Blue Square Thing

There are plenty of things that restrict your freedom to write and publish. If you write libelous material, then you risk being sued. If you publish classified documents, then you risk being arrested. When you publish spoilers, you might ruin the fun for other geocachers. Why should your enjoyment of sharing your geocaching experiences be valued more than the fun of other geocachers? There are plenty of other caches out there to discover and share. Why not write about one of those -- one where the cache owner might even like the attention? I agree with you, in general. I think it's almost always preferable to not annoy cache owners and to get on just fine with as many other people as possible. But, on principle, I will also question whether simply annoying someone else is a valid reason for restriciting the ability to publish. My argument is that if these spoilers are off-site and there's no attempt to obviously link them to here, then why on earth should Groundspeak even want to get involved? Then how would you propose that the disagreements be resolved? If they're offsite? Frankly I'm utterly unconvinced that they either can or should be. Certainly not a disagreement about spoilers. I'm sorry, I understand that people want to play by the "spirit" of the game and so on. I just don't see how attempting to restrict information in this sort of way is going to be effective.

As I've said above, I think, it's that last bit that causes me the problems I think. I'm really not sure that a cache owner has a specific right to ask that action be taken about me if I say something, on a totally different part of the internet, about a cache of theirs (obviously with the exception of if it were libellous, for example). If I deliberatly link to or from here then I think that changes the nature of the case a little. I appreciate the importance of cache owners and their role in all of this. I appreciate, as well, that there is a "spirit" to the game, although the nature of the game and the different ways in which people play it does, really, make that very hard to define imo.

Absolutely their right. For whatever reason (or no reason at all). It strikes me, though, that by using the idea of showing disrespect (through spoilers or potentially otherwise) anywhere on the internet that there's the implication that either I stay quiet and play the game or I have the right to say what I want, but not both. I appreciate that the whole "respect each other" thing is tricky as heck to enforce. Certainly using Groundspeak's servers to push, say, a spolier site is reasonable to ban for. But I'm really not certain that cache owners can claim any kind of intellectual copyright on their caches or cache sites that should be enforceable here under any circumstances. Sorry to take a step back from the whole "what is a spoiler site" debate and all. I just see this as more of a freedom to use the interwebz thing myself.

The problem comes with the suggestion that it is legitimate to attempt to restrict my ability to publish stuff on other parts of the internet based on a convention which seems to be being forced on everyone. That, in all seriousness, is an attempt to restrict my freedom to write or otherwise publish interesting stuff. I'm aware that there are issues with the role of cache owners, but forcing a specific convention on all users, when there's clearly not agreement, is also an issue. In the end, though, it doesn't matter what is published - Groundspeak reserve the right to terminate anyone's membership of their site without having to give any reason whatsoever. What defines a spoiler or whether that convention is valid is irrelevant. That's fine, it's their bit of the internet which they run and it's utterly legitimate for them to do so. We just need to be aware of that when we write stuff elsewhere on the internet. Thanks, by the way, to the three people who responded to a similar point I made further up this thread. My apologies for not acknowledging them earlier. I agree with many of the points that were made.

"Control freaks"? I don't think that people that want to protect their work should be considered "control freaks", Toz. I think the situation is comparable to copyrights. You aren't going to stop copyright theft either, but that doesn't mean that those that want to should be considered "control freaks", nor that nothing should be done in an attempt to stop the problem. OK - I've read these threads with some interest. I now have a specific question which touches on the exchange ^ here (which is the only reason I've quoted it). The cache owner sets the cache and maintains it, sure. To what extent can they, therefore, restrict my right to freedom of expression? On a forum they own, yes, I'm happy that it's their media and they can restrict any "right" I may claim. But on another forum or media? On my own website, for example? Are we really happy to go there? Blimey.

All of that ^ makes sense. I also use the Dynamic map option on the cache page and switch to hybrid view and zoom in. If you've got a good visual sense of what's around you then I find that pretty helpful much of the time - imo better than a gps in many ways.

Thanks for posting that - v helpful to know.

^ this. Pretty please.

Whereas I have an awful lot of film canisters in mine - and so really enjoyed the videos I've watched because they showed me that things could be a lot more creative. It's a bit like that 100 page thread on here about creative containers (or whatever it's called). I guess that's full of spoilers as well - maybe it needs to be taken down? </sarcasm> The vids were well presented and helped hook me in tbh. Without them I might have gotten bored of film canisters - strikes me they were an advert rather than anything sinister.

Didn't realise there was one at Baconsthorpe - a fabby place that I haven't been to in ages. Excellent.

I very rarely use a GPS - good mapwork, street view if necessary, and following whatever trail of vegetation has been trampled usually gets me there more or less. I'm not planning on getting one, although might occasionally use a phone I can borrow as the kids quite like that.

Excellent!

As opposed to attracting new people to give the game a try and see what happens? Who knows, they might like it and become premium members, or just help attract advertisers and sponsors to the site and maybe spend money in the store and set some good caches and have some good, inclusive ideas? Oh, Scubasonic has ranted about that several times, that it should be a 100% pay to play website. It's been pointed out to him that it's probably not even close to their main revenue source, but I see he's still not backing down.<snippage> Thanks for the context :-)

As opposed to attracting new people to give the game a try and see what happens? Who knows, they might like it and become premium members, or just help attract advertisers and sponsors to the site and maybe spend money in the store and set some good caches and have some good, inclusive ideas?

There should be the icon of a black silhouette beside all the premium caches. Yes - I just hadn't noticed it until my edit. They don't seem to show up at all on the iPhone app, which is much more useful - no having to trawl through lists of them.

I think part of the problem is that in the list view there's no indication that caches are Premium Only - you actually have to click on the cache each time. That's unfortunate imo. e2a: no, I lied, there is a way to tell, I just hadn't noticed it, mainly because I've got so few close to me. Not sure if that icon shows up on the iPhone app mind.

you can do that??!? Usually - certainly here you can and it's true on most forums. Helps mobile users for example. The way to do it is to go to My Settings from the drop down up at the top right of the page next to your user name and fiddle there (it's under the Forums tab). You can disable avatars as well if you find them unhelpful - I tend to keep them on as it's a quick, easy way to identify who posted what. And images, which when someone posts a massive great image or I'm on a slow connection is really helpful.

If you go to a map based search they filter themselves out once you get to a low enough level, and you can see them very clearly at a higher level. I find this much more useful as a way of searching anyway (particularly if you install the wonderful OS map script thungy). I'm fortunate in having very few premium caches where I'm at, but have seen a whole pile in other areas - not quite as many as where you are though. A particular shame that at least some of them by your way seem to be tagged as suitable for beginners - that would seem to be a bit counterproductive imo (apologies if that particular point's been done to death elsewhere at another time).

Fwiw, I disable sigs in every forum I read. Just as a heads up on the usefullness of that response :-)

Nice tea shop as well. And a cool tower in the trees you can climb up :-)

I don't know the cache, but the site at Bard Hill, on the hill above Salthouse which is spot on your location, is one of my favourite places in the world - perfect for a picnic if it's a nice day. It's top of my list next time I'm up that way. The caches away to the west by Wells may well be worth a look too - based, again, on knowing the location.

iPhone 4 seems to work fine wrt the GPS when away from a network - put us right on top of a cache - literally - this week with no network coverage. Seems to work pretty well to me so far.