etiquette for individual vs. family finds

[+e-bird67]

I am sure this topic has come up a million times, so I apologize for any possible duplication. I am a relative newbie, but have managed about 80 finds in a few months time. My husband just got bitten by the caching bug, and wanted me to create a new user account for when our family caches together, called Team E-bird. If we all find a cache together, I am assuming I can't log it under our family user name and also under my own, right? I mean, that would be double dipping, I'm assuming.

 

Anyone else have this situation? What did you do?

[+thedeadpirate]

It's fine to log a cache that the family found while you were with them under both accounts.

[+Borst68]

I am sure this topic has come up a million times, so I apologize for any possible duplication. I am a relative newbie, but have managed about 80 finds in a few months time. My husband just got bitten by the caching bug, and wanted me to create a new user account for when our family caches together, called Team E-bird. If we all find a cache together, I am assuming I can't log it under our family user name and also under my own, right? I mean, that would be double dipping, I'm assuming.

 

Anyone else have this situation? What did you do?

 

I don't see where multiple accounts would be a problem. Lot of cachers I now go out with other cachers. When a cache is found, everyone there signs the book and logs it. There is no reason why you can't log it as both. It not like you get a prize for this. If you want to track your own finds and finds as a family group, go for it. Have your husband log the family finds and you continue to log your personal finds. No double dipping there!

[+Ms.Scrabbler]

A lot of families have one name, you could either included them in the account you already have set up or set up a family account and log both the new one as well as your own.

 

Depending on the age of your kids, they may want to get their own accounts so they don't have to "start over" when they are on their own.

[+sdrawkcab]

A lot of families have one name, you could either included them in the account you already have set up or set up a family account and log both the new one as well as your own.

 

Depending on the age of your kids, they may want to get their own accounts so they don't have to "start over" when they are on their own.

 

My oldest just made his own account.... He is sorta upset with me because I won't let him go back and retro find a lot of caches. I told him he has to sign the logs. ....

[+niraD]

I know families who use a single account for the whole family. If anyone in the family finds a cache, then it's logged with the family account.

 

I know families who use a separate account for every family member. Finds are logged with the account for every family member who was there.

 

I know families who use separate accounts for every family member, plus a family account. Finds might be logged only with the individual accounts, or for the individual accounts plus the family account.

 

And so on. As long as you're logging caches that you or your family actually found, there shouldn't be any problems no matter how you decide to log them.

[+Lil Devil]

My oldest just made his own account.... He is sorta upset with me because I won't let him go back and retro find a lot of caches. I told him he has to sign the logs. ....

That seems like something between him and the cache owners. I think most would allow him to back-log them. I would.

 

But he's your son. You can be an over-controlling parent all you want. That's your right.

[+DragonsWest]

I've seen it happen two ways -

 

1. Someone in the family logs using the family group name

 

2. Each member of the family logs a find.

 

It makes no difference to m.

[+all Wright]

I am sure this topic has come up a million times, so I apologize for any possible duplication. I am a relative newbie, but have managed about 80 finds in a few months time. My husband just got bitten by the caching bug, and wanted me to create a new user account for when our family caches together, called Team E-bird. If we all find a cache together, I am assuming I can't log it under our family user name and also under my own, right? I mean, that would be double dipping, I'm assuming.

 

Anyone else have this situation? What did you do?

 

it's nice if you have three family members logging separately, that you indicate it somehow in the logs. ie: "found with big bear...." because sometimes I check the last 5 logs to make sure the cache is still there. I won't visit one that has 3 DNF's in a row, or if the last three people say there are bees all around it or something. I know I could look at the date, but that is not always an accurate way of knowing if the cachers were together or not. More than one group could visit a cache on the same day... or family members may not log them on the same day.

[+Dragery]

Seeing as we only have 1 gps, and it's with me 100% of the time, we have 1 account If family members have their own gps's and break off to do their own caching during some days then it'd be best I would think it best to have their own accounts. But, if you guys have 1 gps, and caches don't get found unless that 1 person comes along, i'd just consolidate the logs into 1 account.

 

I do find it annoying when 2-4 people go out in a group, and all of them log a DNF on a cache tho, especially when they were power (number) caching and don't spend much time on a cache. It's deceiving like the poster above said.

Edited July 23, 2010 by Dragery

[+narcissa]

 

My oldest just made his own account.... He is sorta upset with me because I am a horrible person. ....

 

FYP

[+narcissa]

Seriously though, absolutely nothing wrong with retroactively logging caches you found with a group account.

 

It is courteous to explain what you're doing in the log, though, so cache owners aren't confused. Someone tried to do this recently in our area, but all of their logs just said "1" so between that and the weird dates, many of the logs were deleted and that individual has really not ingratiated themselves with the rest of the caching community.

[+wolfslady]

We each have our own account and we have a family account. The family account I only log to if all 3 of us cache together and it was a special cache. But I also log to each account. (Well I'm a bit behind because I do all the work.) I mostly made the family account for the caches we want to hide and TB's and coins we want to travel. I don't care enough about the numbers to do too much extra work. My husband doesn't care about the numbers at all but he wanted his own account. I wanted one for my son so that he had a record from when he started. Before either had a geoname I signed the logs with my name +1 or +2 and stated in my online logs who was with me. I did go back and log my hubby's 1st cache and I think all of my son's. If an owner wants to remove the log over it they have more time than I do. Once we got the team name I used it to log where space was precious. (Once in a very full log I drew a tiny wolf's head as my mark.)

 

It seems pretty common for some teams to log with just the team name even when all the members weren’t there. Then the team members who were there log under their names. If there are cache owners who have a problem with it they seem few and far between. For this reason I’d say let your son log the caches that he’s done. If you didn’t sign with the team name and you’d feel better about it just send the CO a note and ask if it’s ok. If your son did the caches he deserves credit even though he didn’t have his own account. I know it didn’t occur to me that a child could have an account until we’d been in it for a bit.

[+NJPugs]

We went through something similar last year when we started geocaching. My wife initially setup an account here under her own name, then once we started getting into it we realized it didn't make sense to have the account under just her name since we were geocaching as a family. The folks at geocaching.com/Groundspeak were kind enough to let us change our "name" to a more appropriate name for the family (NJPugs now instead of my wife's name).

 

We usually cache together, but will occasionally grab a cache on our own. When we do, we sign the group name to the log and record it on the one group account here. It's been working just fine for us.