GopherGreg

I live in Ottawa Ontario, Canada, and would love to do something like this with you. Or with anyone for that matter. I saw similar multicaches featured on Groundspeak's geocache of the week. Contact me through the link on my profile or at gophergregftw@gmail.com if you're willing to do this with me. Thanks, Greg

Whenever I placed a larger sized cache I used to stock it full of swag. It seems though that with all the new cachers, they don't seem to consider fair trades as much any more. Usually I'll check on my cache a month or so after it's been published, and most often the swag in the cache is almost completely gone. What I mean by that is there's a few items left. The items that were traded for the original swag are items that no one will use, like soggy business cards, beer bottle caps, and sticks, twigs or leaf bits from the ground which just stink up the cache and get it wet. I've found "protection", if you will, in my caches once, but at least it's more useful than twigs and moldy beer bottle caps... I'll usually then remove all inappropriate or useless items from the cache and put a few more items in. If it's all disappeared within the next few months, I'll wait a couple more months to replace it. I love to place larger caches that people can make trades in and enjoy more than a micro in a shrub, but it's getting to the point where I'm putting more effort into digging up swag items in my basement than into maintain my caches and placing them. I'm so out of swag items that my newer caches are very scarcely stocked. I'm not getting any complains about that though, so that's good. It seems like for the new users you often have to spell out "PLEASE MAKE FAIR TRADES" on the cache page - I'd think it's the obvious thing to do. I know that everyone's definition of fair is different, but I think most will agree that a "action figurine for a twig and a wet leaf you found next to the cache" isn't a fair trade. Especially when other cachers would've liked to take that figurine, and would've made a decent trade for it too. It seems like cachers who want something from the cache will throw anything in the cache that they can find in their pockets, like dental floss or folded up business cards, without considering whether it's fair or not. Then they write on the cache page something like: "Traded action figure for the bouncy ball". When I check on my cache later that day, the bouncy ball is gone, but it appears that they left a wet post-it-note instead of the figurine the y claimed to have left. Unfortunately there's not much we can do about it - I can give them the rules for my cache, but it's up to them to follow them. And there's the occasional cachers who will re-stock the cache, for the CO. I've only had that happen once, but I've seen it on other cachers. Those are some of the people who help keep the game fun.

Since virtuals are grandfathered that rules them out. As others have said it's hard to fin a geological aspect about an airport. My best idea would be to find an airport with interesting building materials, such as interesting stones, etc. place an EC about the interesting materials used in the building. I'm pretty sure this is allowed as I've see a few like this (about old city halls, and catherdrals) but I'm noy sure if the newer EX guidlines disallow this. It's something to look into, I guess. Other than that there isn't too much geology at an airport. It'd be interesting to see one publiahed though. "Cracks in the runway - A Earthcache by ________"

I'm not convinced that the caches were "armchair" logged. I'm also still not convinced that the OP is prepared to listen to reasonable discourse. ibtl The OP's listing was not armchair logged. They altered the listing to include ALR's and advertisement to a bike rental shop after the listing was published. The CO deleted legitimate finds because their ALR demands were not met, the cache page turned into bickering, the local reviewer archived the listing. Oh, okay. Thanks for filling me in. I didn't know what what going on there. I wasn't sure if by cheating he meant armchair logging or not. I'm pretty sure either way he isn't aloud to have ALR on a traditional caches, let alone advertisements...

I understand that you aren't pleased with people armchair logging caches. But really it's not something to get worked up about. They're missing the best part of the game, and at the same time they're making you so angry and frustrated that you seem to be missing out on some of the game's fun as well, because you're too busy hating the Premium members. You obviously don't want any Premium members and basic members. Everyone is equal. No advantages to those willing to pay the prices. Okay. Sure. But out of curiosity, how do you suggest Groundspeak pays for maintaining Geocaching.com and Waymarking.com as well if they don't make money? According to your 'calculations' towards the starting of this thread, you said that Groundspeak would make "around $200,000,000" off of Premium Memberships. Well, my guess is that's a HUGE part in their annual income (of course, that info isn't released by GS, so I could be wrong). Taking away the Premium Features and Premium Memberships doesn't sound like it would do to good for their business. I know they make some money off advertising, especially for geocaching companies like CacheAtNight or Landsharkz, but how else could they make as much money as they do off PM's? I'm very curious to hear your opinion.

1) I actually do like Gouda. And Havarti. Only in sandwiches though. 2)Google is free, yes, and so is Youtube. However, they make money from the people who want to put advertisements up. It doesn't cost money to Google search things, no, but do you think Google lets those websites up for free? 3) Groundspeak reviewers are VOLUNTEERS. Some of them ask Groundspeak to be a reviewer, and some of them are asked by Groundspeak. If Groundspeak asked them to be a reviewer they don't need to say yes. They choose to be a reviewer. If your kid (supposing you have one) asked you to proof-read their essay you could say 'yes' or 'no', but if you said yes would you expect pay? 4) By rampant cheating I'm going to assume you mean armchair logging. I don't know what else you could mean. I ignore armchair loggers. They're missing out on the funnest part of the game, and that's too bad for them. 5) I live in Canada. What Barack does is none of my concern. Maybe I need to learn something but I'm pretty sure you do as well. And you still haven't explained your thing with *asterisks*. I find it very *weird* that someone uses *asterisks* in the place of *quotation marks*.

What's with the *asterisks*? Just *wondering*... Anyways: Geocaching.com is a site that doesn't charge money to allow you to cache. However they have to make money somehow , do they not? That's why they have premium memberships. To make money. I, for one, would NOT have bought my PM if it came with no benefits. If normal members would be allowed to create PQ's, and add favorites, and bookmark lists, what would be the appeal to having a PM? There wouldn't be any. So no one would buy one, and the site would slowly go downhill because they can't afford to keep up and running. It's like this. You set up a lemonade stand. You have the best lemonade in town, and everyone wants to have some. So, you get many, many customers and you have to keep buying lemons. A bag of five lemons makes you ten cups of lemonade, and costs $10 Here's the thing though: You've been giving the lemonade away for free. So have you made money? No. If you spend $10 per ten cups, and you get say, twenty customers, you've LOST twenty dollars, instead of making any money. Then you have to close down and everyone's upset. It's like this with Groundspeak. They can't give out PM's for free, or make the PM features available for the basic members. Then how would they make money? (They wouldn't). There's no sense in whining about it here. What can we do. All that will happen is that people will start talking trash about you, and so on. I suggest you leave it be, and complain to other friends who have similar opinions. It doesn't seem like many people are going to listen to you here. Or if you really feel compelled to you can complain to Groundspeak. I don't think it will change much though. Just leave him be guys. The more you aggravate him the happier he'll be. He probably just came here looking to cause a stir.

Yeah, that's what really convinced me to spend the $30. I got one of the Garmin GPS's and tried the free Premium membership. When it was done it felt so weird to not be able to create bookmark lists, run PQs add favorite caches, etc. I really recommend getting a PM. It's great. Though one thing I do see a lot is a new cacher get a PM then lose interest in caching right after that. They have a PM that they spent $30 on, but they haven't logged in in a couple months. I got the free trial at around 50 finds, but I waited until 150 finds to make sure I would keep enjoying the game even after I'd found all the caches within walking/biking distance from my house. Luckily I did!

Just a word of caution. Sometimes you could be reaching out to a preteen girl or boy who hasn't told their parents that their hiding caches. Suggesting a meet up so you can show them the ropes could get someone into trouble. Which brings me back to the wait period idea. Kids have short attention spans. A 3 month wait period should weed out a lot of the unsupervised kids. Uhhh... Then methinks Groundspeak should address the user age issue, especially in light of the bad (stupid) press they got over the sex offender/geocaching "threat" to kids. Geocaching.com is a listing service, and has guidelines to protect them legally. We are the community that Groundspeak relies on to keep the game going. There has to be some common ground here about how to keep the game going while making sure that the community aspect of the game is fostered. We're not here to babysit or be parents for some kids with smartphones. The guidelines state that kids must use the site and geocache under the supervision of an adult. If a kid geocaches without that supervision, it isn't my fault; Groundspeak should be looking into how to design the game to deal with this eventuality. Remember, there is a difference between "family friendly" and "kid-friendly" or a "game for kids". But, back to the topic again. Mentoring, community. I think I, and a few others around my age would be upset if Groundspeak put age limits. There's cachers who are two or three years younger than me who have put out fine hides. I started caching when I was 11 going on 12 and I waited until I'd found a decent amount of caches before placing my own. My parents don't geocache, and neither do my friend's parents who are the ones who often take us, even though they stay in the car. I think the problem isn't really the age of the cacher, or the supervision they're under, but more of how experienced they are and how dedicated they are to the game. I think really it's just a few bad apples ruining the whole basket.

Does it provide a mechanism to hide caches? I wouldn't think so, their paid app doesn't do that. For that matter, my Delorme nor any Garmin that I have owned doesn't do that... yet I have caches placed. I'm not positive. I've never used it myself. I know a cacher around here that only uses the intro app and has hidden several caches. One time I was going for a FTF on his, after a couple DNFs. I happened to run into him right after I found it. He said he was here to see if it was still there. I told him the coords were off, and he said he used the app on his phone, so they couldn't be off. (I did add better coords to my log, and people have said used those is much better) Taking that away wouldn't do to much really. A cache near my house was listed by a cacher with 15 finds. It was a D5/T3. On the cache page he/she said that the coordinates were taken with a road GPS, which lots of people have now days. (The cache was 30 meters off the coords and was really more of a 3.5/2.) So even if they don't have the ability to hide caches on the intro app, there's many other things cachers can use to take coordinates.

I have no problem with kids placing caches...as long as there is proper supervision, for the hide and the maintenance. It sounds like the teacher in charge did not take *their* responsibility seriously, which is to check that the container and location were suitable. There is no way I would allow any child under my supervision to tape a tic-tac container to a stop sign or place a cache in a local potty. I know some kids who geocache and place caches on their own. It really depends on a) If the kid has cached before and how seriously the kid takes it. I'm not sure how old you have to be to not be a kid, but I've placed many caches, and I'm only 15. I'm not a 'kid' but not really an adult either. Again, it really depends on who the cacher is. Some people with lots of hides have still placed bad caches.

Assuming the above was a result of a class assignment, a 2-3 month wait would mean teachers would be less likely to create a geocaching class project - especially one that requires each student to register an account and post a cache individually. The teacher could put the caches under his/her name (assuming they actually geocache and registered at 3 months prior) then at least the teacher would be responsible for these caches. Each cache was under a different account. After all the caches were unbublished or archived, apparently one of our local reviewers received an apology email from the High-School's students that placed the caches. The note was posted on the forums for our area, and said: ''Dear geocaching, I apologize for creating my childish, disgusting and misinformative geocache on your website. I now realize all the trouble I have caused for your company, my school and the geocachers who have attempted to find my cache. If I ever decide to create another cache I promise to take it seriously and make it safe for others to find. I hope that you can forgive me, my partner for the cache and the school and one day let our school use your site once again. Sincerely, (name removed)'' So that's how we figured out it was a student, and that it was for a school project, though we had our suspicions before since all the caches were clumped around the school...

I'm not sure whether it should or should not be necessary to find 20 or 30 caches before placing your own. Around my area it's usually a few bad new cachers placing bad hides that gives these one-hide no-finds cachers a bad rep. I've found caches before that were amazing, and I got home to log them, only to find out that the CO hasn't found any caches at all. However last summer a High-School in my area decided to do geocaching as a project, and as a result there were a few bad cache placements. One (now archived) was a tic-tac bottle taped to the back of a stop sign. the stop sign was removed, and so was the bottle. An other one (still active) was a pill bottle almost buried under rocks in a big field of thorns. At least these two were find-able. The other two that were published were soooo bad that instead of being archived they were UNPUBLISHED. one of them, the coords took you to the middle of the school's soccer field. There was nothing around to put a cache on, and after a 20 minute search, with a search radius of probably almost 60 or 70 meters... Nothing. The other one was called P-Bowl. The coordinates took you to a hollow stump that smelled vile. Turns out it smelled that way because because kids from the High-School used it as a... P-Bowl, if you will. Basically there's newbies that will put out good hides, and some that won't. I don't think putting rules on how many caches you need to find will help because I'm sure some new cachers will just armchair log. Making Premium memberships a must won't do much either, because even some older members might not place the best hides. It's really seems like it's hard to do something about. The best solution is to ignore the bad ones, and find the good ones. Don't let a few bad apples ruin the whole basket!

I did that as well when I started. But I soon realized that I couldn't keep writing "I'll give it a Fav when I get my next one" on cache pages, because half the time I forgot about the cache. That got me thinking. If I don't really really really remember the experience I had at the cache, or solving the puzzle, then does it really deserve a favorite point? I've learned to be selective in which caches I favorite. Favorite points are supposed to be for the really well thought out/well executed caches. People now days seem to throw out favorite points everywhere now. I know some of the cachers in my area don't usually give out favorite points, and many of them have hundreds that they don't use. One thing I don't like though is when a cacher gives my cache a favorite point, and then five days later takes that point away. I've had a cache that had 10 points on it. I checked the listing two weeks after that, and it was down to seven. I think if there's one thing that Groundspeak should add to the favorite points system, is that once you've posted a favorite to a cache then you can't take it back. As for the original topic: I agree with making a bookmark list. That's the easiest and best way to do it.

I actually have a lot. Ottawa is packed with caches. 1391 caches within 10 miles of my place. Around 20-30 of them are mine. That includes multi caches, puzzle caches, traditional caches, virtual caches, Letterbox Hybrid Caches, and earth caches. And anything else I missed.

There are a few challenges you can do. If you haven't filled your D/T grid, that's a big one right there. I know that this one near my house requires you to have filled your D/T grid three times. There's other challenges that require you to find 1000 caches in a year. An other one in my area has the requirements that you must have MOVED (not discovered) 1000 trackable items. Check out something like GC406F0; this is a neat idea. There's plenty of challenges to do!