not2b

Yes, if someone lives in a region where no one has hidden a new cache within 50 miles for a month, and interest seems to be declining, it's a bad idea to forcibly archive a cache because someone filed an NM over a full log, the owner hasn't responded, and there is plenty of space in the cache for a brand spanking new log. Interest will go away much faster if there is nothing to find, that's for sure. Sure, ideally the CO should respond. But if it is otherwise a good hide the game suffers if that cache is removed. Instead cachers can add log sheets where necessary. If the cache has decayed to a piece of broken trash that is a different matter. The question we should ask is, what action would best serve the game? If satisfactory repair by another visitor is trivial, we should let it ride. I have been to India on business five times, and have found at least one cache on each visit (sometimes an earthcache, but also traditionals, a multi and a puzzle). Traditional caches go missing quickly because monkeys swipe them, there are so few caches that there isn't really a game for the locals, and visitors commonly replace them with the blessing of the COs, though the COs maintain them where they can. There are only about 6 caches in Bangalore, a city the size of New York City. Would it really be better for the game to rigorously enforce a policy that would require archiving all of the non-earthcaches? We need to apply judgment.

Project GC has semi official status as they are the supplier of (now required) challenge checkers, so their list is the best available.

Project GC has done it (unofficially) via crowdsourcing. They started with the mystery caches with the wod "challenge" in the name, and then asked users to identify false negatives (it is a challenge but doesn't have "challenge" in the title) or false positives (the word "challenge" is in the title but it isn't a challenge cache. There are some caches where the decision is fuzzy: they decided that a bonus cache (find N caches, get clues, that tells you where the other cache is) aren't challenge caches, but there were a couple where half the voters say it's a bonus cache and half say it is a challenge cache).

They aren't just visiting, they are paying if they are premium members, so GS is definitely doing business in Europe. But even if they weren't paying, the law applies to sites collecting personal information on EU citizens, so GS can either ban Europeans entirely or it can follow the GDPR. It works in reverse too: European companies are often compelled to choose either to follow some US rule or be banned from the US market.

This new search seems to a major regression, taking away a ton of useful features. I don't see how to do a search without a location, or how to set the filter distance to a particular value around a given point. I'd be fine with a feature that lets you drag out a window and see caches in that region matching some criteria, but the messages read like this is intended to be a replacement. Since I use those features on a regular basis, I was forced to opt out, and now I'm worried that this is going to be imposed. If it is, people doing challenges or planning geocaching road trips will be forced to use other sites like Project GC to get the info they need. This is really too bad, because the current geocaching.com/play/search is one of the best things HQ ever built. It's powerful, easy to use, and finds what you were looking for quickly. There are a few warts (it really would be easier to enter numbers than try to drag the sliders if you need to find caches with a given D/T for a challenge), but it's really cool that if I'm wondering how many webcams exist in some region I can instantly get the full list. Please, I beg you, don't take that away. Maybe there's a role for both kinds of searches and some happy synthesis can be achieved, but if there are things the new search can't do that the old one can do easily, that's a bug.

Don't panic. nginx is a proxy server. If the OP is getting this message at work, the company's sysadmins might be running it. It's probably safe to ask them if they are.

As it stands, if the algorithm ever triggers and the CO does not respond in 60 days, the cache goes away, even if the cache is in pristine condition as reported by the most recent finders. Someone in this thread made the suggestion that if someone posts a "report problem: cache is missing" and a subsequent user posts a "Found It" there is a 50/50 chance that the subsequent find is a throwdown, so it is appropriate to disregard "found it" logs, the owner must personally check, because for some reason some random person who made the problem report is more trustworthy than any number of other cachers. Here's an idea: add a "report that there is no problem" box. This would be a way to allow subsequent finders to say that, despite the previous report, the reported problem no longer exists. For example, someone reported that the cache is missing, and I found it. Someone reported a wet log, and I find a dry log. Someone is putting out a replacement with the permission of the owner. Let the community assist in checking on the condition of the caches, so HQ has more accurate information. Could this be abused? The present system is being abused! For example, a cacher really wants to hide a cache that is within 100 feet of an existing cache, which is in decent shape but has an inactive owner. Easy! Report that it is broken and wait 60 days.

There was a recent case in California of a cache that had about a hundred finds and no DNFs. It was visited by a new cacher who, it was later discovered, was ten years old, meaning that he should not have had an account in the first place. The cacher could not find the cache, and he clicked "report problem" and claimed that the cache was missing. This triggered the algorithm and the cache was first disabled and then archived within 60 days, even though it had subsequent finds, and the only cacher who EVER couldn't find it was the newbie kid, because the owner evidently was no longer active or for some other reason didn't answer. Apparently reports from other cachers that a cache is in great shape are useless. If this doesn't change, classic challenges like the Original Fizzy Challenge and the Jasmer Challenge might soon be undoable, because they may rely on old caches that are being maintained by the community and not by the official owner and Groundspeak thinks this doesn't count. It seems that discretion has been taken away from reviewers; in a sensible system a report from a cacher who has fewer than ten finds that a cache is missing would be ignored, in the absence of other reports.

As everyone else has said, it's disappointing that the point requirements were so miniscule. I racked up 116 points on the first morning (Sept. 3) after a couple of hours hiking without finding any high D or high T caches. I suppose it could have been OK as a promotion with a completely different description, to indicate that it is a challenge for complete beginners: come on in, the water's fine! Using a name like "adrenaline junkie" might have scared some new folks away from even trying, not knowing that they can roll their wheelchair up to six or seven lampposts or guardrails and be done. And then I remembered how nervous I was when I was a new cacher about lamppost hides. What if someone sees me vandalizing this lamp post and has me arrested. Danger! Stress! High heart rate! Maybe that's what they had in mind?

Thanks for the correction, kanchan. An excellent choice.

I know of a cacher who effectively quit the game and archived almost all of his caches, keeping only a very few that had tons of favorite points. He was angry at Groundspeak over several issues (mostly the usual stuff you hear grumbling about, so he decided to go play Pokemon Go instead). This was just before the virtual rewards program started up and since he now looked pretty much perfect according to the scoring system (every single active cache has tons of favorites and no maintenance issues!), of course he got a virtual reward, which he will never publish.

The 30 day clock only starts if the reviewer disables it, or if it comes to the reviewer's attention somehow because of complaints. Sometimes a cache has to be disabled for long periods because of a trail closure or construction. And it doesn't mean you have 30 days to fix the cache, it means you have 30 days to reply about what your plan is.

The California split-into-3 referendum is going to fail miserably, and even if it passed, the US Constitution requires that both Congress and the California state legislature approve the splitup. The same is true for any other attempt to subdivide states. A territory could become a US state, though. Perhaps Puerto Rico will become a state someday, or Washington, DC. But that wouldn't affect our game, those places are already regions of the US and no changes would be needed.

It's rare, but there have been a few minimalist puzzle caches that have done this. The puzzle solver then has to try to figure out the coordinates from what little information is there.

I hope that you can draw more general lessons from this experience. You are sending a mail asking for someone to do something. There are several questions that should naturally arise: Is the request feasible? Are you asking them to travel a thousand miles from home? Are you asking them to waste their time? Is the cache findable? Did they find it already? Have you asked someone who actually plays the game for love for feedback before going live? How can you take advantage of the data you already have to provide a better experience. You have a measure of "cache health" now. You have records of owner maintenance. Doing all these things right makes people happy, and makes them more eager to pay you again when the year of membership is up. Doing it poorly just stokes resentment.

This was a cute idea, but poorly executed. Many people received a "valentine" for caches with many DNFs and no recent finds. Two other people I know got a "valentine" from a cache that they DNFed and subsequently found. Someone else, who lives in California, was asked to revisit a cache in Denmark. It would have worked better to pick only nearby caches whose must recent log is a "Found it". Perhaps if it's done again, that can be taken into consideration.

It's common in cases like this for the CO to disable the cache until the trail reopens, rather than archive it. Disabling lets seekers know not to go looking for it, but allows the cache to be re-enabled later on. "Needs archived" would only be appropriate if the trail is being permanently closed. In this case, "needs maintenance" isn't right either: the CO was right that the cache does not need maintenance. I think the proper log is just a Note, mentioning the trail closure and suggesting that the CO disable it until the trial reopens. If he/she doesn't do this, then at least the note is present so other cachers might see it.

The new search has many very nice features, thanks for doing it. However, why the 30 mile radius limit? That makes some searches a lot less useful, for example for people who are trying to fill their D/T grid. Most will have to travel more than 30 miles from home to get at least some squares, and if they can't search a circle with a radius larger than 30 miles this makes things tedious, or else they have to resort to pocket queries which appear to have a 500 mile limit, but don't have some of the nice features in the new search (like looking for words in the title). And if someone is trying to do a challenge cache that needs a particular word in the title, but the word is rare enough that the nearest match is 50 miles away in some random direction, the limit is also a handicap. I hope I can convince you to raise the limit at least somewhat. If you're worried about someone sucking down all your data you could limit the number of caches produced, but then project-gc.com has it all anyway so it really shouldn't matter. Second, it would be great to be able to filter based on hidden date: find brand new caches, or find very old caches. Thanks again for the improvement.

Some of the new language does not seem well thought out. Example: "A challenge cache may not specifically exclude any segment of geocachers." Wheelchair users are a segment of geocachers; must challenges now all be T1? Seriously, just as some caches will not be attainable by cachers who have physical limitations (like the ability to hike up a mountain), or economic limitations like the ability to travel, the same would naturally be true of some challenge caches and this should not be considered a bug. Likewise, restrictions based on found date were often used to level the playing field, so that experienced cachers would not instantly qualify and newbies would have a shot at qualifying first. If the intent was to avoid having a challenge cache that could never be found by a cacher starting this year, then narrower language should have been used to achieve this goal. Elimination of all date-found rules means that in many cases, newer cachers generally will not be able to compete, though they would be eligible for the challenge eventually. "Challenge caches cannot include restrictions based on 'date found'" would appear to eliminate challenges based on finding caches on their anniversaries of publication. Is that intended?

Different people play the game in different ways. Some care about numbers and go for the easy ones, others love challenges, others take pride in designing unique caches and innovative hides. There seem to be regional differences; there are some places where people are into tricky camo hides, others where it seems every cache's hint reads "It's under the bush". Play it the way you want to.

I run Fedora myself. I rely on gpsbabel. The author (Robert Lipe) expressed a concern that he wasn't seeing or hearing much from Linux users anymore, but in my case it's because it's packaged in the distro's repository and it just works for my needs. Thanks very much for doing it. I've played with qlandkarte a bit lately; still some rough edges but finally some functionality that hasn't been available on Linux is now available.