ChriBli

I could offer several examples of island caches that are rated lower than T5, all without nearby boat rental and many of them a really tough swim away from shore. So that should not be a problem, but maybe different reviewers have different views on this.

I was actually somewhat disappointed recently when I solved a non-T5 puzzle cache, only to find that GZ was on an island and therefore unaccessible to me. It also didn't have the "boat required" attribute. Although I didn't mind solving it, the reason I did so was that I thought I'd be able to go find it. This is definitely different in other parts of the world. Nothing is stopping you from using common sense also in this situation. If there is a boat rental nearby, then by all means don't rate it T5. Maybe you should read the guidelines and the "boat required" attribute as BYOB - Bring Your Own Boat.

some watercraft moo

In my area (Sweden) island caches are most often T5. Probably precisely because of that wording in the guidelines. This varies a bit with CO of course, and frequently if the body of water is narrow enough to swim, it is set lower. Which is a bit counter-intuitive to me. And at these latitudes, it is often possible to just stroll over the ice in the winter. But if you don't own a boat, and there is none for rent, then it can be difficult to get to GZ. I have a cache that awaited maintenance for a couple of years because I foolishly got rid of my inflatable dinghy and couldn't get a replacement. It was only very recently I managed to get to the island to fix it.

The one does not exclude the other. I find it rewarding to get an FP on one of my caches, and I think the FP system is good and works properly (as opposed to AL ratings, I gather). But I also enjoy getting lengthy/creative online logs. Cache logs (written in the physical log book) could also be nice, but only if the log has ample space for it which is often not the case these days. And sadly, many logbooks are lost to muggling, water or fire before the CO gets to see them, making all those creative logs wasted effort.

Well, that explains it then.

Maybe a stupid question, but I have never created an ALC so I don't know: Is there no review process similar to that for geocaches when it comes to ALC creation? If there is, how could this ALC slip through that process?

I don't know about the bookkeeping. In the case of GC8911R all of the waypoints are available, visible on the (small) map and associated with points values. Shouldn't be too hard to plan which ones to visit to reach the required number of points. It has 183 FP (80%) today, and was apparently voted #1 in Sweden and #8 worldwide in 2019 when it was published. So I would not say it is a mistake or needlessly complicated, it seems to be what people want. Another example is GC8904M, also published in 2019, 4.5/3.5, 38 FP (62%), which requires you to visit two places 1572 km apart. No one in their right mind would do this journey just for the virtual, but people seem to enjoy logging this virtual more than, say, an uninteresting traditional container placed near either of the waypoints. What doesn't seem entirely obvious to me is that long distance traveling should go into the D rating. Driving long distances is not really difficult.

As mustakorppi points out, the corrected coordinates could be for a stage. Consider for instance puzzle caches that also have a field puzzle element that leads to another location, not very uncommon. You would potentially solve these and correct the coordinates well in advance (otherwise this problem does not arise), but if the CO moves the final stage/container would you want your correction to disappear and the icon moved back to posted coordinates then? What could possibly work is to treat corrected coordinates as an indication that the user is interested in the cache. Then any kind of change to waypoints or attributes could trigger a notification to everyone that has corrected coordinates for that cache. This could actually be useful also for e.g. traditionals, you may have entered the original waypoint into a GPSr and want to know if it gets invalid. And some people may not be interested in a cache anymore if the size, D/T, attributes or even posted coordinates change. It feels a bit backwards to have the corrected coordinates as such an indication of interest though. It would be better to have it as a part of the instant notification service or watchlist somehow. It could be a pre-checked option in the coordinate correction dialog to add it to such a watchlist.

You can enter whatever you want as corrected coordinates. The icon just shows that you have entered corrected coordinates, not that these in any way correspond to the coordinates of GZ. Unfortunately there is no better way for the CO to communicate a change than adding a prominent text about it in the description.

The OP must have terrible handwriting.

I started geocaching in 2013 and was also BM for a long time. By then, I could not see PMO caches on the browse map (if there was a search map I was not aware of it). Sometimes, for unknown reasons, the map had a glitch that made it show all caches as unfound by me (no smileys), and then also PMO caches were visible. They appeared on the map at the correct coordinates. I know that because I took the opportunity to find a few of them that way. arisoft seems to have started in 2010. So there was a time between 2010 and 2013 when PMO caches were visible on the map, and something has indeed changed. Albeit a long time ago.

Thanks. Since there is no such challenge yet I just assumed there was no checker, but of course one can make one if one has the powers. I can tag scripts but not edit them, if that makes sense. It doesn't matter, I have no intention of trying to fill that grid. But what about the top chart, showing available virtuals for each D/T worldwide? Apparently not something PGC can do.

May I ask where you get these pretty charts from? Neither geocaching.com nor PGC seems to produce them. Just out of curiosity of course, I have no trouble keeping track of my eight found D/T combinations of virtuals.

The disconnect is that PGC limits the list to 1,000 suggestions. If you filter for D >= 2 you get the following US result: All the D1 and D1.5 combinations also exist in the US, plus the combinations that the non-empty profile I used has already found. So there are six missing combinations in the US.

You just have to look at the published high-D virtuals to get examples. I had a look at two D5 virtuals in Sweden, both are on the concept of "visit a number of places scattered over a large area, selected from a set of 30-40 waypoints that are assigned different number of points, reach 10,000 points". The first one was published in 2019, very popular with many FPs, the second obviously modeled on the first. None of them worth D5 it seems to me, but I haven't done them. Why are there D5 unknowns? If you just make the puzzle easier to solve, you could get a lower D rating. Some people enjoy solving difficult problems.

My bad. But searching for "GC9X* ottawa ontario" shows that there is nothing like the GC-code you mention there. Also, there can be no 'S' in a GC-code. There is a GC9X0D5, but that's in Norway. You must have mixed up some other character too. Assuming you know that the cache is fairly recent, so the '9' is correct, you must have got the 'X' wrong. I tried GC9K0D5 but that's in Utah.

There is a GC9X0D1 (Nice shoes) in Ottawa. BTW, the way I found that was Project-GC, wildcard search for "GC9X* ottawa". There may be other ways.

There's ads as well, isn't there? So assuming a BM doesn't block those, he is actually contributing by being subjected to those. Me, I generally dislike the freemium model, crippleware and the combination of paid membership with ads. Therefore I waited until I had 1,000 finds until I started paying, just because it felt good to make that statement. Then I became a PM because in the end I do like to support the site and I always block all ads. I have been a PM ever since, and I think that is the only non-essential service I am paying for. If the business model includes a free membership, people are supposed to be able to use it without feeling bad about it. Subjecting them to random crippling of functionality just to coerce them into premium members leaves a bad taste. I'm all for removing features that can be used by spammers and having PMO caches to protect precious installations from thieves and vandals, as I agree those people are likey to be BM:s.

This would probably work better in the Northwest section.

I'm fascinated by this discussion, and that there are places where your car could get towed within hours IF you don't have a sign that says please don't do that. The world is indeed a very big place. Where I'm from (Sweden that is) - sure, if you leave your car in an intersection "Falling Down"-style, it will be towed pretty soon. Other than that, there are parking regulations that dictate for how long you can park and whether or not there's a fee. If you violate that, you will start accruing parking tickets. Only when there is already a thick wad of parking tickets under the wiper will they finally tow it, and by then they will certainly not care about any sign that says they shouldn't. And if you haven't returned from your geocaching by then, you never will.

Works fine here too. Win10, Firefox 86.0.1.

Has this changed, perhaps? I definitely remember seeing size rating advice based on volume that I can not see now. From what I remember volumes smaller than a film canister (which was the model for a micro then) kind of fell off the chart and had to be other. In any event, where I come from if you call a nano a micro and fail to say so in the description, you'll hear about it in the logs.

Good point, that is probably the best. There will always be some people writing snarky logs about not being able to trade swag or drop a TB (even if that was stated in the description), but since both these habits are going out of style it maybe doesn't matter anymore. I will do that next time. One thing I definitely will not do is change size or D/T on the existing cache.

25% of my eight hides are "other". The problem with the size classification is that it is used both as an indication of what to look for and of what you can fit in it. One of my "other"s is easily large enough for "regular" on the outside, but the inside won't fit even the smallest TB:s or swag. The other is very two-dimensional so even if it is a couple of decimeters in two dimensions the volume is very small. So how should I rate these if not "other"? And of course "other" must be used for all nanos. Those are pretty common in some areas and they have their merits. All in all, "other" may be rare but not extremely rare. Over 9% of my finds are that size, and thats almost as many as the "regular"s and way more that the "large"s. I think most of the "other"s I've found have been that size for good reason.