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This makes no sense. FPs are used in so many different ways for so many different reasons that if you're concerned about what they mean for others, it means you probably shouldn't use them at all as there's no way you can use your FP in a manner that means the same for everyone else. You're basically saying that someone who gives a FP for a FTF (it certainly happens) or gives a FP to the cache because they know the CO (this happens as well) should factor into your decision to award a FP the same way someone who gives a FP for an amazing location or a FP for a rewarding caching experience from start to end. How will you ever be able to meet the expectation for every reason a FP is awarded? You earned the FP and it's yours to give as you deem warranted. Why should someone else's thoughts about what they believe a FP means factor into your decision to award your FP to a cache? Cerberus provided the appropriate link to rebut this. Some cachers did (and still do) use it that way but that was never the overriding intent. It was only an addition that allowed cachers to add FPs to caches for whatever reason they felt like awarding one. I've added them for a cool creative container, the amazing location, the total experience from start to finish, for a cache placed in remembrance of a caching friend, for the opportunity to talk to an Amish gentleman in a cemetery and learn the history of the church and the community, and for other reasons. I guarantee that many cachers wouldn't have found the cache where I was talking to the Amish man a "good" cache. It was just a micro container along a fence line in a cemetery. The experience I had was what made that cache FP worthy. If I were ever over in @barefootjeff's neck of the woods, you can bet I'd look at the caches he's given FPs to because we appear to have similar tastes in cache experiences. I do use FPs to help filter caches when going to a new area for a family vacation. Caches that I ordinarily might remove from my list stay on it due to the number of FPs it has accrued. Sometimes the cache turns out to be worth it while other times it is a dud of a cache. They will never guarantee a good/great experience since they're awarded for too many various reasons to be consistent. However, the odds are usually a bit better than just some randomly filtered out caches with far less (or none) FPs.

Let's set up a long term thread that we can all talk about caching in and around San Diego County.

I've done a nerd nite talk before, but not on geocaching - though I was thinking about doing that. I'd say it would depend on your slant. You can do a 101-style teaching talk, focusing how it works and how to get started, or you could focus on the fun and adventures you can have while geocaching (sharing your love for it) such that you could inspire more people to look into it themselves But yeah, I'd start off broad - share your best or most talk-worthy experience to grab their attention, then move into why, then how. If you have info about high tech geocaches, I'd definitely include some of those (some German caches, night caching, UV/LED/IR/Beacon types, etc). Attempt a brief technical description of how GPS works, what devices have GPS, and why some brands are better than others. I'd end off tongue in cheek showing samples of the run-of-the-mill stuff that most people hate Good to end on a light note, so you could joke about LPCs perhaps That's how I'd structure it at least. I wouldn't come at it from an 'intro course' slant - in the NN atmosphere it may be apt to focus on entertaining more than educating (because geocaching!), while providing enough info to get started (and definitely inform that you'd be glad to help people get started if they want more info or to try it out themselves!) I only recommend entertain over educate because I see the NN environment as about sharing your passion, what it is you love about what you're talking about But ultimately, it's up to you!

Nobody said you could ask for the guidelines to be changed. They just said don't break the guidelines. Wait until the change. Why is that so hard for you to understand. Totem what is it you don't understand that rules never change unless someone brings it up or does something to get them changed I hear you saying that things don't change unless you talk about it, and I understand that. I even agree with you on that. I have been in agreement with you on that the whole time. You don't seem to be able to comprehend what I'm saying. Yes, it is good to talk about things like this. If the guidelines change I might hide one even. Who knows. What I'm trying to say, and you keep ignoring or avoiding it, is that UNTIL the guidelines change stakes are not proper caches. It's that simple. Please don't tell that I'm not willing to talk about this change or that I don't understand about rules changes. When you do you it just prove that you are not listening and that this is not a disscusion, but rather one person holding their breath and throwing a fit because they don't like the way things are now. I am avoiding it because it is a mote question and answer. How do we get the Guidelines changed? we talk about it? we discuss the merits of it. We get noticed by the rule Changers. We all know what you are saying that YES They are illegal now but it does not mean we have to keep mum until someone magically out of the blue, changes the rules. Changing rules is usually an uphill battle and we have to start somewhere and what better place to start then on Groundspeaks Forums. Best of luck, but please understand that you are never going to see this happen. Your efforts might be better utilized creating actual geocache containers. Groundspeak has spent the last six years getting out of the "container-less" cache business. With the exception of Events and Earthcaches, a cache has to have a container and the container has to contain a log. The Chances of Groundspeak doing a complete turn around because someone wants to leave random objects across the landscape and call them caches, and others want to drive around finding them and pretending that they are finding caches, is slim to none. I will take the slim chance as all rules have been known to change

Nobody said you could ask for the guidelines to be changed. They just said don't break the guidelines. Wait until the change. Why is that so hard for you to understand. Totem what is it you don't understand that rules never change unless someone brings it up or does something to get them changed I hear you saying that things don't change unless you talk about it, and I understand that. I even agree with you on that. I have been in agreement with you on that the whole time. You don't seem to be able to comprehend what I'm saying. Yes, it is good to talk about things like this. If the guidelines change I might hide one even. Who knows. What I'm trying to say, and you keep ignoring or avoiding it, is that UNTIL the guidelines change stakes are not proper caches. It's that simple. Please don't tell that I'm not willing to talk about this change or that I don't understand about rules changes. When you do you it just prove that you are not listening and that this is not a disscusion, but rather one person holding their breath and throwing a fit because they don't like the way things are now. I am avoiding it because it is a mote question and answer. How do we get the Guidelines changed? we talk about it? we discuss the merits of it. We get noticed by the rule Changers. We all know what you are saying that YES They are illegal now but it does not mean we have to keep mum until someone magically out of the blue, changes the rules. Changing rules is usually an uphill battle and we have to start somewhere and what better place to start then on Groundspeaks Forums. Best of luck, but please understand that you are never going to see this happen. Your efforts might be better utilized creating actual geocache containers. Groundspeak has spent the last six years getting out of the "container-less" cache business. With the exception of Events and Earthcaches, a cache has to have a container and the container has to contain a log. The Chances of Groundspeak doing a complete turn around because someone wants to leave random objects across the landscape and call them caches, and others want to drive around finding them and pretending that they are finding caches, is slim to none.

Nobody said you could ask for the guidelines to be changed. They just said don't break the guidelines. Wait until the change. Why is that so hard for you to understand. Totem what is it you don't understand that rules never change unless someone brings it up or does something to get them changed I hear you saying that things don't change unless you talk about it, and I understand that. I even agree with you on that. I have been in agreement with you on that the whole time. You don't seem to be able to comprehend what I'm saying. Yes, it is good to talk about things like this. If the guidelines change I might hide one even. Who knows. What I'm trying to say, and you keep ignoring or avoiding it, is that UNTIL the guidelines change stakes are not proper caches. It's that simple. Please don't tell that I'm not willing to talk about this change or that I don't understand about rules changes. When you do you it just prove that you are not listening and that this is not a disscusion, but rather one person holding their breath and throwing a fit because they don't like the way things are now. I am avoiding it because it is a mote question and answer. How do we get the Guidelines changed? we talk about it? we discuss the merits of it. We get noticed by the rule Changers. We all know what you are saying that YES They are illegal now but it does not mean we have to keep mum until someone magically out of the blue, changes the rules. Changing rules is usually an uphill battle and we have to start somewhere and what better place to start then on Groundspeaks Forums. Thank you for finnaly listing to me and agreeing with my original point instead of stupidly wasting your time and mine. I listened to you but I also ignored the obvious but to satisfy you I directly answered it.

Nobody said you could ask for the guidelines to be changed. They just said don't break the guidelines. Wait until the change. Why is that so hard for you to understand. Totem what is it you don't understand that rules never change unless someone brings it up or does something to get them changed I hear you saying that things don't change unless you talk about it, and I understand that. I even agree with you on that. I have been in agreement with you on that the whole time. You don't seem to be able to comprehend what I'm saying. Yes, it is good to talk about things like this. If the guidelines change I might hide one even. Who knows. What I'm trying to say, and you keep ignoring or avoiding it, is that UNTIL the guidelines change stakes are not proper caches. It's that simple. Please don't tell that I'm not willing to talk about this change or that I don't understand about rules changes. When you do you it just prove that you are not listening and that this is not a disscusion, but rather one person holding their breath and throwing a fit because they don't like the way things are now. I am avoiding it because it is a mote question and answer. How do we get the Guidelines changed? we talk about it? we discuss the merits of it. We get noticed by the rule Changers. We all know what you are saying that YES They are illegal now but it does not mean we have to keep mum until someone magically out of the blue, changes the rules. Changing rules is usually an uphill battle and we have to start somewhere and what better place to start then on Groundspeaks Forums. Thank you for finnaly listing to me and agreeing with my original point instead of stupidly wasting your time and mine.

Nobody said you could ask for the guidelines to be changed. They just said don't break the guidelines. Wait until the change. Why is that so hard for you to understand. Totem what is it you don't understand that rules never change unless someone brings it up or does something to get them changed I hear you saying that things don't change unless you talk about it, and I understand that. I even agree with you on that. I have been in agreement with you on that the whole time. You don't seem to be able to comprehend what I'm saying. Yes, it is good to talk about things like this. If the guidelines change I might hide one even. Who knows. What I'm trying to say, and you keep ignoring or avoiding it, is that UNTIL the guidelines change stakes are not proper caches. It's that simple. Please don't tell that I'm not willing to talk about this change or that I don't understand about rules changes. When you do you it just prove that you are not listening and that this is not a disscusion, but rather one person holding their breath and throwing a fit because they don't like the way things are now. I am avoiding it because it is a mote question and answer. How do we get the Guidelines changed? we talk about it? we discuss the merits of it. We get noticed by the rule Changers. We all know what you are saying that YES They are illegal now but it does not mean we have to keep mum until someone magically out of the blue, changes the rules. Changing rules is usually an uphill battle and we have to start somewhere and what better place to start then on Groundspeaks Forums.

That's pretty unrealistic both for me personally and for new cachers (even if they are extrovert and dare to write such notes). In my case, I would not end up with going for the hike with the people I'd like to talk to. If the hike is the official event, then there is at least some effort at least for a while to adapt the pace to slower ones. If I asked for a group hike, certainly not those I'd like to talk to would make an offer as they are so much faster than myself. If the official part of the event is the sitting around at the hut (or somewhere else), the argument will be if someone wants to talk to them, this someone can do that there, but I simply do not enjoy such type of situations. I do not care at all about smileys. My frustration comes from an entirely different direction. Oh, you didn't? There is a big difference between disapproving something/someone and not warmly welcoming it/someone. Also my statement about lame attended logs is not based on disapproving and is a weaker statement. Being someone for whom attended and found it is somehow something of the type mission accomplished (that's why I have chosen to wrote a number of notes for caches where I signed the log book), I cannot help to regard attended logs for a 2 minute visit or a visit to a hiking event without hike as lame. I do not claim to speak for everyone (not even for anyone except myself) and I have often stressed that I belong to a minority. In some cases I wrote about my personal preferences and opinions (and mentioned so) and in some cases I wrote about opinions of others I got to know or felt the need to defend the German geocaching community (sometimes continental European community in other contexts) which consists of many individuals of which only a small number writes arm chair logs. Many of the attacks with respect to German cachers are unfair. I see it as a change and not as a clarification. Apparently you do not understand my point. I will give up.

Here's something I thought I'd never see: An EarthCache Power Trail! I was checking the maps for new caches to hunt this weekend, and I came across a series of ten EarthCaches in one park. The distance between the two furthest is .5 mile. Two are at the exact same coordinates. One of my caching companions loves EarthCaches, so we'll probably hit these ths weekend. (Unless I can talk my caching companions into a series of regulars that I want to find soon...) Ten geologically interesting, and different, lessons in less than a mile? I know the area, and I'm a bit sceptical. Stay tuned for an update after the weekend (if I manage to talk my Geocaching companions into this one...)

Check the list in my post above from Feb 17. It is from the same source. I watch both to see if any new ones are added. It's all "GPS". Different countries put different names on their own systems, though. (g.e., EU = Galileo, Russia = GLONASS, China = BeiDou, etc). It's a competitive environment. When we're talking about L5, it's strictly a US issue. The U.S. govt is still calling the L5 signals from Block III 'pre-operational' and won't be considered fully operational until 24 of the Block III birds are up and broadcasting. That isn't anticipated for some years. Not sure when Lockheed-Martin will be done getting the last of the IIIC units into orbit. Looks like SVN 74 (PRN 4) is up and running and healthy since mid-January 2020. That said, I fully expect nav companies to use any 'healthy' L5 signals to augment what's already in the air long before all 24 are up. In order to deal with things like Galileo, a receiver has to be looking in the right place. While we've been talking about L1/L2/L5, you have to then look at Galileo as E1, E5/E5a/E5b, and E6. Whether the chip maker covers the whole spread varies between manufacturers and chips within their families. All of them talk about civilian accuracy in the 3m range.

Talk about an EVIL hide! I read in the news about the astronaut who dove down to the deepest accessible area on the ocean floor. Who knows, perhaps our diving technology will improve and sunken shipwrecks will become Wherigos. A really neat Earthcache would be the volcanic vents on the ocean floor. I couldn't imagine placing physical containers in shipwrecks, WAY too dangerous/unethical in some cases.

The OP is clearly asking about the "unofficial GeoTour" meaning of "GeoTrail," so let's talk about that.

I am having the same issues as the ones posted above. I have contacted Groundspeak and have received the same answer back as the others. I have contacted my internet provider and also contacted my carrier AT&T which I spent nearly an hour on the phone with. The one I was talking to even went higher up the food chain to no advail. They said the only way they could really tell why i am not receiving my text notifications would be to follow a text from start to finish but I don’t have a clue how to give them an origin for a text that I am no longer getting. It seems like they need to talk to someone at Groundspeak to follow the transaction from start to finish. If you will furnish me that number I would be glad to contact AT&T and give it to them.

I've got a great idea - Let's put out a new category in peer review on a US holiday weekend so that hardly any US waymarkers can look at it! Nice. It's also another great idea to never have had it discussed in the forums. You aren't really requiring photos - you're saying screengrabs are okay. This is a violation of Groundspeak terms of service if those "screengrabs" happen to belong to someone else on another platform like Facebook, Twitter, etc., where the original photographer and the platform hold a copyright. You have to agree to terms of service for each waymark you post and violating that terms of service can get the waymarker who "screengrabs" the picture of the rooftop garden in trouble with Groundspeak and with the copyright holder. Groundspeak Terms of Service You agree not to: "viii - Upload, post, transmit, or otherwise distribute any content that infringes any patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright or other intellectual property, or proprietary rights of any person, including without limitation under any privacy or publicity rights. xi - Violate any applicable local, state, national, or international law." How are people supposed to visit these, especially if they are private rooftop gardens? There is no mention of this in the writeup? What kind of long description are you requiring? Where does one get the coordinates for the garden, especially for a private one that they cannot physically visit, but can only take a picture from afar? What about trespassing and voyeur laws, especially for these private gardens where you would be taking photo from locations outside the garden? If you are shooting from another location, you could be violating privacy laws, which I know for a fact a very strict in California and are very strict in Europe. With that said, that would be a violation of, again, Terms of Service 11. You also speak of playgrounds - why both? Again, people who own these are going to have SERIOUS issues of people taking long range photos of their kids on a private playground. This category isn't well thought-out; it is not well written-out; and frankly, and it definitely has the possibility of being downright illegal. This is why you should always bring these new category ideas to the Forums first. Talk to me on the above, clear up the concerns. There is a hole where this category might fill, possibly, but how can you document these without violating the owners privacy and, just as importantly, how could someone visit these waymarks? I have published the above as my response in peer review.

Not quite true. Groundspeak actively pushes the FTF prize on a very regular basis as one of the benefits of buying premium membership. They talk about it in mailings, sure. But they never talk about rules. They just say it's when you find "that clean, unsigned logbook...". And that's just external affairs/outreach talk--show me where Groundspeak outlines anything specific about a FTF "prize" (especially in the guidelines, or with an official mention or validity with, say, a statistic on your profile) beyond mention in some emails. Back to my popcorn. The terms of use indicate that while Groundspeak provides a service where individuals can exchange information about games and opportunities for location-based play, Groundspeak does not provide any games itself as part of its services. (I'm not sure the HQ cache or the Block Party event are?) Certainly Groundspeak can suggest games and ways to play. These are suggestions and a few requirements/guidelines that restrict certain games from being listed (or sometimes even mentioned) on their websites. Groundspeak is also free to provide premium services to support games and game play. FTF is clearly a game that can be mentioned on Groundspeak's sites. From time to time they may suggest ways to play this game and point out that their premium service can be useful for this style of play. But the actual 'rules' and game play are left to individuals to decide on. Threads like this one start because someone wants to apply their personal rules to how others play this game. They often degrade to where someone who don't want to play this game at all wants to make FTF simply a label to describe some other aspect of geocaching. While is is fun to debate what constitutes a find either for the purpose of deciding who is first or when to use 'Found' for your online log, Groundspeak's president has posted Even though there might be an FTF prize, or a cache owner may award a mention on the cache page to the FTF, there's still no reason to get your knickers in a twist about anyone else's definition of a find.

Not quite true. Groundspeak actively pushes the FTF prize on a very regular basis as one of the benefits of buying premium membership. They talk about it in mailings, sure. But they never talk about rules. They just say it's when you find "that clean, unsigned logbook...". And that's just external affairs/outreach talk--show me where Groundspeak outlines anything specific about a FTF "prize" (especially in the guidelines, or with an official mention or validity with, say, a statistic on your profile) beyond mention in some emails. Back to my popcorn.

I've read a couple threads about Covid-19 and caching, and it got me to thinking: With all of this talk of social distancing and PPE, would there be a legitimate case for cachers to create virtual caches? What are your thoughts?

A false-positive test will do that. It happens. They don't talk about it.

What's dangerous for one child isn't necessarily dangerous for another child. Children learn from parents, peers, teachers, friends about what constitutes safe actions vs what constitutes unsafe actions and they learn those things at different ages. They don't learn it from osmosis, so your point about a child's age not mattering is also not a valid point. Let's use your railroad example. Let's say the child caching with you is 15. By this time, there's a strong likelihood that they realize trains will either severely injure you or kill you if you get too close to them due to their weight, being told by parents and peers, seeing movies/videos, etc... Now let's look at the 3 year old. Their exposure to trains is probably limited to Thomas the Train or The Little Engine That Could. They see familiar faces and trains that talk, are friendly, and are things that have feelings and the ability to do things that people do. They're not things to be cautious about because they haven't learned that yet. They see them as things that they can interact with. The "choo choo" is a friend, not a 300,000 pound engine that can't stop in time to avoid hitting, maiming, crushing, or killing a toddler that doesn't know any better. The same goes for caches near ponds, which was another point brought up. At some point, the dangers of drowning are learned by a child. Until that point is learned though, we do what we can to keep them safe. We have kiddie pools (where drowning can still occur) that are shallow and make sure to watch them. We provide PFDs. We teach them how to swim. There's no specific age for every child where they learn the potential hazards of water. So let's look at the 15 year old at a cache near a pond. They see water and they realize that it's something that has the potential to kill them but have learned how to swim, whether or not the body of water is safe to swim in, whether or not there could be potentially dangerous things in the pond (alligators, red tides, jellyfish) and what to look for to determine that, and various other things that they may have learned in order to keep themselves safe. A 3 year old sees a body of water and associates it with a kiddie pool, even though it may have current, is considerably deeper than the kiddie pool, and may have dangerous animals in or around it. They haven't learned all the coping mechanisms that the 15 year old has learned so they don't understand the inherent danger like the 15 year old does.

A broken plastic container with a log so wet that it's unsignable, by a cache owner that 9 times out of 10 has left the game.. if that's vandalism, then I contend you just replied just to hear yourself talk. But with 10,000 more posts than me I should have expected that.

You're clearly enthusiastic about geocaching and want to talk about it. That's a great thing. However, you're not an expert at this yet. While it's ok to share your opinions, I think some of your posts come across as the only way to do things, and not all of them have been what I would consider the preferred technique. I've been at this for over 13 years now and am closing in on 10,000 finds. I think it's fair to say we have a decent amount of experience at this point. But at the end of the day, I am just one geocacher, and I don't pretend to have all the answers. I try to share my experience, opinions, recommendations, or my personal approach as only that, and not as the "right answer." I don't always remember to do it that way, but that's how I try to approach things: rather than telling someone what to do, I post about what I have done, or what I have seen, or what I think, or what I'd recommend. All in all, this forum is pretty well behaved compared to some other corners of the internet. And if nothing else, we all have at least one thing in common: we are all interested in geocaching. So don't lose heart. But for now, perhaps consider sitting back and doing some more reading, to inform your opinions and experience some more, and asking questions instead of answering them.

Yes, but if this happens with a GPS, you're in the same boat. Whether GPS or Phone, if you plan to go out of cell range, you must plan ahead. And just to reiterate, only the Oregon 700 and GPSMap66 series have live geocaching abilities, and this must be paired with either a wifi connection or your cell phone's data to work. They do not connect to 4g/5g natively. Otherwise, you must plan ahead with a GPS for all geocaching activities. Pocket queries are your friend either way. No GPS connects to the website anymore. The communicator plugins are no longer supported. A newer model will interface with GPX files and geocaches better than the 60 series. Again, you could go back to the Colorado series (not recommended) or even a 62(s) to get this functionality at an inexpensive price point, though current models have removed the limit on the number of geocaches you can load, making them great for larger trips. I'm not trying to talk you out of a new GPS, just give you an accurate portrayal of their limitations along with the functionality of your phone. I'd hate to see you drop $3-400 and be disappointed. That said, when you work within the limitations, the GPS can be more useful than the phone. But both will get the job done.

The more we talk about this, the more I think this is simply a matter of identification: which caches fit this "Olde Tyme" category? If they could be identified, those people that want to look only for them could find them, and, furthermore, people that liked to plant such caches would feel like it was worth while, since now, from what I gather, they feel like there's no point because their high quality, large caches with log books in wonderful places would be lost in the sea of mediocrity. The physics of identify caches is straightforward. GS might even create an attribute for them if they could be reliably identified, or bookmark lists could be created for each area, and discussions about which are and which aren't and which should be and which shouldn't be could be carried on in any forum you'd like. If there's enough interest, I'm sure we could have such a forum here. (Hmmm... it occurs to me there could very well already be such a forum that I've never heard about.) And then there's the additional complaint about the lack of an Olde Tyme community -- people that attend Olde Tyme events, people that write in physical logs, stuff like that -- but that just requires defining the community, and having an appropriate collection of caches and a place to talk about them should be enough to hold such a community together. Unless you split off and file the caches somewhere other than geocaching.com, you'll have to put up with "TFTC" and people signing the nice log books with just name and date, but that shouldn't matter as long as there are enough nice logs in both places by members of the community who have stopped to write about their experiences. So it seems to boil down to how it is decided whether any given cache deserves to be in that special class. While we're hearing lots of people talk about what they miss, I'm not sure how we decide whose preferences to use. The only approach I can think of is a kinda of Hall of Fame. Perhaps pick out a few leaders from the people reminiscing in this forum to seed the community and develop some criteria which, though subjective, could be used as guidelines for Olde Tyme caches. Then as time goes on, cachers that live up to the standard are electing into the Hall of Fame which allows them to identify qualifying caches. If an attribute is created, they could be given the power to light that attribute on their caches. Do you think anything like that might solve the problem? Or is the fun part complaining about it not being like it used to be, not actually doing it like you use to do it?

One done only a couple years after starting (and the other 2/3rds was a FTF monster), was supposed to be at a kid's "Grandma's house". - "She can't wait to talk to people! ". So apparently we're there for her amusement as well... Six in the morning, 2/3rds searching along a hedge at the sidewalk and finds it. A man comes out, asking her what the #$** is she doing, she tells him, and he directs her next door, where the kid's Grandma lives. The container was given to "Grandma", and now she really had to watch and talk to people, until the kid got outta school. Sheesh...