Micro Proliferation and Log Verbosity

[+cerberus1]

The "numbers" folks may be a factor also...

 

Numbers folks aren't hittin' five-mile hikes, but micro - where/what evers.

"Gotta get 'em all" leaves little time for logging.

Hard enough for them to keep track what caches they hit.

TFTC would be a standard, as they may not remember anything of the hide.

 

However...

We do have a few micros. All we were allowed to place by the people we asked for approval.

All are in noteworthy or historic areas, yet some still just say TFTC SL.

That make us feel like they thought them lame.

[+WRITE SHOP ROBERT]

All we were allowed to place by the people we asked for approval.

 

You must have meant Permission?

[+tzipora]

I think age may have something to do with it also...

 

I'm well into the 50s and retired from a job where notes needed to be able to be read/understood by anyone.

I usually tell of our adventure whether it's a micro in a park or a ammo can over a cliff. Sometimes a bit long-winded, I feel the owner deserves the respect of a log.

My shortest logs are on throwdown micros, but even they get a couple of sentences.

 

CJ on the other hand, much younger than me, is in the IT field. She was brought up with the new gizmos and the wording associated with them and uses them day-to-day at work. Time is important and acronyms are needed to simply save time.

She may put a little effort into a log, but it's short and sees no difference in it's meaning.

Micro on a guard rail or Ammo can in a tree top all get the same.

 

I don't think it's age-related at all. I'm under 30 and try to write descriptive logs. I get made fun of sometimes for it, even. One of the folks I've gone caching with recently is retired and her online logs are mostly just "SL".

 

Your idea about it being somehow connected to profession intrigues me more. My job involves writing a lot of reports about information I've gathered. I have to describe what I found and why it's important. I would imagine that a person with that kind of ability and training would be more likely to write a verbose log than a person whose job mostly requires filling out forms, completing checklists, or using acronyms.

 

The other thing that I've noticed recently is that if I write my log immediately after my find, it's a better log. If I wait a few hours or a day, it's always missing something. Logs from days where I've found 6 caches tend to be shorter than 1 cache days. This is most likely because I don't like writing the same thing multiple times, so I break up the story rather than putting it all in one log.

 

I also watched a movie yesterday, "Finding Farley", about a family that treks across Canada to visit their favorite author, Farley Mowat. Instead of simply flying, they decided to re-create many of the adventures described in Mowat's books. Over the course of the film, they read excerpts from Mowat's books about that area, and wrote about what they saw and experienced being there. It struck me that if any of these folks became geocachers, they'd write fantastic logs describing the flora and/or fauna they happened to encounter. They were already interested in documenting and sharing their experiences. I suspect that the verbose log writers on this website share that hobby, while the "TFTC" folks just don't have that inclination.

[+briansnat]

The proliferation of caches in my area from my home coordinates to 20 mile radius are:

Micros (371) 68%

Small (118)

22%

Large (58) 10% --------------------- Total (547) 100%

 

No regular?

[+slukster]

"No, the length of my online logs has not been affected by cache size."

[+zoltig]

The proliferation of caches in my area from my home coordinates to 20 mile radius are:

Micros (371) 68%

Small (118)

22%

Large (58) 10% --------------------- Total (547) 100%

 

No regular?

 

Excuse me. I did indeed mean regular instead of large.

I went back and checked my PQ (I ran 3 seperate pq's for the different sized caches) and the "regular" box was checked. I did not run any "Large" cache PQ's.

 

Thanks for the catch.

I'll edit my post.

 

Well I would have except there is no edit button on my post from yesterday. So for clarification...

 

Micros (371) 68%

Small (118) 22%

Regular (58) 10%

---------------------

Total (547) 100%

Edited March 22, 2010 by zoltig