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I'm guessing that's because the caches in your area aren't that interesting, so the COs aren't expecting anyone to say anything interesting about them. I'd be really puzzled by a CO that placed a cache to encourage people to take a nice hike up a mountain to a beautiful view and then didn't read the reactions. That's the kind of cache we're talking about here. But to react to your comment, if a CO placed mundane caches and didn't even scan the DNFs for longer than usual logs that might indicate a problem, I'd say they weren't planning on maintaining their caches. I'd talk to them about that; I wouldn't accept it as a given that COs don't even glance at logs. But beyond that -- to go back to the original point about DNFs that don't reflect the cache's health -- I'd be kinda tickled if they got a CHS alarm and then ran out to fix a cache that wasn't broken because they didn't even bother to read the DNF logs that caused the CHS. Serves them right.

Last year we did Cape York from CQ, 6491.4 km without leaving the state. But all this talk of remote travelling, and looking at photos and caches found, has my brain ticking over, so I have just posted this to our 4wd clubs Facebook page. I reckon it would be well over 10000km over the 4-5 week trip. Must be time to put forward a proposal for another big trip. Hopefully all this Covid rubbish is gone by then. Autumn/Winter 2023. Central Australia. Approx 4-5 weeks. Simpson Desert crossing west to east. It can easily include Plenty Highway, or better still Sandover Highway, Birdsville Track, Oodnadatta Track, Strezlekie Track. So, a potential itinerary, up to Mt Isa, Sandover Highway, Alice Springs, Mt Dare, Simpson Desert, Birdsville, Birdsville Track, Oodnadatta Track to William Ck, Lake Eyre, Coober Pedy, Port Augusta, Strezlekie Track, home via Cameron Corner and/or Haddon Corner, Windorah, Blackall, Tambo, Springsure, Biloela. No idea of what distance that involves. Just looking back at some of the photos from our last Simpson Desert crossing about 7 years ago, and thinking, we should do that again. Thoughts?

I've never seen anything that bad, but I have no trouble imagining it. I suggest you talk to the new CO and mention how his inaccurate ratings have ruined your statistics. Point out to him that, like most geocachers, you aren't interested in meeting challenges using fake data.

If we are allowed to talk about our own "children", I would vote for Victoria Amazonica and Jaguar.

Okay, yeah, I misread your comment to infer that YOU updated something, which really, really threw me for a loop. There have been some changes in years past in the Datasheet program on how it interprets log entries for stations, which likely helped these stations get an accurate monumented date. (I only know this because one such update that was made back about a year ago) caused a whole bunch of logs that had no status, no agency, and no date appear tacked onto the history list on the datasheet. Had to talk to them and point out some stations that were causing this.

I don't think so, not for me. I usually talk to the people I know and not to all 100 who have signed-up. Just recently have attended an Event with more than 800 People https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC8GVCH_event-am-see-2021-event-at-the-lake-2021?guid=1768bcdd-034c-4155-950a-718a51a3accc and I have been in contact with about 10. The other 790 were not even close to me.

Thanks Keystone, this is the same advice I offered the cache owner when the caches were first submitted. Dan, In regards to the distance, the distance is variable but what we take into account is the audience and if the cache is part of a series. Let me talk in a local example for you. If for example caches were placed around the Canberra region but to the cardinal points then these caches may be further than 100km from each other but are set to appeal for the same audience. This is even more the case where the cache have the same names as a Platinum step within a series. In regards to appealing a reviewers decision this is always an option. Reviewers don't take offence and it helps us to ensure we are following the intent of the guidelines. Often for borderline case we will take a cache to appeals for you. Hope that helps.

Here we have a classic example of WHY we have peer review for new categories. Talk about a category that is completely subjective - one person's "urban legend" may not be another's... Then, you have the creator of the category bugging out of Waymarking the same year he created this "interesting" piece of Waymarking. My question is - if you expand to just "Legends", and these are people, how would this be different than "Epic Beings" if Epic Beings allow a statue of Lewis and Clark to be included in their category????

I've helped with Intro to Geocaching classes sponsored by a county parks department. The instructor presented a quick "chalk talk" at the parking lot, ending it with a challenge to spot a camouflaged geocache right there where the "chalk talk" had been given. (It was a "hidden in plain sight" camouflage cache.) Then we broke up into small groups with an experienced geocacher assigned to each group. Each group was also given a preprogrammed GPS receiver with 8-10 caches on a nearby trail. The caches were rather varied, but close to each other. The new geocachers could find several different types of hide and be back at the trailhead by lunchtime. But yeah, with beginners, each group needs an experienced geocacher just to catch the things they forgot from the "chalk talk".

Just figured I would post an update here, since we're partway (most of the way) through the summer. This has been a fun project for me, and some of our scouts really took interest too, while others didn't really. We had the whole gamut. What worked well -- having the scouts "vote" or submit ideas on where they wanted the TB to travel talking with the older (3rd/4th graders moving onto next grade) about geocaching, rules, and how to do things right. This age group wanted to follow the rules. posting updates about where the TB travelled on the pack FB group and public FB page. Those who were interested asked about it more. Asking my local geocaching group for help to get the TB moving. I met up with a couple cachers, who took the TB to events and meetups, allowing them to get out of state. hosting an "unofficial" cache event for the cub scouts (grades K-5th) -- they got to learn about geocaching, have fun finding caches, signing names, etc ....but when some kids didn't get the rules, it didn't mess with any official caches. (we had a couple kids empting swag and not replacing, even though we had a "swag bin" you could grab from. Other scouts kept them honest, but still....). What didn't / or what could have been done better -- I wasn't able to monitor/lead all the kids through the idea of geocaching. I think it would have been awesome, retrospectively, to get help from a couple local geocachers willing to talk about / lead interested scouts on a hike and talk about geocaching. This wouldn't work at the pack level, but at a den level, and only for the older kids, I think. Obviously I transitioned away from my idea for the pack planting actual caches. That wouldn't have worked. We did hide a couple caches, with interested scouts, but it's something that will be maintained by me. I think at this age, the parent needs to be willing to help maintain the cache for it to be a go. Some of the parents didn't really understand (or care) about geocaching. It would be good to have a couple adults (i.e. more than just one) who know how to do it, and how to teach kids the basics. Other takeaways I got a ton of help from my local (state) geocaching group. I wish I had known about that earlier. Sometimes kids who love geocaching are just not in the mood to geocache. It's okay, and don't take it personally. There are a bunch of people who are willing to offer tips/advice for you if you message them. My kids regularly ask me to ask for additional tips. And people are very kind. scouts will be much more interested in geocaching at the older ages (middle/high school)....BSA troop level. At cub scout level, Trackables are cool enough to keep them interested ("ooh, look, our trackable made it to Wyoming!"). Thanks so much for all your help, I really appreciate it.

The definition of "game" in general is oft debated. I don't think there will be any consensus here But I primarily refer to this as a hobby. Occasionally a game. Depends on context I think. If I'm talking about stats, my mind may jump to game. If I'm talking about the fun and adventure, usually hobby. A game doesn't have to be competitive, or necessarily even have win/lose conditions. Some may even call some hobbies games, depending on their motive for 'doing' the hobby (could building and selling crafts be considered a game to some? *shrug*) I don't think the label is as important as how we promote the activity and talk it up.

My opinion? Let's talk about extremes. If we (theoretically!) excluded all the categories mentioned above, I don't know if I will ever find a waymark for this category. If we include all of them, we will have a lot of crosspostings, but we will also have a category with a lot of fine art on a grave and won't miss any great pieces of art, just because it also represents his/her hobby/occupation or the deceased is a Dead Poet. So, I guess we need something in between. Maybe we should think about it that way: Is the category to be ex- or included also an art category or not? For example: One of my Out of Place Graves is a wonderful piece of art (in my humble opinion). Not sure, if it will create a "wow" for everyone, but let's just pretend that it does. Would you post that one in "Out of Place Graves" or "Funerary Art"? One is an art category, and the other lists graves that are not on a cemetery (artful or not). IMHO there is no reason for preventing a crossposting in that situation. I would understand, if a grave artwork was posted in two different art categories. F.e. "Funerary Art" and "Relief Art Sculptures". In the bottom of my heart I would even allow crossposting in 2 art categories, but that is most likely just my opinion. What I really would like to clarify: Are we talking about "figurative" art to compensate, what the Figurative Public Sculpture category denies (= animals and humans) or are we also considering f.e. abstract art? I posted a photo of the grave of Hedy Lamarr in this thread on July 28, 2017, but received no feedback. PS: Don't worry, I won't shoot you. I don't even own a gun.

OK, so I am working up preliminary areas where Funerary Art could be found. Up front I will say I am not religious, so I have not been raised in any religious tradition (calm down, I am not going to talk about religion). Therefore, I am not familiar at what types of tombs/stones/art on final resting places would be found in places of worship. Most of the locations I am finding are related to Christian churches and burial traditions. If anyone can help with other religions/burial traditions, I would be quite grateful. Remember, the reason this category is getting up and rolling is that Figurative does not accept Funerary Sculptures. We are not trying to create a redundant category and there are many categories that deal with markers for the deceased. The thrust of the category is funerary art, not final resting places or type of monument for the deceased. This category recognizes that most of the sculptures would be found in a cemetery. However, there are other burial locations that may include sculptures that are funerary in nature, such as churches, cathedrals (bigger church), mausoleums and some burial locations that were owned by the deceased (family burial locations). Are there other locations common in other faiths/burial traditions I am missing? (Help please.) Any comments/thoughts on what should/shouldn't be accepted and why. Here are some locations where Funerary Art could be found. Should the category accept/decline from these various locations and styles of burial for the deceased: Sculpture/Artwork found on a headstone, columbarium, crypt, tombstone, mausoleum, ledger grave marker, cenotaph, tomb, effigies, church monument, cadaver monument, .... ? I know some of these have their own categories. Any of these that are related to s specific burial of an individual would not be accepted in Figurative. Figurative only accepts monuments that are, in essence, honoring all the deceased. Figurative does not accept pieces of a specific ('known") individual--that goes in Statues of Historic/Religious Figures. Just looking for comments/thoughts on what should/shouldn't be accepted and why. Existing Waymark Categories (I probably missed some) that need to be considered to be included/excluded: Death Mask Gravestones Broken Column Headstones Occupational/Hobby Grave Stones Woodmen of the World Grave Markers/Monuments Headstones of Centenarians **Veteran Memorials (Many categories - Specific wars and general categories) Homemade Tombstones Graves Mentioning a Cause of Death Out of Place Graves Statues of Historic Figures Statues of Religious Figures Dead Poets Society Zinc Headstones Mausoleum Relief Art (I am contacting Relief Art to verify if they accept/reject relief funerary art) Figurative Public Sculpture Sphinx Sculptures Equestrian Statues Epic Beings Lions, Bears, ... Pet Cemeteries (**There are many categories that honor the resting places of Veterans. For my convenience, I am grouping them into this overall term.) I am not against cross-posting and NOT suggesting all the above should be excluded. Remember the goal of this category is to highlight the art of the memorial - not the final resting place of the deceased. Members are concerned about the premise of the "Wow" factor as to what the category is wishing for. There is concern that the criteria may be too subjective (though there are many categories with 'wow' factor, this is not new). The reason for that idea of "Wow" is that, for instance, there are many headstones with little lambs (for the tragic loss of a child), or fingers pointing upwards, etc. Would a size criteria help (ex., roughly over 3 ft/1m square)? The piece must not be mass produced-it need to be a unique piece. How would members like to see this phrased/defined? Please don't get bogged down in format for title, etc. Right now, we need to best define what the category is trying to highlight and thus clearly define the types of sculptures/art the category is looking for. And I know there are always exceptions when a Waymarker finds something so magnificent we did not anticipate that. Again, I am just thinking aloud and looking for input. Please don't shoot the writer [grin]. Take care, Outspoken1 (Sandy)

The one playground I went to was in a state park, and no one around. It turned out to be a magnetic altoids tin under the front of the slide. Moms with jogging kid-carriers are the worst, and I even hear the angsty talk on phones on rails to trails, and small local parks by moms... Sheesh... - I could imagine what it'd be like if santa in camo was found on his back under the slide by one...

The only real way is enforcing the minimal rules which can be verified (typically that's HQ and the TOU for the website), and finding some way promote values and ethics where not verifiable. Promote positivity in the game, community, aspects that people enjoy the most which negatively affect people the least. Talk down practices that make things worse off for people, or which promote competitive behaviour (where not everyone involved has opted in), and promote benefits of it in an effort to help people have overall great experiences, and encourage people to realize it's an individualistic hobby and not take offense when people do things differently or enjoy different aspects of it... It's really not an easy system to make "work for everybody" - and it never will. All we can do is help to try to make it a great hobby for as many people as possible.

The obvious answer is that it's up to the CO of the challenge cache. But unless they're pretty clear about it -- and I've never seen that -- I'd assume it's just find logs. I wouldn't expect a problem, but, worst case, I'd be ready to try to talk the CO into accepting my finds if he initially rejects them. (I don't think I've actually run into enough caches in this state to cause me a problem in achieving a clear success at the challenge. What keeps happening to me is that I far exceed the requirement by the time I get around to signing the challenge cache log even when there's an initial period where I have to work towards that goal. Once I started looking for unfound caches, I couldn't stop myself.) My reaction to your question is that this is a good reason not to call them "lonely" precisely because it opens up this ambiguity: a CO's or previous finder's visit means they're not lonely, right? "Unfound" is more accurate, but not as cute. I think "unloved" works here: someone that can't find a friend might be called "unloved" even though their parents love them. The first few challenges I saw of this type used the terms "recovered" and "neglected", but those have fallen out of favor. I always liked those terms better, but I don't think they're any better at making it obvious CO visits don't count. Indeed, "neglected" kinda implies even more strongly than "lonely" that the CO hasn't visited.

I know what you mean, but happily in this case I don't have to question the veracity of the claim because the solution remains the same: the person that's so sure this is happening can go talk to the people. explaining how silly they look to people that recognize the obvious subterfuge. If the person making the claim is really blowing smoke about how much evidence there is, then they can decide for themselves whether to initiate a conversation that might make them look petty for accusing someone of doing something they didn't do. If I was that sure, I'd just say, "FTF@8am. Ignoring the signatures from before the cache was hidden." Oh, wait. They sign the log in the middle? Obviously they don't intend to claim FTF, so I'd just take FTF without commenting on it. If I saw this in my area, I'd assume they were people that were there when the CO hid the cache and are planning on claiming the find after the FTF. I consider that kind of "finding while hiding" a little silly, but it doesn't sound to me as if they're trying to block you from claiming FTF.

That's pitiful, both for the seekers and the CO, but I don't see why it matters to you. Sure, I'd talk to them all to try to figure out why they're wasting their effort that way instead of having fun finding caches, but there's no way to prevent it and every reason to think anything you try to do to prevent it will only have the effect of making it hard on people that are actually geocaching. Worry more about other people that are playing the same game you are and worry less about people playing some stupid game that makes no sense.

My estimate is that if your rule had been in effect for the last few years, I would have at least 10 times fewer caches in my area, and they wouldn't be anywhere near as good as the ones I have now. Why would I think that's better? I'd much rather have my experienced COs who have hidden hundreds of high quality caches than a smattering of caches by people who, by law, don't have the experience from hiding even 10 caches. If the prolific COs really did "shut out" others, then I might at least listen to you, but I'm seen them do no such thing. The high volume COs in my area hide hundreds of caches because they easily find hundreds of places to hide caches, and there are thousands more places after that for anyone else to use. If caches aren't being maintained, then they should be archived. In my area, the caches hidden by the high volume COs are the best maintained. It's much more common with a CO with 10 or fewer caches to neglect their hides. But, in any case, they should be archived because they aren't being maintained, not forbidden in advance because your faulty logic predicts that they won't be maintained at some point in the undefined future. In other words, my experience contradicts every single one of your assertions. So please, please, if you really are experiencing those problems, please look for ways to fix it in your local community. And, in fact, that's the obvious place to start anyway: if someone's dominating your area with crappy caches, talk to them. Work with them to make more areas available for other COs to hide caches. Treat them as the friends they should be, the friends you're playing this game with, the friends hiding so many caches for you to find. You're acting as if they're impersonal powers inflicting this situation on you for their own evil ends that you can't discuss with them. My guess is that they're just filling a vacuum and would welcome anyone volunteering to plant their own caches.

Well, I'm not really seeing that. I admit, it's hard to read the OP's combative responses, but I think he's making valid points about the few examples being raised being less than convincing because of other possible scenarios which would look identical to the seeker without involving any incorrect logs. As I read these examples, they tend to clump in 2 classes. The first is fake finds that are clearly an anomalies, so anyone seeing it would discount it. The other class is fake finds followed by a missing cache, and I don't really don't understand how the person reporting the "impact" determined the fake find was fake. The other example we've seen is a throwdown where the real problem that impacted people was the throwdown, not the fake find. It doesn't help that many of the examples are imagining impacts, including a few that show successful searches that involved no fake logs, but "it could have happened! I claim that's one reason the discussion has slipped over from imaginary impacts to imaginary solutions involving COs deleting logs when the OP wants to talk about whether the incorrect logs are a problem to begin with, not how the problem can be solved. Admittedly, the OP tends to reject examples instead of discussing the degree the fake log really did impact the poster in light of other events we all accept as part of geocaching which could easily lead to exactly the same experience. That makes it hard to follow the discussion, but it's more of a rhetorical failure than a logical fallacy.

It does feel like you redefining what "fake log" you want to talk about: A - fake find when dropping a throwdown? B - fake find after series of DNFs? C - fake find amongst real find logs? D - all of the above?

People drop throwdowns all the time. Can you, just this once, forget about the cache owner and approach this from the standpoint of my OP, which I've repeated endlessly to figurative deaf ears, evidently? If you want to talk about what the cache owner should do (in your opinion) then start your own thread.

"We just unveiled a new catalogue system that allows to you search for all sorts of unique media at our library, as well as all of our partnered libraries across the country!" "Great! How can I use it?" "Sorry, it's for staff only. You'll have to go talk to a librarian at the front desk to perform a search." "What...?!" "You're more than welcome to go flick through the index card cabinet, though!" --- (somewhat true story) This is a ridiculous leap backwards by HQ. Luckily it looks like https://gcutils.de/lab2gpx/ still works?

This. Specifically, ngs.infocenter@... will be the people you need to talk to.

My problem with this is that the situation would be exactly the same if the cache was really there, but you just can't find it. Your argument would make it seem reasonable to say a legitimate find log also wastes your time and money. But this has a simple solution that I'd use for reasons not related to fake logs: if I DNFed a cache that was a significant effort to get to, and then someone else found it, before I spent the time and money to go back, I'd talk to the person that found it. I'd be assuming they really did find it and be asking to gather information about how I could have missed it, but if it turned out to be a fake find, that would surely come out in the conversation.