sdarken

I was thinking Ashnikes for a second. Not sure why that thought popped into my head. So you're concerned about historic sites? Weird, here's an excerpt from the website listed in your post: "Adventure Squad explores. This generally occurs late at night, to aid in avoiding other people, particularly those with badges and funny blue uniforms.....Anyplace that is challenging to get to or is off limits to be in is a potential target, particularly underground, abandoned, or historic sites." From: Adventure Squad Why don't start a new thread with your post? I think it will make for some hilarious responses.

So, hypothetically, if you had also rushed out there and been a seventh person looking, when someone made the PAF, would you have refused to be co-ftf? Would you have refused to log a find at all? ever? In this particular situation the cache owner had the option of sending 6 people home empty-handed but chose instead to give hints until they found it. Are you saying that he should have completely denied a find to those 6 people. That wouldn't have been much fun for those 6 people would it. It sounds as though you might want to let the FTF game go if it's causing you angst. As Fizzy said, learning to avoid aspects of the game that you don't enjoy can be very rewarding.

It's worth mentioned that many (most?) people do not bother to log DNFs at all. The comments in this thread are not representative of what the average cacher does in the field. You'll see people mention in their "Found" log that it took them 2 or 3 searches to locate a cache but they wont have logged any DNFs. When caches go missing it may take a while for someone to log a DNF even though it's clear from the frequency of previous finds that people are probably searching for it.

What's the GC number for that cache? I'd be interested to read the description and logs for that one. Also, do you mind me asking why you are giving out favorite points if you consider them to be so worthless?

It does seem random but 528 feet happens to be one tenth (or .1) of a mile. That's how they came up with that number.

That pretty much sums up why they were instituted. Even though I've been hanging around the forums for years, it still amazes me when I see opinions that are so completely different from my own. To me, the favorites feature is the most useful addition to the website that I've seen in the last 4 years. I certainly understand that people might not be as enthusiastic about it as me but I'm surprised to see people say that it's worthless. For the people that say they wont use favorites when caching...Hypothetically, does that mean that if you were in a new area, where there were lots of caches nearby and you had limited time for caching would you really not bother to use the favorites points to narrow down the caches that you might look for? I find it hard to believe that seeing that a nearby cache with lots of favorite points wouldn't be a factor in whether or not you might read the details of that cache to figure out whether it might be something that you might also enjoy. It seems at least as useful as any of the other criteria people generally use to find caches they like (D/T/Size/Age etc).

Great. Thanks for the very helpful information. I'll give Garmin a call and see what they say.

After 4 years of seriously heavy use I finally managed to do some permanent damage to my Garmin 60csx. I dropped it on some cement and broke the bottom of the battery cover. Does anyone have an old 60CSX (or 60CS or 60C) that's only good for parts. I'd be happy to pay a reasonably amount for it. Thanks

I enjoyed the story very much. It reminds me of the excitement I felt when I was new at the game. These days finding the actual cache is not as exciting but I still enjoy the locations and the adventure that's often involved in getting there. Hope your family continues to enjoy the game too.

How about this list sorted by people with the most hides: World Geocaching Leaders Edit: Actually, now that I look again, it's also incomplete even though King B comes out at the top.

A few people may argue that but most people are arguing that's it's an additional way of finding better-than-average caches that they might enjoy. If an ice-cream shop started selling bacon-flavored ice-cream and I found out that 90% of people that tried it said it was one of their favorite flavors, I might be tempted to try it. If the only information I had was that 25 people said it was their favorite (while 1,750 people said that chocolate was their favorite flavor), it would be easy to miss the fact that bacon-flavored ice-cream was worth trying. The numbers don't tell me whether bacon flavor is better than chocolate but having the ratio provides enough information to suggest that bacon flavor is worth a try.

Without knowing what cache you're referring to, I would bet money that it has plenty of favorite votes and will be easy to find without ratios. The ratios are not needed to highlight that kind of cache. Because lots of people asked for it. Topic on the feedback forum with 500+ votes: http://feedback.geocaching.com/forums/75775-geocaching-com/suggestions/1322185-of-cachers-favorited-not-of-cachers-favorited?ref=title Also, I'm sure you saw the very long threads where lots of people indicated that they thought they would be useful. IMO ratios will be a lot more useful when the ability to sort or filter using them is added.

If you look at rankings of geocachers around the world based on total caches found, many of the people near the top of the list found between 9,000 and 10,000 caches last year alone.

I find it interesting to hear you say how sad it is that we don't live in a polite society when I see what you've chosen to use as your forum signature. Back on topic... I think I'd probably enjoy the CO's caches too though it's understandable someone would eventually complain about them. I hope the CO is able to find other ways to make things fun without offending people.

OK, so I'm going off topic but is there an equivalent of TFTC and TNLNSL abbreviations that are used in some non-english speaking countries?

I wonder if I'm the only one that watched that and thought "great example of when camo tape is inappropriate"

Anything that encourages or rewards interesting caches is something that I'd be in favor of. I'm not sure that GS would jump into something like that right now though. It seems too similar to the souvenirs feature which, surprisingly, caused a lot of angst amongst some segments of the community.

I like your original idea. I have no advice to offer however. I dont know what's inside one of those but I think it would be fun cache . I wonder if you could cut a whole in the base and insert a waterproof container in it. Hiding it would be the next challenge. I'm sure you could get lots of suggestions for a good cache name. I found a keg in a public open space one day. It's was in a fairly obscure location and I thought I might be able to make a cache out it. Unfortunately it was gone the next time I went past the same location.

I find your repeated insistence on ascribing motives to those who want to use the ratio both puzzling and somewhat annoying. I was starting to feel that way too. Also, I'm most concerned that that none of toz's posts contain any analogies about flavors of ice-cream. I might agree with him more if there was more discussion about ice-cream in this thread. But back on point, I dont see anyone saying that want to use favorite counts or favorite % to determine which is the very "best" cache. (We know that people have and will try and do that). Most people that contributed to this thread aren't planning on doing that. Almost everyone who is requesting a favorite-% is saying that it will be useful to assist them in locating the kinds of caches they might enjoy. I think most people are also agreeing that the % figure used by itself isn't the solution either. That favorite-% would have to be used in conjunction with other information/attributes. In my case I'd have to start by excluding puzzle caches since I'm fairly sure that many of the caches with high favorite-%'s will be seldom-solved puzzles that aren't of any interest.

One of my caches is a little over 2 years old. 4 of the 5 people that visited it have given it a favorite point, making an 80% ratio. It's the kind of cache I'd like to be able to find myself and if I had the ability to sort based on the ratio/%, I'd be able to find a variety of caches I might never notice due to unremarkable total favorite point count. As others have said it would just be another piece of information that could be used to locate certain types of caches that I like among the 1.25 million choices out there.

The nearby Dueling Autos cache is described as "Just another P&G for the numbers" and was placed by someone with 30+ similar caches. Ask the owner of that one very politely if you could archive or relocate their cache a few hundred feet. You've got nothing to lose and I'd say the likelihood of success is much higher than this approach in the forums. It would be a big can of worms to start making exceptions for caches where people claim it's necessary to walk more than 500ft. It's pretty simple to figure out how far you are from the nearest cache. Stand where you intend to place the cache and use your GPSr to show you how far the nearest caches are. If you do this before you place the next cache you wont have this problem again.

Take a look at the souvenirs tab on this profile for an example of a well-traveled cacher. http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=6648a71b-b453-40a1-a844-113e4826d703&wid=93c09498-1cf0-4804-af78-45711e5dfb9e&ds=2 IMHO the overall look of the page is busy but also pretty boring with all those similar-looking state icons.

I asked Santa for a pony and I didn't get one. What can be done about that?

The new stats tab makes it pretty easy to start to compare stats now. I was interested what the answer to your question might be for all cachers worldwide and it looks like the most profilic cachers found about 10,000 caches in 2010. You can use this page as a starting point (scroll down to see the names) Worldwide leader board. Then look at the stats tab on the profiles of some of the top cachers.

Micros are often low-investment caches :- No thought to the container or the hide location. Just because you can hide a nano anywhere doesn't mean it's a good idea to do that. I'd take a hike up a mountain to get one regular sized container rather than grab 10 "Power Trail #1,2,3..." caches that are placed at the side of a main road somewhere. I'd hike up a mountain to get a nano-sized container too but it better not be camo'd as a fake rock in a pile of rocks or my enjoyment level will take a quick decline. I'd rather find a simply-hidden ammo can in that situation.