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While I hope that my logs are interesting to a cache owner, barring the times when I just can't think of much to say about a particular cache, I tend to look at my logs as my record of my caching and are ultimately for me. As such I will often talk about a lot more than just the cache itself and the search thereof. If particularly memorable then it might be the whole adventure that took me to that cache - some good examples here and there. I've had a few that have gone past the length of 1 log and I had to write a note to include the rest of the story. Never to pad the log for any stats though.

Perhaps I've in the minority but I often talk about the cache, especially when I find a clean, dry container with lots of room in the log sheet. I may simply mention that the cache in good shape because that provides a real time notification to the owner of the state of the cache. I would also talk about the cache if it's in poor shape and mention a very wet log or broken container as that is also useful information for a cache owner, more so than writing that it was 72 degrees, with clear skies and a light wind. Unless the weather was significantly bad or an exceptionally warm day in winter, I can't see the CO or other log readers caring about the weather when I found the cache.

As I said, either confusion or to be funny. Not sure what you mean by "high maintenance". It doesn't make much difference to me. I'm imagining it's such a simple hide that I won't need other logs. Anyway, we still all agree that he shouldn't do it. That's why I mentioned I'd talk to him about it.

I think it goes to the overall requirement that an earthcache be unique. "This is granite, let's talk about granite" is not unique. "This is granite, check out the inclusion at these coordinates and let's discuss it" is unique.

Yeah, I wasn't clear. I didn't mean to imply that one should talk about the cache specifically ("well, it was green, made out of metal, kinda rusted..." LOL ?) I meant people weren't keeping their log entries to talking about the experience of that cache. The day or the weather, or getting to GZ or what have you. I agree that a bit of detail about what brought you out that day, what you found interesting about the area, experiences you had getting there - totally relevant. It was the folks going on about their vacation - not even the caching part of the vacation - that made me

I don't necessarily talk about the cache, but I might talk about my day or the way to the cache or something I found interesting about the area (especially if it involves social housing in any way...). But I never cut and paste and I'm not padding my logs deliberately. The same here. On the more memorable caches, the ones where my logs run close to or over the length limit, it's mostly the story of my adventure on the way to GZ and back, with the cache itself barely rating a mention if it's just a standard box, and if it's something special that's meant as a surprise for the finder, I won't say anything at all about it that might spoil the surprise. My logs do relate specifically to my journey to that cache, and if several caches were found on the trip, I'll split the narrative between caches rather than just repeat everything. The only time I've done any cutting and pasting was for a series of geoart caches associated with the recent mega here, and even then I tried to add a sentence or two specific to each cache if I could.

I don't necessarily talk about the cache, but I might talk about my day or the way to the cache or something I found interesting about the area (especially if it involves social housing in any way...). But I never cut and paste and I'm not padding my logs deliberately.

Speaking of cynical... No, I'm saying these are people that are always arguing over various ways to improve the game, so they're open to all manner of changes. If they object as a group to any given suggestion, it's because something like it has already been considered at length -- or tried -- so the downside is well understood and you should listen to what it is. Taking off means having a community. I think you're mistaking my use of the word "community" for something specific, like events. Every place is different. Every community develops in its own way. That's why a central solution isn't likely to work for your area, and why the community can only grow from people in the community. Unfortunately, I'm not sure every area can develop a healthy community, but I do think that the only way you can have a healthy community is by first recognizing the it is a community and not mistake it for nothing more than a tiny, indistinguishable part of "geocaching". I'm not sure if anything more could be done to make life more rewarding for cache owners, but I've observed two things. First, cache owners need to be motivated by their caches first, and I've found they usually are. If they aren't, the best any rewards GS hands out will produce is more low quality caches. Second, the more GS produces artificial rewards for ownership, the more minimized the owners that don't need artificial rewards feel. If makes them feel like large quantities of inferior caches are considered more important than the heartfelt caches self-motivated COs put out. Wait. "Inspire"? Yes, that's a great idea. Work to inspire cache owners, not to reward them. GS tries to do a lot of that, and god bless them for it. But it won't help if there aren't any COs in your area to inspire. People regularly talk about this in the forums. I don't read much of what GS puts out, but I seem to recall blogs about the joys of good logs. As you observe, upvoting is already being studied. I don't think it will help, but I'm not opposed to it. The reason I don't think it will help is much the same as why I don't think CO rewards work: while imagining you're rewarding logs of the type you describe, in the end you only reward logs that win the reward, and that often is something quite different. You call it manipulation, but if they do something other than what you wanted them to do, blame the reward. Anyway, I think upvoting will be harmless, so I'll be all for it if only because it will make you happy, so don't accuse me of being negative or obstructive. But I predict it will be soon forgotten and ignored. I'm not sure exactly what you're proposing here. You talk about aiming higher, but I don't understand how a owner-only souvenir would do that. But, no matter, I'm all for it, too. In this case, I suspect that it will just be completely ignored. I doubt many people give any serious thought to next year's rewards. So at the same time I doubt it will do much for your cause of more or improved ownership, I also don't think it will significantly increase the number of bad caches that should never have been placed. So, sure, give it a try. I would have no problem with this if GS wanted to give it a try, but I think they try very hard to make the challenges simple so that anyone can understand it without much thought, so I doubt they use it. But to give it your best shot, maybe start a new thread on this specific idea and start bouncing ideas around about exactly how to structure the points and explain it to everyone. As you seem to understand, the devil's in the details, but I don't see any evil at the end of the road if the details can actually be worked out, so have at it!

Not a problem at all. Everyone her speaks the English language and would be happy to talk with you. Just give it a try. Best greetings, MB

That explains a lot. I've jumped back into catching after not being as active for a couple of years, and newly noticed these huge logs that don't really talk about the cache itself at all. I didn't realize there are log length challenges. There are challenges for every hecking thing now. ?

Talk about going off the rails. No one's advocating legislating morality. I know you're already off the rails by your own admission, but that has absolutely nothing to do with this discussion, whatsoever, which is examining the feasibility of whatever incentives could be offered for good cache ownership - their merits and their drawbacks.

So let me get this straight: You participate in a hobby where you make things primarily for people who don't live there and don't care about you, and you're upset because they're not appreciative enough. You want GS to create something to make you feel better about yourself for creating these things when you don't see the point? In addition, there isn't enough local activity for you to be more active in the hobby, and you're upset that you can't participate at the same level as people who live in busier areas. Two suggestions: Maybe the 'hiding part of this hobby isn't for you, AND Take responsibility for your own hobby! If you don't like your caching environment, go change it! Go make more cachers to find your caches! Host events! Talk it up! Get into the local papers! Presentations at libraries or schools or places of worship or community centers! Get people to join you! Get people excited about this hobby! If you can't, then there's your answer; it just might not work where you are. You're right; this IS a game based in the US. Too bad, but that's where those guys lived when they started Groundspeak. I think Groundspeak does plenty to make accommodations for other places, but at some point you're responsible for you and your own experience.

You might be a Social Butterfly if... You walk the walk and talk the talk—as in you like to go to events! You are fully immersed in the geocaching community and Event Caches are totally your thing. You love meeting all of your fellow geocachers and have a knack for helping newbies fall in love with the game! To earn the Social Butterfly souvenir, earn 70 points individually on your Friend League starting October 29 at noon UTC through December 3 at noon UTC. This month earn higher points for attending Event Caches! https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2018/10/you-might-be-a-social-butterfly-if/?newsletter=PM

Hard to define a single best day. But like you, most were getting one challenging cache. There is a 10 mile hike in the woods multi cache about 80 miles from us that is close to number one. Logged it as found the first trip but have hiked it a few more times just for the fun of it. Another was when I loaded of the kayak, drove 120 miles, and paddled 2 miles to get an island cache. And yet another was a cache 45 feet up in a big magnolia tree that required some form of climbing gear, took three trips before I finally managed to get to the cache. I don't expect to find many caches like these out in the wild. However, it sure would be nice to run across one every once in a while that didn't require a drive of 300 or more miles to get to. Wouldn't be none of this talk of burnout for me if that was the case.

I have posted this in other "forgot my pen" threads, so I'll echo it here: most people don't intend to go out caching with a pen, just as most people don't intentionally leave their wallets at home, or lose their pen in their bag, or leave a pen or hiking stick or phone or GPSr at a geocache. All have happened to me over the last eleven years of geocaching. I've never left my daughter at a geocache, but then she can walk and talk, and she wouldn't let me leave her behind even if I tried. If you have never forgotten anything, then kudos to you.

So why are there different cache types at all? Why not just one cache type, one icon, and just put different words in the title to differentiate cache types? I dont understand the resistance to the idea of having a different cache type for challenge caches. Would it actually harm the way you cache? It's funny in a way that we can all talk specifically about challenge caches, we all know *exactly* what type of cache that is as opposed to other cache types, and there are lots of them... but for some reason, there's disagreement that they are indeed a distinct type of cache.

Just because it is doesn't directly relate to geocaching doesn't make it an agendum. I've found and hidden caches near historic places that talk about the history of said place, of which geocaching had no mention. Caches are near natural springs that invite finders to try the water, also not geocaching-related. Such a request might be interpreted as more of an agenda as OP's example. Of course, as we all know, previous caches in no way set precedence for future cache publications. If OP feels strongly enough about the situation, I would definitely appeal this decision.

Hey, I can talk to this! This happened to me. My decision was to change the stage while keeping the rest of the multi the same. If you mean the "virtual/physical" attribute for the stage, I actually did not change the attribute, either. I'm not going to explain why, but I will mention that you should feel free to change the attribute if you can. Furthermore, I'll tell you that this approach did cause some confusion when a previous finder checked the stage on a whim and discovered the original sign based pointer was missing. She filed an NM pointing out it was broken. No big deal: I just filed an OM explaining that it had changed, and also sent that previous finder a note thanking her for the notice and explaining what had happened. It broke my heart when the original pointer disappeared, so I could only be thankful that someone else remembered how it used to be fondly enough to think I should know that it was broken.

When we talk about ugly babies, I'm thinking of logs that talk about what a stupid place this is for a cache or imply that the CO is incompetent in some way. So "the container leaks and the log was a mess" is fine, but "only an idiot would use a container like this" is more of an ugly baby comment. I think a lot of people don't recognize the difference. If you do, then you can carry on without worrying about me. The point is that there are many factors a finder might not understand, so suggestions should be neutral and explanatory, not dictating and self righteous. Local standards are just a good example of one such unknown standard, but a particularly good one because people that believe they know the one true standard are often snotty about telling other people what to do. I admit, I don't really have any idea which is true, but my impression from posts in the forum is that more often than not, the person complaining wrote a log that wouldn't be easy to view as helpful. I'm glad you presented this hypothetical example because it allows me to ask you what I've said to make you think I'd object to this log. It looks perfectly good to me. Sounds like a lot of logs I've written, actually. The ugly baby version would be, "Hike was too long. Nothing interesting in this area. Terrible trail, and it's outrageous that I had to cross a creek on a fallen tree. Obviously should have been rated T4. The CO tried to kill me by planting thorns around the cache. Stinky container, obviously being ignored." My suspicion is that some people will actually write something more like this, yet believe their log is as polite as your is. And then come here and saying that COs shouldn't out caches (babies) if they can't take feedback ("your baby is ugly").

Parents know their kid ain't cute they just don't talk about it.

Fully agree. Not few cache owners are the opposite here - quite easy to offend by an honest log. But I do not think it is too different in other places in the world... Aren't we all weak egomaniacs!? By the way: we usually talk about too LOW ratings. Did anyone of you ever complain about a rating that was too high? Finding the terrain 3 cache high in the tree or the terrain 4 cache which needs a ladder makes me usually complain about the rating. But what about the terrain 5 cache that can easily be climbed to so that terrain 4 would suit better? Or the difficulty 4 mystery cache that anyone solves in 3 minutes. Do you complain that the rating is too high? Perhaps I do not do this as often as other way round but I think it is important to do so, too. If you do in both directions it shows that you want the rating to suit the cache. If you only complain about low ratings it might show that you want to have a big statistics. Both may be true (for all of us)... Recently I solved a D3 mystery in one minute. Now the cache is rated 2.5 after my log - any maybe D2 may be even better as the riddle was really easy. The owner listened to me and no one else complained about the decreased rating as it was just too high... May be something different if the D5 cache would become a D3?! ;-)

I think we are still on topic, and I don't mean to offend Touchstone - if there really is an issue of COs (note plural) unreasonably deleting peoples logs, and continuing to do so, then let's talk about that as a reason for a change of some kind to deal with it... But I'm not seeing it...

To add to the above... Since I'm quite a fan of Earthcaches, and somewhat of a promoter and advocate for earthcaching, I often talk to people about earthcaching. Of those who aren't into earthcaching, here are the top 3 reasons why they don't do it: Number 1 - Too much work to do, too complex, hard to complete requirements, don't know what I'm looking at, don't have something to write down answers on, etc. (Some of this is being unprepared, some of it relates to overly complex ECs they have looked at, or even poorly written up ECs that don't give enough background info) Number 2 - It's virtually impossible to get an EC published, even when you jump through all the hoops, more hoops get created and there's so much inconsistency in the reviewing. (Well, no offence to the reviewers in this thread who have been very helpful in this discussion, but I tend to agree with this one - from my experience I have wasted many many many hours, probably 100s trying to get ECs published and then given up because of sometimes outrageously stretched and pedantic interpretations of guidelines, sometimes entirely made up ones) Number 3 - Oh, there isn't a number 3... Nope, I have never ever heard the reason, in the hundreds of people I have talked to about earthcaching, that they don't do ECs because of COs deleting their logs too quickly and upsetting them. Not once.

I'm not infuriated, but it does seem stupid. If ever there was a good example for posting an NM, this is it, yet they don't even mention that. Instead, we're supposed to quietly talk to the CO in order to to keep it a secret so no know else that might want to look for the cache knows it's a piece of junk. Sheesh. I'm not surprised by the "replace with fresh paper" suggestion even though it's unbelievably silly: ignoring the signatures, the log they show might have been added yesterday from the looks of it. By the time I get through all that, I'm only mildly amused by the idea that they are, it's true, telling seekers that they are supposed to perform maintenance if they can. Astonishingly counterproductive.

14 in 24h?!? That is so Amazing Race. Every so often I talk up the idea of doing the 8 countries from Panama City to Cancun, and - because things aren't that efficient down there - I keep wondering if 3 weeks might be rushing it. Interestingly, it looks like last-minute one-way flights home from Cancun cost next to nothing. I'd never have guessed. So it leaves the door open to an open-ended trip. Find a paradise beach along the way? Stay a while.