On the eve of what appears to be the beginning of the end for what has been an association of benchmarking with geocaching, I thought I would take a moment to post a comment for whatever good that might do. I have only recently discovered the greater joys of benchmarking thanks in part to the discovery of some benchmarking challenges adjacent to my usual home caching area and in part to my general apathy toward new additions such as Adventure Labs. I would much rather locate and then document something of significance than answering another question about what the third letter of the fourth word of the sign is from my car. I certainly understand the appeal of Adventure Labs for many people and have used them on days when I need numbers myself, but I am saddened that geocaching has preferred to support them over things like benchmarks. A number of previous comments have already illustrated the historical significance of these marks and I believe that they are much more in line with the original spirit of our game. I am disappointed that were never supported the way they could have been. I am also saddened that the concept could not be extend to other countries around the world. This notion that benchmarks only exist in the United States is silly - extensive databases for survey markers exist in many countries around the world including Canada, Japan, Great Britain, France, Australia, Italy, Germany, South Africa, India Pakistan and New Zealand just to name a few. Geocaching would have been far better served to support these agencies. Offering some kind of credit for finds to geocachers would likely have made the pursuit of these marks very popular. Unfortunately, that boat appears to have sailed in favor of other endeavors and I think the world of geocaching will be missing a part of what actually gives it some credibility. However, I think there is a much greater issue at stake here.
The ability to log benchmarks has been a great resource. As others have mentioned, geocachers are some of the only people that have provided data points for benchmarks over the past 20 years and their information has been included as updates to benchmark databases have been made. While I understand there are still other ways of recording this information moving forward (albeit in a much more complicated fashion), I am most concerned with the fact that 20 years of data is about to be unceremoniously dropped. I understand geocaching's interest in updating and that the old benchmark site might be holding things back, but why cannot the benchmark site be uncoupled from geocaching yet still be accessible? Is there no way that any part of the benchmarking experience can be salvaged without having to navigate other sites? There is no reason why benchmark logs need to be part of caching. I wouldn't really care if there was no record of how many benchmarks I have found on my profile page and in the interest of moving the game forward I could live with not being to access, compose or edit any logs on the geocaching page, but why can't a link exist that could take you to the old site? It could be uncoupled from geocaching proper, but it would still be available and with the support of the people that enjoy the hobby and possibly in cooperation with appropriate government agencies we could still even log finds and upload photos. This would save all the data that has been uploaded by users over the past 20 years and allow for continued data gathering moving forward. Heck, it could even save benchmark challenge caches!:)
I realize that benchmarking is not one of the most popular aspects of our game, but I don't think that it has ever been properly supported or encouraged. Nonetheless, uncoupling it from the regular geocaching site seems inevitable. That said, I would encourage you to consider providing a way for users to access the database and leave notes and logs on these very important historical markers.
Happy bugging,
Brent
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