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Nomex

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Posts posted by Nomex

  1. 2 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

    Maybe it's not so new or interesting, but I haven't come across this before - it's one of the first round of Virtuals awarded a couple of years ago, but instead of the CO posing a question, the finders answer a question posed by the previous finder, and then pose their own question for the next finder to answer ... the process was started by the Reviewer who posted a question with the Publish log.  The CO is not dealing with emailed answers, and you as a finder get a little involved in the process.  Different (to me), interesting, and fun!  How many questions can there be? Just browsing the logs I found a few duplicates or very close and with careful reading you can likely answer some without even visiting the mural.  It would be fun to try and come up with a new and unique question!

     

    To claim credit for this find, you must look at the mural and complete these two things when you write your log:

     1)       Answer the question posed by the previous finder in their log    

    - - -    a question about the mural.  (There may be an overlap  

       by two or more geocachers finding this virtual on the same   

       day, but do your best.)   Please do not upload pictures of the

       whole mural.   Questions may be easy or a little tricky.

     

    2)     After you answer your question, ask a question for the next 

           visitor to observe and answer in their log.

    For the record, as the Publishing Reviewer, the Cache Owner gave me the first question to add to my Publish log.  I gave them that option, or the option to post a Note on the Listing page.  I have not personally visited the Virtual yet.

     

    I thought at the time, that there would be some finite number of questions that could be asked, but I did not concern myself with that issue, the same way I don't concern myself with the quality of a cache placement or say, how difficult or ridiculously hard a Puzzle cache is.

     

    As far as monitoring the Listing page, that's really up to the cache owner to resolve.  Judging from their Profile, they still appear to be active (logged in yesterday).  Out of curiosity, I put the Listing page on my Watchlist to see how it would be received, and judging from the Find logs, it appears folks are having a good time with it.

     

    Along similar lines, I own an Earthcache on my Player Account (different from my Reviewing Account) that requires a measurement as a Logging Requirement.  In my instructions, I tell folks to use whatever is readily available, and as an example I used my son as a measuring tool.  Since then, people have similarly used common objects like shoes, hats, hands and so forth to make the measurement.

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  2. I just ran a CHS query for the last 30 days for your home area (based on your Finds and cache that you own), and came up with 17 Listings that have fallen below the CHS threshold, which doesn't sound too bad actually.  In comparison, Oregon, in the United States, which is roughly the same size, has 60 Listings below the threshold (albeit, there are probably many more caches in the birthplace of Geocaching, than in your area), which is pretty typical for a relatively saturated Reviewing Territory like that.

     

    I would recommend, like RA mentioned above, to start utilizing the tools you have at your disposal and start posting some NA log types to alert the local Reviewer when you encounter these neglected Listings.  Just glancing at the Review Queue, there's only half a dozen Listings waiting for Review in your area, so I can't really say there's much of a backlog of things to be done.

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  3. I checked with my Reviewer account and didn't see any Published or Unpublished Listings near those coordinates or that  fit the description.  I saw 4 Puzzle caches within 2 miles, but the Finals are not really anywhere near those coordinates.

     

    I noticed a handful of caches in the area with Archived Notes by the local Reviewer mentioning that permission is required for that area, so it might be someone tried but failed to get permission, and never bothered to submit a Listing page, or did make up a page and ended up changing it and using it for another submission at another location.

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  4. 11 minutes ago, winne62 said:

    Ok, look the photo, where can I answer directly?

     

    Thanks for asking winne62, and there's no problem with asking questions if you don't understand the process.

     

    If you go to your Listing page at  the following link:

     

    https://coord.info/GC8C1DP

     

    You should see the following banner at the top of the page:

     

    image.thumb.png.5436596490c2cee46a751660052c6eb3.png

     

    Click on the "Respond" link on that banner, and that should take you to a form to fill out  a Reviewer Note.  Press "Submit Log Entry" towards the bottom of the page after you have finished typing your response, and that's it.  The Reviewer should get back to you soon if they need additional information, or they'll just Publish the Listing if they are satisfied with your response.

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  5. The Reviewer stated in their Disable Note to post a Reviewer Note on the Listing page.  I prefer doing it that way myself, as it keeps the conversation all in one place, so it's easier to follow.  Trying to keep track of email and Friend Requests merely slows down the process.

     

    Your Listing is already Enabled, so they should see any Notes that you add now.

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  6. 37 minutes ago, The A-Team said:

    Also, in case you haven't been monitoring your email, your cache will be archived tomorrow if you don't enable it.

    Actually, I have it scheduled for Archive in about a week, or 30 days from the Note that I posted.  And yes, I have reminded the OP on 2 or 3 occasions since, as they continue to submit new Listings for Publication.  I've also informed them that I will no longer honor any timed Publications from them if they are going to waste my time in this manner.

     

    Not condoning the other Users response to the request to save space on the logsheet (and I see it quite a bit), but deleting logs generally crosses the line between polite request and an ALR in my view.

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  7. Your Listing page is created, but is in a Disabled state, so the Reviewer will not currently see it in the Review Queue.  Aside from the issue you've encountered, I noticed a flag regarding some restrictions for physical caches that came up on your Listing page.  You may want to resolve that issue before submitting your Listing for Review.  Just to save you some time in the long run.  Link to relevant State Park Policy:

     

    https://wiki.Groundspeak.com/display/GEO/Michigan+DNR+Lands

  8. 2 hours ago, dprovan said:

    I think that brings up a lot of questions that we haven't been asking. I would have guessed you'd much rather have someone else do the scans for you. Did you work with these people so they'd spread the load out for you? If they were automated scans, why did you feel like you couldn't process them over time yourself? If they haven't been reported by someone that was actually seeking them, what's the rush? Were the GSAK scans more or less reliable than CHS scans?

     

    Just so there's no misunderstanding...

     

    No, I did not "work with these people', as you put it.  These were just civic minded Community members that identified a problem and wanted it fixed.  I guess you could construe some sort of coordination, in so much, as they would post an NA, and I would feel obliged (one might even say Required as part of my Volunteer duties) to respond.

     

    I'm not all that familiar with GSAK, but calling it "automated" might be a bit of a stretch.  The filters and macro's are useful, but there sounds like some set up is required.  To be honest, I'd rather use the website resources.  I have no idea how GSAK compares to the CHS, other than what Keystone has offered in a prior post.

     

    Per my usual custom, I went through the last months of unresolved CHS flags that I passed over on my first look, as I thought the CHS was a bit too aggressive in some instances.   I ended up Disabling a handful more, but generally, I've found the CHS to be useful, but that's not to say it's perfect.  It still misses some things entirely.  People who continue to post Finds after the cache is unusable or gone, throwdowns that last maybe a month, and then it reverts back to a string of DNF's.  I'm not sure the CHS is going to catch all these sorts of issues, but it does a pretty decent job of catching the low hanging fruit, so to speak.

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  9. 4 minutes ago, dprovan said:

     

    Are you saying that something exactly like CHS sweeps have been going on all the time, but before CHS they were done by vigilantes instead of reviewers?

     

    That makes this an entirely different conversation. Why isn't it brought up more often? I've never heard about it before.

    How so?  A few posts back you were saying how it was up to the Community to report these issues, and that’s exactly how I characterized it. I don’t use GSAK, so I’m not familiar with the development time line of the macro I mentioned. 

     

    A “vigilante” is someone I would say has a bit more staying power to stay at the task for a sustained period of time. The small number of people that took it upon themselves to take on this task I wouldn’t characterize as being sufficiently dedicated to be labeled a vigilante, hence the need for a more automated method like the CHS. 

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  10. 33 minutes ago, coachstahly said:

     

    I disagree, to an extent, with the assertion that the CHS makes things easier for reviewers.

    I'm with Keystone on this one.  I can say categorically that the CHS has made a significant improvement on my workflow.  I understand that YMMV, depending on the way certain Reviewers organize their work.

     

    As an example, as I stated earlier, I had a small number of Users in my area that would essentially do the work of the CHS (probably running GSAK/Cache Cop).  They tended to post their NA's based on their searches once every month or two.  This created quite a backlog of NA's to work through.  Then at the end of 30 days, I would do the process again (sometimes over 100 Listings in a single day) to evaluate if the CO has apparently abandoned the Listing (e.g. non responsiveness), or has posted a plan to take care of the issue or provided some explanation.

     

    With the CHS, this work comes in 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.  Instead of looking at 100's of Listings in a single sitting, I get maybe 6 to 12 in a day.  Likewise the follow up is at a much more relaxed pace compared to before.  Once a month, I can browse through the Listings where it seemed the CHS was a tad too aggressive in my opinion, where I decided not to take action, to see if there have been any changes or updates in the interim.

     

    Similarly, although I'm not sure why this is, the number of long Disabled Listings has decreased as well.  This is a task I take on every other month or so.  Previously, I had to run about 4 PQ's to cover my Reviewing territory.   Nowadays, I can knock it out with 1 or 2 PQ's.  I don't know if the CHS is to account for this change, but it's a very welcome side effect if so.

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  11. 4 hours ago, dprovan said:

    Out of curiosity, how does that 200 caches per week compare to the number of caches you'd archive a week before the CHS was invented? The reason I ask is that one would think that if the goal is to get rid of bad caches, you'd be archiving more caches every week. Are you? If so, I'm wondering why I'm still seeing the same ratio of caches with problem that I saw before the CHS days.

     

    I do a slightly different workflow than Keystone, but I average about 100 Archives a week for my area.  Before the advent of the CHS, it was probably slightly less, but probably not by much.  Perhaps the main reason for this, is the fact that prior to the CHS, we had a small group of individuals that were very active in either posting more NA's than they do now (I suspect they were utilizing GSAK/cache cop to do the sorting), or contacting me privately with a list of Archive candidates.  That activity has essentially dried up since the CHS has been active.

     

    My apologies if you are still seeing problem caches in your area.  Taking a suggestion from our Reviewing friends up North, I've recently started to scan through the Listings with active NM Attributes.  I just finished up a PQ for your area, and on the first page alone, the radius was out more than 30 miles for active NM's, which doesn't sound all that bad to me for a densely populated urban area.  Still, some things can fly under the radar for quite some time without any action (it's amazing what people will tolerate).  If you have any specific Listings in mind, feel free to contact me privately with your concerns.

  12. 7 minutes ago, Luckless said:

    Nomax, I can't think  of any that might be in the middle of the area  where I placed the caches although it might be too close to Tundra Wolf's  cache. Hmm I'll have to check. Being on the opposite side of the road it didn't seem so.

    That is correct.  All but one of your Stages is less than 300 feet from TW's nearby Traditional.  If you're pretty sure about where you were at the time, with respect to nearby caches, I'd suggest taking a look at your Stages and double check that the coordinates were entered correctly.

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  13. 3 hours ago, Luckless said:

    I don't remember having to put stages for a cache 528 feet from each other. I believe I used to only have to keep caches that far apart from other caches. Now it says I have to put stages that far apart as well. When did this change or didn't it? Might as well skip stages all together and just make caches. Guess I can just forget the multi I'm working on. I spent yesterday working on placing stages in a small enough area where a group of people could wander around and spot the hidden hints as well putting the coordinates in their GPS to where they were located. 528 feet apart is an awful large area to have to cover when you have 11 stages.

     

    Looking at your recently Archived submission, it looks like Stages 1-9 are too close to an existing Traditional cache (kind of looks like you basically made a circle around the Traditional).   Like others have mentioned, you can have the Stages within your submission as close as you like, but all your Stages must be at least 528 feet from existing caches.

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  14. 8 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

     

    Just for clarification, and remember we're talking about a throw-down here and not the original container, is it unacceptable for even the CO to remove a throw-down? Is that considered stealing? And if so, what can a CO do when someone drops a throw-down at their cache site, beyond asking the thrower-downerer to remove it?

    Sorry for the confusion bj.  MNTA's suggestion of reusing the container for another submission, was the part I was concerned about.  Groundspeak guidance to the Reviewers is to assure that the container being placed and represented on the Listing page, actually belongs to the person submitting the Listing page, and not purloined from some other cache location.  This comes up once in a great while in my area, and I always have to ask if the User actually has permission from the original owner to reuse the container.  If not, I'm required to reject the submission, and ask the submitter to contact the original owner for permission, and to make it clear on the Listing page what is going on, when it gets resubmitted.

     

    In your scenario, what a cache owner does to "tidy" up the area of duplicate (or more) containers, is not generally considered the concern of the local Reviewer.

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  15. 51 minutes ago, L0ne.R said:

    The guy who left litter gets rewarded. The guy who removed litter gets told he shouldn't steal. 

    I don't know, a Smiley sounds like scant reward for public humiliation in the Forum to me ;)

     

    Quote

    Maybe the reviewer should lock the account for a month or so.

    Edit to add clarification so there's no misunderstanding.  Reviewers do not have the admin privileges to take actions on individual accounts.  Only the Staff at HQ can do that.

  16. 1 hour ago, OCamera said:

    I, for one, have been disappointed with Groundspeak lately.  I contacted Groundspeak about a throw down found it log and they could care less.  I even provided photo evidence of the original container and log.  Granted it's up to the cache owner to delete bad logs but these cache owners are no longer active.  (Haven't logged-on in 7 years.)

     

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/gs-geo-images/6773759f-d7d2-4e2f-88e7-e48961cec9f8.jpg

     

     

     

    Done.

    3 minutes ago, MNTA said:

     Better yet collect the throw down cache and thank the cacher. Place it as a new cache in the area.

     

    Ummmm....no.  That would be called stealing.

  17. 5 hours ago, dprovan said:

    Reviewers have told us that GS has told them they are responsible for policing cache quality and that each reviewer is required to have a reviewer process that uses the CHS to identify bad caches and consider unilateral action.

    Citation needed.

     

    Geez!  I thought I'd missed something, so I went back and checked the Volunteer Expectation page, and I didn't see any reference to the CHS or "quality".

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  18. 1 hour ago, jellis said:

    No it’s not.

    http://www.ebparks.org/activities/geocaching/

    we already had one of the parks kick all the caches out

    Done.

     

    Oddly enough, I did look around at previous Listings in the area, to see if there were any issues raised by the Land Manager in question.  Two that were actually much closer to the lake, now Archived, didn't seem to have any problems with the Parks people (one Archived for non responsiveness to an NA request, and the other Archived voluntarily by the CO).  The cache in this situation looks like its reachable from an adjacent paved pathway.

     

    Regarding the issue with the mass Archival on some lands managed by the same Park Agency, I was actually contacted directly by the Land Manager, after they gave a rather fruitless attempt to contact cache owners themselves, and wanted some help resolving the issue with the closed area.  I had one or two emails following that episode, from cache owners telling me they had the best of intentions of talking with the Land Manager to work things out.  I had to explain to them, that no, when you get contacted by a Land Manager, you Archive your Listing first, then you go have the conversation to get it reinstated, not the other way around.

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  19. 2 hours ago, Ky_Hazard said:

    I had heard of geocaching, never got into it. Was hiking up to High Camp in Squaw Valley and came across a weird thing. Inside were a note about this website and three pages of empty logs. I'm never first at things, so I sincerely doubt I'm the first to find that one. I didn't take or leave anything, but I did put my name. I'd like to log it on this website as having been found, but I can't find it listed when I look at Squaw Valley geocaches, and it was quite a hike for me to get up there. I don't even own a gps, but this might change that.

    It would be kind of unusual to first to find on a cache in the Squaw Valley area, so my first thought was that you found an Unpublished Listing.  Not that unusual for a popular vacation destination like Squaw to get a handful of vacationers dropping caches, submitting them on the website, and finding out that they won't get Published without some sort of maintenance plan.  There was one such Listing that was rejected just West of High Camp, not to far from cache that kunarion mentioned.  If it was an Unpublished Listing, you would not be able to log it online.  The cache owner mentioned that there was a hot wheels, dice, little animal plastic chip clips, little parachute man toy in the cache container at the time of placement.

     

    If you could describe the route you took up to High Camp (looks like several possibilities), that might help narrow the search.

  20. 21 minutes ago, hzoi said:

     

    Probably the best approach.  I recall reading somewhere (must have been in the forums, because I can't find it in the help center) that editing a cache page when it is still awaiting review and publication can push it down in the review queue.

    Groundspeak guidance to Reviewers is to review Listings based upon their GC number, with the exception of Events/CITO's which can be time sensitive based on the 2 week limitation mentioned in the Guidelines.  Looking at the Review Queue in my area, it appears that the Queue is sorted in this fashion as well, without regard to the Enabled date, although there are options available to sort by various headers in the Queue, if a Reviewer wants to sort it in some other fashion.

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  21. 7 hours ago, hal-an-tow said:

     

    Interesting.

    A friend of mine had a recent cito turned down by a reviewer precisely because the page stated that the tree planting day was was in association with a local council group.

    Reading the Reviewer Note, it sounds like a simple misunderstanding.  The gist of the Reviewer Note was the fact that the date they had on the Listing page did not coincide with the actual work being done.  Sounds like the Reviewer was asking for some clarification, and instead of having a conversation regarding the conflict, the Host(ess) preferred to Archive the Listing.  Seems like a little perseverance would have resolved the issue, and cleared up any misunderstanding.

     

    As Keystone pointed out, the Guidelines and guidance regarding CITO Events has evolved over the years, and more flexibility is allowed nowadays, regarding concurrent clean up activities open to the general public, that in past years.

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