Commercial buisness names in geocache name or is it?

[+Renegade Knight]

Its a dead-end. That should tell you its a guardrail hide.

 

Not all dead-ends have gaurdrails. Some just have a concrete barrier with a big huge "Dead-End Sign".

 

TGC

 

Not all dead ends have to have caches, either. Something for some to ponder...

 

Can you put that in rule form so the reviewers know which ones to deny to make sure that some don't have caches?

 

Edit: Nevermind. The cache saturation rule covers it.

Edited September 18, 2009 by Renegade Knight

[+Renegade Knight]

...The guidance was 'Caches with a business name in the title will be denied'. How is that unclear?

First reviewers don't have access to all business names in the country. Thus they are stuck with "well known" names.

Second, lets say I use my name in a cache. It's also a well known business name. Dang. I hate when that happens. Or maybe my muse will demand I use my initials, whoops, another well known business contraction (which isn't a name, but has an indirect connotation which the guidelines say is a no, no). What about Standard Oil? A well known name of a dead business...Are we then promoting the survivors? What about naming a cache after a park that's named after a business, or worse a Park named after a Person, but the Person started the business and named the business after themselves?

Do Non Non Profit Business names count. Red Cross for example? They aren’t' exactly a business but they do conduct business. What about a stupid business name that sucks up a real name? SciFi (Channel) by way of example. I can't name my cache SciFi (Yeah, I know they recently changed their name because of this problem but they aren't the only ones out there to capitalize on a words that are popular or common to create a business name. In my town Portneuf is the river. It's also the name of a heck of a lot of businesses. By the logic of why the OP's cache was denied every cache with the word "Portneuf" in it should be denied in my town (and yours actually).

 

Unless we went back to commercial intent being what makes the deciding factor. Which ironically is what I think the actual intention of the no biz name rule was.

Edited September 18, 2009 by Renegade Knight

[+Cpl. Klinger]

Not all dead ends have to have caches, either. Something for some to ponder...

 

You can't imagine what a relief that is!! Have you any idea how many dead-ends there are in my neighborhood that don't yet have a cache? Guess I can cancel that huge bison tube order! Thanks!!

 

Let me be as kind as I can be in my response, good sir:

 

Stuff it. Unless you think I have no IQ, or am illiterate, your sarcasm to a point not directed at you is uncalled for and sophomoric at best.

 

I also predict this thread to be locked in 5.... any one care to place a bet?

 

 

My response was intended to be taken as a light jab at myself, not at you, Cpl Klinger. I was trying to make myself look stupid. I guess that wasn't clear. Sorry.

 

Eh, I guess in the end I've done the same myself. My wife will tell you that I have next to no sense of humor at times, and my sarcasm detector is broken. So, all is cool.

 

Anyway, since the OP has won his appeal, and all is apparently peachy in his world, I think it's about time to put this discussion to bed. Maybe we can start discussing ponies next?

[+sbell111]

...The guidance was 'Caches with a business name in the title will be denied'. How is that unclear?

First reviewers don't have access to all business names in the country. Thus they are stuck with "well known" names.

Second, lets say I use my name in a cache. It's also a well known business name. Dang. I hate when that happens. Or maybe my muse will demand I use my initials, whoops, another well known business contraction (which isn't a name, but has an indirect connotation which the guidelines say is a no, no). What about Standard Oil? A well known name of a dead business...Are we then promoting the survivors? What about naming a cache after a park that's named after a business, or worse a Park named after a Person, but the Person started the business and named the business after themselves?

Do Non Non Profit Business names count. Red Cross for example? They aren’t' exactly a business but they do conduct business. What about a stupid business name that sucks up a real name? SciFi (Channel) by way of example. I can't name my cache SciFi (Yeah, I know they recently changed their name because of this problem but they aren't the only ones out there to capitalize on a words that are popular or common to create a business name. In my town Portneuf is the river. It's also the name of a heck of a lot of businesses. By the logic of why the OP's cache was denied every cache with the word "Portneuf" in it should be denied in my town (and yours actually).

 

Unless we went back to commercial intent being what makes the deciding factor. Which ironically is what I think the actual intention of the no biz name rule was.

Are you looking for some other answer than "Communicate with your reviewer"?

[+Okiebryan]

[+texasgrillchef]

I understand why you feel that things may be unfair when you perceive that one person gets different treatment than another. Grandfathering is not getting different treatment, though. That is different because those folks submitted their caches at an earlier time when the guidelines were different.

 

Since you raise the fact of grandfathering. I don't know your age, so therefore you may or may not remember this. But at one time in our country the legal drinking age in the majority of the states was either 18 or 19. Then the federal government said that any state that didnt' raise their legal drinking age to 21 would stop receiving federal funds for transportation. (Highways, etc...). So all the states raised the drinking age to 21 before the deadline. Some states offered grandfathering. MOST did NOT!. Therefore one day a person was drinking legally, the next day they weren't! So.... You could say those people submitted thier life for drinking & it was legal, then had it taken away because they weren't yet 21.

 

Not everything has to be grandfathered... Even in geocaching.

 

However, I have a real, real hard time understanding why what name you can put on a geocache would be a "big" life issue to anyone. Big life issues are when the doctor tells you that you have cancer, or when you lose your job unfairly, or when you lose your spouse.

 

Five years from now, will anyone except me care what my cache is named? Will anyone besides me even remember that I have a cache?

 

You & a few others have totally missed the point that I was trying to bring light on. The issue that I feel so strongly about, ISN'T the actual NAME of my cache.

 

The issue I have, is with the review process & how the reviewers interpret the "No Commercial Cache" policy. The reviewers are inconsistant with this policy on a whole, as well as I believe that the the direction that the policy has taken is morally wrong and objectionable, on so many levels.

 

Maybe HOW I went about it wasn't the best way possible to bring light on this issue. I was trying to give an example of how this policy & this reviewer had an effect on me with my cache.

 

If my cache had not been denied I would not have known that this was an issue.

 

But frankly if you don't care that their are inconsitancies with reviewers then you know what... neither do I any more.

 

TGC

[+Renegade Knight]

...Are you looking for some other answer than "Communicate with your reviewer"?

 

Yes because that's not much of a guideline.

 

I want to know in advance enough about the guidlines so my reviewer can just click "approve". I hate to be suprised by a cache named "Scout" being turned down because of either Girl, Cub, Boy International, SC-50, Training variations of Scout or any other Scout, and thus hitting the commercial problem instead of it being simply the name of the mountain or a word I liked, or yes even the name of the business across the street because hey, it's there.

 

I'm also advocating that commercial is an intent. If the cache owner is non commercial and has no commercial intent then it's not commercial. The guidlines are a bit paranoid here. Apparently legally paranoid as I can think of no other reason to avoid the name of a business in a cahe other than potential legal action if I place a Dell Sucks cache using the empty carcass of my busted Dell Laptop that Dell refused to repair so I may as well get some use of the stupid thing. But then that hits the agenda policy...

Edited September 18, 2009 by Renegade Knight

[+Okiebryan]

[+riviouveur]

I'm also advocating that commercial is an intent.

That's pretty much the "meat" of the current framing of the commercial guideline, as introduced by MissJenn's post here. For example, you can talk about your favourite sports team even though it's quite likely to be part of a for-profit conglomerate. You can reference your favourite movie, even if it's only a couple of years old and available on DVD (as long as you don't tell people to buy the DVD). But you probably can't reference a movie which is currently running in theatres. It mostly makes sense, although it doesn't always make for easy reading.

 

The guidlines are a bit paranoid here. Apparently legally paranoid as I can think of no other reason to avoid the name of a business in a cahe other than potential legal action if I place a Dell Sucks cache using the empty carcass of my busted Dell Laptop that Dell refused to repair so I may as well get some use of the stupid thing. But then that hits the agenda policy...

The "business names should not appear in a cache name" guideline exists in a little space of its own, away from the "intent" box. AFAIK, it's about addressing slippery-slope issues: if someone decides to place a cache at every McDonald's in their state, then after a while the corporate name is appearing quite a lot. There may not be any intent to promote the business, but it is sort of the net result. Or, maybe McDonald's is using sock puppets who write their cache pages discreetly, with reviewer notes saying "no commercial intent, honest".

 

McDonald's is probably a bad example here, but the reviewers regularly see all sorts of "borderline" commercial caches; free advertising to an audience the size of Geocaching.com's membership base is something many companies would not sniff at. (As you say, negative use of a business name would most likely fall under the agenda guideline.)

 

I would agree that these two aspects to the commercial guideline could be seen to be slightly mutually contradictory, if you want to take time to argue about the finer points of semantics. But then, there are lots of slightly contradictory things about the whole Geocaching.com experience. I call that "charm".

 

By the way: commercial content on Waymarking? Knock yourself out. Another bit of inconsistency if you think that Groundspeak has a quasi-religious thing about advertising, but just a marketing decision if you see Geocaching and Waymarking as two different product lines.

Edited September 18, 2009 by riviouveur

[+tozainamboku]

The "business names should not appear in a cache name" guideline exists in a little space of its own, away from the "intent" box. AFAIK, it's about addressing slippery-slope issues: if someone decides to place a cache at every McDonald's in their state, then after a while the corporate name is appearing quite a lot. There may not be any intent to promote the business, but it is sort of the net result. Or, maybe McDonald's is using sock puppets who write their cache pages discreetly, with reviewer notes saying "no commercial intent, honest".

That may be. I see the "no business names in the cache title" as a rule-of-thumb reviewers can use to make their job easier. It's like the rule-of-thumb for the 528' separation between caches. Reviewers are free to decide if the use of a business name in the title is commercial or not. But most reviewers are not expert in advertising. The use of business name in a cache can be presumed to be commercial and reviewers are free to deny caches for this reason. Some reviewers are likely to always stick to the rule-of-thumb so they don't get accused of favoring one person's cache over another. Groundspeak could put out a guideline where the reviewer has to make a subjective decision (like a virtual cache has to be in a "wow" location). In this case they have given some rules-of-thumb to reviewers to make decisions that work in the majority of cases. Generally, cache owners are pretty good at coming up with some clever names for the cache that doesn't use the business name, so there shouldn't be a problem - just change the name of the cache an it gets published. If you don't want to change the name you can always appeal the reviewer's decision - or better yet the cache owner can contact Groundspeak for pre-approval of a cache that might seem a little too commercial. TGC says his appeal was successful, that seams to be proof that the system works.

[+traildad]

Now to my food example.

HOWEVER... That doesn't speak on consistancy. Things change over time. What I would have a problem with, in my soup kitchen & in my restaurant (Before I sold out to retire) is that ALL severs would server EVERYONE the same portion size. Example Becky a server, & Jessica another server would both be required & taught to serve the same portion size to everyone. Becky wouldn't have one portion size & Jessica wouldn't be serving a different portion size.

 

In addition to that... Everyone coming through the line would get the exact same portion size as well. Someone coming through the line wouldn't get a bigger or smaller portion than the next person in line.

 

The only reason I responded to your post, is it appeared that it required an reply.

But what if you were being served at the soup kitchen and got a small portion. Then as you walked to the table you noticed that most other plates had large portions. Would you demand someone come out and take food off of the plates that had been served larger portions? Sometimes the answer is to tolerate the problems or to go somewhere else. Trying to force others to live up to our own view of fair may not always work out well.

[+texasgrillchef]

But what if you were being served at the soup kitchen and got a small portion. Then as you walked to the table you noticed that most other plates had large portions. Would you demand someone come out and take food off of the plates that had been served larger portions? Sometimes the answer is to tolerate the problems or to go somewhere else. Trying to force others to live up to our own view of fair may not always work out well.

 

No... because in this case, removing food from someones plate legally can't be served to another person. That would be a violation of law. However, if that person gave the other person a portion of his food, that woudln't be against the law.

 

So because it's against the law to remove the food from the other person and give it to another. I would not demand that from the restaurant or the soup kitchen. However, I would demand that they give me more so that my portion is equivalent to the other person.

 

As far as somewhere else. Sometimes you can't do that. If your the only soup kitchen in town its my free food, or no food at all. My grandfather many many years ago in a land far far away ran a gas station. The only gas station in town. Thats why monopolies are discouraged as well as certain companies that are so large that a monopoly exists by the sure nature of the size of the main business. Thats one of the mean reasons why some people have taken issue with Wally world. (As well as a few others)

 

Speaking of food as well. Beverages do go along with food. When the drinking age was raised to 21 many years ago. Many & most states did NOT grandfather legal consumption of alcohol. One day a 18 year old was legally buying alcohol, the next day he/she couldn't. But your logic, we should have grandfathered those people as well, but again I remind you. Most states did not grandfather the raising of the drinking age.

 

TGC

[+Jackalgirl]

It seems to me that the situation has been resolved, and there is a good series of lessons here:

 

o The guideline is not written down in stone, with exhaustive notes, and probably isn't going to be. Context matters, so having explicit instructions is actually counterproductive. Plus, GS' attitude/policy may shift depending on what they see going on over time, which is not necessarily bad.

o Talking with your reviewer is good.

o If the reviewer says "no", it's not because you're a bad person, or stupid, or because the reviewer is out to get you. The reviewer just said "no", that's all. Don't take it personally.

o If you're not happy with what the reviewer says, it's perfectly find to appeal to Groundspeak and have a conversation with the higher ups.

o The people at Groundspeak (the reviewers, too) are reasonable people and will generally consider reasonable requests. So be reasonable.

 

I have a recommendation, too, for those who might not know or who are otherwise passionate: using caps, italics, bold text, multiple exclaimation points, etc, is the visual equivalent of raising your voice. If there's a lot of it in your text, it's the equivalent of shouting (just as using all caps is considered shouting).

 

As a person with an extensive online customer service background, I highly recommend that your first communication (even your first, second, or third) with each individual entity in the chain of people you talk to not utilize these features. Seriously. Nothing turns a person off than being shouted at from the get go. If you find yourself feeling the need to shout in order to get your point across, it's time to talk to the next higher-up person in the chain.

[+traildad]

I didn't say remove the food and give it to anyone. Suggesting that the caches be archived because was not approved would be similar to removing the food and throwing it away so that everyone had consistent portions.

 

But what if you were being served at the soup kitchen and got a small portion. Then as you walked to the table you noticed that most other plates had large portions. Would you demand someone come out and take food off of the plates that had been served larger portions? Sometimes the answer is to tolerate the problems or to go somewhere else. Trying to force others to live up to our own view of fair may not always work out well.

 

No... because in this case, removing food from someones plate legally can't be served to another person. That would be a violation of law. However, if that person gave the other person a portion of his food, that woudln't be against the law.

 

So because it's against the law to remove the food from the other person and give it to another. I would not demand that from the restaurant or the soup kitchen. However, I would demand that they give me more so that my portion is equivalent to the other person.

 

As far as somewhere else. Sometimes you can't do that. If your the only soup kitchen in town its my free food, or no food at all. My grandfather many many years ago in a land far far away ran a gas station. The only gas station in town. Thats why monopolies are discouraged as well as certain companies that are so large that a monopoly exists by the sure nature of the size of the main business. Thats one of the mean reasons why some people have taken issue with Wally world. (As well as a few others)

 

Speaking of food as well. Beverages do go along with food. When the drinking age was raised to 21 many years ago. Many & most states did NOT grandfather legal consumption of alcohol. One day a 18 year old was legally buying alcohol, the next day he/she couldn't. But your logic, we should have grandfathered those people as well, but again I remind you. Most states did not grandfather the raising of the drinking age.

 

TGC

[cezanne]

For example, you can talk about your favourite sports team even though it's quite likely to be part of a for-profit conglomerate.

 

Actually I know at least one reviewer whose opinion is different and who denies caches of that type and argues that this is a sort of advertising as well. While I have to agree with that, I do not agree with his opinion that such caches should be denied.

 

I would agree that these two aspects to the commercial guideline could be seen to be slightly mutually contradictory, if you want to take time to argue about the finer points of semantics. But then, there are lots of slightly contradictory things about the whole Geocaching.com experience. I call that "charm".

 

I agree with you with the exception of your last sentence and the word "slightly. As your last sentence is regarded, for me this is not charm, but annoyance. Logically sound and consistent formulation of rules/guidelines is something that matters a lot to me in whichever field of life. If it is not possible to come up with something non-contradictory, then I think it is better to refrain from trying to set up rule-like things about the issue under investigation at all.

 

Cezanne

[+Prime Reviewer]

FYI... I received a response back to my reply & I WON my appeal so if I desired I could go back and rename my cache what I originally named it.

"I received a response back to my reply" is the only part of that message which is accurate. You were told that, because the cache page had already been published, the ticket was being closed. That's it. Closed. There was no ruling in your favor. There was no ruling made at all.

[+jellis]

To me it still falls into GC Guidelines vs Reviewer discretion