Virtuals To Close?

[+PRanger]

since locationless caches closed, are virtuals next? If so, when?

 

Please don't reply rudely. I'm hardly on here and don't read everything that is posted on it. Sorry if its been discussed. Perhaps a link.

[+Markwell]

From what I've heard so far, I don't think they are archiving virtuals any time soon. But apparently no new ones are being accepted.

[+tiki-4]

And i would hope that the discussion isnt one sided, while the decison is strickly business related.

There are a lot of virtuals that should go over to the WM side of the house, but there are virtuals that are more puzzle than WM, and there are some that are pure virtual that could serve as a bridge from GC to WM....

[+tozainamboku]

Waymarking provides a good replacement for locationless caches - Waymarking category = locationless cache. Creation of new categories isn't opened up yet - but this isn't any different that than the moratorium we had on locationless. And I expect that soon there will be ways to get new categories added. As it stands today, Waymarking is not a good replacement for virtual caches for the following reasons:

• There may not yet be an appropriate category for the virtual cache.
  
• The hider may not want to use any category, because it would spoil the suprise of finding the virtual
  
• A multi-part virtual may be hard to categorize if the parts are unrelated other than being close together
  
• Finders have to sort out interesting virtual cache type waymarks from the mundane types (e.g. McDonald's Restaurants)
  
• Waymarks don't have terrain and difficulty ratings so it is difficult for someone to find virtual caches that fit their schedule or abilities.
  

Virtual cache type waymarks should have some kind of verification based on information that can only be found by visiting the waymark. There probably should be some way of visiting the waymark without having to meet these requirements for people who are not interested in caching and a different 'found it' log for those who want to use waymarks for virtual caching.

 

These issues have and are being discussed in the Waymarking forums. As Waymarking matures I am sure that these issues will be addressed. Eventually, virtual caches will likely go away from from geocaching.com but, hopefully, not before Waymarking.com has addressed these issues.