SUBMITTED (21313) - [FEATURE] System to remove "ghost" trackables from cache inventories.

[+Touchstone]

20 minutes ago, niraD said:

I wonder what would happen if a cache owner simply marked all trackables as missing immediately.

Requiring maintenance of the trackable inventory is going to push some cache owners towards smaller cache containers, even "in the woods" where larger containers could easily survive. Larger containers would be vulnerable to NM/NA logs when someone drops a trackable in them.

Either that, or CO's will decide that maintaining a zillion Listing pages is unreasonable, and merely reduce the number of pages they have to keep track of.

37 minutes ago, The A-Team said:

Yes, while HQ may not have provided any guidance to reviewers yet, they did recently change the public guidance to include trackable maintenance as a part of the CO's maintenance responsibilities. One would have thought that the reviewers would have gotten notified first, but maybe someone just forgot.

I prefer to think of it merely adding to the tool set that Volunteer Reviewers have at their disposal to come to conclusions on Archival or not.  Just like allowing virtual finds in order to avoid maintaining a cache, or letting a Listing page turn into a Forum, are also tools available to Reviewers to take action on a seemingly abandoned Listing page.  Personally, I think it's important to maintain the public facing Listing page, as well as the physical container.

[+niraD]

32 minutes ago, Touchstone said:

Either that, or CO's will decide that maintaining a zillion Listing pages is unreasonable, and merely reduce the number of pages they have to keep track of.

I wasn't thinking of owners who have "a zillion" cache listings. Who hides that many trackable-sized caches anyway?

No, I was thinking of cache owners who might have (at most) a dozen or two remote "ammo can in the woods" hides, who don't consider a missing/misplaced/mislogged/whatever trackable to be worth a maintenance visit.

This seems like a "be careful what you wish for" situation. Cache owners who don't want to bother with trackables aren't going to be coerced into maintenance visits to check on someone's trackables. They're going to find a way to "opt out" of the trackables side-game. The result will be fewer trackable-size caches.

[+Crow-T-Robot]

8 hours ago, novw.nl said:

And, as wit _all_  things Groundspeaks sais they will implememnt, it is *not*  working.

https://coord.info/TB65MNW  & https://coord.info/TB2K61K have not had any notes / logs / movemnets or whatever, and it is STILL in the online inventory for this cache. I am seriously considering an action group that will start posting needs archived logs on the caches that have TB's in them that are MISSING!!! Its the most frustrtaing part of the entire game!!!

 

If you hope to get the best results, you should really be posting a note on the trackable page as well about it's status of being missing. Just logging on the cache page about a trackable not being in the cache does not notify the trackable owner in any way. The trackable owner should be the one taking ownership of THEIR trackable. A cache owner or reviewer marking it missing is the route to go after it becomes apparent that the TB owner isn't responding/has disappeared.

[+cerberus1]

10 hours ago, novw.nl said:

And, as wit _all_  things Groundspeaks sais they will implememnt, it is *not*  working.

https://coord.info/TB65MNW  & https://coord.info/TB2K61K have not had any notes / logs / movemnets or whatever, and it is STILL in the online inventory for this cache. I am seriously considering an action group that will start posting needs archived logs on the caches that have TB's in them that are MISSING!!! Its the most frustrtaing part of the entire game!!!

Most COs we know take care of marking a trackable missing after doing maintenance, and if there's no response from the TO.  To log NA for Trackables incorrectly logged/missing without either of these actions seems like harassment to me (a TOU violation).

Good luck with that, and it wouldn't be the first time we saw trouble-makers in this hobby get a time-out for their silliness. 

[+frumiousb]

Missing trackables are a huge problem.  While this problem (and it is a problem) of erroneous TB listings is never going away 100%, it could easily be improved a lot.  It takes a lot of mental energy to try to remember which local TBs are ghosts. 

I love finding them and moving them along, and I've only really become active this calendar year, but more often than not a cache's listed TBs have not actually been there and sometimes I've found TBs in a cache that weren't listed.  One cache had around eight TBs listed, about half of those actually in the cache, and I think it was one or two, maybe three, that were in the cache that weren't listed as being there.  The TBs' logs were months to years out of date as far as where they physically were. 

I recently figured out how to make pocket queries, so I've made some to let me know which caches I've found have trackables and which nearby caches that I haven't found have trackables.  But usually the TBs are not actually there.  I have to click on each cache, and each TB, and read the logs (often going back a few years) to figure out what might actually be in the cache.  I've occasionally messaged cache visitors (those between the TB arriving and the first "TB not there" type entry, to ask if they remembered seeing a TB when they were there.  Nada.  More recently figured out how to just leave a note on the TB's log, to notify the TB's owner. 

TB owners don't always respond either.  There's one whose unlisted TB I found in a cache, just the tag, nothing attached to it, and I messaged them to ask what they wanted done with it.  Was something originally attached or not?  Did they want it back or should I place it elsewhere?  Didn't hear from them for weeks and got tired of carrying it around to "visit" all of the caches I was going to, so I eventually dropped it in a hopefully-helpful location.  Still haven't heard from them.

In my excitement over the first couple of TBs I found, I went and bought a bunch, attached them to things, made pages, made info sheets once I figured out how to do that, and placed them.  But now I'm worried most of them are going to just be pocketed soon, never again to show up in a cache.

If TBs were free, I could see GS being less concerned about this:  just a fun kind of thing to move around, and "oh, well" if one gets kept.  But if we have to pay to have a TB, then if we're buying them and spending the time to make a plan/mission for them we deserve to have better records on what's going on with them.

[+novw.nl]

On 3/12/2018 at 7:35 PM, niraD said:

I wonder what would happen if a cache owner simply marked all trackables as missing immediately.

 

Actually: nothing would happen. The next cacher comes along, picks up the tracakble and logs it as found in a cache. Sometimes I wish ALL CO's would mark ALL TB's missing. Have a fresh start.

 

The promise from HQ was that tb's without logs for a year would be automatically deleted. How hard can it be? Even when run once per month this would clean out at least 30% of trackables. TB owners don't care (I have send hundreds(!) of messages), cache owners don't care (I have made hundreds(!) of write notes), Groundspeak don't care. TB's merely seem like an extra way to create extra revenue for Groundspeak. They keep selling them, and they know 60% will disappear within the first year. It looks like they are too chicken to admit the entire TB thing is a hoax. I have spend a ton of money on trackables ( like  -> http://wiki.ssoca.eu/NOVW.NL_personal_GeoToken ) and Groundspeak takes half of that money for the codes. SO: I pay for codes, Groundspeak should give me some more control over how tb's are disappearing from the site.

I hate Groundspeak for not allowing finders to mark my trackables missing. Lets assume there are 5 finders: A, B, C, D and E. C marks my tb missing, so I know I have to ask A and B for more information. And for all I care "we" make a list with cachers who "loose" tb's very, very often. When C marks my TB missing, D can still retrieve it is the missing-log was in error. Where is the problem??!!

[+kunarion]

1 hour ago, novw.nl said:

I hate Groundspeak for not allowing finders to mark my trackables missing. Lets assume there are 5 finders: A, B, C, D and E. C marks my tb missing, so I know I have to ask A and B for more information. And for all I care "we" make a list with cachers who "loose" tb's very, very often. When C marks my TB missing, D can still retrieve it is the missing-log was in error. Where is the problem??!!

 

This was explained to you seven years ago when you asked: