Challenges vs. Virtuals

[+GeoGeeBee]

 

I see that there is community involvement to rate challenges (thumbs up or thumbs down). I don't know what this will end up meaning in practical terms. But logs? The "take a hike" photo challenge has over 805 completions and only a few actual photos (less than 50)- including photos that do not meet the terms of the challenge (take a photo of yourself on a hike; most appear to be from old hikes that were done long before the challenge, which might be within the terms, but would not have qualified for most of the old virtuals or locationless.

 

 

Have you clicked the "flag" button on any of those logs? It looks as though only a few people doing that will cause the bogus logs to vanish.

[+sbell111]

Case in point! I just completed my first "challenge" sitting here at my computer! Challenge was "Las Vegas Sign"...........Posted a pic I took back in April while caching around Vegas. WOW, now that's real Geocaching! Two smilies for the same pic! Think I'll pass on the new game! What's next..Geocaching Farmville?

Hoots!

As I understand your post, there is a challenge that requires you to go to the Las Vegas sign and take a pic. You went to the sign and took a pic. You submitted this pic as proof of completing the challenge.

 

What's your beef?

 

My "beef" is simply a cacher's ability to sit at a computer, play this silly new game and up their numbers without doing anything new! I don't have anything against new "games". I agree with other posters, It's only a game and you can choose to play it or not. BUT.......you shouldn't be able to increase your numbers as I just demonstrated! I say keep the challenges, just don't allow the completions to count as finds on GC.com!.....Hoots!

But you have done something. You took a picture of the Las Vegas sign, which is exactly what the challenge wanted you to do. If you had merely pulled a pic off teh web, I'd agree that you were a cheater, but you didn't. You fulfilled the challenge.

[+sbell111]

Not a good idea. I'd rather see a separate section of the website (or another website) flooded with people's bad ideas. I don't need them cluttering up my PQs and map views.

You can filter out the stuff you don't want on the maps and PQs. Can't currently do any of that with the challenges.

• Challenges don't show up on the maps or in PQs, so they are not cluttering them up and don't need to be filtered from them.
  

[+Hynr]

In all the years since the removal of Virtuals I have not been able to understand why Groundspeak felt the need to stop them. Now that I see what they thought virtuals were about, I fully understand. How sad.

[+tozainamboku]

Case in point! I just completed my first "challenge" sitting here at my computer! Challenge was "Las Vegas Sign"...........Posted a pic I took back in April while caching around Vegas. WOW, now that's real Geocaching! Two smilies for the same pic! Think I'll pass on the new game! What's next..Geocaching Farmville?

Hoots!

As I understand your post, there is a challenge that requires you to go to the Las Vegas sign and take a pic. You went to the sign and took a pic. You submitted this pic as proof of completing the challenge.

 

What's your beef?

 

My "beef" is simply a cacher's ability to sit at a computer, play this silly new game and up their numbers without doing anything new! I don't have anything against new "games". I agree with other posters, It's only a game and you can choose to play it or not. BUT.......you shouldn't be able to increase your numbers as I just demonstrated! I say keep the challenges, just don't allow the completions to count as finds on GC.com!.....Hoots!

But you have done something. You took a picture of the Las Vegas sign, which is exactly what the challenge wanted you to do. If you had merely pulled a pic off teh web, I'd agree that you were a cheater, but you didn't. You fulfilled the challenge.

Backdating finds was controversial with virtuals as well. There is certainly something to be said that point of geocaching is get you outside using a GPS to navigate to a particular latitude and longitude. Once there you can find a cache or take a picture or whatever.

 

Now of course some people find caches with out using a GPS. There are even muggles who stumble upon a geocaches and after discovering geocaching this way they sign up for an account. You probabl can find a few thread where they ask if it is ok to log that found the cache from before they had an account or even a GPS. Seems most people don't have a problem with this, so it's unclear why a virtual cache or a challenge should be different.

 

In all the years since the removal of Virtuals I have not been able to understand why Groundspeak felt the need to stop them. Now that I see what they thought virtuals were about, I fully understand. How sad.

I think they know exactly what people want to list as virtuals. It doesn't matter what guidelines say about places being "wow", people would pick some place and make up something to do to get a find. You could asked them to make it educational, or at least make them notice something they wouldn't have looked at otherwise but it is hard to explain the nuance of such a thing when they simply want to take people to a location they like but are unable to hide a cache at.

 

I'd venture that even the EarthCache reviewers have their hands full wading through submission that aren't even earth science related, let alone the ones that are but asked for some ridiculous photo instead of meeting the educational requirements. That's why they changed the guidelines to not allow any photo requirement unless it ties directly to the educational requirements. I applaud them for there patience dealing with EarthCaches. Perhaps you could have special reviewers for virtuals, but my guess is that is wouldn't be a very fun job.

 

People are stupid. (We have a local cacher who calls that rule #1). Challenges are an attempt to distill virtual caches to basics that the hiders of these sorts of things will understand. Even then, they confused a bunch of people by having worldwide (locationless) challenges that only Groundspeak could create. That caused a lot of users to create challenges that were locationless.

 

With challenges there is a peer review. Things that aren't challenges at all or that are inappropriate for a family friendly game, can be flagged and be removed. Actual challenges can be voted up or down and presumably if the vote becomes negative enough, hidden; while those with big positive votes can be highlighted. Ultimately, this rating will serve as a kind of a "wow" filter.

 

I believe that new challenge types will be added to cover special actions to appeal to people with different taste in virtual caches. I imagine a Learn type challenge where the action must be educational like EarthCaches, and perhaps a Discover type challenge where you have look around and find a particular object or sign to meet the challenge.

 

In coming up with the Best Kept Secrets category in Waymarking, I talked to a lot of people about what they liked about virtuals. There was no one answer. We defined "wow" as being surprised to learn that something was located here that you didn't know about before. But I imagined there would be other Waymarking categories that reflected on what other people thought made a virtual cache "wow". I see the different kinds of challenges as similar to this taxonomy of what made a virtual worthwhile. Soon you will be able to ignore sill Action and Photo challenges if Learning or something else is a more appealing to you. Hopefully we will have an opportunity to give our inputs to Groundspeak, perhaps in the feedback section, for kinds of challenges we would like to see.

[+Crow-T-Robot]

My "beef" is simply a cacher's ability to sit at a computer, play this silly new game and up their numbers without doing anything new! I don't have anything against new "games". I agree with other posters, It's only a game and you can choose to play it or not. BUT.......you shouldn't be able to increase your numbers as I just demonstrated! I say keep the challenges, just don't allow the completions to count as finds on GC.com!.....Hoots!

 

Why exactly would that bother you? If some doofus wants to sit at his computer and knock out challenges around the globe to up his find count...who gives a rip? There are plenty of people that do that with geocaches, too.

 

Personally, I am growing to like Challenges more and more by the hour. I agree 100% that they are a viable substitute for virtuals and I love the idea that Groundspeak has put it on the community to police itself in terms of submissions and logs.

 

Of course, we've already seen the results of that. How many Challenges have been archived because early submitters couldn't grasp the basic concept of basing their challenge on a location? The Kissing a Frog Challenge might've been a catalyst for all these silly submissions, but GS made it pretty clear that only worldwide challenges would be locationless and only GS would publish worldwide challenges. And, of course, in the first hours, we get overrun with "Pick Your Nose In Your Car" challenges that have to be archived. Is that a product of poor planning or an example of giving cachers enough rope to hang themselves with?

 

I know alot of cachers consider Challenges to be silly and worthless, but what I find silly and worthless is the fact that Groundspeak shut down virtual caches because they were being bombarded by submissions to make rotting animal carcasses and tennis shoes into virtual caches and now they've given us another chance to create virtual caches. Better than that, they've turned the controls over to us. Challenges are not reviewed...so if you submit it, it will be published. And what do we do with that opportunity? Publish inane challenges that don't conform to the concept. After such a hue and cry from cachers to bring back virtuals, how THIS TIME it would be different and we'd only have stellar virtuals...this is the result. The onus is on us to make Challenges into what we want them to be.

[cezanne]

But again, there was nothing about the old virtuals that prevented you from doing the same thing with them. Heck, they even had true "locationless" virtuals around, even though they were never supposed to be there. I'm sure you remember Four Windows.

 

But that happened only because some German and Dutch reviewers published those virtuals being fully aware of what they are about.

Of course this also led to the result that a large percentage of cachers in these regions were thinking that virtual caches are armchair sort of things.

 

The essential difference between the old virtuals and the new challenges is that there does not even exist an option for challenges to ask questions and receive answers and that the term challenge makes people think that they need to add something that can be seen as challenge.

Visiting a nice castle is not a challenge so additional actions are added.

The old virtuals used to be good locations for tourists - they did not restrict the time of the visit and the clothes one was wearing etc and many of them did not even involve taking photographs.

 

This challenge (unfortunately only in German) makes quite explicit that going to some location and taking a photo without additional requirements is not seen as a challenge

http://www.geocaching.com/challenges/view.aspx?cx=CXA9A

 

Cezanne

Edited August 20, 2011 by cezanne

[+Zogstarlene]

I don't normally post on the forums. But I'm really upset at the new Challenge feature.

 

Like many cachers I LIKE virtuals as they are now. Like many cachers I voted strongly to bring back virtuals on the enhancement poll run by Groundspeak.

 

I certainly do NOT like this challenge enhancement. Bogus. "Kiss a Frog" is set up by Groundspeak as the 'example' of a good Challenge. Every challenge I've looked at is essentially like that. Terrible!

 

Virtuals took you somewhere. Virtuals required the use of your GPS. Seems like challenges only require you to be good at photoshop.

 

I especially dislike the fact that these stupid challenges count as 'finds'. Benchmarks are actually very hard to find, and you must really work for them and they don't count (which is appropriate.) Challenges can be fulfilled by clicking on a button or by photoshopping a picture and uploading.

 

Challenges should immediately be relegated to a separate website like Waymarking where they will quickly die an appropriate death of attrition.

[+sbell111]

I think that you are missing two important facts. First, kiss a frog is a worldwide challenge (and is being archived). As a worldwide challenge, it is analogous to an LC, not a virt. Many have also been confused by this point and have improperly created regular challenges that are not tied to location. These are being archived.

 

Second, challenges should not be moved to another site as the very reason for thier existence is because people requested that virts, ALRs, webcam caches and LCs be brought back. Challenges can be a viable replacement for these former cache types.

[+awopcxet]

on word:

VIRTUALS!

 

i like virtuals and have done one challenge but i think they are bad, they need to be reviewed

Edited August 20, 2011 by awopcxet