[Unholy hybrids: Bonus & challenge, and bonus & Wherigo. Can they be done?]

Question 1.

If a cache uses a Wherigo cartridge, it is considered a Wherigo cache.

It's a simple statement, and true. Once a cart is used, it's a Wherigo.

 

Question 2

Challenge as bonus.

No. Because it means that to find the challenge you must find  specific other cache(s),  expressly forbidden by the challenge guidelines. See point 11.

https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=127&pgid=206#specificLists

 

[Top-Green Website Banner]

 

[Location already taken]

The Earthcache owner has duplicated its posted coords as a  physical final and indicated stages as physical

This is an error. I'll ask a Geoaware to fix it

 

The planning map does  not check Lab cache locations.

 

The planning map will NOT warn of other unpublished caches   - that info might come from a reviewer

[How long can a cache page remain unpublished before it's removed?]

https://www.geocaching.com/my/geocaches.aspx?archived=y

Link to  page where you can see unpublished archived caches in the right pane Title Strikethough for anyone who owns some.

 

@Ragnemalm  I looked at your unpublished archived back through 2017. Most were archived by you, a few by reviewers. There are 3 created in 2017 that were HQ 'bot archived 10 months later in 2018. 

[Adoption of Old Virtual Caches]

A number of responses:

1) virtual caches, both published and unpublished, can now be adopted

2) the cache owner, or in the case of death, the cache owner's heirs can do this

3) the cache and the listing are the property of the creator, this is the basis of the service - see niraD's post above, "exercising an ownership role".

4) if the profile is inactive, indicates directly that you cannot reach the owner by message or email, NA is the proper log. I've archived a few virts based on that log for that circumstance. In both cases new hides arose (another virtual, an earthcache).  In both cases the person logging NA took heat. They were right however.

 

 

[[BUG] minor display issue Lists Favorites pages]

Windows, Firefox

On lists and Favorites pages only I'm seeing username double in the upper right corner. Username works properly as a link to dashboard.

Image below

[Is This Allowed?]

 

4 hours ago, CommunistOnions said:

Is it possible to unarchive them under my suspension? 

 

No, I don't believe so. From a reviewer perspective, unarchive is exactly the same as publish.  When your hiding suspension is over, you can revisit this. 

[Cache only available once every week-ish]

I've sent an email to the publishing reviewer. Looks like an enthusiastic hider with no idea that their plan is not quite right

[Reviewer publishing own caches?]

Agreeing with RuideAlmeida above.  Either a geoaware is or is not publishing their own caches.  This topic seems to be resting on a supposition that either a Geoaware owns an Earthcache under their Geoaware account which they published, ie, obviously publishing their own cache --> quite possibly after asking another Geoaware to look at it.

 

Or, there is a player whom you believe is a Geoaware, and they own an Earthcache, publish by the Geoaware account that you believe belongs to the same person.  You could be wrong, or you could be right. In either case, there's  no way to know whether the cache was eyeballed by a different reviewer before being published.

 

Also to Keystones' point, I published my own caches for some years. Now I don't. However some reviewers who wish to remain anonymous do publish their own caches.  I'm not sure that there are many (any?) such left, ie, anonymous reviewer accounts. Publication of their caches,  first some other reviewer says yes, then they publish their own. Otherwise the caches of a particular player would be the only caches locally not published by the local reviewer.

[Cannot update community celebration event]

I edited the listing your requested coordinates. I also changed the T rating back to 1, from 4, as you have the wheelchair attribute -  ?this might have been the source of the problem, but that would surprise me. It throws an error, but should still save.

 

Your reviewer note to the page is not going to be seen by a reviewer, unless you submit the cache for review.  It's just a log on page. There's no auto-forwarding to a reviewer.

[Timing publication to coorespond to a bonus cache]

11 hours ago, Hügh said:

they could set the Adventure to "private" (ie. accessible via the link but does not appear on the map) and link to it on the cache page.

 

Yes, that definitely works.  

 

But I bet most of the time, reviewer has to explain it to CO ;-)  - disable the cache for the link edit, and at that point, could just agree to a time for publish. Though link to labs on bonus page strikes me as nice idea anyway, in the way it helps people discover Adventure Labs.

[Timing publication to coorespond to a bonus cache]

14 hours ago, Hügh said:

My recommendation is to either (a) make arrangements with your local reviewer and set a date/time for the bonus cache to be published, or (b) keep an eye on your email inbox and set it to public once the bonus gets published. 

 

Reviewer here,  I won't publish the bonus until the labs are live.  The bonus is a Mystery geocache, and must be solvable to be published.  So I say, go with option A.

 

I suggest write up the Mystery cache, submit, possibly with title like, CHECKING TIMING.. and in the reviewer note explain you want to coordinate release of labs with the mystery bonus publication.

Mostly I'm asking hiders to make labs live as late in the evening as they're comfortable, and I publish the bonus early the next day.

Aside, you can just hide a Traditional that advertises the Labs.  Sure seems easier.

[Trackable page misinformation]

On 5/16/2019 at 9:26 AM, palmetto said:

It's coming up on 2 years since the trackable page update that changed correct information on how to Drop a Trackable to incorrect information. 

 

A trackable is not dropped from the TB page.  A trackable is dropped with a log to the cache that it's being dropped in.

 

 

And now another year has gone by.

Any chance of a fix?

[Notification not working]

Have you seen the Help Center article on this? LINKY

[Awesome Challenge Cache ideas wanted]

@kanchan - your cache is grandfathered. It's fine as is.  The one thing I suggest you change, "may log the second "Found It" - simply because that's no longer possible. The site won't load a second Found it! log. 

Squares that don't meet the current guidelines:

N-3 find 100 challenges
I-2 trackables
I-4 specific cache HQ
O-3 ratio terrain
B-1 ratio difficulty

But you don't need to do a thing about these, it's probably better if you make no changes.

 

@geocat_ - I thought this was cute in the write up, and has enough travel to be challenging, without being over the top on demands.

GC8AFG5

[Downsized Images]

Sidestepping the issue you raise, I'll just say that the for some time, the worst way to upload images to your owned cache pages is via the link on the edit page, pre-publication or the Upload images link in the admin box after the cache is published.  

Do it as image upload from a log. Pre-publication, use a Write Note log, if you use  reviewer note, the image will archive along the log on publish.

 

Upload with log gives you (and others) easy access to the image url not as munged through whatever processes are being applied to owner gallery images.  And yes, I can see your images intact, only because i'm a reviewer, which gives me the same admin rights on your pages that you have. No one else do it.

 

 

[Downsized Images]

PC, Windows Pro Firefox 70.0  Tampermonkey scripts running

 

I went looking for your listing, assumed current, unpublished, and found it GC8H6AQ 

 I see a bug (?) immediately, in the the gallery count that I see is 0 (possibly not a bug, but normal behavior on an unpublished cache? i dunno)

View Gallery (0)

When I click the gallery link currently there are 8 images loaded.

I think what you're seeing is normal and not new.  It's the same behavior that  you get when viewing images from logs. Click the link, get the image, small, centered on the page.

 

If you're looking of the URL of the full sized image (perhaps to load it as part the cache page description) click it from the EDIT page, not the cache page.

 

Here's the link of your image from the edit page

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/c72969d5-b22c-4db4-bb04-1c8b77c2f637.jpg

 

and from the cache page

 

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/c72969d5-b22c-4db4-bb04-1c8b77c2f637_l.jpg

 

nice catch on the subtle difference in the URL. I think at one time, the URL was rather difference, prefaced with "gallery".

the Help Center article on images in cache pages says this, though perhaps not as explicitly as it could.

 

QUOTE: It's a pain when you try to download somebody else's cache image too, as the "_l" image is severely downsized with terrible quality.  

I'm not seeing this on log images? again from the listing page, they load centered, small. Put the log on its own page, click the image to get it on its own page, and you have the URL

https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/4ba91b75-d8d8-43f1-abb3-22bb4da19223.jpg

 

 

 

[Cache to Eagle series]

Reviewer took exception to the direct statement that the caches were placed by and belong to an 11 year old.  This is a terms of use violation. See Minors

Section 1 C

 

The caches ought to be submitted by the adult account, JJSchnepp.

[Feature suggestion: show physical waypoints for own caches and found caches when creating new cache]

4 hours ago, niraD said:

show the edited coordinates of all caches with edited coordinates. That allows one to see the locations of unfound (but solved) puzzles

 

This assumes the edited coords are correct =;-)  & serves as a check on whether they are - a version of your "bogus finds" statement. 

 

 I could solve a Mystery cache by logging a find, and then looking at the planning map. Even if the Mystery CO  deletes my find, in the interim, I've worked out the final coords from the planning map.

 

Planning map: if i were prioritizing engineering time and money, I'd start with showing the posted coords of any staged cache where the listing indicates them as physical: Mystery (challenges mostly) Multi and LBH.   This would leave some older caches of those types unaddressed (created before there was a module to indicate status of listing coords).

Next up would be other unpublished caches of the CO, as the common error I see is series  where #3 is too close to #4 and  #7 #8 #9 are all too tight, etc. 

 

 

[Setting a trail question.]

In reviewer mode, I suggest you submit as soon as you've got coords. You can request scattered publication, or once the location is cleared, disable and wait, days or months  to submit again.

 

The common error with trails is  your own cache  too close to another of your own caches. I see this over and over and over. The CSP will NOT warn you that your unpublished cache A is only 156m from your unpublished cache B (minimum is 161m). It warns  about the distance to posted coords of published Traditional caches and Multi-caches with posted coords as physical.  Nothing else. Not Challenge caches (Mystery type) that are at posted coords.  Just those 2 things, and not your own other unpublished caches.

[I want to Make a Letterbox Hybrid Cache]

  There's a guideline specific to GPS use, it's in the first section here, LINKY

The Help Center article on this is pretty clear - GPS Use LINKY

I mention this as the common issue I see as a reviewer is parking coords as posted coords for cache, then instructions to find box. This is not good enough.

 

I suspect "rubber" stamp is just an artifact of someone's composing that sentence. I don't know of any reviewer who is going to question a CO as to whether the stamp is rubber or some other material.

 

In player mode, I do NOT include ink, but I place in Florida, where it's always wet or humid, and ink pads are just messy.  The people who actually want your stamp impression will carry their own ink (often as roller and ink, rather than the much more expensive pad). There are some self inking stamps around, a bit pricey, but nice if you want to accommodate those who want the impression, but aren't carrying ink (most geocachers)

[How long does it take for a geocache to be approved? And how do I know if it got declined?]

Hi sparsh_k, your cache has already been reviewed. There are some problems, the reviewer note explains them, and what to do about them.

Here's a link that will take you to your unpublished caches LINKY

 

Open the cache, and see the note at the top. It's truncated, to read it all, scroll down on the page, the rest of the log is there.

 

You can see the reviewer's log both on the cache page, and it's been sent to the email address you gave the site.  You can see that email address here

[Message Centre]

Thanks for starting this thread, I just noticed this today.  Makes it impossible to deal with message center content

 

. Fix soonest, thank you.

[Introducing Virtual Rewards 2.0!]

 @CelticShoresTrails  the requirement is for a log in the last 4 months,  not a Found it!  You archived a cache of yours recently. That  log meets the requirement.

 

Sad that yours was one of a handful of caches where the reviewer note logs remained on the page on publish that April weekend.  Puzzle spoiled. 

[Introducing Virtual Rewards 2.0!]

@terratinInteresting. Well the Virtual reward went to my player account, so palmetto wouldn't disqualify on that, absent a human making the connection. But palmetto only owns 1 cache and it's too old. 

 

Time travel is one of my favorite options. Adore it.  Please let me know when you've got a reliable technique. I haven't been able to get my hands on a  Flux Capacitor  and am stuck.