PSJKids

I am having a similar problem in that when I go to my Profile "top right of site" and click on it then click on the "Search for geocaches - near your home location (filter out finds)", my Geocaching map comes up and displays the map correctly but not a single geocache anywhere is populated on the map. I have nothing turned off to hide any types of caches either. I have singed out, closed my browser, opened a fresh browser, signed in, and did a show map of my area again and still get nothing. Any ideas if GC.com is having some website issues? This is displayed using GC.com default search settings.

Will do, it just started doing it today. We aren't new, we have been here sine May 2012 and have over 300 caches.

I have been prompted to Validate my account 4 times now, all in the same day. What gives? I do it and next time I go in I am prompted to do it again. Its getting real old.

Ok, I see all your points and you make so much sense I regret posting that now. Thanks for straightening me out on that, I had not thought about the points gitchee, ecu, and Leprechauns make. In the area north of me, there are not a lot of Geocachers and thats where that thought of mine came from. Now if I could only lock this thread. Happy Geocaching.

I did a forum search for "commercial" but did not get any results and I cannot imagine that I am the 1st person to wonder why nobody has suggested a standard commercial that could be run on just about any TV station. I see throughout the forum topics about making Geocaching more popular and I think that with the vast amount of Geocachers from all over the world who work in such a variety of jobs that there has got to be someone or a few who have the capability and access to the equipment needed to put together a very nice 30 second TV commercial that would cover the basics of Geocaching. Enough to introduce it to the viewer and Highlight the use of not only GPS but the SmartPhone that so many people carry these days. With the Geocaching.com app and some of the aftermarket apps like c:geo which pulls its data from the GC databases, I bet it would peak a lot of peoples interest in Geocaching. I had heard about Geocaching a few years back and read up on it but didn't get involved in it because I did not have a GPS and did not know a Smartphone could be used. When my daughter was working towards some of her Girl Scout badges, I noticed one for Geocaching and let her and her mother know what I knew about it and the PSJKids Geocaching team started the next day with a cache 1 mile from the house. Both my wife and I and both of my children all Geocache as a family and we know several other families that Geocache together as well. My kids are home schooled and since we started Geocaching, we have managed to incorporate Geocaching into their need to learn about nature. Being in Florida, they have seen a lot of our unofficial state animal the alligator, racoons, armadillos, snakes and spiders. They have found caches at several Wetland Parks as well as lots of our wooded areas. They have learned about the use of compasses as well as the technical aspect - GPS and Smartphones. I would love to turn on the TV and see a commercial about Geocaching showing family as well as individuals out searching for Geocaches in the woods and urban settings and short blurbs about being able to use that smartphone they already own and end the commercial with WWW.GEOCACHING.COM

So they DID name an item from the business, and the cache page doesn't really say ???????? As I said before, I don't see a problem. Naming the business in the cache name? I most certainly do see a problem there. Yes, the name of the cache is one of the 2 words used in the name of the business. Just as an example: Joe's Burgers and the cache being called burgers. That is not the name of this cache but just an example and the ??????? listed the food that was given to the FTF.

I hate to ask this because I know what the backlash will be but here goes 2 part question: 1.) What about a cache with the name being a word used in a nearby business name, the description includes the following information: It should be very easy to find. The FTF gets a free ???????????? This is a great place to stop while out caching. Oh! I work here in the evenings, we are open Wed - Sun 10:30-9:00. Hope to see you!! Additional Hints (Encrypt) Straight into the wools from the parking lot, behind a large oak tree. FTF gets a ??????????????? replaced the FTF award with ?????? as that part is not important. 2.) And what about when the Reviewer happens to be one of the co-FTF using their non-reviewer account hours after it is published? Cache description was not changed since it is the same as it was when we left and were STF shortly after the FTF's.

Great. Thank you for the reply. Now I know what to look for when I come across these. Take care, Bob

I found this while setting a Geocache and I have done a coordinate ( N28.55577, W080.844882 )search on the GC Benchmark site and on the GC Waymark sites but cannot come up with anything on it. It is a disk set into a small concrete pillar sticking out of the ground about a foot or so and it is solidly mounted underground even though the ground where I found it was soft and mucky. I am a big guy and when I hit this thing with my left boot, it took me to the ground without it moving at all. Does anyone have any idea what kind of marker this is and/or where I would find info on it? I Googled the GWW RLS 5075 both with the periods and without and only got reference to something not at this area of town.

Not sure what a witness post is. There was a tree next to this that had a small quarter sized disk nailed to it with the exact same info on it and nothing else. Is that what you are referring to?

I plan to Waymark it once I can find out exactly what it is we found. It was buried in a wooded area out of sight and appears to have been there for some time.

I'd sign it fast too...in less than 8 seconds then runing like Forrest Gump !

I found this while setting a Geocache and I have done a coordinate ( N28.55577, W080.844882 )search on the GC Benchmark site and on the GC Waymark sites but cannot come up with anything on it. It is a disk set into a small concrete pillar sticking out of the ground about a foot or so and it is solidly mounted underground even though the ground where I found it was soft and mucky. I am a big guy and when I hit this thing with my left boot, it took me to the ground without it moving at all. Does anyone have any idea what kind of marker this is and/or where I would find info on it? I Googled the GWW RLS 5075 both with the periods and without and only got reference to something not at this area of town. W0

When we cached on International Geocache Day 2012 we got a souvenir on our profile. Is there not one for Int. Earthcache day?

You needn't have done that, really..... but, if that's what you see as a Premium benefit, so be it. You will still be blocked by the "invisible" stages of multi-caches. Your reviewer can see these things we cannot. A (relatively) simple correspondence with him/her can take care of it. Well, in this case our cache was about 250ft from this stage 1 cache that had a number in it needed for the next stage cache. With it being an "Unknown Cache" I did not know where it was at and the reviewer did tell me I was within the 528' limit but that he couldn't tell me what direction or anything. We decided on going ahead and doing the Premium after all since we could see a lot of other Premium Caches in this area on the basic member "Map This Location" map when zoomed out and we have since found quite a few of them so the money was definitely not a waste. I enjoy the hell out of this and so do my kids and it gives me something to do with them that we all enjoy together; the wife tolerates it because she see we have fun doing it. The heat and the bushwhacking is what turns her off but when it finally starts to cool down here in Central Florida, I know she won't mind it as much.

We saw that as well which is part of why we were looking around the forums before posting. We have since spoken to some other cachers and now have a better idea of how a Reviewer is chosen and it makes more then enough sense to us now. We didn't realize the complex process that goes along with choosing a reviewer and after hearing some of what we heard we understand that it is often the cream of the crop that are chosen for such a position and that those positions are very few for the whole state. We got some Geolearning done today as well as a handful of Geocaches. Once again, we are so sorry if we came off sounding like we were badmouthing anyone because that was not the purpose of the post and when we meet B & J in person we will apologize once again. None of us can remember if they were any of the other cachers we met at the SCGA's 5th Annual Geo-versary Event held over here on Merritt Island back in June.

Yep, it does add up a little better I apologize if I sounded like I was badmouthing a reviewer, that really was not the intention at all. After reading several other threads about reviewers and publisher and then reading all the different criteria being mentioned above and seeing the small amount of this particular reviewer it had us wondering. We did not really think about him working 2 accounts but it makes sense. The reviewer we have here obviously knows his stuff, in fact he has pointed out certain things several times about some cache choices we had made prior to us becoming Premium members that we never even thought of. We see this reviewer's name on a lot of published caches so it seems to be a whole job in itself, especially when it comes to making sure if meets the guidelines. Keeping up with it must be a bear. This is part of why it appeals to us. We met some cachers in Christmas while eating at the BBQ cache last week, that would not have been you was it Gitchee? I do not remember what he said his caching name was but he was from Christmas.

I see a lot of stuff about reviewers are only those who have found a lot of caches, held a lot of events, and so on..blah blah blah yet the reviewer in our area has been a member since 2006 and only shows 81 caches found (66 of which are events and 8 are CITO), 19 trackables logged, and only owns 1 cache. SO tell me how this grants someone an invitation to be a reviewer? There has to be some other criteria for becoming a reviewer other than having extensively performed as a Geocacher. Being a reviewer is something that we have thought about because it sounds interesting but upon seeing the requirements listed here in this thread verses the reviewer mentioned, something does not add up.

We had this kind of an issue as well and ended up having to spend the $$ to become Premium members just to find out what direction we needed to move our cache to so it could be accepted. It sucks but that's the way the game is played so we conformed and spent the $.

You could make it a simple "multi" having the seekers get some kind of info off the pole (ID numbers for instance) and have them do a slight math problem to get the coords that could be a few feet away or someplace nearby. Any historical info about the place that could be used for determining a set of coords or in the math problem associated with it? Mention that part in your cache listing as an incentive to do it and so they know they don't have to be going all over God's Creation looking for the cache.

We overheard some cachers talking about this exact topic at the last event we were at. We were still fairly new at Geocaching and had not placed any caches yet so we did not know the whole process like we do now. It was suggested by one cachers that the reviewer could be one of your local Geocachers who has another account and uses that extra cache placement information to find the cache much easier therefore increasing their chances of getting the FTF and raising their numbers faster. If that is the case, that is dirty playing. With that being said, we did wonder about why we were asked what we affixed our last magnetic cache to when we placed the coords in the open grassy area a few feet away from some walls. We thought it was odd being asked that question after we had placed 3-4 others and not been asked for that specific of information.

I was having this issue by not knowing where the premiums were in my area but I noticed that when you go view your profile and then do a "Search for geocaches near your home location" and then clip on the "Map This Location" and pan over to the area you area looking to place a new cache and then slowly zoom OUT, you will see the Premiums pop up. You cannot get a precise location for them but it will give you an idea if there just happens to be a premium in the area of the cache you want to place. I was doing this and managed to get 2 out before having a saturation issue, this was caused by a mystery cache though but I did have one other that was within something like 20' of a premium so I had to go move it but unfortunately it had already been muggled but someone who must have seen me place it there. I eventually just gave up and paid the $30 Premium fees and low and behold I have another 6 premium caches within like 6 miles of my house. The kids are gonna be thrilled when i tell them about it. They love caching.

Great replies and thank you for the responses. Many of those I mention have already been previously listed as needing maintenance several times but I will go back through and address those that need to be addressed. I just hate being the one doing it to many of them, looks like I am picking on this CO when really I am not. ..and Hello Joshism from up here in Cocoa. Once again, thanks for the replies. Bob (father of PSJKids)

We love Geocaching, no question about it. We are somewhat new with only 79 finds since May 2012 but we have actually found many more but did not claim finds on them due to their need for serious maintenance. I hate to say it but we have a CO here on the Space Coast of Florida who has quite a few caches out and many of them need either serious maintenance or to be replaced due to vandalism or theft. We have messaged the CO a couple of times on certain caches needing maintenance and have not heard anything back and upon revisits to those damaged caches we see they have yet to be repaired or replaced. We found one yesterday owned by the same CO that has been destroyed. The container is missing and its contents and ziplock bags are spread out around GZ. The remnants of the logsheet aren't even readable anymore. Another I checked on earlier today has not been found since July last year and its previous hand full of logs state a "Needs Maintenance" log type eventually followed by DNFs. A look at this CO's profile shows they are an active cacher too. There are at least 2 others caches of this CO's that say, from 2 months ago, that they are refurbishing them yet the caches have not been placed and have numerous DNFs on them as well. In my opinion they should be disabled in the meantime and then enabled once they are actually out and ready to be found. Kind of takes the fun out of the game especially since this CO owns many of the caches in this area.