Ragnemalm
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Posts posted by Ragnemalm
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Let me bring this thread to life. Obviously unpublished caches will be archived after some time, and I can prevent it to make comments to keep it alive, but what is the rule for how long I can leave it without having it archived?
In the past this has happened once, I think, and that came from Groundspeak and seemed automated, I think it was after six months. But I recently had a whole bunch of caches archived, and it seems the limit is now three months. I think it was much higher before. Is there an actual rule?
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On 8/21/2021 at 8:29 PM, niraD said:
One of the things I appreciate about Groundspeak is the way they have resisted creating any incentive to hide a cache other than the desire to own and maintain a cache. If they were to offer points for placing caches, then caches would be placed by people interested only in the points, not in owning and maintaining the caches.
I can see that it would be tempting to make a challenge with the goal "make more caches for me to find" (and I guess some old ones exist), but placing caches for fulfilling a challenge or souvenir would most certainly result in many boring, simple and unmaintained caches.
It is not legal for challenges, and for the same reasons not included in souvenirs. Not all rules make sense but this one does.
However, assuming that such challenges exist, can we see that the result has been bad?
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3 hours ago, The Kent Crew said:
As a disabled person (not in wheelchair) I go to search for lots of T1 caches that end up not being disabled friendly. To me the Adventure Caches have given me another way of enjoying getting out and about. They also have a lot of interesting facts about them that are missing from 'normal' caches. I don't like the Wherigo's, or the multi's and Earth caches, therefore I don't do them. It's a simple exercise of if you don't like them, don't do them, but don't spoil it for those of us who like doing them and find it makes a change from having to bend and search for inaccessible cache boxes.
A T1 should never, ever be inaccessible from a wheechair. Have you told the COs? They are breaking the rules. Such violations should be reported to reviewers. Do these caches belong to the same CO? Maybe part of "DT bombs"? For the latter, the COs tend to put bad ratings on the caches just to fill the DT matrix. Don't accept it. For most of us COs, we make an effort to verify that a cache is wheelchair friendly before putting a T1 rating on it.
What bothers me with ALCs is not that they exist but that they are made in collision course to Lab caches. Imagine if T1 and T5 were changed to be the same thing! Confusing, right? But now they make physical+temporary+potentially hard = virtual+permanent+easy. Makes sense?
However, I see nothing in the ALC guidelines that require them to be wheelchair friendly. Unless I am missing something, you should run the same or even greater risk of finding an inaccessible ALC as a badly graded traditional. Right?
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One more thing... This forum states "Formerly the Lab Caches forum, this is a place to discuss playing Adventures. ". Is that implying that Lab Caches (not ALCs) are so dead and buried that they don't even have a forum any more?
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I guess this would fit pretty well into one of my birdhouse caches. However, there is a matter of security. We live in a time when we are getting more and more wary about unknown websites. Scanning an unknown QR that is not part of the cache, which sends my phone to an unknown website... Is that what we want to do?
Wouldn't it be better to upload the photos to the cache in question, and project is given links to all participating caches? The best solution would then be that the project makes a script to "scrape" the images from the paricipating caches. Just some ideas.
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I am pretty sure this has nothing to do with the reviewer, since it is violating several rules from Groundspeak. Pokémon itself is a commercial trademark, Pokémon Go is a competing game, and Pokémon images may be copyrighted. Pretty clear IMHO.
The caches you refer to are several years old, and by then Pokemon Go was very new and these conflicts may not have been put into reviewer guidelines yet. "Past publication of a similar geocache is not justification for publication of a new geocache."
Furthermore, the rules state:
No commercial content
Cache pages perceived as commercial will not be published. Commercial content includes any of the following characteristics
...
Name, links, or logos of the following
Businesses
Commercial products
Competing games or cache listing servicesSo it is all in the rules. Sorry, many fun ideas are blocked by this.
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I used iOS 6 for a long time with L4C. Unfortunately, I don't think that any application has been updated to conform with the new API and still supports iOS 6. Apple very much pushes developers to only support recent version, so as developer you have to fight to keep supporting the old versions, and to do that for a rapidly shrinking audience.
I used to write games for the Mac, and I was extremely good at supporting old systems, both old OSes and old computers. That was a totally meaningless effort. Nobody cared. Same thing here, it is not worth the trouble as developer.
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On 7/30/2021 at 2:08 PM, niraD said:
For me, DNF means I reached GZ and searched, but did not find the cache. If I don't reach GZ, or if I reach GZ but don't search for some reason, then it's a DNS (Did Not Search), logged as a Note.
Absolutely. I would log DNS or DNR (did not reach) as a Note.
I only log DNF if I think I have reasons to believe that the cache is gone, after searching thoroughly.
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On 7/25/2021 at 10:22 AM, barefootjeff said:
Or maybe a bonus for the Difficult Climb and Climbing Gear Required attributes?
Yes, why not? And as long as it is a bonus, and not a requirement for completing the souvenir, nobody is excluded.
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9 hours ago, Aprilscherzen said:
Do you have an example for this?
I do (more than one) but I can't post it here without pointing out specific COs and reviewers, and I don't think that is OK.
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Time since last found and time since last maintenance are two different measures, both relevant. The last of the two, too. I wouldn't rule out any. I believe that the Project-GC number is about the last found.
The whole concept about lonely caches is important and I really would love to see "lonely days" challenges be allowed again. That is just about the only challenge I would consider creating myself.
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Seriously? A souvenir about mountaneering that doesn't even give a bonus for high T? I see the point with the all-including style, but why not a bonus for high T (which then gives a bonus for climbing mountains - as well as other high T caches but that is hard to avoid). Or a bonus for high altitudes. Nothing mandatory, just a little bonus for being on the theme.
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19 hours ago, barefootjeff said:
I guess that makes me a very Bad Cacher then. These are some of my recent DNF logs:
- A terrain 4.5 cache hidden in a rock face where the limits of my climbing ability and the shortness of my arms meant I couldn't quite reach it.
- An AL bonus cache hidden in a tree but at the time I attempted it there was a family having a picnic right under it.
- Another AL bonus cache, this one a Bison tube on a fence, except there was a muggle sitting in his parked car right next to it.
- Yet another AL bonus cache, but on this one I was unable to get within the geofencing at one of its locations which was meant to be accessed from on board a train, and the only thing I could do was log a DNF on the bonus since you can't DNF an AL.
- A roadside cache in Newcastle where I made a cursory search but there was a muggle sitting in his car opposite and watching me so I gave up.
- A D3 traditional in a rocky gully, but it was raining at the time and there were places I couldn't look because of slippery rocks. I returned a few weeks later in dry weather and found it in one of those places.
- A coastal 11-stage Earthcache where I couldn't get to a few of the stages because of huge seas. I returned at a later date when the seas were calmer and was able to complete it.
- A cache hidden in a mangrove tree in wetlands. There'd been drought-breaking rain the week before and the mosquitoes were so thick they were going up my nose every time I inhaled. After a very cursory search I had to give up, but returned in drier and cooler weather and, covered with loads of repellent, was able to make the find.
- A cache next to a creek, but my GPSr was pointing me to the opposite side and, again after heavy rain, the creek was flowing strongly with lots of slippery rocks on its bed. On my next visit, in drier weather, I discovered (to the CO's amusement I'm sure) that I was on the right side of the creek after all and my GPSr had been leading me astray.
I would never log DNF in any of these cases, on a cache that I can't search for or can't reach. These are all DNR's in my book, a "note" saying that I can't log it now for whatever reason, not that I couldn't find it.
So in my area, you would get a message asking you to change the log type.
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3 hours ago, niraD said:
I'm so sorry that you were misled by such a %$#@! cache owner.
I can't say I was miseld when I see caches being deactivated after just two DNFs. It seems to be the rules we have here. Even a DNF on a D3 will cause deactivation.
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2 hours ago, kunarion said:
This seems common when a group of friends places a cache. One time I found a cache where the first log was a note that everyone's waiting for the "FTF" before they make their online find logs. Which is weird when they've already signed the log sheet. Plus they helped place the cache. I sometimes state in my Find log the time I found it, but I let everyone else decide who was "First". In reality where the concept of "time" exists, if I sign a cache log after others have signed it, it is impossible for me to be "First". But in Geocaching, it tends to be a lot more fluid.
I hope this isn't common because it totally ruins the FTF idea. When I place a cache together with a friend, my friend never try to FTF it, at least not without other people who are the real FTF hunters. Actually, we usually let quite some time pass before logging each other caches, if at all, especially if we are co-COs.
Because it feels like cheating.
However, FTF is not a formal thing. I have seen various variations on the concept. In one area, they decided that anything logged on the same day as the first find counted as FTF. And for some time, we had a series of events in our neighbor town, where each event ended with handing out GPX files to a bunch of new caches which were not yet released! This reserved all FTFs to the visitors of the event! This did cause some criticism by FTF hunters...
Sometimes I wish there were rules about FTFs, but we need to make those between us.
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5 minutes ago, dprovan said:
No, *I'm* sorry. DNF means "didn't find". The fact that reviewers -- well, actually the automated scoring system the reviewers use -- misinterpret DNF doesn't change what it means to not find something.
Has this really happened to you? DNFs are fairly common in my area when a climb isn't attempted. If reviewers aren't reading the logs saying "DNF because I did not climb" and deactivating the cache anyway, I suggest that's the problem, not the people that couldn't find the cache for whatever reason posted a log saying they couldn't find the cache.
And anyone that skips a tree climb because of DNFs they didn't look at probably isn't ready for a tree climb, anyway.
This is the problem: It says that it means "did not find" but in practice it is interpreted as "I think it is missing". So what it says does not stop it from meaning something else for users and reviewers.
In my area, it is generally accepted that DNF means that I need to check that it is still there. Some caches have been archived after just two DNFs (first deactivated, of course).
As a beginner, I logged DNF on a cache that I didn't dare searching for close to traffic, and got a complaint from the CO for this very reason: I had not searched enough to claim that it was gone!
However, I do know that practices can vary by area, so maybe DNF is just that in your area. Not in mine.
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5 hours ago, barefootjeff said:
So by your reasoning, we're all forced to downvote at least 90% of the caches we find, no matter how good they are. How do propose we not do that, apart from cancelling our premium membership so that our finds don't count in the FP percentage?
No, no, we upvote the 10% best and don't upvote the 90% that are quite that good... Downvoting is when we deliberately downvote obvious top caches.
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On 7/16/2021 at 6:59 PM, cerberus1 said:
A DNF says you didn't find it. That's all.
Sorry, this is not true! DNF means very clearly "I have searched well and believe it is gone". That is how it is interpreted by reviewers.
If I get a DNF on one of my tree climbing caches from someone who didn't dare to climb, I will ask it to be changed to a note for that reason. I call that a "DNR" log - did not reach - and it must be a "note", not a "DNF", to avoid unnecessary trouble like having it deactivated until I can assure the reviewer that it is still there, or, for that matter, having other cachers skipping it because they think it is gone, due to the same interpretation.
Many log types are strange. "Needs maintenance" means "This has serious problems and will be archived if the CO doesn't fix it soon". This has caused many fine caches to be archived just because the log book was a llittle damp. "Needs archived" means "a reviewer needs to have a look at this".
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On 7/16/2021 at 2:33 PM, niraD said:
Nonsense. Not giving a Favorite Point is not a downvote. It's just saying that the cache isn't in the top 10% Or for some premium members, the top 9%, or the top 8%, or whatever.
Of course it is a downvote! It is a "not in the 10% top" downvote. On a cache that clearly isn't of that quality, it is expected, and rather a missing upvote. For a 5% top cache, it is clearly a downvote.
You have 90% FPs on a particularly good cache. In comes the downvoters. 80%, or even 60%. Would that not be a downvote to you?
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On 7/16/2021 at 5:43 PM, cerberus1 said:
We've seen guard rail and lamp post skirt hides with numerous FPs. Most have seen FTF put a FP on them "just because".
- A group we know FPs each other's cache because they're in their group.
Groundspeak itself says FPs are " a simple way to track and share geocaches that you enjoyed the most." That's all.
Exactly, that what GS says, and that implies that they are a recommendation.
And we all decide on why. A petling in a particularly nice spot is a perfectly good reason. FPs are sometimes given for reasons we may not agree to, but that's just the freedom we have. However, when I know that an FP is just "thanks for the FTF", I try to ignore it for evaluation purposes. I had one cache which had kind of a point. It got an FP for the FTF, none more. I scrapped it pretty quickly.
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On 7/14/2021 at 10:22 PM, Lostboy1966 said:
I don't do gadget caches (yet), I just enjoy making odd containers. Not gonna lie, I've been playing since 2005 and had to look up what a 'petling' was. I assumed it was some kind of weird furry-like fetish, now I see it's just those preform micro containers. Glad to see I was wrong!
Either way, not my style of hide, but to each their own... 
The border between a gadget cache and a custom container is kind of floating. Custom containers can be fun and definitely are more fun to find than yet another petling. And you are not likely to place 100 of them at the same time, filling every possible spot.
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On 7/14/2021 at 5:01 PM, D41 said:
A couple of examples - there's a couple of caches here in my town that we looked for and didn't find. I failed to log them as DNF, but drive by them all the time and think I need to do a DNF and then fail to get it done.
Another example is how I and my family have been handling TB's. The website makes it extremely easy to log a visit of a trackable in your possession. In fact, I thought this was what we were supposed to be doing - taking the TBs with us and logging that they're moving around. I'm learning they're not supposed to "visit" caches, but be dropped in and retrieved from caches. I don't honestly understand WHY this manner of doing things is so important. If the TB is MOVING to a variety of caches, why does it matter who moves it? I'd think we'd want TBs to be in the hands of someone who is actively caching, as opposed to sitting in a cache waiting for someone to come along who may just keep the thing.... I have a couple of TBs of my own that I've not released yet, because there aren't any good places to put them. I've visited a couple of TBHs in my area. One was completely and totally overrun with fire ants and the other was too small to hold my TBs. Anyway - the expectations for TBs are confusing for me.
DNF: No need to log a DNF if you don't feel sure that it is gone. DNF on a cache that is just hard to find makes more harm than good.
TBs: Of course you can log "visit". When you do, the owner sees that it is active, which makes the owner happy. Don't feel bad about that. I can't understand why someone would oppose to "visit" logs. They are there for a reason.
Some TBs are hard to place. Take this for instance:
I had that for a while. My intention was to place it in a "large" cache that I own, but it was too large! And it isn't the largest TB I have seen.
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3 hours ago, lee737 said:
Another reason community maintenance does the game a disservice. Caches from inactive players should be archived once problems aren't fixed - taking out unsupervised caches/logs and freeing up spots for other players.
You have a point in that even if an active cacher monitors the cache, that cacher can't delete a fake log. Everything else we can help with.
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On 6/8/2021 at 12:29 AM, cerberus1 said:
I do agree that "quality" (to me) caches are fewer and far between. 1.5 in a row hides are old hat (for me), and I'd need a bit more for a FP...
I totally agree on that - most of the time. 1.5/1.5 petlings generally don't make it, and I often skip them becacuse they are not interesting.
But it has happened that we found an FP-worthy 1.5/1.5. We found a short trail, 4-5 caches in a nice area including a tree climbing cache (yes, bring them on!), but the first was 1.5/1.5 so we just walked past it to get to the tree climbing cache.
But they we noticed, it had something like 20 FPs! OK, let's give it a chance! And indeed, it was very nice, just easy. The CO quickly positioned himself as the best in the area, so we need to have some FPs saved before visinging any of his caches.
That is an exception, though. Usually, 1.5/1.5 and thereabout are just a petling at face height or a film canister behind a sign. No FPs unless the location justifies it.
I do "squirrel" some FPs, but I have too few since I am actively looking for good ones. I got the suggesting to take a power trail to get a bunch to spend, but no, I am not power trailing! Not my style. Thus, I always have too few.
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Either way, not my style of hide, but to each their own... 
How long can a cache page remain unpublished before it's removed?
in General geocaching topics
Posted
Thank you, that was what I was looking for!