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Cache Placements trending downwards


Gan Dalf

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AS many do, I have used the GSAK Macro FindStatsGen to look at my Caching Stats longer than Groundspeak offered it as a feature. One of the stats that is trackable by that Macro is the Finds by Year of Cache Placement. I'm just strating my 5th year of caching and in all the years I have been, I have found more caches placed that year than the year before. The same can be said of caches placed before I started caching, it's been a steady increase.

 

This year however there is a noticeable decrease in the number of caches that I have found that have been placed this year. I know that the year is not yet over and that I will continue to find more that have been placed this year as time goes on but the drop is siginificant. So much so that I don't think it will go past any of the more recent years unless I move somewhere else.

 

I also tend to clear my area of all avaialable caches. I live in a highly cache saturated area and usually don't have more than 50 or so caches to find witin 10 miles of my house. Even fewer if you leave out the ones that I can't get to becasue I don't own a boat. To be clear, I have found just as many TOTAL caches as I have in years past.

 

So I guess my question is, am I finding fewer caches placed recently because of my tendancy to keep my area clear, or are cache placements really trending lower? Have we reached a point where we will start to see fewer placements with caches only being placed as older ones are archived? I am sure this will be variable depending on where you live so feel free to share what you are seeing in your area.

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I suppose it could be that your local area will have fewer caches placed this year than in previous years. In my area, this certainly isn't the case. Nor is this the situation worldwide.

 

I'm guessing the reason you've found more caches that were placed in 2010 than were placed in 2011 is only partly because 2011 isn't finished yet. The bigger reason probably is that you search for caches outside your local area. While traveling last year and earlier this year, you've had more opportunities to find caches placed outside your local area in 2010 than in 2011. GSAK can give you more definitive answers.

Edited by CanadianRockies
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I live in a highly cache saturated area

This could be the issue. Is there a distinct lack of .1 miles to place a cache?

 

while there is plenty of room to place caches by the strict sense of the word, I wouldn't say it's easy to find places unless you want to put a cache in every lamp post, bus stop and gaurdrail around. It is fairly urbanized with not a lot of open spaces left.

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I wonder if it has anything to do with new cachers coming in to the game. We had a large influx in mid 2008 and through 2009 and then it dropped off quite a bit. We've had a few more come in this year and it tends to be the newbies that place the most caches. Usually they go out and find 10 or 20 and then start hiding like crazy in every available lamp skirt, vacant lot and rock wall in the area. It's starting up agian with a couple of new cachers, I've noticed we've had 10 in the last month from one guy and another group of newer cachers is placing some out in the more remote areas. Maybe once I push out into those reaches a little more forcefully I'll pick up on the 2011 caches...

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Fizzy's graphs are always fun to see when he updates them. His latest is consistent with what the reviewer team has observed: 2011 was our busiest year, and the reviewer group is at record size now.

 

If new placements seem slow in your home area, take a look at the cache maps in Germany or the Czech Republic.

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I've only been caching since April - but the area I'm in is VERY saturated!! That's good for me (and newer folks) but I can plainly see how the long-timers have a hard time getting any finds in their local area. There's no spots to hide them!!

 

My husband enjoys 'fabricating' containers - and we're picky where we like to put them. There's not a lot of places to put caches without driving a good distance. Personally, I like to keep our hides closer to home so we can keep them maintained often.

 

It makes me wonder.... Of all the caches in our area, how many of the 'cache owners' are still geocaching? It's almost like (and I mean this in a good way for the geocaching community)those folks who have fallen off the geocaching wagon and their caches are 'stagnant' - should archive them to make room for new hiders & active geocachers. To keep things constantly FRESH.

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I posted the new graph today here. No change that I can see in membership growth or cache placement rate. Both follow long-term trends nicely.

 

Here is the graph:

CachingGrowth2011-12-7.png

 

while this is a great graph and I appriciate you posting, it doesn't really answer my question as it gives total number of caches available rather than how many are actually being placed. If the number of caches placed is higher than those that are being archived than the trend will remain upward even if the pace has slowed. This is almost certainly the case around here becasue a lot of times as soon as a cache is archived a new one is put in place to replace that. Add that to the ones that are being placed in new locations and the net will be an increase in the number of caches but not necessarily in the number of plasemnents per year...

 

As Keystone points out, in some areas caches are being placed at record levels but I still think that fewer caches are being placed in my area than in years past.

 

thanks to all that replied.

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There does seem to be a slowdown in Washington State as a whole this year. Granted, we aren't at the end of the year yet, but here are the numbers I get:

 

YEAR PLACED ACTIVE

==== ====== ======

2000 12 3

2001 372 128

2002 1332 371

2003 1991 589

2004 2586 870

2005 3440 1365

2006 3704 1688

2007 4064 2026

2008 4619 2749

2009 5819 4184

2010 7418 5927

2011 6152 5685

 

And here's that data graphed:

 

wacaches.png

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I think it's probably because you're clearing out your area.

Maybe, I do have to drive farther to cache the way I like to which is to be able to find at least 10 or more caches every time I go out. But wouldn't going to new areas result in finding more 2011 caches too?

When you traveled farther out on 31 Jan. 2011, you could find all the 2010 active hides but very few 2011 active hides (i.e., only those that were placed in Jan.). When you traveled farther out on 28 Feb. 2011, you could find all the 2010 active hides but still relatively few 2011 active hides. Etc. Etc.

 

Unless you have recently cleaned out all the farther away areas, it wouldn't surprise me if you've found more 2010 hides than 2011 hides in those areas.

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I think it's probably because you're clearing out your area.

Maybe, I do have to drive farther to cache the way I like to which is to be able to find at least 10 or more caches every time I go out. But wouldn't going to new areas result in finding more 2011 caches too?

When you traveled farther out on 31 Jan. 2011, you could find all the 2010 active hides but very few 2011 active hides (i.e., only those that were placed in Jan.). When you traveled farther out on 28 Feb. 2011, you could find all the 2010 active hides but still relatively few 2011 active hides. Etc. Etc.

 

Unless you have recently cleaned out all the farther away areas, it wouldn't surprise me if you've found more 2010 hides than 2011 hides in those areas.

 

Agreed to a point, as I said in my OP. But this year is way behind, not even 50% of what I found up to this point in the last few years. It's so far behind I don't think it will ever catch up. Moun10Bike's data seems to agree with what I am observing. In our area at least cache placements are down and so are the numbers overall despite there being more cachers and it doens't appear that we will even be close to what was placed last year. I doubt we will get 1300 caches placed in the next 3 weeks.

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I'll give you a different graph and then some stats. This is the number of caches placed in the GONIL region of Chicago by month since January 2008. Note that there is always a dwindle in November through February in placements, but the overall placements are going up.

gonil_placements.jpg

 

Now for the stats. Here's the data for how many caches were AVAILABLE (not archived) at the end of each quarter and the change from the previous snapshot. I've also correlated it with the data on how many caches were PLACED in each quarter.

gonil_available.jpg

 

The Chicago area has seen an overall increase in available caches over time, as well as the rate of placement has increased. The quarter ending September 30 wasn't as BIG of an increase as previous quarters, but there's still a substantial increase in the number of available caches.

 

Mind you, that's JUST for the GONIL area around Chicago. Your mileage may vary.

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There does seem to be a slowdown in Washington State as a whole this year. Granted, we aren't at the end of the year yet, but here are the numbers I get:

 

YEAR PLACED ACTIVE

==== ====== ======

2000 12 3

2001 372 128

2002 1332 371

2003 1991 589

2004 2586 870

2005 3440 1365

2006 3704 1688

2007 4064 2026

2008 4619 2749

2009 5819 4184

2010 7418 5927

2011 6152 5685

 

And here's that data graphed:

 

wacaches.png

Nice, is there a place where this can be filtered by state, etc.?

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There does seem to be a slowdown in Washington State as a whole this year. Granted, we aren't at the end of the year yet, but here are the numbers I get:

 

YEAR PLACED ACTIVE

==== ====== ======

2000 12 3

2001 372 128

2002 1332 371

2003 1991 589

2004 2586 870

2005 3440 1365

2006 3704 1688

2007 4064 2026

2008 4619 2749

2009 5819 4184

2010 7418 5927

2011 6152 5685

 

And here's that data graphed:

 

wacaches.png

Nice, is there a place where this can be filtered by state, etc.?

It is already filtered for the stat of Washington.

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Sorry.

 

Nice, is there a place where this can be filtered by states, etc.?

 

Perhaps jholly wasn't clear, let me expound upon it. The stats that moun10bike provided ARE ALREADY filtered stats for the State of Washington.

 

Perhaps you are asking if there is a way to filter caches in othr states the same way?

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Sorry.

 

Nice, is there a place where this can be filtered by states, etc.?

 

Perhaps jholly wasn't clear, let me expound upon it. The stats that moun10bike provided ARE ALREADY filtered stats for the State of Washington.

 

Perhaps you are asking if there is a way to filter caches in othr states the same way?

Correct.

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is there a place where this can be filtered by states, etc.?

 

My expectation is that Moun10Bike is able to provide those numbers either from saved Pocket Query data, or because as Lackey, he can work with database in ways that aren't available to users.

 

Markwell's data is almost certainly derived from his personal store of Pocket Queries. I could run similar numbers for a region of central Florida, if I cared to, from my own saved pocket queries.

 

You could find out how many caches are active from each year now, using a set of current queries. But, unless you have saved data from earlier years, knowing how many caches were originally published in 2005 would be difficult.

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My expectation is that Moun10Bike is able to provide those numbers...because as Lackey, he can work with database in ways that aren't available to users.

Ding ding ding ding ding! :)

 

The criticism of my analysis, that it does not show rates, is a valid one. I have been working to try to get rates; it is not a problem for membership or logs, but it is very tricky for cache placements since the "date" of a placement is not the same as the date the waypoint was created.

 

I can probably get the average cache placement rate for a period of about 2 months, but anything shorter than that is problematic. I'm trying some tricks (1.5/1.5 caches seem more likely to be placed on the same day) but there is still work to do.

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My expectation is that Moun10Bike is able to provide those numbers...because as Lackey, he can work with database in ways that aren't available to users.

Ding ding ding ding ding! :)

 

The criticism of my analysis, that it does not show rates, is a valid one. I have been working to try to get rates; it is not a problem for membership or logs, but it is very tricky for cache placements since the "date" of a placement is not the same as the date the waypoint was created.

 

I can probably get the average cache placement rate for a period of about 2 months, but anything shorter than that is problematic. I'm trying some tricks (1.5/1.5 caches seem more likely to be placed on the same day) but there is still work to do.

 

I would call it more a critique, than a criticism. :)

Edited by FobesMan
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Just wondering if the same downward trend in Washington is across the board or specific to some states.

Fizzymagic's data (Post #16) show that the trend across the board is upward.

No, actually it doesn't. What Fizzymagics data shows is that the overall number of caches, members and logs continues to go up. That can be the case even if placements are dropping, which is what I was asking to begin with.

 

I think overall, worldwide and probably even in the US placements continue to rise, an analysis like th one moun10bike did would be necessary to know for sure and he is implying that he is able to do that because he has access to data the rest of us don't.

 

In Washingotn State it is apparent that placments have dropped significanlty this year. I think I might have an explanation for that. In 2010 Geowoodstock, the 10 year anniversary of geochaching and the first Grounspeak Block Party were all held in the Seattle area. People came from all over the world to particiapte in those events and locals here were encourage to and did place caches like crazy in anticipation of that. The Peace Sign Series and dozens of new caches around Carnation and in Downtown Seattle where the events were taking place probably contributed to the spike in plascments. Once those events were over, local cachers returned to their previous levels of cache placements. You can see from moun10bike's data that we ARE ahead of placements from 2009 and that 2010 might have just been a spike.

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Just wondering if the same downward trend in Washington is across the board or specific to some states.

Fizzymagic's data (Post #16) show that the trend across the board is upward.

No, actually it doesn't. What Fizzymagics data shows is that the overall number of caches, members and logs continues to go up. That can be the case even if placements are dropping, which is what I was asking to begin with.

 

It shows that it's increasing at the same rate. If it were dropping, the the angle of the trend line would decrease.

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Fizzymagic's data (Post #16) show that the trend across the board is upward.

No, actually it doesn't. What Fizzymagics data shows is that the overall number of caches, members and logs continues to go up. That can be the case even if placements are dropping, which is what I was asking to begin with.

Yes, even if placements were dropping, the total number of submitted caches still would be going up. But you can subtract the total number of submitted caches on 1 Jan. 2010 from the total number of submitted caches on 1 Jan. 2011 and determine how many caches were submitted in 2010. Similarly, you can subtract the total number of submitted caches on 1 Jan. 2011 from the total number of submitted caches on 1 Dec. 2011 and determine how many caches have been submitted so far in 2011.

 

With a month still to go, it already looks like there have been more caches submitted in 2011 than there were in all of 2010. Maybe fizzymagic can provide some raw numbers to confirm that. If that is indeed the case, then this would continue the upward trend seen in all the previous years.

 

While the total number of submitted caches isn't an exact match for the total number of placed caches, it should be a reasonable substitute. But it would be great if Moun10Bike could run a worldwide analysis for placed caches.

Edited by CanadianRockies
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