MartyFouts

Welcome to the support group. We have a 12 step program, by the way. Step 1 is: buy a gps.

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin): quote:Originally posted by LarsThorwald: I'd be pretty careful of this from a constitutional rights/invasion of privacy standpoint. From my limited knowledge of law, I believe you can take a picture of anyone and publish it, as long as you don't profit from that person's likeness. Otherwise the newspapers would have a heck of a lot of lawsuits on their hands. I doubt a photo of someone would deter them from taking a cache, unless you can give out particular's on the individual, like their name. A fourth thought is to create permission style caches, where someone would have to ask permission from the owner before receiving access to their caches. After permission was granted, they could see all of that user's caches. It beats the account-only cache idea, where you need to be logged into geocaching.com - which can be easily bypassed with a lame hotmail or yahoo account. Jeremy Jeremy Irish Groundspeak - The Language of Location I just got around to reading this thread, and noticing the comments about photo legality. Technically, you can only publish an identifiable image of individual, (in the US, other jurisdictions vary,) either with their prior consent, or because the image shows them in a newsworthy endeavor. Newspapers do, from time to time, get sued for photos that identify people, and sometimes lose because the image wasn't deemed newsworthy. what's been suggested in the early parts of this thread is legally risky. You'd better be able to prove in a court of law that the person really was doing what you're accusing them of, or they'll be able to successfully sue you for libel.

quote:Originally posted by Jeremy (Admin): quote:Originally posted by LarsThorwald: I'd be pretty careful of this from a constitutional rights/invasion of privacy standpoint. From my limited knowledge of law, I believe you can take a picture of anyone and publish it, as long as you don't profit from that person's likeness. Otherwise the newspapers would have a heck of a lot of lawsuits on their hands. I doubt a photo of someone would deter them from taking a cache, unless you can give out particular's on the individual, like their name. A fourth thought is to create permission style caches, where someone would have to ask permission from the owner before receiving access to their caches. After permission was granted, they could see all of that user's caches. It beats the account-only cache idea, where you need to be logged into geocaching.com - which can be easily bypassed with a lame hotmail or yahoo account. Jeremy Jeremy Irish Groundspeak - The Language of Location I just got around to reading this thread, and noticing the comments about photo legality. Technically, you can only publish an identifiable image of individual, (in the US, other jurisdictions vary,) either with their prior consent, or because the image shows them in a newsworthy endeavor. Newspapers do, from time to time, get sued for photos that identify people, and sometimes lose because the image wasn't deemed newsworthy. what's been suggested in the early parts of this thread is legally risky. You'd better be able to prove in a court of law that the person really was doing what you're accusing them of, or they'll be able to successfully sue you for libel.

Couple weeks ago I went to Pleasanton for a personal cache-athon. It was not the best possible trip, I got NFs on 4 caches. I logged all four. I've heard back from three of the cache hiders, and the caches are definitely still there. (In three cases, I suspected it was, in the fourth, I'm still surprised I couldn't find it. ) But I still think that logging them was a good thing. I encourage it: if you looked for the cache, log an NF, even if you assume it was your failure to find the cache rather than the cache not being there.

Couple weeks ago I went to Pleasanton for a personal cache-athon. It was not the best possible trip, I got NFs on 4 caches. I logged all four. I've heard back from three of the cache hiders, and the caches are definitely still there. (In three cases, I suspected it was, in the fourth, I'm still surprised I couldn't find it. ) But I still think that logging them was a good thing. I encourage it: if you looked for the cache, log an NF, even if you assume it was your failure to find the cache rather than the cache not being there.

quote:Originally posted by cachew nut: Those of us who hid their caches well and had them disappear know better. While some may be found by accident, some are also looted. just because you hid the cache well doesn't mean it wasn't "accidentally" found. Cachers may not do as good a job of putting the cache back, leaving it exposed. They may be discovered while they've got the cache out, giving the discoverer a reason to come back to the area and search for the treasure. They may be seen while they're putting the cache back. Social trails can get created, making the cache easy to find. People make the mistake of putting food in caches, making them easy for animals to find. Weather and the seasons can conspire to change how well hidden a cache is. I assume that by "looting" you mean people deliberately using the GPS coordinates from the site to find the cache and then trash it or take its contents, rather than "accidental" discovery and destruction. I've seen plenty of evidence that discovery and removal happen. I, personally, know of no evidence that "looting" happens, although I don't deny that it is possible. So I ask: does anyone have anything more than mere circumstantial evidence of looting?

quote:Originally posted by cachew nut: Those of us who hid their caches well and had them disappear know better. While some may be found by accident, some are also looted. just because you hid the cache well doesn't mean it wasn't "accidentally" found. Cachers may not do as good a job of putting the cache back, leaving it exposed. They may be discovered while they've got the cache out, giving the discoverer a reason to come back to the area and search for the treasure. They may be seen while they're putting the cache back. Social trails can get created, making the cache easy to find. People make the mistake of putting food in caches, making them easy for animals to find. Weather and the seasons can conspire to change how well hidden a cache is. I assume that by "looting" you mean people deliberately using the GPS coordinates from the site to find the cache and then trash it or take its contents, rather than "accidental" discovery and destruction. I've seen plenty of evidence that discovery and removal happen. I, personally, know of no evidence that "looting" happens, although I don't deny that it is possible. So I ask: does anyone have anything more than mere circumstantial evidence of looting?

hmm... i think 19. oh wait, you said month, not day. i dunno. i've been at it for five months and have about 200 finds, so let's say 40. marty

Way to go. Sounds like you've got a lot of great experience out of those 100 caches, and that's what counts most. Marty

quote:Originally posted by Criminal: I could understand a pack full of provisions if the caches was three or four miles away, but that’s not been a problem so far for me. Most of the caches I’ve read about are less than a mile or so away from where you park. If the cache is close, I don't take the kit, but I prefer the caches that are long hikes. I'm guessing that about 1/4 of the caches I've gone after have been > 3 miles in one direction. and almost every one that's not been urban has been in an area with no cell phone coverage.

quote:Originally posted by BassoonPilot: I think my cellphone will remain my primary "emergency call device." I take my cell phone with me also. and about 95% of the time, there's no cell coverage in the area I'm hiking. -- an area that is usually within a few miles of the San Francisco Bay. Don't assume, even in populated areas, that there will be cell coverage in a park.

quote:Originally posted by BassoonPilot: I think my cellphone will remain my primary "emergency call device." I take my cell phone with me also. and about 95% of the time, there's no cell coverage in the area I'm hiking. -- an area that is usually within a few miles of the San Francisco Bay. Don't assume, even in populated areas, that there will be cell coverage in a park.

quote:Originally posted by Criminal:If it’s not on the web, then you won’t be able to log, and your numbers will not reflect the find. VERY important to some…………… ><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><><>< What is the price of experience, do men buy it for a song, Or wisdom for a dance in the street................. just like you don't get credit for the waypoints leading to a multicache.... The people to whom numbers are important will just have to skip the unregistered microcaches. I think it's a great idea and would make a great easter egg in a cache.

quote:Originally posted by BassoonPilot:So, this thread has clearly pointed out that cheating is bad. That's good! We've learned that people are paying attention to logs posted to caches. That's good, too! We've learned that some cache owners will not hesitate to take appropriate action ... namely, deleting "finds" that have proven to be fraudulent. That's reassuring! The other major issue covered was that many people want locationless caches to be counted separately from physical and virtual caches. Fine by me. Can we lock this thread down and put it to bed now? Please?? We can't be dunne yet, dunne's in California. Oh, no, that's not what I meant to say: We're not done until we've done the part of the thread where we speculate on who Cachepolice is. . .

thanks, fuzzy.

thanks, fuzzy.

quote:Originally posted by ZachNLiam:I really wish locationless caches were a separate count - not just because of what's happened here. I wasn't interested at ALL in benchmarks, until they started being counted on their own; now they have SOME appeal to me. Same with locationless. I really don't like them because I don't even want MY OWN number of finds to increase because of them, but if they became their own count I'd see them as a separate game, and probably start doing them. As far as "trinkets in a box" where I live the caches are very creative. Our caching community prides itself on its creativity, and they don't seem that way at all. Each find is unique around here. Hopefully other areas will become like this also. I vote MAKE LOCATIONLESS ITS OWN COUNT! I want virtual caches to stay with the "regular" cache count because in my small experience they're about as difficult as an easy regular cache, sometimes more difficult and you DO have to go to a specific coordinate. If you don't want the locationless caches in your count, you don't have to log them on the site when you find them. from looking at signed logs from my caches, it looks like maybe 2/3 of the people who find them never bother to log them. It's possible to design a virtual that requires actually going to the site -- you just have to take the time to make sure that the information isn't available on the web. and it's just as easy to post a bogus online log entry for a traditional, if not easier, since no one has to fake a photo to fake a traditional log entry.

quote:Originally posted by Geo Quest:See, this is why I hate virtual/locationless caches. What kinda weirdo does this thing over and over again? Doing it once for a joke I can see (even though it's not funny). But more than once? C'mon!? "There's no need to be afraid of strange noises in the night. Anything that intends you harm will stalk you silently." ain't nothing that keeps someone from faking log entries for traditional caches, either. how many cache hiders do you think compare the signed logs from their caches to the cache logs on the site?

quote:Originally posted by Crusso:Since the bottom of the main Groundspeak page shows all cachers logged on, Is there a way of instant messaging? Would be nice to contact someone on the boards directly. Sounds like the basis for a feature request: A profile field for people to stick in their favorite 'instant messaging/icq/whatever' id if they want to. hopefully it will come sometime well after GPX, though.

quote:Originally posted by georgeandmary:The thing is, I often used 'just the hand' photos for locationless because I'm by myself. Now I'm tempted to change the requirements to disalow 'the hand'. Now the cachepolice have to be doing a lot of web research to find all the real photos of these fakes. What got them started? george Remember: Half the people you meet are below average. http://img.Groundspeak.com/track/5867_200.gif I cache alone almost always, and so often use "the hand". I'd rather that you didn't punish the vast majority of good geocachers just because there's someone out there cheating themselves by faking photos.

try lookig for caches hidden by fizzymagic. especially IQ test and IQ test 2, IIRC.

quote:Originally posted by GPThespians:We use an eTrex Legend which does support bread crumb trails. In this lies our second error. We chose to navigate along paths as we hit them in hope they led to the car as opposed to fighting our way back the way we came. We visited two caches in the same location, so the track log would have brought us first back to the 1st cache, and then along the difficult bushwhacked path we took to get there. Three hours and pained legs later we would have been better off braving the bushwhacking a second time. Live and learn I suppose. -KRMarlo Never hold back your step for a moment... Never doubt that your courage will grow... Hold your head even higher, and Into the Fire we go! I'm not sure how knowing where your destination is, especially when you've bushwacked, will tell you which of diverging trails will get you there. Especially if you bushwacked to get to the trails in the first place. But maybe that's because I've often hiked in areas where two trails only diverge slightly at the beginning and you can go pretty far down the wrong one before you realize it. Nothing wrong with checking out the maps of the area first. They may be out of date but they're better information than no information at all. And, at least in the US, with the maps widely available on line, there's rarely any excuse not to.

quote:Originally posted by GPThespians:We use an eTrex Legend which does support bread crumb trails. In this lies our second error. We chose to navigate along paths as we hit them in hope they led to the car as opposed to fighting our way back the way we came. We visited two caches in the same location, so the track log would have brought us first back to the 1st cache, and then along the difficult bushwhacked path we took to get there. Three hours and pained legs later we would have been better off braving the bushwhacking a second time. Live and learn I suppose. -KRMarlo Never hold back your step for a moment... Never doubt that your courage will grow... Hold your head even higher, and Into the Fire we go! I'm not sure how knowing where your destination is, especially when you've bushwacked, will tell you which of diverging trails will get you there. Especially if you bushwacked to get to the trails in the first place. But maybe that's because I've often hiked in areas where two trails only diverge slightly at the beginning and you can go pretty far down the wrong one before you realize it. Nothing wrong with checking out the maps of the area first. They may be out of date but they're better information than no information at all. And, at least in the US, with the maps widely available on line, there's rarely any excuse not to.

It dawned on me, while responding in a different thread that the whole debate over how to track, count, and score caches is being held in the wrong place. The whole business of competition and scoring should be taken up with Dan Miller, who runs the leaderboard at http://www.insidecorner.com/geocaching/stats/index.cgi After all, leaderboard is the site that keeps score lists, not geocaching.com It would solve a lot of problems if the people who wanted competitive geocaching would work with Dan Miller to get that site to score the way they wanted rather than trying to modify this site. As to tracking, There are a huge number of possible ways to break down the totals posted on our profile pages. We could keep Jeremy busy full time doing nothing but inventing new ways to subdivide and list cache finds. I don't think that's a good use of his time, and I hope most people agree.

quote:Originally posted by Web-ling:Number don't matter - to some people. They do to others. What's great is that those of us who do like the friendly competition can have it, while those who couldn't care less can ignore it. quote:Originally posted by Steve Bukosky:What I did say elsewhere is that these hunts are not true geocaching as there is no cache involved! I suggested that perhaps they be treated like hunting benchmarks and kept seperate from true caching regarding totals. Steve Bukosky N9BGH Waukesha Wisconsin I personally like the competition. I also agree with Steve that the stats should be seperated, because there IS a difference between Locationless caches and other cache types. I'd be a lot MORE likely to hunt Locationless if the stats were seperated. For that matter, why not divide up the stats for ALL types, then provide a total at the botton of the list, including benchmarks? Those that don't care about stats can still ignore it, and those of us who do will have more ways to compete... http://img.Groundspeak.com/user/25021_1200.gif There are lots of different kinds of caches. Sure, locationless are different. And so are virtual. And so are multicaches -- because of the stages. And so are event caches -- because they're events, not caches. And so are puzzle caches -- because you don't know what you're getting into. And so on for ever. If you start subdividing, you'll end up with a category for each class of cache, and another one for each level of difficulty. that's currently 5x5x7 kinds of caches...