addisonbr

I enjoy the FTF side game, and am in the camp that wouldn't email the CO for a hint. And if I had DNF'd a toughie and found out afterwards that the eventual FTF got (non-public) hints, a part of me might get a little pouty. But I also try really hard to remember that the vast majority of people who geocache aren't privy to whatever side game norms may have developed on these and other forums. As a cache hider, I want my caches to be found! I want people to enjoy them. If I was a relatively new player to the game and someone wanted a hint on one of my caches, I'd be more than happy to help out - hey, someone's trying to enjoy my cache! I'd be way bummed if I helped a fellow cacher enjoy themselves and later got pushback from 'the community' over some sort of cheating-type allegations for a part of the game I didn't think mattered (it matters who finds my cache first?). So even as a Hound who's a part of the no-non-public-hints camp, I would never try to do anything to make a CO uncomfortable about helping out other cachers. I wouldn't email them, I wouldn't leave passive/aggressive logs on the cache page, I wouldn't do any of that. I'd just remember that this is all part of the side game I choose to play, be grateful that there are CO's who are responsive!, and eagerly await the next publication. (I suppose I could have just quoted Totem Clan's first post and said '+1', but I had some extra time on my hands this afternoon)

My guess is that they could have / would have / should have known by the part of the cache description that Lil Devil quoted:

There is a historical cemetery in the yard of the church behind my office. The church folks put a cache out of their own on the grounds last year, and I have a puzzle cache which points people to a marker (the container for my cache isn't on the grounds, however).

Nice list. Very slight modification / technicality for the Bridges & Arches of Central Park info - the trackable coins are actually available to cache finders in exchange for donations to the Central Park Conservancy. The nontrackable gift coin is usually in the final container (we've been relying on the honor system for those, and to date geocachers have proven that faith well placed).

One of the most basic possibilities is that you enjoyed the spot and wanted to go back. There's also moving trackables along.

It's not clear to me why the reviewer's hands are tied. In my area, the Reviewer would be really upset if someone misrepresented the location of a hidden final to avoid proximity issues. If it's important to you to hide a cache at this location, it sure seems like going through the reviewer is the right first step, to prove that you don't actually have a proximity issue of your own. As professionally as possible, I would collect the data that you have available - take a photo of the information on site, and copy and paste the information from the cache page describing how to calculate the final coordinates. Show that they lead to the coordinates that they do. And I'd include the information that you indeed found the final container at that location, and that it matches the hint on the cache page. If the reviewer still feels like they have no authority to act, it would then be time to send that collection of data to appeals@Groundspeak.com. You'll probably have better results if you present the material as dispassionately as possible. Don't make judgments as to the motives of the other CO or the reviewer; just present the facts as they pertain to your own proximity issue. Good luck!

Can you substantiate the location of the final? Presumably there is some way to point people to the final coordinates where the cache is actually hidden, like a label in the penultimate container or something.

All true. I usually keep one set marked as "Home" and another set marked as "Away". When I go out of town, I switch the location settings for the "Away" notifications and turn them all on. When I return, I just unclick them to deactivate them for a while. It works pretty well.

Of course anyone can ignore a cache. Only premium members have an ignore list. Adding a cache to your ignore list means it not appear in maps or searches. Yes, I meant 'ignore' in the system-supported, code-enabled sense.

Interesting, I didn't realize that not everyone had the ability to ignore caches.

Surely. The second grouping of options on the PQ page says "Show me [blank] caches of:" and then has a radio button for either "Any Type", or "Selected Types:" with checkboxes for each of the different cache types. Click "Selected Types" and then check every box *except* "Unknown Cache". That should do the trick. Good luck!

I think it's a great idea to hide the cache for your kids and stock it with Disney stuff (and not publish it - just have it be something the girls hunt for). I think they'd go bananas once they found it and realized what it meant. (I think that several years ago it's possible that a published cache along these lines might get a high percentage of geocachers playing along with the intended swag. But the swag game has changed a lot, and I think that you'd find few would make the kinds of trades you're hoping for.)

For many of the stats you're looking for, there isn't. FTF's in particular are a bit of a point of contention, and it will be difficult to find a meaningful aggregated list. This site is a good place to start, for total finds: http://cacherstats.com/ mygeocachingprofile.com is the site that was acquired by Groundspeak to power the new statistics tab on our profiles. Among people who have uploaded their MyFinds PQ to their site, they have some aggregated rankings for a few different things. Keep in mind, however, that the lists do not include the majority of cachers, only those who have actively found that site and chosen to upload their stats: http://www.mygeocachingprofile.com/cacherrankings.aspx This site is also not exhaustive, but the owner does try to make sure that includes every cacher with at least 100 hides. Here's a link to a list sorted by hide count: http://www.zinnware.com/HighAdv/Geocaching/most_caches_found.php?OrderBy=hides&Ordering=DESC&Limit=20000 As far as finds per day, res2100 used to maintain a timeline of the numbers as they evolved - the most recent posted version I could find was from a little over a year ago, but it's not a bad place to start: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=261055&st=60&p=4490551entry4490551 Hope some of that helps.

I had been told by a local cacher that once I got to about 75 finds or so, I'd probably feel like putting a cache out. Turned out to be about right; I think I had 71 or 72 finds when we decided to place one. Cache is still in place, close to 4000 finds now I think.

It's true! It's actually the only natural forest remaining on the island. Everything else on the island is, essentially, landscaped. The North Woods in Central Park feels pretty natural, but every tree was planned and planted and is tracked. I was hoping that there might be some trees in Inwood that were alive while Colonists were scrapping with Redcoats up there, but near as I can tell the oldest trees there probably postdate Revolutionary War stuff by 50-100 years.

This is a fantastic guide to adding HTML (including links) to cache pages (do a control-F search for 'hyperlinks'): http://www.follow-the-arrow.co.uk/resources/htmlcodes.html

Great idea.

NeverSummer is right on both counts. Any log posted to the cache page (by you or by the reviewer or by anyone else) will go out in an email to the watchers. When you enable it, they'll get an email (and also when a cacher logs it, etc.). And there is no way to see who is watching your cache; it's an anonymous tool. If it was important to you, you could always post a note to the cache page asking those who are watching it to drop you a line. Some may reply.

Hey jennydoug. Welcome to the game. It typically takes up to three days for a submission to be published, or kicked back to the submitter to answer any questions that the reviewer might have. So I'd sit tight until the weekend. To see if you checked the enable box, look for the cache you just submitted from this link: http://www.geocaching.com/my/ You should see your cache towards the top. Click on it, and then click the "Edit Listing" link in the box in the top right of your cache page. On that page you'll see a big map sort of in the middle, with coordinates next to it. Immediately underneath that box is a checkbox that says: That's the box you're looking for. If it's checked, you should be fine. If it's not, just check it, go to the bottom of the page and check the two boxes that read: And click the button at the bottom labeled "Submit Changes" You should be good to go.

As long as taking coordinates with an iPhone follows the letter and using satellite imagery does not, I'm hoping that folks will think of the guidelines as guidelines. Those who hunt caches in urban areas will be grateful.

That's been roughly my experience as well.

I've found that in urban environments with tall buildings, the combination of signal interference and far above average map calibration makes satellite imagery more accurate than GPS readings. YMMV.

Those sound like challenge caches (different from Groundspeak challenges). Typically, you have to accomplish some geocaching-related task(s) to qualify for the found it log - filling out a grid of D/T combos, or caching a certain number of days in a row, or that sort of thing. There are a couple of ways that a "you haven't logged an FTF before" challenge cache would likely not be published by a reviewer. One is that it's based on a non-accomplishment, and the other is that it is based on FTF's / competitions in general. From the knowledge books:

I have a couple of traditional caches that are less then 1000 feet from each other. It's not uncommon for them to pick up multiple finds in a day. Usually the way I discover that one has been muggled is not via DNFs, but because the other cache will continue to pick up a couple of dozen found it logs over the course of a couple of weeks, while the first cache simply remains silent. I'll go visit, and sure enough, it's missing, and nobody wanted to log a DNF. Count me in the camp that wishes people weren't embarrassed by DNFs... They would be very helpful to me as a CO, if they were used more often.

I could have sworn a whole topic on the old Feedback forum disappeared once. But then it was there again a few days later, so I wasn't sure if I dreamed the whole thing up or what. It was kind of weird.