Korichnovui

Yep 3 of my kids have accounts. Their interest waxes and wanes, and I don’t push it. It can be a pain logging a find on all the different accounts. It was a “major project” when 2 of my kids completed a geocoin challenge last year and we found 28 or so caches in 1 day. I’ve gotten adept at using different browsers on the desktop, one for each cacher, with URL copy/paste.

No, way different part of the world, and I don't get the joke...

These are great points that are helping me to understand the issues better, just having never thought about it before. I was thinking in terms of myself, where if I volunteered to be a caretaker then it would of course be for purposes of respecting the original hide while also keeping an "historic" cache alive. But I can see how it wouldn't always work out that way. Thank you for your insights!

So the proto-original question I had was, what do people have against an abandoned cache going up for adoption without CO’s consent? The process could look like this: -The reviewer asks On the cache page for someone to volunteer to be cache guardian -If no one does in the allotted time frame then cache is archived -If someone comes forward then they are “cache guardian” until CO comes back and says they’re ready to take care of their cache again (if ever)

I think some of the oldness factor specifically comes from the Jasmer challenge. The rarer it is to fill the Jasmer spot, the more people care about the oldness of that cache, at least that’s my guess. There are probably other factors too that could be fleshed out by more experienced cachers than me. I remember finding a 2001 cache that is not far from my home and it still had the original logbook in it, good condition. I was pleasantly surprised to see the page-long entries that early cachers had written in it. It blew my mind and really had a strong impression on my whole outlook of the hobby. Should all caches be preserved? I don’t think so. It’s great for an area to open up for someone to be able to put a fresh new idea there. Should certain ones try to be preserved? I don’t know but it’s interesting to think about.

Pardon for bringing this up, I feel like I've read about it on the forums before but not able to search it up. A friend of mine that I got into caching recently visited another country and did a little caching. He did a popular virtual there (among others). The CO deleted his find. Now they're in a struggle where my friend keeps reposting the find and the CO keeps deleting it. I reviewed the situation and my friend appears to have done everything correctly. The CO appears to be quite unreasonable (I haven't contacted that person but saw their communications). My friend would like to log the find. Does he have any recourse? Anyone have experience navigating this sort of thing?

Last year I had been scouting a place for a cache in a wilderness preserve area in the middle of town. I got excited that maybe I had found a nice little nook but soon discovered a makeshift latrine. A low-lying horizontal branch served as a seat, under which was a small mountain of “brown stuff”, and next to it was an immense pile of toilet paper. I left quickly, disappointed and disgusted and not sure that I should hide a cache anywhere near that area after all. I guess a few homeless folks are camping out in that area.

One reason to save legacy caches is for stats. It’s a significant part of the game for a significant amount of players (at least, I assume it is). Project-gc.com specifically tracks it. One of the most well-known challenges is to complete Jasmer. Eventually Jasmer will become literally impossible, and then you’ll have “Jasmer 2002” or whatever oldest year is still do-able for new cachers. I’m not saying that’s a good or a bad thing, I can see pros/cons both ways, I’m just saying it’s “a thing”.

I’m curious to know why it was poorly received. I get that sometimes people are happy to see a cache go and a spot open up for a new cache. That’s cool. But there’s also a subset of the community that appreciates the “oldness” of some caches. Heck it’s the reason why this thread even exists. Usually nobody gives a crap if some random cache is going to be archived....

Would people ever possibly warm to the idea of involuntary adoption to a willing active user? I mean, if there’s no response and the cache gets archived, is it so bad to instead turn over control to someone else who is willing to upkeep it? The CO clearly doesn’t care in the former situation, so would they care about the latter? Just curious. I suppose there’s the awkward situation of a CO that had taken a hiatus and then they get back into the hobby later, and now their cache is owned by someone else. That would be weird.

I agree. Also relevant to OP: I was actually awarded an adventure lab credit last week, and they want it to be “public” or live by May. It will be the first/only adventure lab (not counting temporary ones from a mega last year) in my community. I plan on creating a “companion cache” to increase visibility of the adventure lab.

Also 2 of my kids have “polaroids” they’re trendy again, probably for the reason stated above

yes, doing 1 Wherigo was enough for me! I also have a sort of goal to try to create as many different kinds of caches as I can, so I did look into making a Wherigo, but decided not to pursue it.

I made a small series of YouTube puzzles. Well, one savvy cacher subscribed to my YouTube channel and was able to solve one of the puzzles before it published on geocaching.com . Silly me, I hadn't thought to make the YouTube videos "unlisted". Live and learn! For the cacher that solved the puzzle (and found the cache) before publication, I say more power to them.

You may get more first-hand information too by messaging some of the people that find caches in that general area (if you haven't already)

I attended a Mega in 2018 where they put out a bunch of new caches. This Mega happens to take place in my home town every year. Once we all split up to start finding the caches, I strategically chose one that was somewhat out of the way of the natural main loop to get all the caches, GC7NT54, with intent of being FTF. Sure enough, I got there first and inked the completely empty logbook. I then got on my app to be the first to log online, as well, before an onslaught of other Mega-attendees logged it, and much to my surprise, someone had already logged a find online! I was rather distressed for a minute there, thinking I may have made a mistake, but no, there was really no way anyone could have gotten there faster than me, I was pretty quick out of the parking lot, and also the logbook was completely empty. It appears to me that the person who logged it online ahead of me...may not really understand how geocaching works. I've kept this one as an FTF on my list.

The example of mystery caches was actually a very good example of a different way of looking at your issue, to gain insight. I invite you to think about it some more and not just brush it off. The way I see it, people could discuss the nuances or parse words for many more forum pages and not find a consensus. That’s because there is no official ruling on FTF. Basically, hundreds of people could claim FTF on 1 cache over a period of years. It doesn’t make any sense, but there’s nothing to stop them. They can tag it as [FTF] so that it shows up on project-gc.com as a legitimate FTF. They can put it on a public bookmark of “my FTF’s”. Okay great. Other players don’t care. Other players can discern the “truth” (in their own eyes) easily enough. At the end of the day, just play the game for yourself. If you feel like you were FTF through some edge case or rules lawyering, then go for it. It’s you, in the end, that will admire your FTF list more than anybody else and you’ll know in your heart how true and accurate it is.

I got one. Being relatively new to the hobby, only having attended a few events myself, I'd love to hear about some cool/memorable events that other people have been to over the years.

If I understand this right, you’re trying to make a Trifecta challenge. If you read the rules, you’ll see they demonstrating that the challenge is “do-able” is one of the rules. Nobody said you have to find “hundreds” but a sampling will do. In this situation I may try looking up the profiles of several prominent cachers in the area (more than 10k finds) and see if they’ve completed the a trifecta. Get a list of maybe 3-4, I bet that would satisfy the reviewer. You could also ask around a little on the local geocaching social media sites to see who has completed the trifecta, and get some names that way. Send messages to some of the prominent cachers. Etc. I think you only need about 3-4, that would probably be adequate.

Actually I thought the analogy was good. Throwing a party for your friends can be a lot like a gift. Even more than a gift sometimes. You put time, effort, and money into it. Making a cache for the community can feel similar. Anyway, the analogy worked for me. But it won't work for everyone. Different cache owners view things differently.

I also found this statement interesting. I think we are straying into an area now where different people will have different opinions about what is "correct". Is it okay to give hints or not? In this case, people asked for a hint and I gave it. Then they found the cache and added +1 smiley to their account. Maybe some people are offended that those finders didn't really "earn" it because they had to get help, get a hint. It's not "fair" to compare them to someone else who solved a 4-star difficulty puzzle without any help. I can understand that point of view. But at the same time, if someone asks for a hint on a puzzle of mine, I'm going to work with them on it. I think it's fun, like we are both learning a new way to think, together. On my other puzzles I did withhold hints until they were solved without help. And I thank you for your advice, it's good advice! For this one, I decided to give hints because it had been 2 months. Maybe that's not so long a time for you guys. I probably could have been more patient. Maybe it wasn't fair to a couple of solvers who put off finding it when it was relatively inaccessible (sorry Wild Ponies!!). All I can say is, I'm definitely not perfect and I'm just trying to improve myself in this interesting hobby. This cache has been a learning experience for me. And again, I liked the concept of the puzzle, had fun making it, and I know that it is solvable without getting a hint, so I feel satisfied with it. If I felt otherwise then I would tweak it (as I did for the other GC code that I provided in an earlier post)

Well, since posting the GC code here earlier today, 2 more people have solved it without getting any contact from me, so yeah, I'm sure. There were a flurry of certitude solutions before the cache was ever found. It took 2 months for the first person to visit the cache, I think mainly due to unusually heavy snows that came shortly after publishing the cache. Looking at the logs and then concluding that its only solvable if you get a hint is a fallacy, like a confirmation bias. Others have solved and chosen not to find the cache, because they don't live in the area or for whatever reason. It's not a park and grab. I like what kunarian said. There are buh-zillions of caches out there. If you don't like this puzzle then just skip it, that's fine. Someone out there likes it. I think most of all, I liked making it and seeing it get solved, that made me happy, I think that's all there is to it.

The “read my mind” issue is complicated. I’m aware of the difficulty and try my best to avoid it. But it’s hard to be unbiased in this area. I’m definitely not going for a “cleverer than you” scenario but I want the puzzles to take some work, effort, thought, and be a little different than just a straightforward cipher or google this and that. I made a short decoder series recently and the puzzles ended up being pretty difficult. And actually the “read my mind” phenomenon loomed unexpectedly for GC7WZV1. I thought this was the easiest one but people really didn’t get it. I have adjusted the puzzle to make it easier and now people are getting it. So it’s hard to fully avoid the “read my mind” problem and the other puzzles in the series likely suffer from it still. But actually they were all solved by people who received zero hints or help from me, so they do not require “reading my mind”. They DO require patience, experience, and some willingness to engage in trial and error. These are qualities that I have used to solve some difficult (for me) puzzles. To what degree other cachers want to exercise these qualities (or obtain experience elsewhere) is variable, and when some cachers fall short then they may say “you need to be able to read his mind”. Not so, it’s just a difficult puzzle. The nastygram cache is not in my profile, the cache is GC7T5WG. Yes, I made a difficult puzzle. But to some people it’s dead easy because they’re already familiar with the concept and there are clues enough to be able to solve it quickly. Should we not make difficult puzzles? Should we dumb things down to cater to most cachers, who (I am well aware) have little interest in difficult puzzles?

I’ve put out quite a few puzzle caches in my area and been met with lukewarm response. In fact there’s one that has gotten a nasty-gram posted as a note on the cache page because it’s hard and apparently everyone needs a hint to solve it. Which is not the case at all, but it is a rather difficult puzzle. I just get the feeling that people don’t want hard puzzles. If they can’t solve it almost immediately then it’s not worth the effort....

......Is it one of my puzzles?