L0ne.R

One of mine was almost a kilometre away from a PT rail trail and still got "Thank you PT owner for your contribution" cut n paste logs.

Going back to the original premise about what constitutes a find and where you/we/Groundspeak personally draws the line. Tree climb. Bob calls his friends who regularly group cache together. He calls them to come watch as he climbs a tree. He will climb the 20 feet up the tree, no ropes and ladders needed. Bob signs the log with his name only. 15 people show up at ground zero and watch him climb. Bob signs "group of the day" and 16 people log the find (Bob plus the people watching from the ground). 2 more people from the group that Bob contacted show up afterwards at the pub for a beer with the group. They each log a find. 2 more people couldn't make it at all, but log their "group" find. 1 person couldn't make it to ground zero but asked one member of the team to stream it live for him. He logged a find. Susan happens to be a geocacher who stumbled upon this climbing event and watches Bob climb the tree. However she is not part of the group. She logs a find. Mary shows up 10 minutes after the group left. She looks up into the tree, like 15 people before did 10 minutes ago. Sees the cache, like 15 people did 10 minutes ago did. She logs a find. My opinion, the most cut n dry, the most authentic, legitimate find is Bob's find. The rest log notes (or DNF, or nothing). Where do you draw your line and why?

It's all part of the +1 behaviour. The slippery slope. An increase in the find count at any cost.

I retrieved my caches and stopped hiding because of behaviour like this. I enjoyed creating and hiding caches but the above behaviour started to become the norm rather than the exception. I did not want my caches feeding into it.

So true. I remember about 5 years ago, finding a trail that was just about to officially open to the public. 'Yeah!' I thought. 'How lucky am I to discover a new trail that hasn't been taken by power cachers' (I checked the app for new caches). I'll hide my sandwich-size disguised cache here (I made an outter disguise for the Lock & Lock container). I spent about 40 minutes searching for a good spot and placed the cache. Then I went for more of a walk on the trail. Along the way I saw a bench and behind the bench a tall stump. 'Good spot for a cache' I thought. Maybe I could make another cache for the trail. So I looked in the stump and inside was a pill bottle, and in the pill bottle a scroll that said ' 'Trail Name' cache #28'. Sigh. Someone had already filled the trail with pill bottles. Back I went to my cache and removed it. The power trail of pill bottles was published 13 days later. I had for a moment considered leaving my cache and submitting it. Perhaps I would get it published before the PT went in, if not I'd come back to remove it. Then I thought, no. If I get it published my cache will be lumped in with the PT caches. I would end up getting PT-style cut-n-paste logs thanking the PT owner for his contribution. It was not an appealing choice for me.

I think the explosion in micro size caches, in particular pill bottles and bison tubes, happened when power trails were allowed. Cache owners began to hide dozens, often hundreds of caches. Even one dollar per container was too costly.

Part of the experience of being a cache owner is to check my geocaches occassionally to see if the contents are still in relatively good shape. Contents include a dry, not full logbook, and a few bits of swag in reasonably good shape for added fun. Junk will accumulate, so part of a maintenance visit includes removing things like broken toys, coupons, bus tickets, dirt, leaves, stones.

I can completely relate to your sentiment. I have archived for those reasons. Not playing by the caches intent has an effect on many COs, especially those who hide in order to engage with finders and provide a fun experience.

Being in the same area, I can vouch for the 'unseemly' behaviour. And for at least one or two of these groups, they have a private group to discuss plans so that it's not public knowledge (and to avoid inevitable drama). I used to care much more about it, now I'm kind of annoyed but whatever. If they pass through an area and there are 30 find logs, I only expect to see a handful with log text that's actually relevant to the cache in question, and on the logsheet, only a group name (and maybe a handful of individuals who prefer to ensure their own name is on the sheet). Thank you for confirming that this behaviour does exist in our area. (And has for years).

I see that as appropriate behaviour when caching with others. My beef is with those who use the "we're being courteous" feigned excuse because they found a loophole to beat the system.

Yet when there's a large logbook in the cache, with plenty of room for hundreds of people to log in, still the group-of-the-day name goes in. For the last decade people log only a trailname and date. It takes up little space. 10 signatures can easily go on one side of a pocket-size notebook page. 30-40 signatures easily if the date goes on the top of the page and everyone writes their trailname only below. In most locations, a pocket-size notepad logbook lasts 3 years easily. Mine do. It's really about saving time, by not passing the logbook around. And also saving time in order to get on to the next cache. And because the logbook can't be passed around because not all of the group is present and won't be. I once asked in the forums about owners being allowed to ask for all signatures rather than a group-of-the-day name. I was tarred and feathered. In my area a CO did request it. His ammo can large logbook got completely filled by a visit from the "group"*. One person found the cache, wrote in large letters filling each page, wrote one member's trailname per page, filmed it and posted it on youtube. Ha, ha, so hilarious. I got the message, COs should not clash with groups. Also showed that when some groups cache *only one person actually finds the cache.

Something similar happened in my area. A popular old-time geocacher (caching since the early 2000s) took a film canister to an event to use as a pocket cache--passed around for people to sign, then turned the pocket cache into a throwdown so people could "legitimately" log a find. He put it in a tree where a small cache had gone missing and the CO stopped caching about a year before. 34 people attended the event, 16 people at the event logged the pocket/throwdown as found. It was reported and archived by a reviewer that week. But those event goers got to keep their finds. Dishonest group behaviour was rewarded.

The way I see it Gretzky put the puck in the net. Lindros doesn't claim that he by-proxy, because he is a member of the team, put the puck in the net. In geocaching standards the team win would go on the team account. The team won the game (is that a thing in geocaching, that we win geocaching?) Gretzky scored the goals. They don't individually claim to have put the puck in the net because Gretzky did, and then everyone nod in agreement and claim that they too put the puck in the net because they watched Gretzky do it on live streaming.

Exactly. That's me as a CO as well. I used to love being a CO and hiding caches. My goal was to fascinate, amuse, and delight finders. It worked for at least a decade. Very rewarding. But then PTs and challenges happened. Caching in group-of-the-day teams became popular in my area--divide-and-conquer behaviour where actually visiting a cache didn't matter. Cut n paste group logs became popular. My caches were used to supply a heavy demand for challenge qualifiers, souvenirs, numbers, stats, grid-filling. When the group-of-the-day culture grew and attracted more numbers--15-30 per group on average--that's when I stopped feeding into a system that makes cache ownership more about providing +1s. Either "on location" physically or virtually, this proxy behaviour can have a negative effect on COs.

Yes. But it has changed. In the beginning a "team" account was mostly a family account. When they went caching they recorded their finds to their family account. Fast forward to the power trail era and now people join groups-for-a-day to pick up as many caches as they can. When we work as a "team" we get more finds which we can use to qualify for challenges, grid fill or complete a large power trail. On New Years Day a few years ago I had a team of 90 people "visit" my cache. They were looking to get as many non-trads in one day on a special day to qualify for jasmer challenges and get a special souvenir, and they had a goal to surpass their previous month's record finds. I think they "found" 65 non-trads that day over 3 cities/towns. They don't create a team-of-the-day account and record all those finds into the one account to memorialize their day.

I don't think they are vastly different. They are both by-proxy experiences. They are poor etiquette behaviours and lack legitimacy. Yet in this age of virtual reality, we legitimize one and criticize the other. There's a thin line between whether someone one is physically there, or virtually there. They are both essentially there, doing the same thing, watching. When I attend a virtual workshop I am actually there and listening, learning, and participating as much as if I were physically there, and I get equal credit to those physically attending. Of course, there will be those who claim to have been there but actually weren't, both physically and virtually. That happens very often in large group finds (leap-frogging, 3-cache-monte, divide-and-conquer). I'm not saying we should legitimize the live-streaming finds. I'm saying I'm dismayed that many can't see that there should be no distinction, that by-proxy is not OK whether down physically or virtually.

You don't know for sure, but the CO will. If I were the CO and someone posted an NM because they found a broken birdhouse at ground zero, I'd thank the finder for posting the NM and alerting me to my oversight, i.e. that I moved the cache and forgot to update the coordinates and description.

It helps alert an active CO and future finders that their cache may actually be gone. If all signs point to a missing cache post an NM. There are factors you can consider... Is it supposed to be an easy find? Is the D rating low? Is the hint a give-away? Are there spoiler photos in the gallery to corraborate a missing container? Are there a string of DNFs for a cache that got only find logs before the DNFs? Did something drastic change at the location, like a flood or the cutting down of trees?

I say yes, especially if I was the one to spot it way up there in the tree and guided the climber to it from the ground. Then the streaming group gets to log a legitimate find, no? What if the person streaming the video to the group scans the tree with his video camera and someone online calls out "Stop, I see it. It's to your right about 10 feet up near the trunk." And as the person who climbed the tree comes down the group guides him back down safely? (Let's assume he set up a second camera on a tripod so everyone could watch the climb, and also uses the GoPro on his headstrap.)

I'm with you on the video proxy finds. I don't care for leapfrogging or other divide-and-conquer variations of armchair logging either. As for the alleged "hypocrisy", that seems to be based on a distinction that you dismiss, but that others recognize. Regarding "visited the coordinates", I'm in agreement with NYPaddleCacher:

No. My beef is with the by-proxy finds and the hypocrisy. I agree with bruce0 that it boils down to ...

Maybe they could. But should they be required to, or expected to? I don't think so. Personally I would say 'expected to'. If it is claimed that one found a tree-climbing style cache but actually only watched (either by standing near the tree or holding ropes or a ladder), I don't see how that is a legitimate truth. Similar to going to a climbing gym, holding the ropes then claiming one has climbed to the top of the wall, the achievement did not occur. Same for holding a ladder so someone else could safely get to the roof of a house. To claim that one has, by-proxy, also climbed onto the roof of a house is not a legitimate claim. I don't see how someone can be bothered by the group streaming behaviour but not similarly bothered by a behaviour that is almost equivalent. They are both by-proxy behaviours. The way I see it, by-proxy is not a legitimate style of play.

In the case of holding a ladder or ropes, it can be done the "Huckle Buckle" way too. Each person takes a turn holding the ropes and everyone has the opportunity to visit the cache and sign the log.

And if you use the Cachly app there's also a "Needs Maintenance" log. I prefer a separate NM log too.

Exactly my point. Both show a lack of integrity. GCHQ says one form of lack-of-integrity is legitimate, while another form is not. Both forms should not be sanctioned by GCHQ.