Something's wrong with this "sport"

[+ohmerfam]

i am SO tired of new geocachers coming into this game and hiding a geocache after only 15-20 finds, only to find out that their hides are not within the guidelines or placed without permission.

 

i mean, come on! Can't we enforce a 100 finds before your first hide rule?

[+dfx]

ah, it must be wednesday

[+entogeek]

ah, it must be wednesday

Wednesday is such a maligned day of the week - seems to take the hit for almost everything that goes wrong.

[+BlueDeuce]

i am SO tired of new geocachers coming into this game and hiding a geocache after only 15-20 finds, only to find out that their hides are not within the guidelines or placed without permission.

 

i mean, come on! Can't we enforce a 100 finds before your first hide rule?

 

I have to assume you are talking about approved/published caches.

[+TL&MinBHIL]

i am SO tired of new geocachers coming into this game and hiding a geocache after only 15-20 finds, only to find out that their hides are not within the guidelines or placed without permission.

 

i mean, come on! Can't we enforce a 100 finds before your first hide rule?

 

What in the world does number of caches found have to do with a person's ability to read, follow, & apply the rules to placing their own hide? Don't blame the fact that they can't (or won't) play within the guidelines on their low find count.

[+Huntleigh]

i am SO tired of new geocachers coming into this game and hiding a geocache after only 15-20 finds, only to find out that their hides are not within the guidelines or placed without permission.

 

i mean, come on! Can't we enforce a 100 finds before your first hide rule?

 

Assumes that all people with few finds are incapable of setting a decent hide. A big, and incorrect, assumption.

 

A better solution, perhaps, would be to place the CO's Hide:Find ratio on the cache page and then you could choose not to look for it.

[+KristenSh]

Also, the Find number can be very misleading ... the number of caches I've sought, and been in the right place, only to discover they'd been muggled, or deactivated while the (experienced!) hider realized he needed permission for the location, or destroyed by weather ... I think I'd have another ten or twenty finds! (I'm at about 40+ right now, plus various letterboxes that of course wouldn't show up on stats here.) Found yet another today that had met with misfortune (could see the cache but could not access due to its falling in a storm drain!). So ... you never know.

 

On the other hand, if you've had to deal with an unusually large number of badly done listings ... I am sorry. I am sure that must get very frustrating to those who've been doing this forever. Hopefully the ones that have bugged you will learn from their first attempts, and do better the next time. This just happens to be one of those hobbies that inspires folks to go out and give it a try.

[+JohnnyVegas]

i am SO tired of new geocachers coming into this game and hiding a geocache after only 15-20 finds, only to find out that their hides are not within the guidelines or placed without permission.

 

i mean, come on! Can't we enforce a 100 finds before your first hide rule?

Um, I have found many illegal caches that were place by cachers that have more than 1000 finds. This semester I am only going to school part time so I have increased the amount of caching I am doing. It seems about 10% if the caches I find now are illegal and have been placed by cacher with finds in the 4 digit range.

Part of the problem is that new cachers will copy what they have seen others do. If they see a sprinkler head cache that is in the ground they copy it, they do not know it is illegal.

They see a cache that is screw, nailed or glued to a tree, they copy it, they do not know it is illegal.

THey see a sing of telephone with a cache screwed into it they copy it, they do not know it is illegal.

And these are just some of the illegal caches that I have seen placed by vetran cachers.

[+JohnnyVegas]

removed due to dup post

Edited November 11, 2010 by JohnnyVegas

[+briansnat]

The getting started forum is where we welcome new geocachers and encourage their participation. The appropriate form for this discussion would be the general forum.