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Geocache Hiding Average


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Since my average number of posts per day is really low (.01 - I usually do not have too much to say), I was thinking of some other measurements for Geocaching that might be meaningful. What I came up with is the percent relationship of hides to finds. To me this is a neat average because it shows how much a person gives back to the sport. I have hidden 18 and found 324 so my hiding average is 5.5%. The one person I know who excels at the is BrianSnat who has`125 hides and 386 finds for a hiding average of 32.4%. This may not be an original thought but I have not seen it before. Anyone care to post their average? Does anyone beat Brian?

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To me this is a neat average because it shows how much a person gives back to the sport.

Using number of hides as a figure of merit is even more nonsensical than using number of finds as a way of defining "leaders."

 

There are other ways to "give back" to the sport besides hiding crappy caches under lamp posts. :(

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14%

 

29 finds / 4 hides.

 

I was worried in the begining that with so little experience my hides wouldn't be all that great. But I've gotten good logs so I'm not worried anymore.

 

I like the hides almost as much as the finds, the experiece keeps on giving. I love getting a positive log while having a bad day at work.

 

Paul

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21 finds - 17 hides.

 

There are not many caches here in South Africa - especially in the province we live in, so we took the decision to hide as many as we find. So far, though, finds are outnumbering hides - but not by much.

 

And no ........ not one of them is a lame micro!!!!

 

They are all quality caches with up-market swag.

 

As we've become more experienced, we find we actually enjoy hiding caches more than finding them, so it's highly likely that our hides will soon outnumber our finds.

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80 finds (but a lot were events) and 2 hides (brand new!).

 

Does anyone else worry about their hides? You know, are they ok. Has anyone damaged them, are they getting wet, etc?

 

Of course, if they are getting wet, then it's raining. We're farmers in the middle of a drought. Much as I hate missing caching because of rain, I'd hate to see all our neighbors going belly up.

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You've picked a "measurement" which gives me a measly 1.85% "raw score." Whoop de doo.

 

My 25 active caches (out of 29 total hides) are generally well-maintained and hidden in an interesting spot to which I want to bring visitors. Would you rather I hide 75, half of which are uninspired parking lot hides that I don't have time to check on when someone says they're wet? No? Then double my score due to "cache quality adjustment."

 

I do a lot of work for geocaching and for geocaching.com. Land manager contacts, advice to other geocachers, helping out in the forums, helping with new caches... it's got to be 30 hours per week, on average. Since I could have used that 30 hours to go out and hide more caches, and maintain them, double my score again due to "other contributions adjustment."

 

There, 7.4%. That's a better "adjusted score."

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205 finds and 55 finds. But that is a false percentage when computed. Because some the the hides are Events and Virtuals. Another figure to look at is what is the average D & T's of your hides. I would prefer a cache that ranks in the 4 x 4 range in the hills over a 1 x1 in Wally World

 

What counts is a nice log from a cache in a nice location. Quality over Quantity gives a much nicer average.

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To me this is a neat average because it shows how much a person gives back to the sport.

 

There are other ways to "give back" to the sport besides hiding crappy caches under lamp posts. ;)

 

Quality over Quantity gives a much nicer average

 

But not all prolific hiders specialize in lampost micros. NY's Jonboy has 76 hides and any one of them would probably make most geocacher's top 10 list.

 

Quantity does not necessarily preclude quality.

Edited by briansnat
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You've picked a "measurement" which gives me a measly 1.85% "raw score."  Whoop de doo.

 

My 25 active caches (out of 29 total hides) are generally well-maintained and hidden in an interesting spot to which I want to bring visitors.  Would you rather I hide 75, half of which are uninspired parking lot hides that I don't have time to check on when someone says they're wet?  No?  Then double my score due to "cache quality adjustment."

 

I do a lot of work for geocaching and for geocaching.com.  Land manager contacts, advice to other geocachers, helping out in the forums, helping with new caches... it's got to be 30 hours per week, on average.  Since I could have used that 30 hours to go out and hide more caches, and maintain them, double my score again due to "other contributions adjustment."

 

There, 7.4%.  That's a better "adjusted score."

I'll give ya 95%, since I KNOW how much you give back. I'm reserving the other 5% until I finally get the chance to find one of your caches! ;)

 

Salvelinus

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Interesting topic. Reminds me of a cache log I read the other day from the very first cache I placed:

 

July 23 by ROCKY (374 found)

Well Salvelinus I thought it was about time I found one of your caches. I have been caching since April of 01 and have admired your logs, well thought out posts on the forums and creative hides. Mrs. Rocky and I have taken several long weekend caching trips to Pennsylvania over the past several years. On this trip your cache was our centerpiece of the many we lined up to do and we were not disappointed.

 

What a picture perfect day we had for caching. The heat and humidity finally broke making it very enjoyable. We traveled mountain and forest roads 30 miles to the cache location. Your directions and description had us sure we were starting from the right place, especially what you wrote about the weather rock.

 

We followed the path less traveled right at the stream edge. What a great feeling to be that far in and have the place to our selves. We do some hiking in the Adirondack Mountains and this area certainly has that feel to it.

 

From reading the logs I thought it would be a more difficult find, we had it in about 5 minutes. You can imagine my surprise to see we were the 3rd ones to log in that day.

 

You can put whatever number you want on it. But when I read a log like that...I know I've given somebody something back.

 

Salvelinus

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less than 1% here, mainly because my first few hides were simple ones and I received a lot of negative comments on them, I decided not to hide stuff and prevent someone else from using the areas for a better cache/hide. Why people feel the need to complain about an easy find I have no idea....

 

I've had some better ideas recently, so I'm hoping to improve that percentage, albeit I won't be breaking any percentage records by any means, but I'd like to get to 1% at least. Hopefully my new ideas won't generate complaints.

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0% for 61 finds.

 

My area is too saturated with caches already. There is not a single plot of land that even resembles a park in this county that doesn't have 3 or 4 caches already. It makes no sense to me to place a cache for the sake of placing a cache.

 

I know many areas in the city that have interesting stories, but they don't have good hiding spots for caches, or they probably wouldn't last very long if you did hide a micro. Forget virtuals, seems everyone, including the local approvers, hate them.

 

Does this make me a taker only? So be it.

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less than 1% here, mainly because my first few hides were simple ones and I received a lot of negative comments on them, I decided not to hide stuff and prevent someone else from using the areas for a better cache/hide. Why people feel the need to complain about an easy find I have no idea....

 

I've had some better ideas recently, so I'm hoping to improve that percentage, albeit I won't be breaking any percentage records by any means, but I'd like to get to 1% at least. Hopefully my new ideas won't generate complaints.

Speaking for myself, I don't have anything agianst an easy find, it's the caches that are hidden in garbage, or have no other redeeming quality that annoy me. I ask myself, "Why did the cache owner bring me here?" To see the bottom of this tree just outside a construction zone? To fish through dirty diapers looking for a fake turd? No thanks.

Edited by Criminal
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Speaking for myself, I don't have anything agianst an easy find, it's the caches that are hidden in garbage, or have no other redeeming quality at annoy me. I ask myself, "Why did the cache owner bring me here?" To see the bottom of this tree just outside a construction zone? To fish through dirty diapers looking for a fake turd? No thanks.

Agreed. On my first 2 hides I didn't just go out to a location and toss a cache in a tree, the locations meant something to me personally (1st being a lake near my place that I've walked around since I was a kid, even picked a trail not everyone would know about that gets you up close to the lake, 2nd was a local city sponsored medallion hunt that ended at a park, and I decided to place it in tribute to King Boreas' 500th hide). Perhaps the locations didn't mean as much to another cacher, but I did try to describe my reasonings on the cache descriptions.

 

Still, I've learned that I need to come up with better ideas for new caches, sadly the best ideas/scenic areas have been used in my area, so coming up with new and different that would make another cacher go "Wow!" is getting much harder to do. The scenery part is almost out of the question anymore, so I'm left with clever cache designs, puzzles, and other such things.

 

At least my imagination is getting a workout ;)

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less than 1% here, mainly because my first few hides were simple ones and I received a lot of negative comments on them, I decided not to hide stuff and prevent someone else from using the areas for a better cache/hide. Why people feel the need to complain about an easy find I have no idea....

 

I've had some better ideas recently, so I'm hoping to improve that percentage, albeit I won't be breaking any percentage records by any means, but I'd like to get to 1% at least. Hopefully my new ideas won't generate complaints.

Speaking for myself, I don't have anything agianst an easy find, it's the caches that are hidden in garbage, or have no other redeeming quality at annoy me. I ask myself, "Why did the cache owner bring me here?" To see the bottom of this tree just outside a construction zone? To fish through dirty diapers looking for a fake turd? No thanks.

Place your cache in an interesting area and you will get raves. It doesn't have to have a Grand Canyon-like vista. All it needs to be is a pleasant walk in a pretty area. Add a quality, waterproof container and a dry logbook and your cache will get many positive comments.

Edited by briansnat
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I currently have 643 finds and 45 hides. Of the 45 hides, 2 are archived and one is disabled. This puts me at the 6.998% bracket. Only nine of my 45 hides are micros. The rest are decon containers up to ammo cans.

 

New hides are slower to come by now. I take more time researching interesting areas to place caches, designing puzzles, and crafting custom cache containers. I refuse to hide spur of the moment caches, with limited appeal.

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0 ratio (it's not a % because % is part/whole and the two numbers you're comparing are un-related).

 

I must be the worst member of my community. ;)

 

Hides/Finds as some measure of community return quality is meaningless. The game requires hiders and finders (and actually more finders than hiders satisfy the equation better).

 

Here's why:

 

Any type of QA-like measurement needs meaningful upper and lower bounds.

 

The lower bound for Hides/Finds is 0, but that loses any information about Finds. Is a 0/10 better or worse than a 0/150?

 

The upper bound is also useless on Hides/Finds. Imagine a person who has 50 hides and 1 find. You'd think that his ratio of 50.0 is great! He's really giving back! But now imagine an entire community like that. Everyone places 50.0 caches but only finds 1. That means there are on average 49 useless caches per cacher (assuming no cache is found more than once) in the community. A single 0/150 cacher in that community instantly improves the experience of quite a few people with 50.0 ratios.

 

In reality, you're going to have to take into account the cacher's quality of caches hidden (a subjective decision, but can be averaged over all finders for some reasonable value), the number of finders per cache (helps normalize subjective issues and should be weighted against difficulty/terrain), the cacher's finds (a hider without finds isn't adding to any other hiders' experiences), their level of participation at community events, their contributions to the websites that make listing caches possible, and to some degree their global contributions in community discussion and interactions with all things promotional (newspaper articles, opening park systems, podcasts, blogs, etc).

 

Come up with that measurement and we'll talk about it.

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To me this is a neat average because it shows how much a person gives back to the sport.

 

Isn't this just another superiority complex statement? That's the reason why player's stats aren't a part of this web site anymore. It just gives people a reason to play the superiority card.

 

The trouble with using these averages or any others is the numbers can be eschewed and has nothing to do with quality coupled with quantity (exceptions have been noted.)

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Giving back is giving back. If someone is at 0% hides, doesn't bless us in the forums as Septic Tank points out, isn't a member of their local organization, doesn't take widows and orphans geocaching, doesn't log jack, and so on, then they aren't giving back squat. You can argue the quality of someones hides relative to their number, what percent you should have, and so on, but squat is squat whatever the reason. It's not meaningless but it is hard to quanitfy. The point being at least one aspect of your chances to give back should be above ZERO even if it is just a nice but short log.

Edited by Renegade Knight
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My "ratio" is fairly low, but I've hidden more caches than the majority of cachers out there. My take on this is...who really cares? I hide caches on my own schedule. Some are the result of weeks or months of planning, and some are hidden on the spur of the moment when I discover the perfect spot. I have fun hiding them, and people have fun finding them. That's all I care about.

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Giving back is giving back.

How true.

 

Maybe we should have a thread about the various ways in which people give back to the sport? Here are a few I can think of that do not require placing any caches:

  • Repairing caches in the field for the owner.
  • Creating neat cache containers and giving them to people to hide.
  • Hosting events.
  • Writing entertaining logs.
  • Being a volunteer approver.
  • Collecting, repairing, tagging, and releasing travel bugs.
  • Writing software useful for geocaching and giving it away to everyone.
  • Finding neat geocaching gadgets and giving some away.
  • Creating a attractive and interesting sig items and leaving them in caches.
  • "Trading up" geo-swag in caches.
  • Writing and publishing articles about geocaching.

I know people in my area that do every one of these things. Each one contributes significantly to the community and to the sport. Some of these things require a great deal of time and/or money, yet people do them freely and willingly.

 

You know, now that I think about it, I think a thread about different ways of "giving back" is a pretty good idea.

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Giving back is giving back. If someone is at 0% hides, doesn't bless us in the forums as Septic Tank points out, isn't a member of their local organization, doesn't take widows and orphans geocaching, doesn't log jack, and so on, then they aren't giving back squat. You can argue the quality of someones hides relative to their number, what percent you should have, and so on, but squat is squat whatever the reason. It's not meaningless but it is hard to quanitfy. The point being at least one aspect of your chances to give back should be above ZERO even if it is just a nice but short log.

;) Rather a hostile tirade. Is it that time of the month or do you feel too far behind in your "blessings?"

Not to mention highly self serving.

Will your faux homepage be up soon?

My intention is to raise the ability to place an adequate cache before I attempt it.

Anything less would be an insult to what I consider one heckofa cool hobby.

Don't discourage people. God knows there may be someone out there who actually thinks you know somethind. :laughing:

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How interesting that Renegade Knight's post -- which basically said, just do *something* to give back, even if it's writing a nice log for a find -- inspired two such diametrically opposed responses.

 

Fizzymagic's post is excellent, one of the nicest posts to the forums today. deimos444's post stoops to the level of a personal attack. There is absolutely no reason for personal attacks in this thread. deimos444, if you are enjoying the forums and finding caches that you are logging, then you're giving *something* back.

 

When I visit this thread next, I very much hope to see lots of positive responses to Fizzymagic's post, or further constructive responses to the original post. It is OK to be critical of the concept of hide/find ratio as a measure of "giving back," but we don't need to criticize individual geocachers. Thanks.

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There are over 500 caches within 25 miles of my home ... do I really have to pollute this area even more?

 

I could easily give a number of lame excuses for zero hides, but to be honest I don't think I'd be a good cache maintainer. I have a track record on creating great new stuff and not maintaining it. This isn't as bad as it sounds for the stuff I normally do, but certainly would be bad for caches.

 

I also try to look at it from a higher level ... the satellites perspective. Do I give more than I take in any public community? If so, what is wrong with taking more than giving in another? In the big picture, it naturally levels out and that is why I have no problem with zero hides. I myself have contributed thousands of hours (and counting) to something else that is freely available for everyone. Just enter my real name into google and yes, most of the 16,000 hits are good ones. Even on a more narrow view, this very forum uses open source software ... I am a contributing open source developer.

 

So in my not so very humble opinion, one has to have very narrow tunnel vision to consider the find/hide ratio usefull for anything at all.

 

Jan

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One of Florida's geo web sites used to "rate" each cachers hide/find ration with an expectation that something around 10% represented a desirable goal. Given Floridas cache density and the number of 1000+ find (and 2000+ and 3000+ and 4000+) cachers here that ratio starts to look a little unrealistic. The longer you cache, the harder it is to maintain some kind of arbitrary percentage.

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Giving back is giving back.  If someone is at 0% hides, doesn't bless us in the forums as Septic Tank points out, isn't a member of their local organization, doesn't take widows and orphans geocaching, doesn't log jack, and so on, then they aren't giving back squat.  You can argue the quality of someones hides relative to their number, what percent you should have, and so on, but squat is squat whatever the reason.  It's not meaningless but it is hard to quanitfy.  The point being at least one aspect of your chances to give back should be above ZERO even if it is just a nice but short log.

:laughing: Rather a hostile tirade. Is it that time of the month or do you feel too far behind in your "blessings?"

Not to mention highly self serving.

Will your faux homepage be up soon?

My intention is to raise the ability to place an adequate cache before I attempt it.

Anything less would be an insult to what I consider one heckofa cool hobby.

Don't discourage people. God knows there may be someone out there who actually thinks you know somethind. ;)

Lets play nice. I'll go first. I really like your signature. "If I only had a brain."

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Lots of interesting responses. Certainly hiding a cache is not the only way of giving back but the hide to find ratio is an interesting statistic. It says nothing about the quality of the hides just as the number of hides listed on a profile says nothing about the quality of the hides.

Be nice to each other people. I hate to see personal attacks in the forums.

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