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I see another chance for a locationless cache is gone


lamoracke

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Just a little miffed this morning and am just voicing my opinion of course. If locationless caches were locked and archived in January 2006, that would be fine.

 

They converted a virtual for the International Space Station in 2007 or 2008 to a locationless, so some folks got that icon that way. Still, it was years ago and was before I started.

 

I see in the last few days they converted a virtual in Germany called Four Windows to a locationless cache. 9500 folks logged it before it got archived in early 2009. Now all these folks got a locationless, I bet many of them for their first time.

 

I know I am jealous a bit, I really want that icon.... I wish GS would either let folks have the icon some way on purpose, or just leave things alone. This kinda irked me this morning when I found out.

 

I wonder if there was some other virtual out there I could foresee being turned into a locationless because if they have done it twice (at least), they may do it again.

 

Just wanted to vent somewhere.

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My initial reflex was to claim that I was not an icon junkie, but a glance at my profile tells me this may be self delusion. I see that I have a webcam cache, an earthcache, a few virts and a couple benchmarks as found in my profile. In looking back, I remember going for those more so I could add the icon to my list, than actually wanting to do the cache. (sigh...) I guess I really am an icon-ho. Heck, that's my primary motivation in wanting to go to the Pacific Northwest; to log an Ape cache. If I had a chance to log a locationless, I would be all over it.

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The first cache I found was a traditional, the second a multi, the third a virtual, the fourth should have been a mystery but I stopped 200 meters from it.

The locationless caches were locked before I bought my GPSr, but after I learned about geocaching. At that time it irked me that an icon is no longer available for me, and I was mad because I could have logged some in 2005. I read the forums and used google-power to find a locationless not yet archived, and stumbled upon "Four Windows". I thought about logging it, but considered that logging a cache in Germany without visiting the place isn't right. Now I feel the same, and if locationless caches will be unlocked/brought back/etc, I still wouldn't log any.

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Is is true that there were some virtuals that were changed to locationless for a short time after locationless had be grandfathered to allow people to log them as such; or were these virtuals that were archived, locked, and then had their types to changed to what they should have been originally, so that people who logged them as virtuals got the locationless icon after the fact; or is this just a rumor that someone started?

 

I never logged a locationless cache when I could have. I didn't even log one when we knew they were about to be archived and we had a "last chance" to get the icon. To me locationless caching was not geocaching. However, I have posted a number of waymarks in various Waymarking categories. It just makes much more sense to me to do this as Waymarking than as geocaching. I suspect that writing up a waymark description is generally a bit more effort than logging the locationless - which generally only required a photo and the coordinates. I can understand that locationless caches may appeal to those who prefer to log TFTC instead of putting some thought into the log and providing some useful information about the location.

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To me locationless caching was not geocaching.
I think locationless caches were more geocaching than the armchair caches like Four Windows. I posted a Note for the cache Four Windows because I knew the answer to the riddle, but I didn't consider it a "find" in any meaningful sense of the word.
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Is is true that there were some virtuals that were changed to locationless ....so that people who logged them as virtuals got the locationless icon after the fact; or is this just a rumor that someone started?

 

A number of virts were changed to locationless back in late 05 to early 06, archived, and locked. A few more since, here and there along the way. Some have just been archived and locked, some type changed to Locationless, archived and locked. If the cache type changes, finders stats change with it.

 

They converted a virtual for the International Space Station in 2007 or 2008 to a locationless,

 

No, it was Aug 06. Just some late clean-up of mis-characterized Virts - most of that was done by Jan '06.

 

I see in the last few days they converted a virtual in Germany called Four Windows to a locationless cache.

 

I think changing the type may have come out of the Souvenirs. People not wanting a souvenir for the original coords on the thing. so now, instead, cachers who started caching after Jan '06 have a Locationless Icon. Interesting.

To the OP, yeah, it is kind of annoying.... though there have been various Locationless loop holes - early in the smart phones with gps, people found a way in to logging Locationless.

 

One of the more odd ball Locationless was listed as an event. Eventually it got changed to Virtual, and archived. This well before the end of locationless. I remember being happy with the icon change, as it was messing with my Event stats, and I was considering deleting the find over it. As a virt, it was fine with me.

Edited by Isonzo Karst
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Thank god! I made the mistake of logging that guy years ago, and was tired of the stats always showing me with a false find in Germany. With GSAK/FSG, I was able to edit the cache type and force it to locationless, but MGP didn't have that option. I wonder if the acquisition of MGP had something to do with it.

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My initial reflex was to claim that I was not an icon junkie, but a glance at my profile tells me this may be self delusion. I see that I have a webcam cache, an earthcache, a few virts and a couple benchmarks as found in my profile. In looking back, I remember going for those more so I could add the icon to my list, than actually wanting to do the cache. (sigh...) I guess I really am an icon-ho. Heck, that's my primary motivation in wanting to go to the Pacific Northwest; to log an Ape cache. If I had a chance to log a locationless, I would be all over it.

 

 

I didn't realize any locationless actually still existed. I drove well out of my way last week to grab my first webcam cache mainly so I could have the icon. What a cool experience it turned out to be.

 

Edit: Does anyone know any others still in existance? Maybe a bookmark list?

Edited by John in Valley Forge
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The OP is referring to Four Windows. This cache was originally listed as a Virtual. It was a "couch potato" cache, by design. A simple puzzle, you figured out the solution, answered the question by email, and logged the find. It was archived, and locked in '09, still as a Virtual, with a "location" in Niedersachsen, Germany .

 

Just in the last couple of days, the type of the cache was changed from Virtual to Locationless (and now it has no location to generate Souvenirs). The OP's complaint is that, had he logged this virtual, he'd now have the Locationless icon.

Edited by Isonzo Karst
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I didn't realize any locationless actually still existed
Not listed on Geocaching.com
There are a handful that actually are. They don't have the icon, but are functionally identical to Locationless Caches. Groundspeak is aware of the ones I know about; at this point they aren't mistakes so much as grandfathered exceptions.
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[snip...]

Thanks for the information.

 

So it seems that after locationless caches were archived and then locked, some other caches got reclassified as locationless caches (and if they were still active they were archived and locked at that time). So there should have been no time when someone who hadn't already logged theses cache was able to log a locationless cache. However, it also means that some people got a locationless icon because they had previously logged one of these caches.

 

I don't understands Groundspeak's rationale in re-categorizing a cache to a grandfathered type. Does that mean if I find a virtual that was incorrectly classified as a traditional cache, Groundspeak will change the type of the cache to virtual when they archive it? I suspect a lot of people who want to get an icon for owning a virtual cache would be interested in this.

 

The idea of reclassifying Four Windows to a locationless is also hard for me to understand. Locationless caches were reverse caches, meaning you had to find something and then go there to take a picture and post the coordinates. If Four Windows was a locationless cache then only one person would have been able to log it - whoever went to the North Pole first could claim a find. Granted the idea that a locationless was a cache you could do anywhere may make some think that the armchair virtuals like Four Windows were locationless caches. Instead these were caches that never fit the guidelines in first place. If this cache was screwing up someone's statistics or earning them a souvenir they didn't want, they could have deleted the find. By changing the type Groundspeak sending signals that it is okay to armchair log caches. Not only can you count this as find, but eventually the cache type will get changed to locationless to keep your statisitics "right".

 

If people would stop looking at the find counts as a score and stop viewing icon and souvenir collecting as a competition, then the few screwed up caches that existed at one time or another don't matter. You would either delete the finds if you don't want them to count or leave them and be happy with your Niedersachsen souvenir.

Edited by tozainamboku
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I didn't realize any locationless actually still existed
Not listed on Geocaching.com
There are a handful that actually are. They don't have the icon, but are functionally identical to Locationless Caches. Groundspeak is aware of the ones I know about; at this point they aren't mistakes so much as grandfathered exceptions.

Quick log your brass cap virtual so when they start giving out the Canadian province souvenirs you can get Alberta even if you have never been then or the locationless icon - what ever they decide.

 

Edit: Just checked and the brass cap has to be in Alberta so I guess the sovenirs won't be a problem for this one. (Is there a similar cache for each province?)

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I admit, I am an icon junkie....and I do not think there is anything wrong with that. Given thats the case, I hate these reclassifications personally. This cache was able to be logged in late 2008 and early 2009. I thought it would have been a cheap virtual as I figured virtuals were caches one had to actually visit so I never logged it.

 

Thanks for posting the link to the cache and the person who stated how the icon was changed, I obviously did not do a great job of explaining that originally, given a few posts.

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And what exactly would your solution have been? And really, what does it matter?

Leaving the second question aside, it's possible that exempting specific caches from the souvenir program would be a possible alternative to retroactively changing their icons.

 

I don't know how doable that is from a programming standpoint - maybe that's really klugy? But I'm guessing there weren't many huge fans of switching the icon on 10,000 finds either, so the whole quandry could be a lesser of several evils kind of situation.

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And Groundspeak decided that, rather than giving Niedersachsen veneers to all who found that cache, it would give the locationless cache icon instead. Seems like a very poor solution. Someone did not think this through very well.

 

I too am not pleased. If Groundspeak is giving out this icon type, they should give the people who actually want it a chance to get it. Why are the armchair cachers being rewarded like this?

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Huh . . .

 

First time I saw Four Windows, I knew the answer immediately and thought about logging it, but decided no.

 

Now I find out that if I had, I'd have a locationless cache icon?

 

Maybe I should start looking for the other armchair caches and log 'em before they get locked and converted. . .

 

(Hello, my name is John, and I'm an Icon Addict.)

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I didn't realize any locationless actually still existed
Not listed on Geocaching.com
There are a handful that actually are. They don't have the icon, but are functionally identical to Locationless Caches. Groundspeak is aware of the ones I know about; at this point they aren't mistakes so much as grandfathered exceptions.

 

The poster that caused confusion may be referring to the fact that Terracaching.com has a little over 1,100 Locationless caches listed. :huh: Speaking of which, there hasn't been an official announcement yet, but that website will most surely be saved, most likely by European Dev's, and won't be going dark New Years Eve as threatened.

 

Oh, so Groundspeak is aware of the Canadian "Virtual" where people are allowed to post multiple smileys for finding benchmarks in a certain Province? I'm shocked that still exists.

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And Groundspeak decided that, rather than giving Niedersachsen veneers to all who found that cache, it would give the locationless cache icon instead. Seems like a very poor solution. Someone did not think this through very well.

 

I too am not pleased. If Groundspeak is giving out this icon type, they should give the people who actually want it a chance to get it. Why are the armchair cachers being rewarded like this?

 

Too bad you missed that people could still log them with the Iphone app. I'm sure that hole was closed very quickly as soon as discovered. :huh:

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There's a certain "feel good" factor to logging a new cache type. Plus it's good to try every cache type once. Go find a Benchmark once and if you found it less fun that a regular cache never find one again.

 

Also, some Challenge caches require that you find a wide range of cache types.

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I was well chuffed when Four Windows got changed to a Locationless - and pretty miffed when it got changed back as my sole reason for logging a find in the first place was in the hope that it would get changed!

 

I logged a pukka locationless last January using the iphone but the uk reviewer deleted it (see my profile)

 

There are still a number of logs on locationless caches which were logged this way last January and have NOT been deleted because they were backdated.

How do I know this? I have a bookmarklist with ALL the locless caches on and received emails each time one was logged.

 

Someone logged a find on a locless a couple of weeks ago as well, but mentioning it here is like claiming you're sane in a asylum - no one listens!!

 

Mark

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<!--quoteo(post=4563324:date=Dec 19 2010, 07:18 PM:name=Castle Mischief)--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Castle Mischief @ Dec 19 2010, 07:18 PM) 4563324[/snapback]</div><div class='quotemain'><!--quotec-->And what exactly would your solution have been? And really, what does it matter?<!--QuoteEnd--></div><!--QuoteEEnd-->

Leaving the second question aside, it's possible that exempting specific caches from the souvenir program would be a possible alternative to retroactively changing their icons.

 

I don't know how doable that is from a programming standpoint - maybe that's really klugy? But I'm guessing there weren't many huge fans of switching the icon on 10,000 finds either, so the whole quandry could be a lesser of several evils kind of situation.

 

Technically, creating a blacklist of caches wouldn't be that difficult, but it would have been a lot easier if had been done before retroactive souvernirs started to get released. It would, however, add a bit overhead to what is likely a fairly compute intensive process when a retroactive souvenir is released. Because locationless caches are a unique cache type it would be fairly easy to exclude them. Moving caches, on the other hand, don't have a unique cache type (I've seen them listed as traditional and unknown types) so adding them to a black list would have to be done on a case-by-case basis.

 

Of course, if GS decided to do something like this the forums would get a lot more "I had a souvenir for insert-state-name-here State and now it's gone" posts.

 

This is speculative, but I have assumed that when new State/Country souvenirs are released some sort of process which awards them retroactively is executed and once it completes you have to actually find a cache that *currently* exists in the souvenir zone (or use the official mobile app to search within that zone) to obtain a souvenir. If that's the case, if GS provided a mechanism for deleting a souvenir, those that are concerned about getting a souvenir for a place they haven't cache can just delete it after the retroactive awarding process runs. If they happen to visit that area sometime in the future and log a find they'll get the souvenir "for real" at that point.

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I was well chuffed when Four Windows got changed to a Locationless - and pretty miffed when it got changed back as my sole reason for logging a find in the first place was in the hope that it would get changed!

 

I logged a pukka locationless last January using the iphone but the uk reviewer deleted it (see my profile)

 

There are still a number of logs on locationless caches which were logged this way last January and have NOT been deleted because they were backdated.

How do I know this? I have a bookmarklist with ALL the locless caches on and received emails each time one was logged.

 

Someone logged a find on a locless a couple of weeks ago as well, but mentioning it here is like claiming you're sane in a asylum - no one listens!!

 

Mark

 

I heard the rumors (and this was several months ago), and leisurely checked about 100 locationless at my convenience (only about 350 ever existed), and all I stumbled on was a party of 6 or 7 mostly high number cachers, all of whom joined 2007 or later, who all logged the same locationless with an Iphone. This seems like an obvious ploy to qualify for challenge caches. No, I ain't sayin' who or what cache, and no, I have no plans to check the other 250. :blink:

 

Of course there could be tons of these logs, but most people were smart enough to bury the logs in 2004 or something, and not log a locationless in the summer of 2010.

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