Definitions of "Destroyed" - which ones to use and which to not use for the Benchmark Section of Geocaching

[+Black Dog Trackers]

quote:

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for the community to decide

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This should probably have its own new Topic.

 

One unfortunately common situation is when the benchmark's cap is pried off.

 

I found two posts of surveytech on this topic. This one which discusses

KV1898 and this one.

 

From this, I gather a PID should NOT be logged as "destroyed" if:

 

1. The benchmark cap is off but the shank is still there.

or

2. The surface station is totally gone, but there is an underground station listed.

 

I also figure that in case #1, it would be a "found", and in case #2, "not found".

[Rubbertoe]

Well, to be blunt - it doesn't really matter a whole lot when it comes to logging them on the site here. I mean, it does matter if someone marks it as destroyed - because other people would be less likely to look for it, but it isn't too big of a deal because this isn't official data that matters to anyone but us.

 

I have two benchmarks that I found, which I logged as destroyed. This one that was a firetower, but now only its foundation remains - and this one which was removed from the stone face, and is obviously gone.

 

Fwiw, I contacted the person on the NGS report form to ask about the proper way to report missing marks such as this one - and she said "In such cases, if you can email me with a photo of the area showing the "hole" where the station was located then that would suffice for me to submit a destroyed report." Of course, a photo of the missing mark, along with PID and station designation are required.

 

Now, I'm not saying that what I just said is written in stone somewhere - but that is what I was told (about that particular marker) when I inquired about submitting accurate information. Like I've mentioned in another thread, I don't want to be one of hundreds of eager geocachers who submit forms that might contain misleading or inaccurate information.

 

The Toe Pages

[+Black Dog Trackers]

True, this site won't be used by surveyors to find benchmarks. However, I think it is of interest to work toward some consensus here because I think we're all going through an education process here, at least I am.

 

I would've logged the second one of yours as found.

[Rubbertoe]

quote:

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Originally posted by Black Dog Trackers:

I would've logged the second one of yours as found.

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I'm curious... why would you log it as found if the marker isn't there anymore?

 

It wasn't broken off and laying there beside the rocks or anything... the mark had been removed from the natural rock face there, and is completely gone. Not even a stub remaining in the rock there. I'm just trying to figure out how/why people would claim a "found" for markers that obviously aren't there.

 

The Toe Pages

[+Black Dog Trackers]

The reason that I'd count the cap-removed type as found is primarily because of what surveytech said in the first of his 2 posts that I pointed to in the start of this Topic. From what I understood from his post, a decapitated station is still useful. To me, that's worth a "found it" category, or in NGS mark recovery terminology, "Poor".

 

I can't tell exactly from your picture, but it looks like some of the benchmark's metal is still there in the hole. So, I'm assuming, for the sake of argument in this post, that there's bronze in the hole.

 

Secondarily, I'd count it as found simply because it is in the right place and obviously a benchmark's (former) position. Although you didn't find the cap part of the benchmark, what you have found is the shank part of the benchmark. Admittedly you can't read a shank, but you can't read a "chiseled X" either!

 

Now, in the case of a hole in a rock, with no circular 'fossil' impression mark from the benchmark and no metal shank, I'd call that a "not found". I've seen lots and lots of holes in rocks, some manmade, but nowhere near a benchmark location. Same with a hole in the ground. I've seen gopher holes, post holes, holes people dig to get plants or pretty rocks for their garden, etc. and none of them ever had a benchmark in them.

[+Egnix]

quote:

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Originally posted by Rubbertoe:

I mean, it does matter if someone marks it as destroyed - because other people would be less likely to look for it...

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I wouldn't be any less likely to look for it!

Like I've said in another post or two, I'm not a surveyer looking to verify a disc's existence. I'm into geocaching and benchmarking for the hunt. If I can find some trace of what I'm looking for, it's a success to me (even if it's not a "found it".

 

If there were a few logs saying "couldn't find anything", I probably would go out of my way to look for it, but if there is something to be found - I'll go try to find it.

[Rubbertoe]

quote:

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Originally posted by Black Dog Trackers:

The reason that I'd count the cap-removed type as found is primarily because of what surveytech said in the first of his 2 posts that I pointed to in the start of this Topic. From what I understood from his post, a decapitated station is still useful. To me, that's worth a "found it" category, or in NGS mark recovery terminology, "Poor".

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I understand your reasoning there, but in this case it goes against the 'official' word of what the NGS has decided. I submitted all of the information and was told that is was enough evidence to submit a report as having been destroyed. There wasn't anything left in that hole, not even a stub.

quote:

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Secondarily, I'd count it as found simply because it is in the right place and obviously a benchmark's (former) position.

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Ahh, well it seems that you are also going by your own rules, rather than trying to go by NGS guidelines. I'm not saying that is bad - I figure most people will go by their own rules, because sometimes the NGS classifications can be a bit tricky to figure. But, when I find a hole in the rock - where a marker used to be, but is no longer... I just can't count that as a find.

 

To me, that is along the same lines of searching for a cache, finding the hole in the tree where the cache was hidden - but even though the cache was stolen from that spot, still logging that cache as "found" when you get home. You found the spot, yeah - but you didn't find the cache. Same with benchmarks, for me... I found the spot, but the marker was gone. To me, that is "destroyed" - or at least "not found."

 

Again, don't get me wrong - people can play by whatever rules they want here on the site... I just misunderstood your original post, and I was thinking you were one of the folks who believes we should report here at geocaching.com based on NGS type guidelines.

 

The Toe Pages

[+Black Dog Trackers]

To a small extent, I think we all have to go by our own rules when logging benchmarks in the Geocaching site. I say this because the NGS statements on their mark recovery form are not completely clear to me when I try to apply them to actual situations. I think there are a lot of gray areas there. You seem to agree with this point. Perhaps there is more documentation that might be available from the NGS.

 

I have used both surveytech's posts and the NGS statements, amalgamated them as best I can, which resulted in my best interpretation of what others have said.

 

I think my intent is the same as yours - to try to reflect what is needed by the professinal surveying community from the NGS database.

 

In the case of your example PID with the cap removed, and no metal shank, I'd log that as destroyed also, same as you. But as I have said, if the metal shank was there, I'd log it as found, because surveytech said it would still be usable, and I believe him. An empty hole, of course, cannot be usable.

 

You took my 'Secondarily' quote out of context and made most of your points on that, which is unfair. I certainly don't log as 'found' an empty hole in the right place and claim it is obviously the benchmark's position, which one would think by taking that (secondary) part of my post out of context.

 

By the way, you'll surely be glad to know, I have yet to log anything with the NGS. I want to get the gray areas filled in first.

[survey tech]

Very good discussion guys. You both have valid points. Technically, Toe is right that it is destroyed, because all the material that comprised the mark is gone. But BDT is also correct that this spot may still have some value, since the rock in which the mark was set is still solidly in place and the exact spot where the disk was can be seen. A surveyor might still be able to verify his work by locating the hole and calculating its coordinates. If he were to determine that its coordinates are within an inch or two, for example, of the NGS coordinates, this might be adequate for his purposes, depending on the nature of the work he was doing at the time. There are, and always will be, gray areas in this business which can only be conclusively resolved through professional judgement and measurements, but the best rule to follow, from a surveying standpoint, is always to respect the potential value of any marker, or any remaining evidence of it, and make a complete report of it from which others may decide what its true status is. Remember, there should be no implication of failure attached to declaring a point not found. I have looked for thousands over 20 years and made a conclusive determination on perhaps only about one third of them. In fact it is imprudent to declare a point either found or destroyed without truly compelling evidence. This is the standard to which surveyors hold each other, although geocachers may choose to apply their own rules, suitable to their own personal goals. I appreciate both your interest and your concern for getting this right, and I encourage you both to continue to learn more about it.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

I would assume that, if the brass/bronze shank was still present even though the cap was off, it would be more useful than just an empty hole. Probably the positional accuracy would be well within an inch, both vertically and horizontally.

 

It sounds like in some cases, the difference between destroyed and 'recovered'/found is definitely a gray area and really a matter of relative degree of precision rather than an absolute.

[Rubbertoe]

quote:

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Originally posted by Black Dog Trackers:

You took my 'Secondarily' quote out of context and made most of your points on that, which is unfair.

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Sorry.

quote:

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By the way, you'll surely be glad to know, I have yet to log anything with the NGS. I want to get the gray areas filled in first.

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Yeah, I did the same - with the one I've been mentioning, I actually e-mailed the lady there on the submission form, asking for a little clarification before I submitted anything. That's when she said as long as nothing was there but the hole, and I could provide her the PID and designation - she'd report it as destroyed.

 

I kinda feel sorry for her... the more popular this gets, the more people like me that are going to be e-mailing with questions. But, I still think that is better than just going nutso filling out a report for every benchmark found or not found, without perhaps knowing exactly how to do it.

 

Oh, and "well said" surveytech.

 

I'm gonna go to that site soon and try to learn more about benchmarks in general - why they are placed, why they are placed WHERE they are, why they are placed WHEN they are, if they ever are replaced when destroyed, etc. My brain is nearly full right for today, I think I'll wait until I've got a bit more space in the morning.

 

The Toe Pages

[+embra]

OK, let me see if I'm in synch here. This depicts a missing disk beside the courthouse steps. Smooth granite with an disk-shaped marking where the disk clearly *was*. No metal remains. (The picture would probably be more useful if I hadn't zoomed in *quite* so close.)

 

Because of the near-certainty of the location, it still constitutes a find? And would a more ambiguous location have warranted a "Destroyed" log? My sense from what Survey Tech is saying is that we're looking for a location in 3-dimensional space that is usually designated by a disk marker, but sometimes might be where we can determine--with high degree of confidence--a disk marker used to be. (I am, of course, just talking here about bench mark disks and not other types).

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Well I was going to say that the picture doesn't exactly like a benchmark fossil. Then I read the location and it sounds quite definitive. Then I looked at the date. Wow; 1906 !! No wonder it doesn't look typical.

 

Hey, by the way, is that a metal remnant of the benchmark there in the center?

[+embra]

No metal, that is something like a pebble that someone either stuck or glued in there. If I get ambitious someday I'll ask some people in the building if they know anything of what happened to it. I know the battlefield is always getting "souvenirs" ripped off.

[survey tech]

Embra

553 1906 would be properly described as destroyed, since the description is of the marker itself by the NGS definition, but as I have said before, surveyors may still use this spot, since it is still clearly perceptible. Destroyed is the appropriate description because of the lack of ambiguity, not because of ambiguity. Where any ambiguity exists no conclusive determination can be ethically made. You are exactly right that a marker is just a symbol marking a precise three dimensional location, but without actually seeing the marker and confirming that the stamping on it matches the datasheet, the only way to positively verify the spot in question is through professional measurements, so without the presence of the marker one cannot ethically declare a point found. In other words, "near certainty" is not sufficient by professional standards. I suspect this may have been one reason this site was set up the way it was, because the objective of the geobenchmarking game, like the geocaching game, is to find the actual object, rather than a mere spot where it probably once was, but that is up to the participants to decide for themselves. The important point here, from a surveying point of view, for those interested in it, is that to some extent vandalism can be defeated by a wise choice of point location. This is why locations like this one are chosen, because as long as the setting remains unmoved the spot retains at least some of its value. Still, since it is not possible to find something that no longer exists, I would not call it a find and we have the vandal to thank for that.

[dave and jaime]

i think that one good example of where these such discs would be used is to verify your work when doing construction surveys which are not 'official'. these moarkers would have plenty of use when afield with engineers and doing some preliminary work with respect to projects.

[survey tech]

Toe

The answers to your questions are:

 

They were placed where they were with a view toward the greatest permanence. If you had to pick a spot within a certain area where settlement and development were anticipated, and you wanted it to last 100 years or more, you would have to try to visualize what was going to happen there in the future. This is what early geodetic surveyors were confronted with.

 

They were placed when they were because it was decided that a national network was needed to facilitate the expansion of the country and the fulfillment of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny. Such historic figures as Thomas Jefferson, J. C. Fremont, John Wesley Powell and Thomas Hart Benton were among the most instrumental players in the saga. The relentless push westward that followed the Civil War made it absolutely vital that the continent be mapped from coast to coast. And so it was done.

 

In the past, destroyed or damaged markers were very often replaced by NGS or contactors working for them, but the Reagan administration brought an end to that with its government spending cuts, leaving the NGS with barely enough funding to continue its existence. Of course, by that time its original mission had been accomplished, as all parts of the nation, even Alaska and Hawaii, had been provided with the control points they needed. What little money NGS now has at its disposal is committed to the formation of a new high tech network known as CORS, which you can read about at your convenience on the NOAA website. The surviving triangulation stations and benchmarks still represent the finest large scale control network on earth, as well as a monumental piece of Americana. I hope everyone here will respect them as such and help to discourage any vandalism of them.

[+Black Dog Trackers]

As per the title of this topic, here are some strawman definitions of 'destroyed'.

 

1. The NGS official definition. The NGS has on their 'mark recovery form' only one definition of destroyed: "If you found the actual marker separated from its setting, you may report the point as destroyed."

 

2. A standpipe (water tower) it's top was a PID and no the water tower no longer exists.

 

3. A station was a benchmark disk mounted vertically on a building, and that building no longer exists.

 

4. A station was on the top of a firetower or beacon tower and that tower no longer exists.

 

5. A station was on an old bridge abutment and the bridge and its abutments have been destroyed and replaced by a new bridge with new abutments.

 

6. A station was on a section of sidewalk or curb and that section of sidewalk or curb has been replaced without the benchmark.

 

(#5 and #6 are admittedly not as rock solid as the others.)

 

Why would I propose additional definitions for 'destroyed'? We're not the NGS, and I contend that the NGS database has a minor design flaw in having insufficient definitions of 'destroyed'. Because of that, it is needlessly loaded with benchmarks that haven't existed for decades. No one can record them as destroyed since their destruction mode doesn't meet the single definition. The Geocaching database could actually be an improvement over the NGS database in this one particular aspect - the ability to indicate hundreds or thousands of stations as destroyed that certainly no longer exist.

 

Our main disadvantage is that our GPS units can only bring us to within about 15 feet of the right location (in practice it seems better than that). With the 6 above, however, it could hardly matter. With #6 for instance, if a station was mounted on top of a curb, one can inspect the curb for 100 feet on each side of the location indicated by the GPS. In the case of firetowers and water towers, it doesn't take any more accuracy than +/- 1,000 feet to determine that the tower is gone.

 

Note: If the NGS records that a station is destroyed, they don't actually take it out of their database - they just change its searchability mode

[+embra]

quote:

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Originally posted by survey tech:

They were placed where they were with a view toward the greatest permanence. If you had to pick a spot within a certain area where settlement and development were anticipated, and you wanted it to last 100 years or more, you would have to try to visualize what was going to happen there in the future. This is what early geodetic surveyors were confronted with.

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One of the reasons I enjoy benchmark hunting so much is we're not just hunting in three dimensions, but we often have to try to see through time. I like the notion that those who placed the markers were trying to see forward to our time, too. I feel some sort of connection though these hunks of metal.

 

Thanks for your comments, Survey Tech. I appreciate the education you (and other contributors on this forum) are making available to us.

[Rubbertoe]

I think I agree with all six of those definitions... the rest of that post too, really. And yeah - even reading that sentence: "If you found the actual marker separated from its setting, you may report the point as destroyed."

 

To me, that could mean at least two different things. First, it could mean that you physically FOUND THE DISK - which had been seperated from the setting. But it could also mean you "found" that the disk had been seperated from the setting, and is no longer there. In that usage, the word "found" would mean more like "discovered" rather than the physical recovery of an item.

 

So, yeah - you said it pretty well in that post.

 

Toe's Photo Archives

[+Black Dog Trackers]

Interesting, I hadn't thought of that interpretation of the word 'found'. But I see it would cover the 6 definitions. I doubt they mean that interpretation, though, especially because their second alternative to the 'found seperated' statement is to report 'not found' if you did not find the actual marker.

[survey tech]

Although found can have various interpretations, within the surveying community it positively conveys the message that the point remains intact and is still fully usable. Technically, once the marker is separated from its setting it loses all of its value and ceases to be a survey marker, becoming just a piece of metal. Therefore, it would not be credible to use the word found to describe a destroyed marker, even though it is true that you did find a piece of material that was once a marker or you located a spot that used to contain a marker. Its unfortunate that it appears some people may be so determined to label every marker that they search for as found, for purposes of personal gratification, that they may choose to ignore this time honored reporting tradition, ultimately diminishing the integrity and value of the data as a whole, so I would advise that this be discouraged. The dichotomy will probably persist, however, since there seems to be a fundamental split among the participants here, between those who wish to be fully NGS compliant and those who want to treat the pursuit purely as a game, so the rule will probably continue to be "to each his own".

[Rubbertoe]

Yeah, that sounds about right... and one more interpretation that I will make. When Jeremy said "for the community to decide" - I really took that as "for the community to decide - for themselves" More like, each individual will decide for themselves - with those individuals making the community. *laugh* I think he can probably assume by now that we'd never be able to agree on anything as a whole community. But anyway...

 

Toe's Photo Archives

[+Black Dog Trackers]

surveytech -

 

I agree that a marker found to be separated from its setting is not to be reported as found. It's an amusing play on words, but surely not what the NGS means.

[+embra]

quote:

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Originally posted by Black Dog Trackers:

As per the title of this topic, here are some strawman definitions of 'destroyed'...

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After mulling it over for a day, I would endorse these as "destroyed". I think we can be a little looser than NGS and potentially provide something of value in that "flexibility." Of course, the risk is always that of beginning the slippery slope.

 

I would suppose the logs would give the best particulars of each situation (assuming veracity). But some uniformity in the status categorization would surely be important if they are to have any meaning.