MartyFouts

I hide microcaches near historical markers for precisely the reason you suggest, but some markers are in locations where there simply are no good places to put caches nearby, not even microcaches -- which is why my first cache is a virtual multicache. And while you can 'see' hundreds of historical markers going down 101, you don't really get to experience them that way. As I've already mentioned in this thread, one of my favorite logs on my virtual cache is from a guy who road his bike past the first sign every day but had never noticed it. Tastes vary, and you don't like the part of geocaching that involves the finder being the one to locate the object rather than the placer. That's OK, but just because it doesn't appeal to you doesn't mean it's not a good part of the hobby -- it definitely appeals to others. I have three locationless caches, one virtual cache, three microcaches, and one regular cache -- and that's the order they get visited in, from most often to least. While the most noise in the forums seems to be against locationless and virtual caches, the most traffic seems to be to them, so they're pretty popular with the people finding caches, even if they're not popular with the people talking about them. quote:Originally posted by White Rabbit: That whole deal with the "historical marker" locationless cache is kind of what I'm talking about. That just doesn't seem to be Geocaching in my opinion. I can drive down Highway 101 and see dozens of those Historical markers, but that doesn't have to do with caching. Why not make it like the series of caches done by, ummm...Fractal I think, called the "Oregon History Lessons". He took the time to go and find somewhere near these History Markers to hide a cache, and after we found that, we went ahead and read about the place. I'm not telling anyone how to place thier caches or what they should like or not like, for the THIRD time, I was just curious to see if anyone else liked to just hunt for the caches with an actual container of some sorts at the end. There's no need to get all defensive or anything. http://www.iinet.net.au/~rabbit/rabpics/buneatg.gif _I am the Rabbit King, I can do anything_

Laws restricting photography of federal facilities date back to WW-I. During WW-II soldiers were posted around various defense industry facilities to prevent photography. Laws were beefed up during Vietnam, and now copyright issues have intruded and commercial outfits are also prohibiting photography of their buildings. As Jeremy pointed out earlier, though, it is often possible to get waviers by contacting the appropriate authorities and asking nicely for permission. quote:Originally posted by The Shadows Know: I believe there were a number of laws passed during the Vietnam War era that prohibited the photographing of federal property. If I recall correctly, these laws were very broad and were written to included any public works project that involved federal funding, i.e., bridges, monuments, etc. It seems a number of war protesters were scouting federal buildings and other properties before they planted bombs. Draft boards and post offices were favorite targets, so popular that they even bombed the main draft board building way up north in Minneapolis. Connected with this is an interesting bit of trivia. There was a law enacted around 1970 that reduced the time necessary to establish residency in a state to 24 hours. They enacted the law to make it easier for states to prosecute war protesters that crossed state lines to incite riots. As far as I know that law was never rescinded.

Laws restricting photography of federal facilities date back to WW-I. During WW-II soldiers were posted around various defense industry facilities to prevent photography. Laws were beefed up during Vietnam, and now copyright issues have intruded and commercial outfits are also prohibiting photography of their buildings. As Jeremy pointed out earlier, though, it is often possible to get waviers by contacting the appropriate authorities and asking nicely for permission. quote:Originally posted by The Shadows Know: I believe there were a number of laws passed during the Vietnam War era that prohibited the photographing of federal property. If I recall correctly, these laws were very broad and were written to included any public works project that involved federal funding, i.e., bridges, monuments, etc. It seems a number of war protesters were scouting federal buildings and other properties before they planted bombs. Draft boards and post offices were favorite targets, so popular that they even bombed the main draft board building way up north in Minneapolis. Connected with this is an interesting bit of trivia. There was a law enacted around 1970 that reduced the time necessary to establish residency in a state to 24 hours. They enacted the law to make it easier for states to prosecute war protesters that crossed state lines to incite riots. As far as I know that law was never rescinded.

It's interesting that you worded your comment this way, because several of the log entries I've gotten on my virtual cache literally say "gee, I've walked past this every day and never knew it was there." By all means, if you don't like them, don't do them, but the good ones work just as well as any stash-cache. quote:Originally posted by White Rabbit: I guess some people don't understand where I'm coming from with this. It's not about the toys, it's about finding something (a sort of 'treasure') that people walk past everyday, sometimes right under there feet, but they don't know it's there, only a handful of people have found it and know it's there. I don't know, I was just wondering if there's anyone else that gets annoyed by the barrage of questionable caches that pop up whenever they're trying to find one. I don't tell people how to design them or which ones they should/shouldn't do, I was just wondering if anyone else just likes to actually go out and FIND something I guess. If you're just going to reply saying "just ignore them", then please, just ignore this topic and don't post. I do ignore them, I'm forced to ignore them. I just wish there wasn't so many of them and more of the well thought out, well hidden, more 'traditional' caches (a la Fractal style). http://www.iinet.net.au/~rabbit/rabpics/buneatg.gif _I am the Rabbit King, I can do anything_

It's interesting that you worded your comment this way, because several of the log entries I've gotten on my virtual cache literally say "gee, I've walked past this every day and never knew it was there." By all means, if you don't like them, don't do them, but the good ones work just as well as any stash-cache. quote:Originally posted by White Rabbit: I guess some people don't understand where I'm coming from with this. It's not about the toys, it's about finding something (a sort of 'treasure') that people walk past everyday, sometimes right under there feet, but they don't know it's there, only a handful of people have found it and know it's there. I don't know, I was just wondering if there's anyone else that gets annoyed by the barrage of questionable caches that pop up whenever they're trying to find one. I don't tell people how to design them or which ones they should/shouldn't do, I was just wondering if anyone else just likes to actually go out and FIND something I guess. If you're just going to reply saying "just ignore them", then please, just ignore this topic and don't post. I do ignore them, I'm forced to ignore them. I just wish there wasn't so many of them and more of the well thought out, well hidden, more 'traditional' caches (a la Fractal style). http://www.iinet.net.au/~rabbit/rabpics/buneatg.gif _I am the Rabbit King, I can do anything_

I'm sorry, but I don't see your point. I've found "real" caches that were much easier to find and a lot less interesting then some of the virtual caches I've been to. There's at least one cache in this area that you can park within 25 feet of, for instance. On the other hand, I've found virtual caches that were interesting and informative and a lot more fun to get to. I also don't get the distinction about microcaches. One of the caches I've not been able to find (and I've looked for it three times) is a micro cache, and some of the microcaches have turned out to be very challenging to locate. As for 'anyone can do it': that's true about 95% of the caches hidden, no matter what kind. It wouldn't be a very fun hobby if nobody could ever find any of the caches. Also, locationless caches -- if done right -- can be pretty challenging, and they all require a GPS. A locationless cache, after all, is just asking the finder to do what the hider usually does. And who knows, once people realize how easy it was to do the work to find a locationless cache it might dawn on them that they can hide caches too and more caches will get hidden.

I'm sorry, but I don't see your point. I've found "real" caches that were much easier to find and a lot less interesting then some of the virtual caches I've been to. There's at least one cache in this area that you can park within 25 feet of, for instance. On the other hand, I've found virtual caches that were interesting and informative and a lot more fun to get to. I also don't get the distinction about microcaches. One of the caches I've not been able to find (and I've looked for it three times) is a micro cache, and some of the microcaches have turned out to be very challenging to locate. As for 'anyone can do it': that's true about 95% of the caches hidden, no matter what kind. It wouldn't be a very fun hobby if nobody could ever find any of the caches. Also, locationless caches -- if done right -- can be pretty challenging, and they all require a GPS. A locationless cache, after all, is just asking the finder to do what the hider usually does. And who knows, once people realize how easy it was to do the work to find a locationless cache it might dawn on them that they can hide caches too and more caches will get hidden.

This may have been documented already, but in case it has not, here goes. I tried to log a note on a travel bug saying that it was still in a cache that I'd just visited. I selected "Making a note" for "What type of log?" on the travelbug log page for the bug, but the software logged it as "I have it". It's not an important bug to fix, because there is an easy workaround: I just posted notes in the cache site's log saying that I hadn't really take the travel bug, being careful to select the bug from my inventory as part of the log.

This is an interesting quiz, because I just got back from Montana (where I grew up) I think there are more caches within 10 miles of where I live now then there are in all of Montana (the 4th largest US state.) It's just another reason why it doesn't make sense to try to pretend that 'counting caches' is some kind of competitive sport.

quote:Originally posted by VentureForth: Important! Especially if you go alone, take a cell phone with you. At least you know where you are if you are bit and can get in touch with someone. It's probably not a bad idea to take a cell phone with you, but it is a bad idea to count on being able to use it. Where I grew up, the only cell coverage tends to be along the major interstates and in towns, because it is a rural, sparsely populated place. But living in a populated area is no guarentee. I've been hunting caches in the Santa Cruz Mountains (on the penninsula betweeen San Jose and San Francisco California) for a couple of months now, and I would say that about 80% of the land in the open space preserves has no cell coverage.

quote:Originally posted by VentureForth: Important! Especially if you go alone, take a cell phone with you. At least you know where you are if you are bit and can get in touch with someone. It's probably not a bad idea to take a cell phone with you, but it is a bad idea to count on being able to use it. Where I grew up, the only cell coverage tends to be along the major interstates and in towns, because it is a rural, sparsely populated place. But living in a populated area is no guarentee. I've been hunting caches in the Santa Cruz Mountains (on the penninsula betweeen San Jose and San Francisco California) for a couple of months now, and I would say that about 80% of the land in the open space preserves has no cell coverage.

quote:Originally posted by wcgreen: I've an idea for a micro- or virtual cache at a location that once was a tourist landmark but now is forgotten. This place is accessible by parking on the shoulder of a US highway, climbing over the metal traffic barrier, and crossing a gravelled drainage ditch. The road shoulder is very wide, so there should be no danger to a careful person. The ditch has some thistles, but I saw no poison ivy. I crossed it in sandals, so it's doable. Can a micro-cache work here or would this be considered too risky? -- Wendy Chatley Green wcgreen55@hotmail.com I've found other caches in similar situations. Make sure that it's legal to park in that spot and, as others have written, point out the risk in the cache description. Marty

quote:Originally posted by BrianSnat: I know many people refer to Geocaching as a game. The site supplied Geocache letter also calls it a game. But I've heard others call Geocaching a sport. The distinction is important in one respect. I believe it would be taken less seriously by land managers if it's called a game. For those who are seeking approval to place caches, has this been an issue? It's a hobby. There are people who want to make it competitive, and they can compete with themselves, but it's just something to pass time and an excuse to get outside.

quote:Originally posted by mtn-man: I do not want them to go away, I just wish people would be creative and think about them more like the first few that were done -- and they were well done. As I have said, I have logged a few of the first ones. As as far as changing the rules as you go you have to remember this... At the start you had to post the coordinates for a location, either a physical cache site or a virtual cache because no cache box was allowed for legal reasons. The rules changed at one point to allow a cache to be approved that had no coordinates. It appears that Geocaching has been attempting to adapt to what cachers want. Locationless caches are linked at the top EVERY result page every time you do a search, yet less than 1 percent of cachers log them. It is not as if they are hard to find, but if they were so popular there would be 2000 logs on every cache since there are over 12,000 Geocachers (or more). I support the Georgia Geocachers Association, or the GGA! On the other hand, I've got three locationless caches and five real caches, but over 75% of the cache hits on my caches are for the locationless ones. *AND* I've done less work to find some "real" caches than people have done to find my locationless caches.

quote:Originally posted by georgeandmary:

quote:Originally posted by Duc996: Give me a break. Finding cities that begin with letter "X", find a casino, find an airport.....?? Okay it was fun at first but its way out of hand now. I don't get it. I just don't get it. OK, I can see that locationless caches aren't for you. That's cool. You don't have to do them if you don't want to. But why, precisely, is it, that people who don't like an aspect of a hobby always find it necessary to spoilt that aspect for those who do? If you don't like locationless caches, then don't do them. But there are a lot of people who do -- my locationless caches get a lot more traffic than any of my real caches, for instance. So let them have their fun too. It ain't no skin off your nose.

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin): quote:One (Mission Madness) was approved, while the other (College Credit) was not. Both are permanent objects, both were intended to require GPS/photo documentation, both are moderately rare, both are already subjects of coffee table books. Well, first off you can always appeal a "judgement" by bringing it up to vote in these forums whenever you want, but I'll bite on this one. Your college credit locationless cache was to log a College. As the rules listed, it has to be something that is novel. A college, by any stretch of the imagination, is not novel. Historical missions are. And where would you specifically log coordinates for a place like a college? The college entry sign? That would probably be novel enough for a locationless cache. But an entire college? Not likely. Jeremy Jeremy Irish Groundspeak - The Language of Location It seems to me that you're playing at semantics. The rules for the cache clearly stated "Entry must include at least one photograph that clearly identifies the college and the coordinates for that photograph." So that gives what seems to me to be exactly what you've said would make it an acceptable cache: you have to find *1* identifiable thing about the college, such as the entrance sign, and photograph and record its location. Here's the entire text of the cache rules as they now stand in the archived version of the cache "Major colleges have played an important role in the history of the United States. Even people who've never finished high school know about such schools as Stanford and MIT, and have heard of the IVY league. But did you know that Universities also have colleges within them? Find a major university or college, photograph it, tell us something about it. (Extra credit for a URL of a site telling the history of the college.) Please, only one entry per college (but note that colleges within universities count as separate from the university.) Entry must include at least one photograph that clearly identifies the college and the coordinates for that photograph. Extra credit for photos with you and your GPS. The first log entry is an example." It is my opinion that the above both meets the requirements you've put at the begining of this thread and the requirement you mentioned in the post I quoted. If locationless caches are acceptable at all, I believe this one is about as acceptable as they can get. As for how novel the cache is: do you know the answer to this question: Are there more or fewer major colleges than historical missions in the US? (I don't know the absolute answer, but I do know that in Montana, where I grew up, it would be more missions, and in the Silicon Valley, where I now live, it would also be more missions...) What say you all? By the way, where is this 'appeal' process documented? I didn't know anything about it before seeing your post. [This message was edited by Fouts on June 01, 2002 at 09:27 PM.]

There's no single answer and there's no simple answer. I like riding my Bianchi but I don't like the damage that too many riders do to some areas. Things that matter include how sensitive the local terrain is to incursion (there are large parts of Denali that couldn't sustain any bikes at all without damage) how much traffic there might be (some areas could handle some but not a lot of bikes) how much damage has already been done (it's too late to protect some areas) how safe the area is for the bikers (moose are not your friend, especially during calving season) and how badly bikers would interact with other area users (do not get me started on my rant about how jerk-riders screw up off-road for the rest of us.)

I'm sure this was covered in the hash/rehash discussion, but just in case: it has been my experience that many caches can be approached in more than one way and the apparent difficulty can vary a lot depending on your way in. Around here most hiders seem to be conservative and so the rating tends to be as bad as or worse than the way in, but I've seen people turn 1/1 caches into 4/1 caches by coming at them in a way that the hider would have never guessed.

Very well said sir.

Very well said sir.

quote:Originally posted by DisQuoi: 1,000 as a milestone logs is arbitrary. Is it important becasue it's divisible by 100? ... 20? ... 500? I'm a number-nut, so my own personal milestones are based on statistics that would be meaningless to anyone else. If you don't know where I live, they'd be impossible for you to check, as well, since they're based on finding a percentage of caches within various distances of my house. But even doing that is just a way to waste time when it's too dark to go caching. The point of the hobby is to get outside and have some fun with a GPS. And fun ain't measured by how many cache logs you've recorded compared to someone else, it's measured by whether you enjoyed the activity of finding the caches so you could log them.

Nah. It's a reason why people shouldn't care about silly things like found counts. It's like any other hobby: do the parts you enjoy and ignore the parts that would piss you off. quote:Originally posted by skydiver: CCCooperAgency "found" a cache out here in Montana a couple weeks ago. I found the same cache, on the same day. However, the physical log in the cache did not show they visited, nor were any of the items in the cache on the list of things they took or left. I notified the cche owner and they deleted CCCA's virtual log. CCCooperAgnecy is just another reason we should have http://opentopic.Groundspeak.com/0/OpenTopic?a=tpc&s=1750973553&f=6770936793&m=3930977814. They're obviously more interested in being famous than being real geocachers. --- Two paths diverged in a wood, and my... my GPSr pointed dead center between them. ---

I'm confused. Two days ago, completely unaware of this thread, or the debate over locationless caches, which I had only discovered a couple of days earlier, I tried to create two locationless caches, both of which seem to meet the requirements. One (Mission Madness) was approved, while the other (College Credit) was not. Both are permanent objects, both were intended to require GPS/photo documentation, both are moderately rare, both are already subjects of coffee table books. Don't get me wrong -- it's your site and I'll obey whatever rules you want for posting here, but I really want to know what the rules are, so that I can apply them consistently when trying to create a site.

As things now stand, there's no reasonable way to compare the 1/1 cache that took a two hour hike in steep terrain and a bit of risk (someone else broke their arm trying to get it) to the up-a-tree-but-I can't climb 1/1 to the extremely well hidden 50' from the parking lot 1/1 to the found it in two minutes after a 10 minute walk across a level field 2.5/2.5 -- all of those are caches I've tried. You can't compare a multicache that took three trips and a bunch of research at a local library to the five caches all in the same urban park either. "Keeping score" is silly in this hobby, and a lot of work would have to be done to cache stats and scoring rules to make it anything but silly. As to 'tradition', no hobby less than three years old should describe its behavior as having 'tradition' unless tongue is firmly planted in cheek.