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I see no reason to think it would make any difference at all whether the caches are disabled or archived. Either way, it's two less caches for your hotel friend to find. You assume that if the disabled caches are archived, two new caches will pop up in their place, but I don't see that happen. Too often when I hear people arguing for fixing caches as soon as possible instead of leaving them disabled, I realize their arguments are really supporting the idea that more caches should be planted. After all, your specific complaint is that your hotel friend doesn't have enough caches to find. That could be solved as easily by you planting new caches as by that other CO fixing his old caches. Disabled caches are just special cases of non-existent caches -- they are non-existent caches that, nevertheless, have an identity and location -- but too often people think of disabled caches as a special case of existing caches. If they existed, they wouldn't be disabled. If you're worried about specific locations that must always have an available cache, then the solution isn't a general purpose way of dealing with bad COs or a CO score that helps automatically identify problems; the solution is to talk to the CO and explain why you think there needs to be a cache there pronto and volunteer to plant one if he wants to archive his. In most cases, though, there's no rush, which is why you don't do that every time someone disables a cache.

There's a lot to like about this post, but at the same time, I'm a little worried about this description of "get involved" being very close to "call in the cops". Yes, get involved, but first get involved with each other. If you receive a nasty response to an NM, the first thing you should do is ask the CO why he's being nasty when you're just trying to help him out. Our first goal should be to make bad COs better, not to immediately jump to calling in GS to spank them. I can't help but think that at least some of the shouts of "cache cop!" are caused by a CO having a bad day and being unnecessarily short with someone and finding themselves called on the carpet about it without any chance to talk it over with the hurt party.

Before would be okay with me. But by the way, after I typed my last response, it occurred to me that the main thing I was looking for is for all of us to meet up at the same time, and that the place does not really matter. We could meet at your event table, as long as we all shoot for a specific time, like noon. At that point, we could all kinda figure out which way to go from there to sit down and talk. Might even be in a break room at the event or something. Again, just some ideas. A dinner would be nice, but if it's a pain, we just shoot for the "meet at the table at time X" thing. Is there a cost associated with going to the existing event where your table is? If so, being Scottish, I would like to avoid paying a fee just to get all of us together at the same time; if possible. (We could just go with the restaurant meet thing and get something for our bucks.) If the event is free, we could meet at the table and go from there.

Old vlogg with english subtitles, and this one i will talk a little bit of my self

I was going to point out that approach in my original post, but I started laughing too hard, so I left it out. I was even going to talk about creating a sockpuppet account to do it by myself...except lists are a premium feature, so I'd have to pay for my sockpuppet. An easier workaround would be as follows, which is what I used to do to 'copy' a bookmark list created by someone else. It can be used to copy your own list, although having a Copy button on owned lists would be better: View the other List and click "Create Pocket Query". Schedule that PQ to run. View that PQ on the map using the official app (Lists --> View on Map). Zoom out a bit, select "Add all to List", and create a new list. No need for a second account, but does require using both the website and official app.

I was going to point out that approach in my original post, but I started laughing too hard, so I left it out. I was even going to talk about creating a sockpuppet account to do it by myself...except lists are a premium feature, so I'd have to pay for my sockpuppet.

I find the OP to be missing the point - and the fun - of geocaching. Of course people want to read about the caching adventures of others. You may an exception, but whenever I talk to cache owners, they universally tell me that getting nice long longs is part of their motivation for placing caches. This is even more true for those who place quality caches. It is that nice little reward that comes into my inbox every so often that brings a smile and encourages me to place another one. I used to place a lot more caches, but when people stopped writing decent logs and instead "TFTC" started showing up, I cut way back. I agree with the responder who said he considers that an insult to the cache owner. If someone gets tick bites or poison oak or disturbs a neighbor when searching for my cache, I want to know about it. I may be able to change the location a bit or maybe even archive the cache if I think it's a serious problem that can't be remedied.

Hi all, I'd like to ask some questions down this line if I may? I'd particularly value Australian perspectives on them. My wife, stepsons and I started geocaching about 18 months ago and while I wouldn't call us addicts, gee we enjoy it when we do it! To date, we've used my wife's smart phone - my phone isn't on a data plan, and I sense that my wife's phone's GPS isn't quite what it could be. So, Australian geocachers, there seems to be a bit of talk here about GPS units. I've never used one, so I'm very green on that front. If we decided to buy a GPS unit purely for geocaching purposes, what would be the advantage over a smart phone - simply that it's a smidge more accurate? How much does a GPS (not top of the range for our occasional use) cost? And I would presume that there would be some form of data usage, so what do people find are their ongoing costs? And where do you buy them?! They might be basic questions to you, but they're biggies for us! Thank you to whoever reads this and chooses to respond! BJ (and Tara)

This is perfect. As I was reading over this, I could see that everyone's making good suggestions, but mostly they're all ways to avoid the basic problem of people looking for caches without either using their heads or reading the description. If they'd done either, they wouldn't end up in the trailer park. Since the person affected is your friend, perhaps this would be a perfect chance to teach some people a lesson. Regardless of any mitigation you do based on suggestions here, talk it over with your friend and give him a plan for dealing with interlopers when he spots them. I mean, just basically coming out and demonstrate his understanding of the problem and pointing out the results could have been much worse if someone else owned the trailer park would be good, but personally, I'd encourage him to have fun with it, even putting the fear of the lord into people's hearts first before letting them off the hook by talking to them about what they did wrong. There's no real solution to this problem other than not putting a cache there, but perhaps you and your friend could use the challenge to make the world a better place. If you want.

I guess my cases are unique in that I do maintain other abandon caches from time to time and my brother likes to suggest the hide and read the logs but not go out and find them! I should probably just use my id for those and let him watch! I just find it wrong to use not logging on as a criteria for Needs Archive- I prefer if you have an interest in the cache just shoot me an email and we will talk and resolve the issue! The reason I adopt without permission is to preserve the great logs and fun times had with a very worthy cache! I can't be the only one out there that is entertained with others experiences and especially with highly expressive logs! Some are just great! A good cache should have a life of it own and if abandoned there should be a way to adopt it thru the reviewer and preserve the great logs and history of the cache! The Box is not near as important as the experiences we all share playing this game. It is just totally great!

I just got "bitten" by this bug. Someone asked me for links to interesting caches, I sent two GC codes (typed into the message as GC codes only, i.e. no URLs) ... and later we found out, that the message was totally screwed up . The text showed the same GC code in all places, and the (auto-generated) links all pointed to a different cache. Are cachers supposed to actually talk about geocaching when using the Message Center? If so, fixing this bug would be a great idea . Thank you!

Yes, I like them. I just ignore the ones I'm not interested in whether it's because I'm not likely to be able to meet them or because the challenge just doesn't seem interesting. Dunno how many is too many to you. You could try talking to the CO and mention that you'd like to see more achievable challenges, just like you can talk to COs about any other caches you think are a waste of space.

There has always been a problem with getting help with Garmin to assist with Delorme file transfers - one would not talk about the other so you get caught in the middle. I hope that gets better now. What I want to see is Corrections in Delorme being permanent. They had the river names correct in 8 and 10 is wrong a lot or missing! I would like to trace better especially state borders and rivers. I like Delorme but not happy with all the errors!

Hello everyone! I am Son of Cyclops and started collecting geocoins back in 2005. Throughout my caching I collected a lot of coins but due to my interest being elsewhere and life getting in the way of geocoins and geocaching. I am selling off the last of my collection. In total, I have 543 coins on the Google Sheets list which I have attached in 3 different binders and a box. I would prefer to see if I can sell the entire collection to one person or if I can break it up in large portions that would be ok as well. A small portion of the trackable coins are activated and I can transfer these to you. If your interested in specific coins, we can talk about prices. But if I sold the entire collection to someone (to reduce the work on selling them off in smaller portions), I would ask $1800 obo. Not sure what the current market is for geocoins but this prices out to about $3.30 a coin which I feel is reasonable. Again if you are interested in smaller groups of coins or individual ones, we can talk. Some of the coins are more special which I listed below (although they are copied onto the list in the link) The Easter Coin Bunny (Blue and Red) The Easter Coin Bunny (Green and Pink) UF Gator Mystery Pay it Forward Gold GeoBandit Mystery 1markymark1 bronze 07 1markymark1 antique silver 07 Geocoin Club ROT13 Pure Silver Geocoin (Only one in public hands) https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sdzCtHnX-DwT1qij99ujaOrbxQ_1XGb8xD1PJukOCUE/edit?usp=sharing Thanks for the time and don't hesitate to ask any questions!

I'm not the first person to ask here, but for some reason the question keeps getting ignored: What problem? Lots of talk about whether it would be better to routinely lock archived caches, or eliminate them from the database entirely, or just mask their coordinates, but I don't understand why anyone thinks any of those things are needed. The problems people are talking about seem insignificant compared to the various run-of-the-mill ways archived cache listing with accurate coordinates are useful. This is exactly the kind of minor complaints about imaginary problems that convinced GS to essentially wipe out challenge caches and completely change how problem caches are identified. Now I'm worried that archived cache listings will be similarly wiped out to fix these "obviously" terrible yet completely unidentified problems.

Thanks then I won't talk about the ones you have to solve a puzzle to get to the event.

Yes, as long as they know it's expected, so, as RuideAlmeida mentions, be sure to talk to other COs to get it going. I thought I heard that Curse of the FTF series are now forbidden because they forced (well, "forced" at least) someone to plant a cache whether they wanted to or not. You're not allowed to obligate another CO to plant a cache in your series, you can only ask them to.

For the android maps you can use openandromaps.org, they provide good maps for the whole of Europe and more. I've been Geocaching in Prague without speaking Czech and can't remember having any problems. I don't know if you've been to a country before where you couldn't understand the language, but humans are pretty good at communicating with each other without talking each other's language. (And most people talk some English) So don't worry and enjoy your holiday!

I snipped out the parts of your post to highlight some of the things I wanted to comment on. I wouldn't object to having some flexibility in creating an even with a higher D rating, as long it didn't create an additional burden for reviewers having to arbitrate all the requests for giving an event a rating higher than D1. It's hard to take your post seriously about justifying a higher D-rating around Christmas (keep in mind that not everyone celebrates Christmas). There's always going to be some reason why attending a specific event would be difficult (for example, I wish I could have attended a WWFM event several years ago in Ethiopia but I was enroute on an airplane at the time) but that is no reason to increase the difficulty. I am curious why geocachers in your area talk about "dead of events". The point of an event is to bring together geocachers to socialize, meet new geocachers and old, and talk about geocaching. I fail to see how the difficulty should make any difference. Filling up a D/T grid is just a side game and I, personally don't want to see guideline changes just to cater to some challenge cache or other side game. The only reason that I could envision an event with a rating higher than D1 would be if it was in a location that was from some reason difficult to find (e.g. behind an unmarked door in Manhattan), which, to me kind of defeats the whole point around events. Creating an event with a rating higher than D1 just so attendees can fill in a square on a D/T grid is not, to me, a legitimate reason.

I just found this thread and I like to share my opinion with you. First of all, I agree that 95% of events should be D1 because there is no reason for a higher D-rating. But then there are the 5% which are special. And the new rules give no space to adapt the D-rating to a special event, and that is a pity. Groundspeak acts like a poor government: they "improve" their regulations where is no need to do so. I would give the final decision about an event-D-rating into the hands of the reviewers in order to make exceptions possible, if they are reasonable. For example an event at christmas should have a higher D-rating because it is hard enough to leave the family to attend. Or a clock-change-event (summer/winter) at 02:00 AM in the morning, to give only two examples. Personally I drove sometimes 100 or even more kilometers to an event if the subject (and the rating) was interesting. Now - when all events are D1 - they are no longer attractive and I will focus my activities on other cache types. I know lots and lots of cachers they think the same way, and in my environment some guys already talk about the "dead of events". No doubt about it that a "stammtisch" (regulars' table) is mentionned as D1. But to forbid something that worked not so bad in the past should always be the last solution. I remember the one year without challenge caches, and they came back with some other rules. Why not aks the event owners to clearly justify their event-D-ratings in order to define some wise limits. Groundspeak might have forgotten that most of the players are paying clients. And if they lose fun, Groundspeak will lose money. In short: it's a game and cheating is part of it. If some cachers need to cheat, they disqualify themselfes and lose reputation. But for what reason Groundspeak is destroying the attractivity of some events? What comes next? All traditional caches wil get a D1-rating too, because they are easy to find if the coordinates are known before? I have filled my DT-grid with all possible 81 event ratings before the new rules were installed. For me it was a pleasure to drive a long way to an interesting event and I met some real cool guys there and we are still in contact. I would never have met them if the event had a D1 rating - because I would not have been there. So the higher rating was a prove for the classical sense of events: come together, meet new friends, share your hobby with others, and so one. With the new rules this will get lost for many people. And those who refuse a higher event-D-rating, just use your ignore list and stay at home. Nobody is raping you to attend, so please don't judge the others they like to do so. Just think about it.

I hope my posts don't come across as combative sophistry. I'm just discussing a topic that I find interesting with others who (hopefully) also find it interesting. And likewise. I get very flustered when I see critical opinions posted that I believe (key) are solely based on personal tastes and don't further discussion, and then I run off on a moral policing crusade. All I like to see is people getting along and being reasonable in disagreements. But often I fall into the boat of being the target of my own words. In this case, I was following the premise posed by the initial link, and the sentiment shared by Touchstone. The latest guideline link solidifies the point that yes, attendees need to be "at the event coordinates", which I believe everyone agrees is 'normal'. That doesn't change the fact that exceptions can always be made, but that's true of any of the guidelines, so isn't worth battling over. My primary point, which I still stand by, but which I pushed much too far here going off the rails and for which I apologize, is the moral "It's ok to not like things, just don't be a jerk about it." It's far too easy to hold that view so strongly to the point that it applies even to the people who espouse it. I still need to work on knowing when not to talk. =P It's the end of the year. The forums are a bastion for bringing out the worst in people, myself included. We don't all have to be best of friends, but we can all proceed with respect and ... ah well, here I go again, eh? Ok, off to finish off the year. Happy caching, folks. The concept of multi-waypoint events is an interesting one. I'd love to hear from HQ what they thought of the idea. I'm willing to bet something like that's been tried, but told that event must be at the posted coordinates, with alternate waypoints being references for optional activities and whatnot. It's an interesting compromise. What about claiming the event though? The stats would only show the listing as at the posted coordinates, even if the event equally took place at two simultaneous locations. But then if they're close enough to each other the statistical difference would be negligible. I guess the sticking point might be whether the EO publicly allows people to 'attend' the event from the alt waypoint or not.

Talk down to me all you like - I've not done so to you. You call me insulting, but your condescension is no better. I've not insulted any single person, but rather what some people will do for a number. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I find all the excuse-making and loophole-searching quite distasteful. I'm not here to enforce rules or tattle, but I see nothing wrong with calling anyone out when they go to great lengths to justify something which ultimately is meaningless, silly, and yes...ridiculous. I agree with J Grouchy and don't see why his arguments should be considered antagonistic rhetoric or how being affected / not affected by the issue being discussed is in any way relevant to the validity of the arguments presented.

Talk down to me all you like - I've not done so to you. You call me insulting, but your condescension is no better. I've not insulted any single person, but rather what some people will do for a number. Maybe I'm splitting hairs, but I find all the excuse-making and loophole-searching quite distasteful. I'm not here to enforce rules or tattle, but I see nothing wrong with calling anyone out when they go to great lengths to justify something which ultimately is meaningless, silly, and yes...ridiculous.

Are we supposed to talk about cryptocurrency in cryptic code?

To whom do you think the online attendee will talk to, if everyone else just drops in and is leaving again? I have the answer! To the multi tasking multi connecting machine mentioned above.