ccurzio

I believe what you're saying is accurate to a certain extent, but I have trouble with believing that Google isn't categorizing Aruba as part of South America. And then why would I get a message saying that the GC folks are "constantly working to add countries," when (if what you're saying is accurate) the response should be "that's not within our control?" Can you point me to where I can learn more about this module? Maybe I can open a bug with Google to get it fixed. Thanks for the info.

There has been a long-standing issue with the website team simply ignoring the "Maps" section of user statistics. A long while back (maybe a year or two?) I had contacted GC asking why the country of Aruba was not included as part of South America. I received a generic "we are constantly working hard to add countries" message of some kind in response, but literally nothing has changed. "Caches You've Found in Asia" has also only ever displayed a zoomed-out world view. There's also no "North America" (or even "Central America") section so countries like Mexico and Panama are just in limbo. Does anyone at GC even work on the maps anymore?

I went ahead and "grabbed" it from the other cacher, and then logged a "visit" for the trackable at the cache where I found it. Both are noted with a full explanation of the details. Thanks guys.

Hello everyone. While out caching yesterday, I stumbled across a GeoCoin that I snagged from a cache. Unfortunately, when I loaded the GeoCoin's page I discovered that the person who had it last didn't bother logging that they dropped it off in a cache, so the coin is still registering as being "in the hands" of the person who last had it. As a result, when I try to log that I now have the trackable, the only option I have for logging it is that I retrieved it from the other cacher and NOT from the cache itself. For the benefit of the coin owner, I want to make sure it's logged properly as A) being present in the cache from which I grabbed it, and logged that I retrieved it from the cache rather than the "hands" of the previous cacher. How can I do this?

Silly me, thinking it was about having fun and getting outside.

There's so much wrong here it's not even funny. Not only is it a narrow and uninformed view, it's poorly articulated. Challenges weren't removed because people complained that they didn't like them. Challenges were removed because the ratio of site users to challenge users was massively low on the challenges side. All of the work and effort put into designing the challenges, writing the content for each, programming the code and rearchitecting the databases to accept the new category, and everything else related to it was being done for a small subset of users that wasn't enough to justify the effort. (And yes, just because YOU didn't see evidence of resources dedicated to challenges doesn't mean it didn't happen. Adding something like that to a database architecture of this size and maintaining it is a massive undertaking.) Again, if you don't agree with how this site is being run, nobody is stopping you from leaving. You're completely able to start a parallel challenges website of your own. After all, it's easy to do, right? P.S.: it's not "sudo", it's "pseudo". And it's not "per say", it's "per se" and it should be italicized since it's Latin.

To be fair, it's their website and their system. I did a bunch of challenges too. But I'm more concerned with having fun and less concerned about the statistics and numbers. If you want to maintain your challenge stats, you could start up your own Challenges website and publish/maintain them there.

This is a huge flaw with many different things on the website. When showing a list of events/logs that have all occurred on the same day, they will usually end up displaying out of order because the system apparently doesn't know how to sort by both date and time when providing listings. A good example is souvenirs. There have been several occasions where I'd find multiple souvenirs in a day, and they end up displaying out of order in the app. (Hilariously enough, in some cases I've actually seen a souvenir captioned with "Found Tomorrow" because the app got confused.) The BEST example is in Travel Bug logs. If you look at a travel bug map: http://www.geocaching.com/track/map_gm.aspx?ID=4127596 You'll notice that the last event (dropping off in a cache) is way out of order. It's actually listed BEFORE the event where I discovered and grabbed it. This kind of thing happens in strange cases all over the site, including on user profiles when listing found geocaches. 

I don't even necessarily disagree with this. My point is that if there's going to be souvenirs for something as basic as a US State, then there should at least be country-based souvenirs. If you want to restrict them to more focused souvenirs like time-specific events or flash mobs, that's cool too but then you should probably remove the basic ones. Consistency. That's all I'm looking for.

I understand that completely, but at the same time you also have to accept that if you want to be a member of this community as it evolves, then you have to roll with that evolution. If you are unable or unwilling to adapt to the changes that occur in the community, there is absolutely NOTHING stopping you from developing a parallel geocaching community with old-school processes and procedures that you enjoy and deem appropriate. People who agree can join your community. As you've said, "it might be appropriate for those who want something completely different to come up with their own thing." So if that's what you want, go do it. Being a member of geocaching.com and complaining about geocaching.com policies while stomping your feet about how the rules that existed prior to the existence of geocaching.com are so much better is pretty silly. If you want to be a member of this community, then accept that you're a member of this community and not one that existed a decade ago.

Every system ever created is susceptible to abuse. Internet companies get a ton of bogus reports to their abuse@domain.com email addresses. Customer service departments for every company ever constantly encounter stupid complaints. Does that mean they should shut down these functionalities entirely? No. They suck it up and deal with all of the reports, bogus and otherwise. Having worked in Internet Security for over a decade, I understand this concept very well. If you're not equipped to take the good with the bad, then don't take on the responsibility. Leave it to people who can actually handle it.

Then if you're a cache owner you shouldn't be. Most geocachers aren't going to read through all of the previous logs for a cache. It's not their fault for missing an entry that mentions a problem. It's everyone's responsibility to report problems when they're found and it's the CO's responsibility to act on those reports. If you don't want that responsibility (or if you're going to take offense to it) then get out of cache ownership. Period. What a ridiculous sense of entitlement you have! I'm more than happy to lend a hand to a CO when I'm able, but for you to EXPECT it of the community in lieu of your responsibility as a cache owner is amazing. There's nothing more to say in response to this insanity other than you should absolutely not be a cache owner. Ever. "There's a problem with my cache and you've posted a notification? FINE. I'M GOING TO TAKE MY BALL AND GO HOME. SCREW YOU GUYS."

Two things: 1. As has already been mentioned, a "Needs Maintenance" entry isn't just for the cache owner, it's also for the community. Not everyone reads every previous log entry so mentioning that there's a problem with the cache in your "found it" log may be sufficient for the CO but certainly not for everyone else. 2. As has also been said, "Needs Maintenance" means that a cache "Needs Maintenance." It's as simple as that. The guidelines state that you should post an NM log if a cache needs maintenance. It doesn't say anything about how it is used to insult the cache owner. If you're a CO that's going to read an NM entry as "Your cache needs maintenance and since you are incredibly dumb I am logging this NM so you understand this and I also hate your face and I want evey other geocacher to know it" then you are an overly sensitive individual and you need to hand over ownership of your cache to someone who isn't going to break down and cry when someone gives you a heads-up on a problem. Just sayin'.

I'm currently in India on a business trip, and during some of my downtime I decided to go on a geocache hunt. I'd managed to locate the cache and I was looking forward to receiving a souvenir for my effort, but there was none to be had. How do we go about requesting new souvenirs? If we're going to have them for something as basic as each US state, we should at least have them for the country of the cache you've located - including the US for our international friends.