more, more and more tech turns up. I LOVE this sport for it's ability to evolve. As has been said before, and will be surely said again: If it's not for you move on, and enjoy what you enjoy! Happy caching. Tech or traditional (where ever that line is for you)