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Moderator / Reviewer Bloopers


sept1c_tank

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There must be all kinds of stuff that goes on behind closed doors that most of us never pleasure to know. I hereby invite the mods and approvers (and anyone else that may be in the know) to share some of the lighter moments they’ve experienced in their associations with geocaching.

 

Here’s one I found recently:

 

Recently I was cleaning up a thread in the General forum by deleting a number of duplicate posts. I experienced some delays and error messages in trying to get the duplicates to go away. After awhile, I gave up and went back to the page that lists all the topics in the General Forum. It said "There are no topics in this forum." "Yikes!" I said to myself... "Self, you've done something terribly wrong and deleted the entire General Forum!" After that:

 

1. I changed my shorts.

2. I thought as how deleting the entire General Forum might not necessarily be a bad thing.

3. I refreshed my screen and the forum magically reappeared.

 

:blink::)

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Everyone watching, nobody saying anything. Hmmm. Well, I'll get things going! :)

 

Can we take that quote of Keystone's as the reason the whole Groundspeak Forums were on the fritz the other day?

 

Ah, you remember that day, in the wee hours of the morning, before sunrise, on a cold day in October of 2003! :huh::o:huh:

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How's this?? Twice in the last week I published a cache in an area that turns out was well inside the minimum saturation distance of 528 feet from an existing cache. They were both in areas that have a very high number of puzzle & multi-caches. The caches that they were too close to had not yet added the final coords to the cache page using the new additional waypoints feature. If they had, the new caches would not have gotten published.

 

I urge everyone who has hidden a puzzle or multi-cache to go back and add in the final coords. It will help your local reviewer to avoid mistakes like this in the future.

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I will ignore the "Approver" faux pas and respond to this thread with an embarrassing story as a volunteer cache reviewer.

 

It is no secret that I suck at puzzle caches. As a player, I steer well clear of them in most cases. As a reviewer, however, I am obligated to follow the listing guidelines, and list puzzle caches that meet the guidelines. One of the most important guidelines is to check the coordinates for the actual cache location for appropriateness, and to make sure that they are within a mile or two of the posted "bogus" coordinates. Reviewers use form letters when people forget to tell us the actual cache location.

 

Have a look at this puzzle cache. Try your best to solve it. :)

 

Here was my first reviewer note after I opened the cache page and saw puzzle questions:

 

Hello, I am a volunteer with Geocaching.com and I am reviewing your 'Bunches of O's' cache submission for listing on the website. First, I need to know the coordinates for the final location of this cache. This is to ensure that the cache meets all of the site's listing requirements, and to confirm that it is indeed located outside the state park borders as you've stated.

 

For fastest response, please e-mail me the coordinates at keystoneapprover @ yahoo.com or send me an e-mail through geocaching.com by going to your cache page and clicking on my name in the note I left for you there. Do not reply directly to the message you received from the geocaching.com mail BOT, as I will not receive it.

 

Happy caching,

Keystone

Geocaching.com Volunteer Cache Reviewer

 

And my second note, about two minutes later:

 

Duh! Please ignore my prior message. I should have read your challenging puzzle before writing to you and asking for the coordinates. (I use a form letter and paste it into a note whenever I see a puzzle or multicache.) Now that I have actually *read* your cache page, I believe that I have cracked your nearly impossible puzzle. I checked these coordinates and everything looks fine... seems like a nice hike from the parking lot through the hunting area into some woods. I will be listing your cache now.

 

Happy caching,

Keystone

Geocaching.com Volunteer Cache Reviewer

Edited by Keystone
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I will ignore the "Approver" faux pas and respond to this thread with an embarrassing story as a volunteer cache reviewer.

 

It is no secret that I suck at puzzle caches. As a player, I steer well clear of them in most cases. As a reviewer, however, I am obligated to follow the listing guidelines, and list puzzle caches that meet the guidelines. One of the most important guidelines is to check the coordinates for the actual cache location for appropriateness, and to make sure that they are within a mile or two of the posted "bogus" coordinates. Reviewers use form letters when people forget to tell us the actual cache location.

 

Have a look at this puzzle cache. Try your best to solve it. :)

 

 

It wasn't a faux pas! :huh: But it was a mistake I realized immediately after I posted the topic (it sure would be nice if us posters had the oppertunity to edit topic titles).

 

I understand your grief with the puzzle; the toilet seat question has me stumped. :huh::o

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I'll take that last post as authorization to edit the topic title. (With the new forum software, it's easier to do that than it was before!)

 

If I was wrong, then call it a "moderator blooper."

 

"Tanks!" Actually, I was going to ask someone (moderator) to change it right after I posted, but I thought, since so many topic titles seem never to get edited that I would just grin and bear it. :)

 

Now tell us some more stories (please)! :huh::huh:

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When I had a event cache disapproved about a year ago, I was really started to wonder if the approver knew that Geocachers were people. And Geocaches were the inanimate thing you were looking for. So the following is the actual note that the approver posted to tell me that it did not meet the guidelines:

 

Your event does not meet the guidelines to be listed as an event.

Event Caches

Event caches are gatherings for Geocaches by Geocaches to discuss Geocaching. After the event has passed, the event cache is archived. While a music concert, a garage sale, a ham radio field day or an orienteering event might be of interest to a large percentage of Geocaches, such events are not suitable for submission as event caches because the primary focus of these events is not Geocaching and the primary attendees are not Geocaches. In addition, an event cache should not be set up for the sole purpose of drawing together cachers for an organized hunt of another cache or caches. Such group hunts are best organized using the forums or an email distribution list.

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Well one time I ...CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED... and I get an e-mail back from owner telling me that the tail was broken :ph34r:. It was the funniest thing that ever happened to me. I don't think I ever laughed so hard in my life. My wife had to come in and make sure I was OK.

Edited by Joy Division
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When I had a event cache disapproved about a year ago, I was really started to wonder if the approver knew that Geocachers were people. And Geocaches were the inanimate thing you were looking for. So the following is the actual note that the approver posted to tell me that it did not meet the guidelines:

 

This one goes in a Forum Poster / Cacher Bloopers thread. I find it funny how everyone keeps calling them "approvers" in threads (or sentences in this case) that complain about a cache not being "approved"! :laughing:

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Have a look at this puzzle cache. Try your best to solve it. :laughing:

 

Here was my first reviewer note after I opened the cache page and saw puzzle questions:

 

 

That was one of your "firsts?" I seem to recall meeting someone who looked like you at a caching get-together right about when that one came out, and the owner of that cache was there, too. There were a lot of people there that I met for the first time that day, but have met again since. Definitely a good time!

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