baer2006

Which reminds me of a CITO here a while ago, which was organized to exterminate giant hogweed in some area. This is hard work, and you have to wear a full-body biohazard suit. It was not winter, and with the gear and the work, you would be sweating like hell . The event was listed as T3 (which I think is reasonable). And then one cacher posted a note, that he would only attend if the rating was changed to T5. I asked him if this was a joke, but he said no, he's going for high T's, and would not go through the trouble if the "reward" was only T3. Anyway, that was off-topic for a thread about D-ratings. Sorry!

Wow! Thanks for making me aware of this. That change is a bad idea. I have one puzzle, where I got an exemption from the 2-miles-rule from the reviewer, because the design of the puzzle depends on a specific listing coordinate. So now I wouldn't be able to make the slightest change to my cache page. Well, my listing was rather old, the puzzle a bit "dated", and I had played with the idea of archiving it anyway. So that's what I did now .

In my view, this is a complete abuse of the D/T system. If finding the way to GZ and the cache there is both trivial, it should be a D1. If actually following the path to GZ is a hard physical challenge, it's T5 - but still D1. A different issue would be a multi-cache, where finding the way to the final (e.g. through a maze of tunnels in an old bunker system) is difficult in itself, so I agree that your original example is not D1. But using the D-rating to further differentiate between "easy" and "extra hard" T5 caches doesn't make sense. A big orange box in a tree is always D1, even if it's very high up and you need a complicated setup to reach it.

... and owners, who hide their cache on the ground, and set the "Available in winter" icon - in an area where lots of snow is normal in winter. But to be honest, that doesn't really irk me ... only making me shake my head and ramp up my DNF count .

It should be as kosher as it can get - I discussed the whole idea with a reviewer before submitting anything . I have prepared a set of potential locations for the final, all within an otherwise cache-empty wood, in an area of about 0.5 sq.km. These locations are all entered as hidden physical waypoints in the listing, so other cachers won't be able to hide anything there. When I run out of "unused" final waypoints, I could add e.g. 10 more, and would then ask the reviewer to check and approve these in one go.

Almost all Wherigo owner in my homezone use the "related webpage" field to link to the cartridge. Also, there are quite a few puzzles which use the feature, although this might not be a big problem if existing fields are allowed to stay forever.

For the record, I don't make a big secret out of the fact that the final of my cache is moving. Otherwise, I wouldn't have mentioned it in a public forum anyway.

Sorry to hear that. But being "everybody's darling" is not my goal anyway . Of course it's a reaction to how others play the game. But that way (openly sharing final coordinates) is clearly something that irks me (q.v. thread subject ) and that special cache will definitely remain a one-off experiment. I played with the idea for almost a year before actually implementing it, and had no idea how it would "work". The cache has been online for three months so far, and the find rate is still low, even though the typical "critical" threshold of finders (after which shared final coordinates multiply rapidly) has been passed. On the other hand, regularly moving the final is no fun at all for me, and the overall lifetime of the listing will most likely be significantly shorter than my usual standard (5+ years). At the end of the day, I wouldn't recommend it to other owners.

That's not how my cache works. The outdoor part is a one-stage multi. The solution of the puzzle in the listing leads you to stage 1, which does not move. At S1, you find a field puzzle, which is rather simple to solve if you know how to solve the listing puzzle, but impossible if you don't. When I move the final, I also replace the field puzzle at S1 (I have a set of future final locations and corresponding field puzzles prepared, so I can do this at very short notice ). So your solution for stage 1 remains valid forever. But you have a problem, if you either just grabbed the final coordinates from a previous finder, or got the coords for S1 but not the knowledge how the puzzle works .

Wow, that's more than I had expected. So it seems that not all reviewers follow the rule that Event = D1. In fact, I made a quick check for the current events in a large radius (200 km) around my home base, and all events with D >= 2 were published by a single reviewer. So maybe you have to ask the right person if you want to host a high-D event .

Reviewers do this here (Germany). Some even add something like "Originally published as D1/T1" to their publish log, so that it's super clear to the CO that they are not supposed to change the rating later .

The reason for this might be a misunderstanding by the CO about what the "Correct these coordinates" feature (the "pencil" near the listing coordinates) is about. There were at least two recent situations in my homezone just like that. Coords were off, finders provided better ones, nothing happened ,,, and days or weeks later it turned out that the CO thought they had updated the public coordinates using the "pencil" tool. I vaguely remember that when GS opened the "Corrected coordinates" feature to cache types other than "Puzzle", some people warned about this possible problem. But don't get me wrong - I still think it's a great feature, I only wish that people would actually read what's shown to them on a screen. After all, it clearly says "Corrected Coordinates (hidden from others)" in the popup dialog.

I couldn't have said it better . I'm the owner of quite a few difficult puzzle caches, and I don't like it at all that final coordinates are regularly shared without any explanation about the puzzle. The problem in the community here is that many take it for granted that finals are "shared". Nobody seems to have the slightest bit of bad conscience when doing it. It's especially true for D5- or T5-rated caches. My "solution" to the problem was to downgrade most of my D5 puzzles to D4,5 max, and to take all T5 finals down from the tree and make it T2 max. As a reaction, I placed a D5/T5 puzzle cache, which can only be found if you have understood how the puzzle works. Either by solving it yourself, or getting a thorough explanation by someone who has. Needless to say, it's a lot of extra work for me (basically, I have to move the final after every find). But it's quite telling to see, who has not logged a find so far, even if they usually don't seem to have a lot of difficulties to find other D5 hides in the vicinity .

Das war aber nicht mehr möglich. Zum Zeitpunkt der endgültigen Archivierung war der "alte" Cache längst Geschichte! Die ursprüngliche Dose war gemuggelt, und der Ersatz lag nicht mal mehr im ursprünglichen Versteck. Das hatte mit dem "ersten Cache in D" also nichts mehr zu tun außer dem GC-Code. Und wenn du auf den GC-Code Wert legst, dann sind wir eben doch wieder bei Statistik. Das ist so, wie wenn du ein "Original-Schwert aus dem 11. Jahrhundert" hast, aber dann einräumen musst, dass die Klinge schon 3x, und der Griff 4x ausgetauscht wurde .

Seh ich genauso. Grad im Fall GC77 hatte der Cache zuletzt mit dem ursprünglichen Cache eh nichts mehr zu tun. Es mag jetzt provokativ klingen, aber meiner Meinung nach hat das Gejammer über die Archivierung von GC77 nur einen Grund: Man kann seine Statistik jetzt nicht mehr so einfach mit dem Fund eines Caches aus dem Oktober 2000 "schmücken". An der Location an sich gibt es ja wieder einen Cache (GC49D07).

It's fine to streamline the user workflow in some cases. But that's no excuse for also preventing a stand-alone NM (or NA) log, where it would definitely make sense. I said so months ago (see this posting) but unfortunately, GS chose to ignore this .

When I was in a similar situation, I looked for cachers who either already fulfilled my challenge or were relatively close to doing so. The reviewer didn't object at all to the latter group. From what I've read in this thread, I might have been lucky with my reviewer .

Ok, I see your point. But I refuse to feel guilty for German law having a lot more employee rights than US law . And for the record, the actual minimum annual vacation here is 4 weeks (20 working days). But frankly I'm a bit shocked to hear that you don't have any guaranteed vacation at all (I thought it was, like, 2 weeks or so).

I know the incentives, and that some cachers would go to great lengths to get a single more smiley on a "special" cache. But are streak challenges so special, that you have to cheat to get them? In my area there are quite a few of them, and lots of other challenges which I will never meet. And yet they only make a small fraction of my Ignore List. Geocaching is still a game, and in the end getting a smiley or not doesn't change anything for the rest of your life. You mention "pass a test" as a cheating scenario, and I can completely understand that. There a many tests in your life, which are super-important once-in-a-lifetime situations, where your whole future can depend on the outcome. Yes, I can fully understand if someone uses extreme "result oriented strategies" (i.e. cheating ) for them (I did so, too). But in a game like geocaching, without any material gains or losses? In the end, the problem is perhaps the inability of some to admit a "failure" - not fulfilling a challenge (-> cheat), not finding a cache (-> don't log DNF and/or leave throw-downs).

Thank you. This is an excellent example why I would never place a throw-down. You can never be sure if the cache is really gone. There are example where even the owner was mistaken, and someone found the original cache after the owner placed a new one . Also, great caching ethics on your side, going back and removing your throw-down. If you call in sick for work, but go caching anyway and don't want your boss to know, you cheat on your boss and co-workers. Compared to that, false logging on geocaching.com is a negligible sin . Actually, I can't understand it. Sorry, but the point of a "streak" is to say "I went for a cache on every single day of the streak" and not "I went for a cache almost on every day". The latter is not a streak - period. Of course, cheating is easy, and the chances that you get called out are essentially zero. It's still cheating, and it's definitely one of my "self geocaching rules" to log each find on the day I actually found the cache (or were at the location of a virtual or EC).

No. Also, you can't delete your own log from a locked cache.

Some stats for caches around the center of Munich, within circles of 30km and 50km radius. Year 30km 50km 30km (no events) 30km (events only) 2001 2 2 2 0 2002 12 13 12 0 2003 41 58 41 0 2004 150 192 146 4 2005 206 281 200 6 2006 263 334 257 6 2007 411 513 399 12 2008 630 948 603 27 2009 779 1262 756 23 2010 876 1459 846 30 2011 1326 2572 1292 34 2012 879 1593 826 53 2013 884 1586 821 63 2014 1007 1833 888 119 2015 871 1613 737 134 2016 959 1777 774 185 2017 697 1319 499 198 So we see a steady rise until 2011. 2011 was also the year in which the first and so far only big (for German standards ) power trail in the area (~ 400 caches) was placed. After that, the numbers dropped back to 2010 level and have remained roughly constant until last year. But in 2017 there will definitely be a marked drop. There are only 6 weeks remaining, and this time of year is typically low for physical caches. I also made a separate stat for events within 30km. Without events the drop is even sharper (and the small rises in 2014 and 2016 almost disappear). The number of events has been increasing every year, and December 2017 will give this year another big boost. Typically we have a "Christmas event overkill" here, with almost every small Christmas market in town having at least one GC event during the season. So the bottom line for Munich is: From 2012 to 2016, the number of new physical caches per year was more or less constant, but 2017 will almost certainly show a significant decline.

Hi, The icons for finds, hides etc. on profile pages have gone missing. I attached a screenshot of my own profile page, but the result is the same for any profile I view. The image URLs (e.g. https://www.geocaching.com/ui-icons/icons/log-types/2.svg for the find count) lead to a 404. Regards baer

Das ist aber nur dann technisch überhaupt möglich, wenn sämtliche Änderungen an "statistikrelevanten" Eigenschaften des Listings (nicht nur D/T, sondern auch Cachegröße und vielleicht sogar Attribute) in der Datenbank persistent gespeichert werden. Ob das der Fall ist, weiß ich nicht, vermute aber mal eher nein. Alternativ könnte man auch bei jedem Log die aktuellen Statistikdaten mit Speichern, aber da bin ich mir ziemlich sicher, dass das nicht der Fall ist (bilde mir ein, ich hab's mal von jemanden gehört/gelesen, der es wissen muss). Wie auch immer, es wäre jedenfalls ein nicht-trivialer Programmieraufwand, und rückwirkend wahrscheinlich gar nicht machbar. Und das alles nur wegen eines "Nebenspiels"? Nee, würde ich an GS' Stelle auch nicht machen .

Around here (Germany) the general consensus is like this: If you have to do "homework" before going outside for the cache, it's a puzzle cache. If you can just read the listing, pack the required gear, go to the listed coordinates, and continue from there (possibly involving field puzzles, tricky boxes, etc.), it's a traditional (if the final container is at the listing coordinates) or a multi (if it's not). I think this is a very useful convention, because you immediately know if you can rush out at once, or if you have to solve a puzzle first. Whenever an exception is published, cachers tend to be somewhat confused . LOL ! You forgot to mention that you need to solve a puzzle first to get the starting point of the Wherigo cartridge . Anyway, the actual classification is actually easy - it's a Wherigo.