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Not a naive assumption, but, yes, I did take for granted that you hadn't talked to the COs because if you already had reactions from the COs, I would expected you to present those in order to make that the topic. The responses you've now told us about are the real problem that we can talk about solving. It's far less productive to start with the unsupported claim that the NM attribute is useless because you don't think it's being used correctly. But, I see, this way you got to call someone innocently trying to help you with your problem "naive", so that's always fun.

They do. Keeping this site running 24/7/365. Newer people haven't experienced the site going down over the weekend because of heavy use like it used to a lot about 15 years ago.

I am glad our countless hours of research through logs and plethora of photos mean nothing to HQ and zero attempts are being made to keep our data available in an archived format. All this community talk is nothing but lip service to the corporate machine and bottom line.

If this is based truly on non use (vs cost cutting which I believe it is) then get rid of other things in geocaching that get little use such as caches that require special equipment such as Wherigo or project APE caches. You guys talk out both sides of your mouth!

No, it's the same issue that I described previously. Comcast is now throttling Weekly Mailer messages we attempt to send by deferment, so our server keeps retrying until the message is accepted or expired. In this case, it took ~4 days. Here are the logs: Sep 30 13:40:36 signal2 postfix/error[18592]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=0.1, delays=0.1/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta34.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 14:21:55 signal2 postfix/error[27076]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=2478, delays=2478/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta24.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 15:15:28 signal2 postfix/error[26069]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=5692, delays=5692/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta10.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 17:31:19 signal2 postfix/error[21426]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=13842, delays=13842/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta19.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 21:50:24 signal2 postfix/error[21488]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=29388, delays=29388/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta25.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 02:20:11 signal2 postfix/error[17888]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=45575, delays=45575/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta25.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 06:50:08 signal2 postfix/error[14401]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=61771, delays=61767/4.3/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta28.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 11:20:24 signal2 postfix/error[10233]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=77988, delays=77967/21/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta09.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 15:50:18 signal2 postfix/error[5719]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=94181, delays=94167/15/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta30.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 20:20:06 signal2 postfix/error[1014]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=110369, delays=110367/2.6/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta29.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 00:50:09 signal2 postfix/error[29149]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=126572, delays=126572/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta12.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 05:20:20 signal2 postfix/error[24714]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=142783, delays=142764/19/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta32.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 09:50:20 signal2 postfix/error[20450]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=158983, delays=158965/19/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta27.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 14:20:05 signal2 postfix/error[15686]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=175169, delays=175165/3.9/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 18:50:05 signal2 postfix/error[11213]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=191369, delays=191365/4/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta21.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 23:20:32 signal2 postfix/error[5842]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=207596, delays=207564/32/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta26.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 03:50:18 signal2 postfix/error[1119]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=223782, delays=223765/17/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta12.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 08:20:09 signal2 postfix/error[28593]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=239973, delays=239966/7/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta38.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 12:50:08 signal2 postfix/error[23322]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=256172, delays=256167/4.6/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta17.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 17:20:18 signal2 postfix/error[18820]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=272382, delays=272367/15/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta08.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 21:50:19 signal2 postfix/smtp[13687]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147]:25, delay=288583, delays=288567/15/0.3/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta18.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 4 02:20:12 signal2 postfix/smtp[8287]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147]:25, delay=304776, delays=304768/6.3/0.3/0.7, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 YxL81m02s3RP4Bm0QxL95o mail accepted for delivery) And I still don't get one.

No, it's the same issue that I described previously. Comcast is now throttling Weekly Mailer messages we attempt to send by deferment, so our server keeps retrying until the message is accepted or expired. In this case, it took ~4 days. Here are the logs: Sep 30 13:40:36 signal2 postfix/error[18592]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=0.1, delays=0.1/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta34.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 14:21:55 signal2 postfix/error[27076]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=2478, delays=2478/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta24.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 15:15:28 signal2 postfix/error[26069]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=5692, delays=5692/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta10.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 17:31:19 signal2 postfix/error[21426]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=13842, delays=13842/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta19.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Sep 30 21:50:24 signal2 postfix/error[21488]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=29388, delays=29388/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta25.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 02:20:11 signal2 postfix/error[17888]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=45575, delays=45575/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta25.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 06:50:08 signal2 postfix/error[14401]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=61771, delays=61767/4.3/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta28.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 11:20:24 signal2 postfix/error[10233]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=77988, delays=77967/21/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta09.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 15:50:18 signal2 postfix/error[5719]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=94181, delays=94167/15/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta30.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 1 20:20:06 signal2 postfix/error[1014]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=110369, delays=110367/2.6/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta29.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 00:50:09 signal2 postfix/error[29149]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=126572, delays=126572/0/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta12.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 05:20:20 signal2 postfix/error[24714]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=142783, delays=142764/19/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta32.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 09:50:20 signal2 postfix/error[20450]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=158983, delays=158965/19/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta27.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 14:20:05 signal2 postfix/error[15686]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=175169, delays=175165/3.9/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta02.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 18:50:05 signal2 postfix/error[11213]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=191369, delays=191365/4/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta21.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 2 23:20:32 signal2 postfix/error[5842]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=207596, delays=207564/32/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta26.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 03:50:18 signal2 postfix/error[1119]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=223782, delays=223765/17/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta12.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 08:20:09 signal2 postfix/error[28593]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=239973, delays=239966/7/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta38.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 12:50:08 signal2 postfix/error[23322]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=256172, delays=256167/4.6/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta17.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 17:20:18 signal2 postfix/error[18820]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=none, delay=272382, delays=272367/15/0/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (delivery temporarily suspended: host mx2.comcast.net[76.96.40.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta08.emeryville.ca.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 3 21:50:19 signal2 postfix/smtp[13687]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147]:25, delay=288583, delays=288567/15/0.3/0, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147] refused to talk to me: 421 imta18.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net comcast Try again later) Oct 4 02:20:12 signal2 postfix/smtp[8287]: DBBC5702B75: to=<earl.anderson@comcast.net>, relay=mx1.comcast.net[68.87.26.147]:25, delay=304776, delays=304768/6.3/0.3/0.7, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 2.0.0 YxL81m02s3RP4Bm0QxL95o mail accepted for delivery)

Looks to me that the proposed category is very similar to the elongated coins category (aka Penny Smashers) in the aspect of an automaton creating/selling a touristic token. T0SHEA told me (not a week ago) that we should strive for inclusion if we have similarities to another category. So you should have a talk to the category leaders / officers first if they are willing to expand their category to accept these touristic tokens also.

Hello everyone! Here is a great place to post that you want your score updated, talk about high scoring caches, ask questions, etc. Have fun with the game, and check out the rest of my "Let the Games Begin!" series caches! GeoEskimo

Zu einer der Teildiskussionen hier: Normalerweise mache ich keine Power Trails, die geben mir nichts, die finde ich langweilig. Wenn ich aber mal wieder versuche eine paar Challenges zu erfüllen (ich weiß, dass hier im Forum Challenges umstritten sind), dann sind Power Trails echt hilfreich. Zur Zeit arbeite ich z.B. an zwei Challenges: GC4JFXW (88 Tage einen Tradi/Tag) und GC4P8GX (222 Tage Dauercachen), bzw. eigentlich arbeite ich an ein paar mehr, aber das ist irrelevant. Wenn ich nach den 222 Tagen noch Lust habe, will ich versuchen, auf 365/6 Tage zu erhöhen. Allerdings habe ich von einer alten Häsin in meiner Region auch schon gelesen, dass die, als sie kurz vorm Abschluss der 366 Tage-Challenge stand, ihre Lust am Cachen verloren hat, seitdem pflegt sie tatsächlich nur noch ihre Dosen und geht selber kaum noch suchen. Kann also durchaus ein Lustkiller sein, dass Kalendercachen. Und genau dann, wenn man in seiner Umgebung alle (vermeintlichen) Quality Caches schon abgegrast hat (denn es werden ja nicht jeden Monat 31 neue Caches in der Homezone verlegt) und wenn man so blöde Challenges mit 88 Tage jeden Tag einen Tradi angeht, da ist man plötzlich über blöde Power Trails ganz glücklich, denn die sind i.d.R. relativ einfach und nicht zeitaufwändig. Also zwischen Arbeit und Einkauf mal irgendwo kurz aus dem Auto* springen und am nächsten Tag 161 Meter weiter dasselbe (so mache ich das normalerweise nicht, ich versuche zu vermeiden, zwei Tage hintereinander denselben Tausendfüßer anzugehen). Natürlich sorgt der Versuch, solche Challenges zu meistern auch dafür, dass ich Tradis angehe, die ich sonst eher meiden würde. Etwa https://coord.info/GC2RTYJ, der erstaunlicherweise 236 FF.PP. hat. (Es handelt sich um einen einfachen Abzweigdosen-Tradi an einem nicht weiter sehenswerten Ort hinterm Hauptbahnhof, ich war eigentlich erstaunt, dass ich nur eine Urinpfütze überspringen musste, was aber daran liegen mag, dass aufgrund der Pandemiesituation in der Gegend in den letzten Monaten weniger los war, als sonst.) Warum mache ich Challenges, zwingt mich doch keiner zu? Weil ich ein fauler Hund bin, eine richtige Couch Potatoe. Das Kalendercachen zwingt mich zu mehr Aktivität. *Die meisten Caches versuche ich allerdings schon mit dem Rad zu machen.

Yeah, I agree with you about that. That's one one the reasons I didn't seriously think he was interested in newbies: he was just using them as an easy way to talk about the perceived unfairness of challenges that allow history even though the newbies themselves wouldn't notice it.

Regarding that we can also have a fourth option : 3a. Wayfrog promotes some other officer (perhaps the active one) and I have to talk again to the new leader. Or we could make it completely different and create a single category for each of the seven remaining countries (but for that option I would like to have a poll with at least two-thirds majority in favor for the split) ... Or something else that the community wants - just say it here. (This may include the (in my eyes really bad) idea to not have any new categories any more - but I think that should require a full approval with at least 95% of all waymarkers in favor ... And then we should close this recruiting part of the forum ... ).

Ja, leider. Die D/T-Matrix 27* füllen oder 365 Tage am Stück cachen (was für alte Hasen die schon alles in der Gegend gefunden haben eine fürchterliche Ressourcenverschwendung darstellt) ist erlaubt, kreative Lösungen die den Grips anstrengen sollen sind verboten.

Hello Very new to all this but I'm completely hooked already! I've hidden a cache near my house. Today, when I was sweeping the drive, a treasure hunter came for the cache. When she'd logged the stash she came over to talk to me about the gadget I was using to get the weeds out of my drive. Should I have mentioned that it was my cache??? I wanted to but didn't know what the etiquette was.

Better plan! Open enrollment is ON. Join, talk with our Wayfroggie about becoming leader. Throw out the deadwood. Invite some active Scandinavians to the group (there are a few here). Have one of them take it over, as a Scandinavian is a better choice as leader than a Canadian. Keith

Since my response is to the moderators of the site and Groundspeak et al., I will post this here weeks after the main discussion has passed. Like all of my logs, this is mostly just a rant. I... support the decision! The sport/game/hobby of geocaching has existed for so long, its long term survival outweighs what some users think about the more antiquated elements of it. I would argue benchmarking is not a priority for many users, only partially because Groundspeak has relegated it to obscurity on the website for years. Beginners, who are important customers to expand the product, don't seem to be flocking toward benchmarks. My area has been dominated by loop-holers focused more on statistics than unique hunts and only seem to log benchmarks when they can get a challenge cache out of it. The 0.13% statistic that was paraded around is probably an understatement, but I do not see the logic of paying to support something so little of the general population cares about. A majority of my gripes are not with Groundspeak's decision but the rotten system of global capitalism and the myth of unlimited business growth. Low interest, sadly, equals low profitability and thus elimination. The archivist aspect is the main element that is tragic in all this, for me. But this is a symptom of the internet at large- huge portions of the web are just being lost to the wind and almost no one seems to care. Geocaching has now outlasted web 1.0, 2.0 and if the impending demise of twitter is any indication, 3.0 as well. One of its most valuable elements then are the logs from a pre-cell phone age. There are inactive users who commented on benchmarks and their logs will be lost forever. That sucks. While scraping page by page through The Internet Archive is a great idea, it's not practical. I'll try anyway. It's not a defense of the decision, but reality. Burying the lede here, but Benchmarking is/was one my favorite elements of Geocaching. I think it is profoundly interesting from a historical aspect, and many of my most memorable experiences with caching overall have been hunting remote benchmarks. I was annoyed with how old the datasheet was and just how many of the marks were actually destroyed. Especially living in an urban area, where mindless sprawl and that myth of unlimited growth have destroyed many of these disks. But the ones I did find were fun, even if it was impossible to combine that experience into any sort of phone application. Of the 84 I found so far, 56 (66%) have been radio/water towers, cupolas, domes, flagpoles, or just tall buildings. These are a majority of the benchmarks I've noticed other users have logged. Which is logical- they are the most easily accessible. But I would also argue, not entirely worth it. For those above me who complain about lamp post hides, these categories of benchmarking are very much in the same vein. I do not want to gatekeep against either as that would be hypocritical. I strive to give my logs as much depth and information as possible, but it's pretty obvious that a State Capitol dome is "in good shape". Which leaves the other 32 (34%) of my finds- bench mark discs themselves. This is what I'll- and others here- will truly miss. I think that the amount of marks logged as missing or never logged at all are vast. That sort of eliminates the ease of accessibility. Of those 32 disks, a third of them have been found less than five times. I am the most recent finder on all of those for the past eighteen months. I was happy to recognize one of those other finders in these comments, and empathize with their disappointment, but this doesn't eliminate benchmarking. It just pushes it to a much less popular website. This is by no means the end of my benchmarking. It's just the end of me keeping track of my benchmarking online- my disapointments with Waymarking are a separate rant entirely. Talk all you want about how the best things in life are worth the challenge, but from a business model perspective it's not marketable. Which goes back to my hatred of the "game" (capitalism) not the "player" (Groundspeak) trying to promote and protect Geocaching. So in summary, while I love benchmarking, I can understand why Groundspeak would phase it out. Because it's a niche, mostly unrelated element to geocaching at large.

Three months is the bare minimum. I've had caches that were hidden for less, but it was not because I planned it - it was because they weren't viable for some reason and didn't work out. I have moved every couple years since starting, so each time I got to a new area, I knew roughly when the expiration date of my caches would be. I had a few in Oklahoma that I put out intending for them to be there for a year, and then we ended up moving six months early, so they were only there for five months. Other than that, looking through our hides, the shortest we planned to have some out was for about nine months. I'd say get 'em up now. If you end up moving next summer, take the ideas that worked and hide them in your new locale. I have returned to some hide styles (and some puzzles) over the years because they work, and because the locals don't necessarily know how to solve them in the new area. The important thing is to plan for your move. Don't wait until the last minute to try to adopt them out. Either talk to someone ahead of time about potentially adopting the listings from you, or plan to pick them up and archive them. Don't just leave them behind without a plan. All caches need maintaining, and moving without a plan just dumps the problem on the local cachers (and reviewers) you're leaving behind.

If you don't need the vicar in the zone after the player talks to him, you could move the vicar to the next zone as the first command when you talk to him. If you still need him around in the current zone, you should be able to disable the command, at which point the player app is supposed to be smart enough to recognize there isn't an object in that zone anymore that has that command. If that's not the case--it really depends on how the player app handles things--disabling the command and then toggling the zone's enabled state should do the trick. So: - On Talk() - - Disable Talk command - - Set zone.Enabled = false - - Set zone.Enabled = true - - Do things for Talk

Let me offer a recently reincarnated challenge trail we put out around here. A few pre-moratorium caches are in it but most are under the new guidelines. The goal was to make interesting ones under the new guidelines. Feel free to crib ideas as some of these were cribbed from other creative folks. GC3F12D Neglected Cache Challenge GC55XPN The Bigcall Challenge: A Baker's Dozen GC55XP0 The Bigcall Challenge: Nifty Fifty GC980EH 365 Unknown Dates Hidden Challenge GC980EK Feet Under the Sea, Head In the Clouds Challenge GC980EJ All The Attributes Challenge GC9838K The Golden State Challenge GC9839B The Best Finds Challenge GC9838Z The Perfect Country & Western Song Challenge GC9834G Globetrotter Challenge GC9834D The Island Life Is For Me Challenge GC9838F Virtual 👻 Border to Border Challenge GC98388 5 states*100 Finds Iconic Challenge GC9838P Iconic Traveler Challenge GC9834N Every Day Hidden Challenge GC98396 The Bay Area Puzzlers Challenge GC98393 The Taking a Long Lunch Challenge GC98341 Largest Counties Challenge GC9839N Road Less Traveled Challenge! GC9833X Wherigo Quarter Century Challenge GC98347 So Easy a Child Could Do It Challenge GC9838D It's Five O'Clock Somewhere Challenge GC995K7 Mysteries Across The USA Challenge GC995K2 5 Types x 10 States Challenge GC99842 Historic Alameda County Caches Challenge GC99A3G The Demented Diminishing Dozen Challenge GC99AD4 1000 km Altitude Challenge GC99ACQ The Blue or the Gray Challenge GC9986G Hazards of Geocaching Attributes CHALLENGE 313 GC9986J Accessible Attainable Attributes CHALLENGE 1313 GC99X8B The Lazy Cacher Challenge GC9A2N2 The Good N.E.W.S. or Bad N.E.W.S. Challenge GC99EMN The 3.5 Billion Year Challenge GC99AE7 Well-Traveled Cacher: Degree Squares

Thanks both for the responses. I guess what I was trying to get at is not so much the theme of the cache as the physical nature of it. As a kind of anti-example, we don't really have LPCs in Australia but I found one that I understand was very typical when I visited California a few years ago. It was under the skirt of a lamp-post on it's concrete pillar about 3 feet off the ground, in the middle of a carpark. I can imagine that caches like that are convenient for people with limited mobility because you can get right up close to it whether you do that in a car, a chair or on foot. I can also imagine that, even if they all had great reasons to bring you to carparks, the same thing over and over would be boring. So my curiosity is more about how you might make the hide itself both accessible and interesting (perhaps uniquely so) to someone who, for example, is in a wheelchair or has low vision. And yes, I'm well aware that every person's disability is different. I used to do education talks with someone who uses a wheelchair. She can walk a decent distance but it can be slow and tiring so she largely keeps to the chair. However, she quite enjoyed wheeling into a classroom and doing the talk, then finding an appropriate excuse to stand up and surprise the kids. We weren't there to educate on disability and inclusion but I think she taught a lot of kids a good lesson doing that.

Found a lot of challenge caches a while ago. Some of them I qualified immidiatly and I could log them as found. And for some of them I logged at the cache and logged a write note online. Later, all of them were archived without written down a reason, just a small note were it looked like the CO was annoyed by the situation. Today, finally, after a long time, I qualified for a challenge I had logged before. 365 days of the calender full with a found of a traditional. And now I wanted to log it as found, or change my write note in a found, but now it seems to be locked. I can't find a way to log it now, even when I think I am allowed according the rules. Is there a new rule that archived challenges are not allowed to log? Or was there a situation with the CO all geocaches that found a cache are now suffering from? Why isn't there a note that explains this situation?? The cache I wanted to log is http://coord.info/ GC8JG9W

Was ist denn mit type of log genau gemeint? Ich habe z.B. mal einen Challenge gesehen, da musste man 20 Logs haben, wo im Cache-Namen das Wort Hütte vorkam (Zwillbrocker Venn). Ein Arche-Noah-Cache (Hamm oder Unna) verlangt von den Loggern, dass sie 40 Caches mit Tiernamen geloggt haben (ohne dass sich ein Tier wiederholt bzw. GCSchwein, GCEber, GCSau, GCFerkel als vier Tiere gewertet werden. Manche verlangen, dass man an allen 365/6 Kalendertagen je mindestens einen Cache (oder vielleicht sogar in einer verschärften Version je einen Multi oder Mystery) geloggt haben muss. Es gibt jede Menge Challenge-Caches mit teils absurden, teils interessanten Anforderungen an die Community (wobei sich absurd und interessant nicht gegenseitig ausschließen müssen).

I purchased a number of such apps. Every one of them self-destructed. As a dev myself, though, I'm somewhat sympathetic to their problem. There are a few problems that inherently makes the geocaching app market work poorly. I think it's gotten better for low-volume apps, but the OS provider (Apple, Google) gets a third of that right off the top. Now that's a fixed COGS and was hopefully built into the price model, but the dev now gets $6.50. The twist is that geocaching apps are something a user may stare at intently two days a week instead of, say, a joke-telling app that's used a few times and discarded or even something as specialized as a map converter that you only need a few times a year. Geocaching apps are just not typical App store apps: Geocaching apps are a small market. A successful app may have hundreds of installs and a really successful one may break into the thousands. So maybe that app maker made $10K. Maybe. (Download count is not the same as purchased user account...) It's a demanding market. Look at the endless raging controversy over 3 vs. 4 digits after the decimal point on some Garmin firmware. If your app works differently than the user expects, you're going to get an earful. Maybe you built - and sold as such - a bare-bones "follow the arrow" navigation app. You're going to get one star reviews because the app doesn't have native puzzle-solving abilities, such as decoding caesar ciphers on the device. That actually has nothing to do with geocaching, but there's an expectation that it's there. Maybe your app doesn't think it should be involved in travel bugs (and you made no promises about travel bugs in the app listing) but someone will say their life is ruined if your app can't automatically dip travel bugs with a log that auto increments, includes the timestamp, and reports "3/14 for the day", for each log. Oh, and it needs to handle the day ending when they went to bed, not at midnight because they were caching after dark. It's a moving target. Groundspeak was disrespectful of developer investment in their API and at least twice has restructured the way applications had to communicate with the server in an incompatible way. Not a minor, annoying, "let's change the spelling" way, but a major "rewrite the bottom half of the app" way. Multiple times. Cache types and log types and maximum API calls per hour and other things change (or at least did - I've quit following it) regularly. It's a localized target. Geocachers are worldwide. You'll need SI and Imperial. You'll need to know that altitude may be in feet, but ground distance may be in meters. You'll need at least most of the Romance languages supported. Individually these are trivial, but it's a lot of _stuff_ to keep track of and to exercise all the combinations. It's a changing target. Even within a given API level, Cache and log types come and go. Security rules around logins change. OSes change version and deprecate some service that you were using. There are new event types to handle. You'll need to build and test on phone and tablet, probably on real hardware and not the emulator because geocaching is a physical thing and it's hard to simulate the experience in the field. You'll need to handle all the new devices coming on as well as all the old devices that ever worked because someone will have a phone identical to yours, but is on a carrier that's withholding the OS upgrade so your "identical" phones offer two different sets of features to develop, test, and support. It's a demanding target. You don't control the schedule when any of this happens. OS updates get pushed and you're either on the train or your app quits working. Groundspeak changes the login process - again - and all your users are locked out. The solution space is small. You're never going to get VC funding to get an iOS dev, an android dev, a support person, a testing person, some equipment, etc. This is always doomed to be a one person operation (Every open-source attempt into this space I've seen has usually been a single-person show, perhaps after a brief flurry of introductory activity) and it's not like it's even going to be big enough money to be a full time job with insurance, etc. It's big enough to be painful (to do it well) but not big enough to actually hang a business around. Even Garmin made a run into the "geocaching" app space and eventually quietly withdrew. Not unique to geocaching is the split of the market. While there are frameworks that help you move your app between iOS and Android, they don't really cover things like the compass and the GPS and battery issues that are all crucial in a geocaching app, but less so in others. If you're a serious dev out to capture serious market share, you can then count on basically building,, testing, and marketing your app twice: Once in Swift and once in Kotlin. (And ten years ago, neither of those languages existed, so you've probably replaced the original Java and Objective C++ versions....) So now you're fighting for relevance in two markets, on two different fronts. I just looked at the android app store at the top paid apps from indy devs: #1 $5 - Sync for Reddit actually shares some of these problems. However, there are 430 million monthly Reddit users. The market is actually large enough to bring non-trivial income. Yay for them. Only they also just added monthly subscription fees ON TOP OF the base app price. This didn't go over well. #2 $3 calendar app. 1M users. (Hint: you're never going to get 1M geocaching app users) The target market is people that need a calendar. Not sure it competes on ongoing maintenance, though. #3 $1.39 watch faces. A watch face app is probably a weekend project. Build it once and you're done. 10K users. #4 $4. An application to talk to ghosts. Seems unlikely to have much tech support demand or changes from ghosts going on strike. So all of these are apps with a WAY larger potential user base and either less ongoing required dev/maintenance/support costs, or an additional monthly subscription fee to cover that. Yet, if you build an app for $10 (the same app for $2 would drive you insane with looky-loos demanding support) users basically expect the app to keep working forever, but without an economy around it that supports this. Build a $2 fart app where the market is anyone that was ever eight years old and people will forget about the app in a week and you never hear from them again. A watch face app may get a cease and desist from Rolex about using their artwork (and that could be detrimental if executed, but you're out a weekend of development) but you'll notice that other app types in the industry don't have this whole large ecosystem that they have to live in, but can't control. Mobile apps blew out the pricing of software. People now associate app prices with that $2 fart app, a $4 flashlight app, or the $1.39 watch face (honestly, I think the market for that kind of junkware has kind of blown over, but it still cratered consumer expectation of paying for software) and if you ask them to pay $50 for a specialized mapping program or some other market-specific tool, it's like you're a baby-killer. Yes, I was there for the wailing every time Clyde rolled out a paid upgrade to GSAK...and watched him put up with users going to great lengths to avoid paying for those upgrades, but still taking up his time. This isn't the article I was looking for, but it cites a lot of related articles that touch on these topics. See https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167811619300473 So, yeah. A failed $10 geocaching app is just par for this course. Sorry. If I need credentials, I've been developing geocaching-related tools off and on since 2001. I've built at least two Android apps and one cross-platform GSAK-like app for cross-platform to prototype stage. I have geocaching-specific code in GSAK and in Google Earth (drag and drop a PQ into Google Earth Pro. Thats me.). I've studied this market and I've thought about it a LOT. Concluding advice: develop geocaching apps to scratch your own itch or do it for fun, but there's no money in it.

Please read my comment again. I'm not saying anything about PQs going away. I'm explicitly saying to migrate the PQ preview from the old buggy seek/nearest platform to the modern next.js search results. Knowing the mess that is the old seek/nearest code-base, I doubt it's that simple. I responded to similar claims here before: Yes it was working before when two ancient ca 2005 code bases were working together. Some of these issues are side-effects of trying to get a 2005 and a vastly different and advanced 2022 version to talk to each other. The best course of action would be to get two modern systems that are much more compatible to work together. That is the next step. For the present issue, while I understand your frustration, I offered you a clear workaround. If instead of continuing to have a productive conversation like we did up until this point , you'd rather point fingers and speak poorly about the people who are trying to help you, let me know and we can be done here. And to those who say "don't take it personal" - thanks, I'll stand up for my developers and QA engineers any day because I know how hard they work every day within the constraints of our systems.

Here is the message I received, I'm not available, so I thought I put it out there. Please reply if you contact Michelle, so she doesn't get hammered. ______________________________ Does your brother know of an avid geocacher that would like to give a brief 10 minute talk about geocaching and travel bugs…possibly including a few personal stories? If so, do you mind passing their info to me and I’ll forward to Doug, please? The time commitment would be on 4/12 from 4pm for 10 minutes and they could stay until 6pm when the event is over or only stay for 10-15 minutes. Thanks so much!! J Michelle Michelle Watson College of Technology and Innovation 6049 S. Backus Mall, Sutton Rm 301L Mesa, AZ 85212 (480) 727-1881 phone

Please can you advise how to shut off the talk to command for each zone. I am doing a Church Wherigo and I want the vicar to pop up at each question point. As such he is in zone 1, has a talk to command, asks a question, gives commands to move on or retry if answer wrong or right. I am stuck at the next bit, as in how do I turn off the talk to, or attribute it to one zone only so I can do a further talk to at zone 2...