G.O. Cash

Sure, that is a possible reason, but I rarely see large crowds around an FTF - sometimes there are several people logging „Team FTF“, but more often than not, only one of the group shows up at the cache anyway - don‘t get me started. In my own FTF experience, in 90+% of the cases, I‘m by myself at the cache, and on the way there. In the rest of cases, it‘s mostly shared with one other cacher. I guess sometimes people phone a few friends to go for FTF together. Anyway, no, I haven‘t asked the reviewers for reasons, partly because the tone of the announcement didn‘t appear to be inviting comments or questions...

This is current situation in Germany: there is no nationwide lockdown. Most states have imposed restrictions, such as that gatherings of more than two persons are disallowed unless they live in the same household („contact restriction“), certain types of shops and businesses have to remain closed etc. I‘m not aware of the detailed rules in all regions of Germany, but around the city of Hamburg, and in Northwestern Germany in general, there are no rules that would prohibit going into the woods on your own, whether to geocache, go running, hiking or whatever. The weather is beautiful if cold, and I see lots of people out and about - and why shouldn‘t they, assuming they adhere to the imposed rules. As far as existing geocaches are concerned, I‘m not aware of any that have been disabled out of virus concerns - I have searched for disabled caches around me, but all I could find were normal maintenance issues. However, it appears the reviewers in all of Germany have stopped publishing all types of new caches - yes, you read that right, not just events, but also all other virtual and physical caches. The reasoning is obvious for events - those would clearly be in breach of the contract restriction rule, but I fail to grasp any justification for ceasing publication of eg all physical geocaches. There is an announcement (in German) on the german reviewer‘s website https://www.gc-reviewer.de/news-der-nord-reviewer-schleswig-holstein-hamburg-bremen-und-niedersachsen-bzgl-des-corona-virus/ , but it does not elaborate on the specific reasons. I‘d love to hear people‘s opinions about this, also, if something similar is going on in your region?

Nope, "Die Helden" have more: Grand Total of 12,929. Wow.

There is a cache owner near Hamburg, Germany, who has published 31 caches to date (though he has not published any new caches recently). His most favorited cache, GC18182, has collected 2,310 FPs as per today. All of his caches combined have earned a grand total of 11,219 FPs... That has got to be some kind of world record. The CO's name: Mystphi.

PQ mapping worked yesterday, it doesn't today. Or have I been dreaming? Win7, IE10.

Mapping pocket queries still not working, only shows home location. Currently in Germany; tried under both Win 7/ IE10 and Mac 10.7.5 / Safari.

Check out addisonbr's profile page; http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=d1194840-a7da-4a1b-a566-29de18a6094e . He has created bookmark lists of most found caches by country.

Beta maps still doesn't work properly on the iPad: tapping on the cache symbol in the map doesn't open a balloon with the cache information & link to the listing. Clicking on the cache symbol in Safari on Macbook works as expected, but not in Safari on the iPad. Tried another browser on iPad as well (Mercury); also doesn't work.

There's an app for that... Search for iGCT in the AppStore; it will do that for you, and a few other things.

Mit einer premium-Mitgliedschaft geht sowas. Man kann "pocket-queries" nach verschiedenen Kriterien definieren, z.B. alle traditionals/ puzzle caches etc. in einem bestimmten Umkreis usw., und alle Wegpunkte dann mit Hilfe eines Programms wie EasyGPS o.ae. im Paket auf das Geraet laden.

Well, so you're not confused, neither am I - good for us, huh? Fact is, many people make that mistake. As in, Columbus discovered America - and claimed it for his king or country. It still has that connotation of "take possession of", and I'm merely making a practical suggestion, guided by observations.

Good point. It wouldn't have to be "spotted". Other logtypes use several words as well ("grab it from somewhere else"), why not make it "saw it, but didn't take it"? If it has to be short, "tag it", "tally", "score", whatever...

"Spotted" was the favorite choice when this log type was being discussed, but for some reason they went with the ambiguous "discovered it" instead. I agree with you that the existence of this term, combined with the complete lack of any explanation of its proper use on the TB page and the "how to log a TB" pages, causes confusioon and likely contributes to the disappearance of many coins and bugs. You are not the first person to voice this opinion, though -- it's been mentioned many times before, but there has never been any indication that it is going to be changed. If you'd like to read the history of the "discovered it" concept, you might find these threads interesing: "Icon swap meets", started in November of 2005, in which Jeremy proposes this new type of log and asks for opinions and suggestions. Many possible names were suggested, including "spotted it", "saw it", "touched it", etc. "Preventing virtual coin drops at events", from Januuary of 2006, in whch the topic comes back up. Note that in post #40 of that topic, Jeremy even refers to it as the "spotted it" log type. "Discovered It log entry", from May 2006, when the new log type was introduced. In post #4 of that thread, Jeremy says that Thanks for directing me to the prior postings on the topic, and sorry for not searching the topic more thoroughly before posting. But maybe there could be some value in bringing it up again now, because in the meantime, the track record appears to prove that the label "discovered" does indeed lead to confusion, cachers being disappointed because of coins/TB's they expected to find are not there, coins /TB's going missing etc. I came across one cache recently that is a case in point: Central Park carousel GC12N21. Nine trackables listed, four of those are not there. If you read the logs, you find that all four have been taken out, and were logged as "discovered". If "spotted" came out on top, and somebody picked "discovered" because it sounds better - well, anybody can know now that in fact it doesn't make as much sense, not by far. I would say it's time to change it.

I have noticed that many, many times geocoins or travelbugs listed with a cache actually are no longer there (I know, "duh!"). While they may have gotten stolen, in most cases the reason is simply that inexperienced cachers log them as "discovered" instead of "retrieved" when they have in fact taken the coin with them. Obviously, the term or logtype "discovered" is confusing people. Why not call it "spotted it" or something, instead of "discovered"?