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I will now describe a much older statistics issue that is still unresolved. When viewing the 'waymarks' (from the drop-down menu on the top of the welcome page) and moving from past-30-days-most-visited to past-365-days-most visited (or from latter to former), an error message box appears. An Error Has Occurred... After creating this error, my access to that waymarks page can be disrupted for hours.

Premium Member [Caches Found] 22300 Found it 08/11/2016 I headed on up the hill this morning While the wild westerlies tried at times to blow me off the mountain No rain !! Here on the exposed westerly bit of the mountain, I was hiding from the blast as best I could And soon found something cache like !! Ooh !! Yuck !! It's a puddle in there !! I guess there was a container attached to the lid I found somewhere in there once I satisfied meself with signing the 'camo' to satisfy the log signing claim Hey !! I found the cache TFTC !! View Log Member [Caches Found] 365 Temporarily Disable Listing Temporarily Disable Listing 07/11/2016 hi, please this is not in any shape to collect. View Log Premium Member [Caches Found] 1994 Found it Found it 06/11/2016 Easy find the cache, but the lid is broken, well is full of water. Found piece of plastic bag where once was a logbook. Need to fix this. View Log Member [Caches Found] 137 Needs Maintenance 04/11/2016 Pretty much destroyed. Lid is smashed, well is full of water, logbook nowhere to be seen. I hope the CO will repair as it's a great cache. As for Te Reo- a couple of colleagues wrote this: Mauao Kopurererua Takitimu Huria Ngati Ranginui e Otumoetai e E kore rawa Te tangata E pakari I te wai marino Otumoetai e Member [Caches Found] 137 Found it 04/11/2016 Good news - I found it. Bad news - it's pretty much destroyed. Lid is smashed, well is full of water, logbook nowhere to be seen. This cache was a piece of 4" PVC pipe buried vertically in the ground and was in trouble for a long time before being disabled. Cache

Some are available on your Statistics page:https://www.geocaching.com/my/statistics.aspx Others are available from various third-party statistics tools. These are based on well-known challenge caches. Here is a Help Center article on Challenge Caches in general:http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=206 And here is a blog post that describes the Fizzy and Jasmer challenges specifically (as well as the 365 challenge): https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2014/08/jasmer-fizzy-and-365/

I like to add badges and things to my profile, but I do so with the expectation that the only person who cares about my profile at all is me. I don't mind badges or souvenirs, my problem is that ones that I would care about don't exist. Completed Jasmer, D/T matrix, 365/366 calendar, 360 degree circle, and 500 mile well traveled cacher. Also, completed GeoTours. So create them yourself and paste them in there! Share them with others who have also achieved those things. That's what people used to do.

I like to add badges and things to my profile, but I do so with the expectation that the only person who cares about my profile at all is me. I don't mind badges or souvenirs, my problem is that ones that I would care about don't exist. Completed Jasmer, D/T matrix, 365/366 calendar, 360 degree circle, and 500 mile well traveled cacher. Also, completed GeoTours.

Then the solution is to not discuss any challenge cache ideas that might conceivably violate any of Groundspeak's challenge cache guidelines, at least if there are any new challenge caches that use those ideas. No, the solution is just to discuss with common sense, on topic, and sheesh, treat the thread just like other threads that may talk about issues and concerns without naming specific caches. Yes there may be collateral damage through discussion, but my hope for the discussion is not to become a thread where people keep bringing up and naming GC's that seem to break the guidelines. Take that to reviewers, there's no relevant reason to the discussion to call them out specifically here, just like in other similar threads. [Emphasis in original.] If you apply a little common sense, then you should quickly realize there are numerous relevant reasons for naming specific challenge caches. For example, the cache I recently mentioned was written in Spanish, which I don't understand very well. Although Google Translate indicated that the cache required one to "have found a cache of more than 10,101 km from home," we all know Google Translate can sometimes seriously misinterpret passages. I wanted people to be able to refer to the cache in question so that they didn't have to rely on Google Translate. Someone else might come across another challenge cache that requires people to find 100 caches on a single day, which would seem to contradict Groundspeak's "time-limited" guideline. An examination of the actual challenge cache, however, might indicate that the listing page later clarifies that the "single day" refers to a single day of the 366-day Finds Calendar on your Profile page's Statistics page (i.e., years are irrelevant). Another person might come across a challenge cache that requires a 1,000-day consecutive finding streak, despite Groundspeak's 365-day limit on such challenges. A closer inspection of the actual listing page might reveal that this particular challenge was published in 2014, before the new limit was imposed. But I'm still not sure why you're so fixated on omitting challenge cache names. There will be "collateral damage" to questionable challenge caches even if the cache names are absent from the discussion (and the loss of all the benefits that could entail). As you noted earlier, "it's certainly not hard [for Groundspeak] to pull a daily list of worldwide challenge caches and find it easily and quickly, since they're published so rarely." So I stand by my original point. If you don't want to risk Groundspeak archiving questionable challenge caches, then don't mention them on these forums, either by name or by concept. I've refrained from doing so on several occasions. The "find caches X kms apart in a day" challenges likely were published before the new guidelines took effect. Now, requiring people to find two caches on a single day violates the "time-limited" guideline (see #9). Your variations also would run afoul of that same guideline. Seriously, requiring the finding of two caches in a single day (i.e., 24-hour day), is against the new challenge cache guidelines.

Trying to find out where I find out requirements for being awarded a particular souvenir or what souvenirs are available? EXAMPLE: I thought I'd get a souvenir awarded for 30 days consecutive caching. Do I have to go to 365 consecutive days? How do I find that out? How do I know what other souvenirs are available to me? Thank you.

this part is interesting to me. could you be more specific in this subject? Look at https://www.geocaching.com/blog/2014/08/jasmer-fizzy-and-365/ and you'll see three typical challenges someone might try to accomplish. There's no way I know of to use the GC.com web site to find needed caches to fill in your Fizzy Challenge grid. You can run a series of queries or if you download a bunch of PQs to filter offline or use Project-GC you click a button and it shows you. Same goes for finding caches placed on specific dates or months/years referenced by the other challenges on that page. I'm going to a new area not near my home location and I'd like to find some of the oldest caches, say 2003 or older. I sometimes look and see if there are caches which haven't been found in 6+ months and consider going after those. I might try and apply any of the above to a route I might be driving. Those examples and many more aren't possible or extremely inefficient to attempt using the GC.com website search functions.

Did anyone from Groundspeak reply to this? Try riding a bike and have the " getting close" pop up at every cache on a 365 cache trail.. jens985 Premium Member Group:+Premium Members Posts:1 Joined:01-January 11 Posted 23 April 2016 - 05:19 AM As someone who exclusively uses her iPhone to geocache, I have to say that there have been some great improvements to the app lately, and I appreciate that Groundspeak is working on making the experience better. During all of the changes, I've been thinking about the features that would make the app PERFECT (at least for me), and I'd welcome any additions to my "Iphone App Wishlist". This is not me whining, I know the app is a work in progress. 1. Add/remove caches to lists - love the recent addition enabling looking at lists, but its a pain that I can't edit the list in the field. 2. Map lists - I'd love to be able to see all of the caches on my list in map form. 3. Needs Maintenance log - right now I can only log a found, dnf, or note - but a needs maintenance would be super handy! 4. Favorite points - I know others have said this as well, but I hate having to remember to come back to the site to award favorite points. 5. Attributes - another well-voiced frustration on these forums. It's worth repeating! 6. You're getting close - can we disable it? Disable the sound? Nothing like trying to be in "stealth mode" and having that loud sound announce your presence to everyone around you This is by no means an exhaustive list - but these features would give us less dependency on the website while out in the field, which would be incredibly helpful. Thanks Groundspeak!

There is one such challenge for even the 366 days calendar in Czech Republic, has 24 finders up to now: Challenge Forest - Everday Yellow There is also a similar Challenge Forest- Everyday Green for traditionals and 47 finders Challenge Forest - Everyday Blue for Unknown caches with 31 finders. So while in Czech Republic it might be slightly easier to fill the Unknown calendar the Multi calendar it is clearly doable, the challenges are all rated D5. I would think that fulfilling that challenge without knowing about it is sort of unlikely, from the three Austrians that found more than 3000 multi-caches two stand at 364 days and one at 365 days. As unlikely as fulfilling the GC6GEZ0 Find 5 Confluence caches in 3 Countries challenge. It isn't too difficult at all, so no problem with it, but simply no one was thinking about it before except the owner. But there are a lot of geocachers locally that only need less than ten more days for filling their multi calendar and abundance who need less that 30 days. Once it is known there is a challenge people start filling their grids, otherwise you might continue finding the 'wrong' cachetypes for a certain day years over years, even with a ten year streak. I would bet that after one year there would be at least 30 finders also in Austria.

It may or may not be misleading. I don't know that their response isn't global. I know my interpretation of what they said read to me as global. Do I know if they did any data mining or comparisons; no. The point of appeals is to be a second view and to relook at and reinterpret earlier decisions if someone feels there is an issue. I think it makes sense to look at a challenge like this more regionally but at the same time, the answer, even with different data could be the same. Maybe they decided that multi caches are a dying type and shouldn't be used. Or maybe they want less regional policy and want something that is either yes or no so they have to deal with less back and forth. I can't and won't speak for them. I can just say, their response seemed like a global response to using other icon types in a 365 non-streak fill in the grid. Ok thanks for yet another clarification. I misunderstood what you wrote before in the sense that you believed it to be a local response. I hope that in this light what I wrote makes sense to you.

It may or may not be misleading. I don't know that their response isn't global. I know my interpretation of what they said read to me as global. Do I know if they did any data mining or comparisons; no. The point of appeals is to be a second view and to relook at and reinterpret earlier decisions if someone feels there is an issue. I think it makes sense to look at a challenge like this more regionally but at the same time, the answer, even with different data could be the same. Maybe they decided that multi caches are a dying type and shouldn't be used. Or maybe they want less regional policy and want something that is either yes or no so they have to deal with less back and forth. I can't and won't speak for them. I can just say, their response seemed like a global response to using other icon types in a 365 non-streak fill in the grid.

Thanks for the clarification. I now understand that there has been an appeal case in your review territority that was totally unrelated to the request for a challenge checker by oberi a cacher from Germany on the project-gc challenge checker forum. So the above then seems to say that the specific appeal dealt with a concrete challenge cache in the US. So my new question is this: Has HQ decided in general that multi grid filling challenge caches (just assume the requirement is to find a single multi cache for each of the 365 days) are forbidden? If not, I find it a bit misleading that you posted your reply to a thread coming from someone from Germany from an area where there exist sufficiently many multi caches. As I said, without ever having looked at my grids I'm closer to having filled all days with multi caches than with mysteries and it would not take me that long if I wanted to fill my multi grid completely (not that I have this ambition). PA is a large area, indeed. However compare the numbers for PA you obtained with the numbers only for the city of Vienna (not that large and much smaller than the usual caching area of regular cachers): 2357 50.3 Traditional Cache 1249 26.7 Unknown Cache 736 15.7 Multi-cache 15 0.3 Wherigo Cache 14 0.3 Letterbox Hybrid 11 0.2 Earthcache 10 0.2 Webcam Cache While still traditionals and mysteries are more frequent the difference to multi caches is not that large (and do not forget the relative smallness of Vienna). Actually your post in reply to oberi's post created the impression that there is a hard rule that multi caches are not allowed for such challenge caches. Why would then someone go for appeal? Typically appeal will be used when there are borderline cases where one can interpret a guideline differently or when not all aspects seem to be have been taken into account. Anything else seems to be a waste of time. In any case I think that a fill the grid with multi caches challenge cache is much easier for many cachers than say find 10000 traditionals which I guess will be easily approved in most cache dense countries. The "fill the grid with multi caches" challenge caches would be one where most cachers have to do at least a bit of work and only very few would already qualify before they become aware of a challenge and that seems to be the only real appeal of challenge caches. I agree with that rule but think that it would be helpful if they added such new rules very quickly to the guidelines.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?" What you missed is that cezanne asked a two-part question: "So why has HQ decided that multi cache grid filling caches are not allowed and why is this is not mentioned in the guidelines?" (Emphasis added) I felt comfortable answering the second part of the question, as I knew the outcome of the appeal and the timing of it, and I'm familiar with the periodic updates to the linked challenge cache guidance. I wanted to rebut the assertion that there are hidden, secret guidelines. I was not comfortable in explaining the reasoning because I did not participate directly in the dialogue of the appeal. Fortunately OReviewer has posted to answer that portion of the question.

I believe you are reading it wrong, or at least not the way I read it. The person wants you to fill in your 365 day grid (non-streak so the fill ins can be from any year). This kind of challenge isn't really touched upon in the guidelines other than the leap day part of it. Originally, the challenge I sent to HQ was fill in your grid with 3x mystery caches a day. When I sent it to Appeals it was for two reasons: 1) Is a specific cache type 365-nonstreak grid an okay challenge? 2) Advice on "are there enough qualifiers being published of said type in a given area" The answer I got was due to what is being published in the area and generally (not sure about globally), there are enough traditionals and mystery caches being published to meet this challenge going forward. I decided to do a little data mining. Just a snap shot of one state. I ran a lot of PQs to get all of the caches in PA last month. The entire state which is bigger than what I would consider the region for a cacher, there are -1197 Multi caches -3755 Mystery caches -21 Letterboxes -20 Earthcaches What more, in 2016 to date published: -87 Multi caches -466 Mystery caches -151 Letterboxes -237 Earthcaches Based on all this, I think the 'ruling' makes sense to me. I also think that if you provide appeals info for ones area to show it is doable and that there are more than enough caches to do it and caches being published to make it feasible, they may allow it. You can understand why they might not allow some of the others though. It would be near impossible to fill in say a yearly grid of virtual or webcams or letterboxes. Edit: they also said 1x a day max for these kinds of challenges. My opinion is it can become a slippery slope of how many is too many; as you can see has happened with the 2+x Fizzy, etc.

No, the OP on PGC does not want a streak checker (type restrictions are not allowed there anyhow). He wanted a challenge cache where you need to have found a multi cache for each of the 365 days which exist in every year - it does not matter in which year you filled a day with a multi cache. It seems completely arbitrary to me to allow such challenge caches for traditionals and mysteries but not for multi caches (except of course in areas with hardly any multi caches, but here the decision is apparently a worldwide one - the OP comes from Germany). The people at PGC cannot understand why the multi case is not allowed either - typically they already advise cachers who ask for a checker in advance that something will not be allowed or advise them to ask - this did not happen here. The no seems to have come out of the nowhere.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?" Perhaps I'm reading the supporting links differently, but the OP on PGC wants a checker built for individual cache types for a 365 day streak. The Help Center article explicitly excludes streaks for individual cache types. It appears that all cache types must be included in any streak challenge submission. From the quoted thread on project-gc:

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?" Perhaps I'm reading the supporting links differently, but the OP on PGC wants a checker built for individual cache types for a 365 day streak. The Help Center article explicitly excludes streaks for individual cache types. It appears that all cache types must be included in any streak challenge submission.

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?"

Someone pointed me to this thread on the project-gc challenge checker forum http://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,3468 and I need to admit that like target I cannot understand why challenge caches that ask for filling the 365 day grid (without February 29) are allowed only for the cache types traditional and mystery but not for multi caches as has been pointed out by OReviewer. None of the rules in the guidelines refers to that case and since it seems to be a general decision it cannot refer to areas where there are not enough multi caches and not enough cachers which will be able to satisfy the requirements. It's quite unfortunate that apparently there are so many hidden rules and whenever someone comes up with something not yet covered in the rule set, new hidden rules are added. I'm closer to having filled the 365 day grid with multi caches than with mystery caches (I have never worked on any of the two goals). So why has HQ decided that multi cache grid filling caches are not allowed and why is this is not mentioned in the guidelines? I'd appreciate a reply from someone who knows about the background and can provide a clarification about something which makes several people wonder.

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We've heard a lot of speculation, conjecture and theorizing...but no comments from those that actually made the decision at the time of formation.... They are too busy working to keep their business going to spend time here. 24/7/365? I'm impressed! Actually, though, to answer that, they don't need to spend a single second here now! I asked about what was said and done *14 years ago*, and fortunately Geodarts had a helpful answer.

Based on the average length of a Nautical Mile by International agreement: 1 Degree = 364,566.9291 feet, so round that to 365,000 feet. .00001 Degrees then = 3.65 feet. 1 Minute = 6,076.115486 feet, so round that to 6,000 feet. .001 Minutes then = 6 feet. 1 Second = 101.2685914 feet, so round that to 100 feet. .1 Second then = 10 feet. You indicate you have a dd.ddd option. If that is correct, that isn't good enough. You need dd.ddddd That is 5 decimal points needed in Decimal Degrees instead of only 3 decimal points in Decimal Degrees. If your app will actually give you 5 decimal points of Decimal Degrees accuracy, that is good no matter what they call it in the app. The mm.mmm option is good. That is the Geocaching standard. When Keystone says that an "out of the box" iPhone in degrees, minutes and seconds is an insufficient level of precision, that must mean it is only capable of ss.s At ss.ss it would have more precision than either dd.ddddd or mm.mmm Explaining to someone that 6 foot precision is the desired Geocaching standard, while 10 feet is insufficient precision could be a bit of a hard sell. So we usually don't explain it. We just say don't do it. I know why mm.mmm is the Geocaching standard. dd.ddddd would have been a much better standard at 3.65 foot precision, and one nice clean number. To late to "fix" that, but you can still collect coordinates as dd.ddddd - but they must still get published accurately on the cache page as mm.mmm Good Luck with your hide. This seems like a great explanation but may be more technical than they wish to absorb. The main thing is that you've pointed out the standard format used in the game (which they can see for reference by looking at the description of an existing cache). That's how they should set their device. So they should choose the location, measure the gps coords several times (even better on different days), and then write the listing, place the cache, and last, submit for review and publication.

Based on the average length of a Nautical Mile by International agreement: 1 Degree = 364,566.9291 feet, so round that to 365,000 feet. .00001 Degrees then = 3.65 feet. 1 Minute = 6,076.115486 feet, so round that to 6,000 feet. .001 Minutes then = 6 feet. 1 Second = 101.2685914 feet, so round that to 100 feet. .1 Second then = 10 feet. You indicate you have a dd.ddd option. If that is correct, that isn't good enough. You need dd.ddddd That is 5 decimal points needed in Decimal Degrees instead of only 3 decimal points in Decimal Degrees. If your app will actually give you 5 decimal points of Decimal Degrees accuracy, that is good no matter what they call it in the app. The mm.mmm option is good. That is the Geocaching standard. When Keystone says that an "out of the box" iPhone in degrees, minutes and seconds is an insufficient level of precision, that must mean it is only capable of ss.s At ss.ss it would have more precision than either dd.ddddd or mm.mmm Explaining to someone that 6 foot precision is the desired Geocaching standard, while 10 feet is insufficient precision could be a bit of a hard sell. So we usually don't explain it. We just say don't do it. I know why mm.mmm is the Geocaching standard. dd.ddddd would have been a much better standard at 3.65 foot precision, and one nice clean number. To late to "fix" that, but you can still collect coordinates as dd.ddddd - but they must still get published accurately on the cache page as mm.mmm Good Luck with your hide.

Suppose you found 365 caches in one day and waited to log them one on each day for a year so you could have a "streak?" Suppose I log a multi cache that I find next weekend as though I found it last weekend and a cache with 10 FP that I also find next weekend as though I found it on July 30 or 31? They're all lies.