allow finders to rate Terrain and Difficulty

[+dfl1]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

[+Gitchee-Gummee]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

Maybe some cache owners might need to monitor their caches, ultimately making decisions on making D/T rating (or other) changes....

But to allow anyone and everyone to make changes does little than to invite anarchy. I cannot go for this.

 

Sorry.

[Pup Patrol]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

 

Not sure how many times this has been suggested. Hasn't been implemented, so I think that tells you what Groundspeak thinks of the idea.

 

You can suggest different D/T ratings, according to your skill and experience, in your "found it" log.

 

Whether the cache owner takes it into account or not is up to him/her.

 

 

B.

[+StarBrand]

I live in a hilly part of Nebraska prairie (grasslands and loose soil). I recently visited a rugged part of the South Dakota Black Hills (rocky, mountainous, trees, thick foliage).

 

I guarantee what easily gets a 3.5 terrain around me is rated at no more than a 2 up there.

 

Nothing wrong with either rating. Just the way it is. User input will just confuse the issue more.

[jri]

You might want to have a look at Handicaching.com. This is a site that tries to help make geocaching more accessible to disabled people. It allows you to give caches your own difficulty and terrain ratings, as well as rating them for distance, terrain, slope, obstructions and hide height. When several people have rated a cache, it will show average values. You can also leave general comments about the accessibility of each cache.

 

If this is the sort of thing you were looking for, and you are using Firefox or another browser with userscript support, you might also find the Handicaching userscript I wrote helpful. It displays Handicaching ratings on caches' listing pages with a link to make it easier to rate them.

 

I don't think that Groundspeak would be too keen to put this functionality on the main website as (as the previous posts show), different people can have very different perceptions of the difficulty of a cache, depending on their capabilities.

[knowschad]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

 

I don't really know that that would really help, dfl1. The problem really is that we all have different degrees of ability in both of those areas. A trim, fit 21 year old is going to think that a climb that has me huffing and puffing and ready to drop is only a 1.5 terrain and would sneer at my 4 star terrain caches. Likewise, a magnetic electrical cover plate (love 'em or hate 'em) could prove to be very difficult for a newcomer but those of us that have been caching for a while would scoff and walk right up to it. That's why those ratings, both difficulty and terrain, are so subjective as to be nothing more than a mere suggestion.

[+AcousticNut]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

 

I whole-heartedly agree that this would be a great value-add to the cache listing page. Along with the log, finders would post their D/T rating and the cache page would show the average rating of all finders. Leaving the D/T rating solely in the hands of the hider leaves a lot of room for unintentional bias.

[+kantear]

maybe just add a separate optional "finder rating" completely independent of the posted rating. ... but ... bias works both ways - a new cacher may find something harder, or an "old" cacher may not like the terrain... this could also include attributes. sometimes a rating combined with another "hint" embedded in a cache page is a clue. ... on and on.

 

i don't think this will fly. too many more places to go from there, over-complicating something that's just part of the game in the first place.

 

but ... i think some kind of clinical input by finders could help new hiders understand some of the concepts, (yet another but) but ... this could just as easily be covered with appropriate logging.

[+dprovan]

I've found it effective enough for people that think the ratings are off to suggest different ratings in their logs. If they make a good case, the CO can adjust the rating. Adding a field wouldn't do much except discourage any justification.

 

Besides, in my experience, people hiding caches know more about the rating systems than the average visitor, anyway, so there's every reason to think the visitors' opinions would tend to be less accurate. Given that there's no assurance that the visitor supplied ratings with be an improvement, I prefer leaving it up to the CO to make the judgement.

 

The best bet is not to take the ratings that seriously to begin with...

[+Harry Dolphin]

Tough question. Some are bizarrely wrong. Don't know what to say about the 4.5 difficulty where the final coords we 6' off from the listed coords.

But we looked at a series of ten caches over a two mile hike. All were listed as a 3* terrain. Parking available at either end of the trail. We did five of the ten listed caches before turning around in the thunderstorm. A bit over a mile hike in. Very nice trail! Beautiful area. We almost did not do this series with the 3* terrain. The first one was 1.5*. The second was 1.5. 20' hill almost made the rest a 2*. Naw! Perhaps the 4 mile round trip if we did all ten might hae raised it to 2*. We'll get the rest from the other parking spot. If we'd found all ten on the four-mile hike, it would have been a 2*. We almost did not attempt this series because of the over-rated terrain listing.

[+The A-Team]

If we want to talk absurdly ridiculously incorrect D/T ratings...

GC19TC1

 

Access is from a rail-trail (ie. wide, flat, level, well-compacted), about 500 feet from the nearest road access.

GZ is about 25 feet off the side of the trail, up a ~20° slope.

The slope is covered with grass, small rocks, and plants less than 6 inches tall.

Container is an uncamoed film canister, sitting behind a lonely cluster of large rocks, covered by a pile of sticks/rocks.

 

I would rate the cache as a 1/1.5.

 

The CO rated it 5/1.

 

[+DonB]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

I really can't see it working, the terrain rating would probably have quite a spread depending on the age of the cacher, and the difficulty would probably have quite a spread depending on the experience of the cacher.

[+Glenn]

I often see caches will wildly off Terrain or Difficulty rating posted by the person who hid the cache. As someone who makes a find, I would like to offer my suggestion as to the Terrain and Difficulty rating. Perhaps the finder's ratings could be averaged and displayed along with the hider's ratings.

I really can't see it working, the terrain rating would probably have quite a spread depending on the age of the cacher, and the difficulty would probably have quite a spread depending on the experience of the cacher.

Don't forget about seasons too. For example in my area you can have a cache that is terrain 2 or less during the summer. Easy to drive up too and right off the road park and grab. During the winter when the road is closed 50 miles back and there is 6+ feet of hard packed snow on the ground the terrain rating would be a 4+ for the same cache.