Cell Phone Cachers

[+FASTFRANK&WANDA]

One of my pet peeves. A cacher looks for a cache for five minutes then opts for his "Phone a Friend Hint". He calls someone who had logged a previous find for the cache and gets additional hints so he can find the cache quickly and move on to the next "number". Is this ethical caching?

[+jason10]

How does what somebody else do effect you? This is a game, a sport. When you are at the park do you complain how the people on the tennis court/basketball court/baseball diamond are playing on the court next to you? You can play however you want, they can play however they want.

If the person is calling you for help, if you are the 'phoned friend' use caller id. Don't answer the phone. Don't make this a community discussion point about one more thing that other people do that upsets you.

[ImpalaBob]

If you've hiked 1 mile into a rock field with a hidden micro ..... ans searched for 30 minutes ..... yeah it's ethical. It's no different than the cool discussions we have at our local geocaching group meetings. I'll confess that we only use it after an exhaustive search .... and all I want is a hint .... not the final coordinates for a 5 part multi. Last week we phoned a friend and were told the coordinates were about 30 feet off ..... and with this new info we continued to search and found it.

 

My geocaching friends are part of the game to us and way more valuable than any numbers. We do not abuse the phone-a-friend aspect..... but it is important to us that we have geocaching friends!

 

When we our out vacationing we contact any DNF owners each night for a hint and then return to look again. Often the owners meet us the next day and go out with us. How cool is that! ImpalaBob

[+Larth's Clan]

I haven't phoned a friend but I have my family with me so there's four active people searching at a time. We're all under one name too.

 

Is that cheating too then?

[The_Brownies]

Have to say I have phoned my house to make sure the coordinates are correct. See when you do paperless caching this is not too much of an issue since you have the most recent cache pages on your PDA with the decrypted hints. However when someone is using a cache sheet that is 5 months old and the cache is not at the given coordinates, then it's a good idea to phone home to see did the cache move or has it been plundered.

 

Plus when someone gives a clue that requires language translation to get the hint, its nice to phone a friend and use babblefish to decode the language.

 

It's not how you play the game but did you have fun doing it.

 

Almost forgot.. Phone home is a must when you get to a cache location in tim buck too and your pda's battery goes dead on you and your stuck without the aid of a cache page and hints. This has happened to me.

 

What the heck... Can't refuse... This could almost be it's own topic. what defines a geocheater?

 

If you have ever watched a cacher hide a cache and then you find the cache before it's been approved. You might be a geocheater.

 

If you have ever Helped the owner of a cache hide the cache and then log your visit you might be a geocheater.

 

If you have ever placed your own cache and logged a find. You might be a geocheater.

 

If you have never found a cache but have 1000+ finds you might be a geocheater.

 

My personal favorite..

 

If you have ever attended a geocaching get together and logged a find you might be a geocheater.

Edited February 2, 2006 by The_Brownies

[+ZackJones]

I have phoned a friend once after spending 12+ hours and logging 3 DNFs for the same cache. He didn't tell me exactly where the cache was but he gave me enough hints that the light finally went on and I was able to find the cache. I'll do it again if I ever get that stuck trying to find a cache.

[+Sue Gremlin]

We cache because it is fun. We don't worry about what other cachers are doing or how they are doing it unless it directly involves us. If there is a cacher that logs finds without putting in the effort, it doesn't affect me. *shrug* This isn't a contest, and there's no prize money. The reward is in finding the caches.

 

How do you feel about people caching in mobs? They can't ALL find the cache, generally one person finds it, and everyone else signs the log. Is that cheating, too? Does it really matter?

[+ZackJones]

How do you feel about people caching in mobs? They can't ALL find the cache, generally one person finds it, and everyone else signs the log. Is that cheating, too? Does it really matter?

I like group caching. What we typically do is everyone searches and as soon as someone spots the cache they walk away from it and then call out Found It! We then either decide to keep looking or let the person that first saw it reveal its location.

[The_Brownies]

(Sue Gremlin @ Feb 2 2006, 11:15 AM)

How do you feel about people caching in mobs? They can't ALL find the cache, generally one person finds it, and everyone else signs the log. Is that cheating, too? Does it really matter?

 

I like group caching. What we typically do is everyone searches and as soon as someone spots the cache they walk away from it and then call out Found It! We then either decide to keep looking or let the person that first saw it reveal its location.

 

Group caching -- AKA Cache Machines.. is this cheating? To answer that question you would need to define what exactly is a group? Have you ever cached with more than one person? I.e. Friend, spouse, or kids? This is a group. So if one of the members finds the cache, is it cheating for the rest of the members of the group to log a find?

 

Maybe it is.. Hey I know.. after the first one finds the cache, eveyone should put on blindfolds so they don't know where the cache was found. Then they should take turns finding and rehiding the cache,until each member of the group is able to find the cache.. Yeah right!!..

 

I would have to say group caching does not make you a geocheater.

[+redcard]

Phoned a friend to pull up my computer account and get the hint for me. Only.. he was not a tech-savvy person, and couldn't figure out the site. As I was waiting for him to describe what webpage he was on, I used my foot to kick a log over.

 

Cache.

[+GPSOkie]

The closest cache to my house I have DNF'd 4 times. If I knew anyone, I promise I would call them for a hint ! Actually, there are far more DNFs on this cache than finds. I think if you put out a reasonable effort to find the cache and are not able to find it, calling a friend is legitimate. It isn't that much different than using the included coded hints to find a cache.

[+trailpuppy]

In my area cachers will put "phoned a friend for help" in the log. I don't see a problem with that.

[+ZackJones]

In my area cachers will put "phoned a friend for help" in the log. I don't see a problem with that.

 

Too bad they don't publish numbers so when the rest of us get stuck we'd have someone to call . This would help especially when caching out of your local area.

[+Rick618]

It can also be rather entertaining. After heading to a get together I saw another cacher looking for one that has several DNF's including my 2 before I was FTF. I stopped and watched as he crawled around, poked and prodded, used a mirror all with no success. I don't like to just point to it so after a couple of gentle hints he was still looking. His wife and my gf sitting in the warm comforts of the cars were enjoying him looking and so was the restaurant owner who came out to watch too. Finally, as we needed to be somewhere and it was in the 30's I gave him a better hint. He SL and we were able to go to the event. The owner told us he had seen someone else there just a little while ago and that they had looked all over for at least 10 minutes.

They were at the event and fessed up to having not found it. Later as we were watching the super bowl who calls? You can tell from the sound of the voice that they have spent some time with no luck, get to hear the story of looking here, looking there, it must be missing, etc. I place the phone on speaker so the owner can hear them as well. It was funny to listen to the antics. Once again, some gentle hints with incredulous but I've already looked all over.....but apparently not there.

 

I don't mind the phone and friend and use it mostly when you are out of my area and may not know what caching styles are being used. Also helps when you think that you've looked everywhere and find that indeed the cache is gone.