An open letter to Groundspeak about Virtuals

6.1k · June 1, 2012

Lame micros still have a bona fide, actual container at the coords. Lame virts have an absentee CO, and a page full of couch potato logs.

So let me get this straight. We had a Groundspeak representative come here, and pretty much say Virts were discontinued because too many lame ones were being submitted? But yet a film canister in a trash littered alley behind a strip plaza near the dumpster, on private property without permission, has never been an issue? And people like me who disagree with this are radical members of the vocal minority?

I'll just roll with the explanation that this is because it consists of a container and a logbook. I guess I have no choice but not to.

Imagine all those parking lot micros without any containers, an absentee CO, and a ton of couch potato logs. Having an actual container there is a step up from that.

10.2k · June 1, 2012

Lame micros still have a bona fide, actual container at the coords. Lame virts have an absentee CO, and a page full of couch potato logs.

So let me get this straight. We had a Groundspeak representative come here, and pretty much say Virts were discontinued because too many lame ones were being submitted? But yet a film canister in a trash littered alley behind a strip plaza near the dumpster, on private property without permission, has never been an issue? And people like me who disagree with this are radical members of the vocal minority?

I'll just roll with the explanation that this is because it consists of a container and a logbook. I guess I have no choice but not to.

Imagine all those parking lot micros without any containers, an absentee CO, and a ton of couch potato logs. Having an actual container there is a step up from that.

OK then, you convinced me. Waymarking and Challenges it is. :lol:

I actually have exactly 100 waymarks visited (I had about 70, and someone put out a "visit 100 Waymarks" Challenge cache), and have done 9 Geocaching Challenges. So I'm not a hata there. Bur really, "quality issues"? All while there obviously will never be "quality issues" on physical caches?

2k · June 1, 2012

Imagine all those parking lot micros without any containers, an absentee CO, and a ton of couch potato logs. Having an actual container there is a step up from that.

Not really. It just means now you have a lot of litter in parking lots.

19k · June 1, 2012

I have always liked Virtual's. We have found some amazing places – Historical and such – with them. My vote is to keep them but control them. I dislike when someone puts a micro at a beautiful place and then you can see where hurried Geocachers' are digging here and there to find it – do damage.

Caches don't dig. Cachers do.

June 1, 2012

I like virtuals and have found some great sites with them – sites that I would not want some micro at. I get frustrated with people putting micros on places where they do more damage than good. I was at a rock wall – with a micro- and you could see Geocachers had dug into it - knocking loose rocks, rooting into the flower bed and just damaging a beautiful area. Why is that better than a virtual?

6.1k · June 1, 2012

Imagine all those parking lot micros without any containers, an absentee CO, and a ton of couch potato logs. Having an actual container there is a step up from that.

Not really. It just means now you have a lot of litter in parking lots.

I can recall that the proximity rule at the time applied to virts. So someone could list a lame virt which had you get the number off a telephone pole. The owner would disappear and it would then block the area for eternity for actual caches.

Plus, virts don't actually exist. Try explaining to a muggle that there is a virtual invisible cache at the location, and they will think you are nuts. Caches are only litter if abandoned. Usually they eventually get muggled and disappear instead.

Edited June 1, 2012 by 4wheelin_fool

June 1, 2012

Imagine all those parking lot micros without any containers, an absentee CO, and a ton of couch potato logs. Having an actual container there is a step up from that.

Not really. It just means now you have a lot of litter in parking lots.

I can recall that the proximity rule at the time applied to virts. So someone could list a lame virt which had you get the number off a telephone pole. The owner would disappear and it would then block the area for eternity for actual caches.

Plus, virts don't actually exist. Try explaining to a muggle that there is a virtual invisible cache at the location, and they will think you are nuts. Caches are only trash if abandoned. Usually they eventually get muggled and disappear instead.

I think this whole thread is nuts. It's funny reading all the responses. LMAO. :blink:

8k · June 1, 2012

Virtuals were not killed by lameness, they were killed by contempt (and possibly structural issues with the web site).

To a degree this is true.

In the early days Jeremy allowed far more experimentation. The community was trying out different thing to see what worked and what didn't work. People hid all sorts of things that weren't the traditional containers of today.

Virtual were just one a several experiments that have gone by the wayside along with Locationless caches, moving caches, codeword caches, additional logging requirements, puzzles that require downloading software or signing up on website, etc. When these experiments didn't work or didn't fit the constraints of the Geocaching.com website, the guideline were updated and, in most cases, existing caches were grandfathered.

Virtuals were meant as a way to allow caches where physical caches couldn't be placed. This turned into the first problem, since it is difficult to determine if a physical can be placed or not. If virtual caches required that you asked for permission to leave a physical cache first and only when turned down could you then discuss leaving a virtual we might not have the other problems.

What happened is that someone can say they know for sure that permission would be denied so they went right to placing a virtual; or they said they couldn't identify who to ask, so rather than placing a physical without permission, they placed a virtual. Placing a virtual cache was a easy way to avoid the permission question, and a easy way to not have to deal with maintaining a physical container that might go missing. (Perhaps without virtuals we have more people placing physical caches without permission - but that is a different problem.)

Too many people just wanted to share some place that was special for them with the geocaching community and rather that placing a physical cache there, they made it a virtual. While virtuals worked in allowing geocaching in National Parks and other places where physical caches weren't allowed, it was mostly a failure because it provide a cheap and easy alternative to hiding and maintaining physical caches, and was being use far too much for that purpose.

To try to fix the problem, the "Wow" requirement was added. A virtual cache had to be novel, of interest to other players, and have a special historic, community or geocaching quality that sets it apart from everyday subjects. This allowed the reviewers to control virtuals to keep them from taking over geocaching. From the start the purpose of this requirement was to make it more difficult to hide a virtual cache than a physical one, in order to discourage the use of virtuals as replacement for physical caches. The new guideline would still allow for a few virtual caches in places where you truly couldn't place a physical cache.

The "wow" requirement ended up being very successful in accomplishing its goal, but at a very high cost. Reviewers needed to spend far more time on virtual cache submissions than on traditional caches. The "wow" guideline had little effect on what was submitted as virtual caches; they continued to be used by people looking to share a place and not wanting to deal with permission or with maintaining a physical container. So there were a lot more submissions that had to be rejected, and each of these required a reviewer note explaining the requirement. And of course, since these locations were often of special interest to the person submitting them, there were challenges and appeals to the reviewer's ruling in a high percentage of cases. Reviewers, by their nature, want to help get caches published, and many would spend extra time working with the person submitting the virtual either to figure out how to make it "wow" or to get the submitter to create a traditional or offset multicache that highlighted the location. It was the reviewers who felt that a "wow" requirement was too difficult or too time consuming to implement that ultimately led to the decision to end the experiment.

June 1, 2012

I can recall that the proximity rule at the time applied to virts. So someone could list a lame virt which had you get the number off a telephone pole. It would then block the area for eternity for actual caches.

If Groundspeak is "just a listing service", shouldn't they avoid imposing their own standards of taste and just publish the caches as submitted?

Plus, virts don't actually exist. Try explaining to a muggle that there is a virtual invisible cache at the location, and they will think you are nuts.

Missing caches don't actually exist either, but that doesn't stop people from logging finds on them. Some people think that's nuts.

2k · June 1, 2012

Caches are only litter if abandoned. Usually they eventually get muggled and disappear instead.

If they have an absentee owner they will eventually fall into disrepair and become litter. The quality excuse for doing away with virtuals is hogwash given groundspeek's lack of quality control over other caches, except for earthcaches, which, btw, don't exist in the physical realm either.

5.6k · June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

3k · June 1, 2012

While I commend the OP's enthusiasm and enjoy Virtuals myself (half the caches I got on a recent 2 1/2 week trip were Virtuals or Earthcaches), the OP really just rehashes what has been said many times before by others.

The way I see it, Virtuals cannot come back without limitations and Reviewers have enough on their plate that they can't and/or really don't want to deal with evaluating Virtuals.

To rehash something I've said before: Virtual lovers best hope is probably a situation like Earthcaches where certain kinds of Virtuals come back because an organization partners with Groundspeak and handles the criteria and reviewing separately from the normal Reviewers.

Maybe someone should organize a letter-writing campaign to a major historical society or similar organization to get on board with "Historicaches"?

June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Ironic then that Dave Ulmer was already having second thoughts about placing physical containers only 5 weeks after placing the first one.

You really don't see the problems with a sport until you get deeply involved

in it. As the one that has placed the most stashes so far, I began to see

the problems that it created. Some of my stashes are placed on tree farms

owned by a large corporation. They are not, No Trespassing areas but they

are private property. I didn't think too much about it at first because

woods is woods around here, and a cache bucket seems like a pretty benign

thing. The problem I saw was with the published coordinates attached to an

uninvited bucket attached to my name could some day cause trouble. Some

corporate dude five years from now could decide to prosecute me for

littering or something just for the fun of it. For that reason I've decided

to remove the stash buckets but keep the coordinates that are interesting

for another game.

The second major problem I found with geocaching was that you couldn't

easily place them in urban areas or other areas of special interest. One of

the goals I had for geocaching was to attract people to some of those

"special spots" that only local people know about. I know of many unique

spots in the urban area that I would like to identify for people to visit. I

tried the CyberStashing concept that seemed to solve all the problems, but

that was a flop, it was too complicated.

So now I'm on to the Wondert game. Looking for places where just being there

is the reward. I think it might work, I'll let you know when I get back from

vacation. I know my Billy Graham stash would make a good Wondert and

probably Williams Lake too. The two cyberstashes are certainly candidates.

I'll see what other Wonderts I can find.

So go visit my Wonderts and see what you think.

8k · June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Ironic then that Dave Ulmer was already having second thoughts about placing physical containers only 5 weeks after placing the first one.

You really don't see the problems with a sport until you get deeply involved

in it. As the one that has placed the most stashes so far, I began to see

the problems that it created. Some of my stashes are placed on tree farms

owned by a large corporation. They are not, No Trespassing areas but they

are private property. I didn't think too much about it at first because

woods is woods around here, and a cache bucket seems like a pretty benign

thing. The problem I saw was with the published coordinates attached to an

uninvited bucket attached to my name could some day cause trouble. Some

corporate dude five years from now could decide to prosecute me for

littering or something just for the fun of it. For that reason I've decided

to remove the stash buckets but keep the coordinates that are interesting

for another game.

The second major problem I found with geocaching was that you couldn't

easily place them in urban areas or other areas of special interest. One of

the goals I had for geocaching was to attract people to some of those

"special spots" that only local people know about. I know of many unique

spots in the urban area that I would like to identify for people to visit. I

tried the CyberStashing concept that seemed to solve all the problems, but

that was a flop, it was too complicated.

So now I'm on to the Wondert game. Looking for places where just being there

is the reward. I think it might work, I'll let you know when I get back from

vacation. I know my Billy Graham stash would make a good Wondert and

probably Williams Lake too. The two cyberstashes are certainly candidates.

I'll see what other Wonderts I can find.

So go visit my Wonderts and see what you think.

http://www.wonderts.com

21.9k · June 1, 2012

http://www.wonderts.com

Hey lookey! Toz done found himself a Waymarking Easter Egg. There are others.

June 1, 2012

It would still be another couple of months before geocaching.com even existed, but within eight weeks of hiding the first cache, Dave Ulmer had already had it with all the squabbling about what a true geocache was.

I am personally tired of all the squabbling over what is a True GeoCache or

not. I've always felt that different locations require creative different

solutions to creating a stash. So far the webmasters of this game are making

the rules and any innovation in stashing is ruled out of bounds and won't be

published on their sites. This attitude has caused me to give up on the game

and am planning on taking any new ideas somewhere else...

Dave...

I think he got it exactly right. It's really sad, maybe even tragic, that mediocre web development was able to stifle his vision.

6.8k · June 1, 2012

Moreover, I think that in some countries in Europe containerless forms of geocaches (whatever they are called) could be an answer to
geocaching bans like

http://www.gocacher.de/?p=1598

(unfortunately, the stuff is in German) - it is about a ban of geocaching by a German municipality as a reaction to excessive geocaching in the area due to powertrail forming the text Geocaching Forever on the map). There are other similar bans and new ones will come in the years to come.

I'd say that's more of an argument against power trails than for virtuals.

Actually it is both. On the one hand, powertrails exist and are only part of the problem (there are many others like damage caused by searching for tricky hides) and on the other hand, I had virtuals as a partial solution in mind for being able to continue with the part of the activity which is important for me despite the fact that others parts (the container part) will sooner or later be ruined in these areas.

The container is the only critical component from the legal point of view and typically the one causing all the damage that takes place.

Typically people do not destroy moss, stone walls, tree stumps, etc in order to find virtuals.

Cezanne

10.2k · June 1, 2012

http://www.wonderts.com

Hey lookey! Toz done found himself a Waymarking Easter Egg. There are others.

I always suspected "The Mormons were right". Although I'll bet he just got that from a South Park episode. And he needs to validate his account.

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Cathy did bring that up (managers banning physical caches, and asking for virts) and so did B+L when he resurrected the discussion on her response. I've always said that issue has merit.

June 1, 2012

While I commend the OP's enthusiasm and enjoy Virtuals myself (half the caches I got on a recent 2 1/2 week trip were Virtuals or Earthcaches), the OP really just rehashes what has been said many times before by others.

The way I see it, Virtuals cannot come back without limitations and Reviewers have enough on their plate that they can't and/or really don't want to deal with evaluating Virtuals.

To rehash something I've said before: Virtual lovers best hope is probably a situation like Earthcaches where certain kinds of Virtuals come back because an organization partners with Groundspeak and handles the criteria and reviewing separately from the normal Reviewers.

Maybe someone should organize a letter-writing campaign to a major historical society or similar organization to get on board with "Historicaches"?

Ok I thought I was done in this thread but sheesh really? "The op rehashes what as been said before?" Apparently you all make these sorts of claims did not read what I wrote. I never once said "bring back virts as they used to be" The whole purpose of my post was to stimulate a conversation about what was good about virtsd and how to bring them back into the mainstream fold of caching. I was never closed to the idea of offsets. I never once said "lets log dog poop as a virtual" I never once claimed any of that yet I get bashed and chided here and other places over this because people are not reading what I wrote?

And then get told "hey you expect too much from geocaching.com they are just a listing service" If that is the case, why bother having any rules then? Just let people list what they want and be done with it. EVen singing the praises of the company and the reviewers seems not to be enough.

In the end I guess many narccisitic qualities must feed self-indignation which fuels the visceral that is these forums. Too bad for that. I guess I did expect too much from this wanting an grown up discussion about it. Live and learn.

June 1, 2012

It would still be another couple of months before geocaching.com even existed, but within eight weeks of hiding the first cache, Dave Ulmer had already had it with all the squabbling about what a true geocache was.

I am personally tired of all the squabbling over what is a True GeoCache or

not. I've always felt that different locations require creative different

solutions to creating a stash. So far the webmasters of this game are making

the rules and any innovation in stashing is ruled out of bounds and won't be

published on their sites. This attitude has caused me to give up on the game

and am planning on taking any new ideas somewhere else...

Dave...

I think he got it exactly right. It's really sad, maybe even tragic, that mediocre web development was able to stifle his vision.

And 12 years later nothing has changed. Still squabbling. Only thing is, people don't even know what they are squabbling about - making up things as they go along. EVeryone has "their idea" of what the game should or should not be and god forbid if you disagree with that, you are the bad guy then.

1.9k · June 1, 2012

While I commend the OP's enthusiasm and enjoy Virtuals myself (half the caches I got on a recent 2 1/2 week trip were Virtuals or Earthcaches), the OP really just rehashes what has been said many times before by others.

The way I see it, Virtuals cannot come back without limitations and Reviewers have enough on their plate that they can't and/or really don't want to deal with evaluating Virtuals.

To rehash something I've said before: Virtual lovers best hope is probably a situation like Earthcaches where certain kinds of Virtuals come back because an organization partners with Groundspeak and handles the criteria and reviewing separately from the normal Reviewers.

Maybe someone should organize a letter-writing campaign to a major historical society or similar organization to get on board with "Historicaches"?

I tend toward this idea myself, but not limited to Historical sites. I think there should be science, art, history, etc. I lean toward EduCaches. Educational purposes like the Earthcache model, but not limited to geology. But I don't know who could oversee them -- just a group of volunteers?

6.1k · June 1, 2012

http://www.wonderts.com

Hey lookey! Toz done found himself a Waymarking Easter Egg. There are others.

So Dave Ulmer and GOD are both responsible for Waymarking? :ph34r:

June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Cathy did bring that up (managers banning physical caches, and asking for virts) and so did B+L when he resurrected the discussion on her response. I've always said that issue has merit.

I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching.

Narrow-mindedness, bigotry and provincialism won the day.

6.8k · June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Cathy did bring that up (managers banning physical caches, and asking for virts) and so did B+L when he resurrected the discussion on her response. I've always said that issue has merit.

I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching.

I also can recall that very early in my caching career I had similar thoughts than Dave Ulmer (not knowing about his thoughts at that time). Having seen the damages caused by searching cachers at some locations, I came to the conclusion that there are many locations where a container could be placed, but no container should be placed. I do not care that much whether virtuals are part of the core value of geocaching for the majority, but I do think that virtual geocaches have their place and would have more positive than negative effects. Powertrails are published now routinely even though they only have negative effects on geocaching.

Cezanne

6.1k · June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Cathy did bring that up (managers banning physical caches, and asking for virts) and so did B+L when he resurrected the discussion on her response. I've always said that issue has merit.

I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching.

Narrow-mindedness, bigotry and provincialism won the day.

Perhaps non waterproof, buried caches hidden on private property containing food items should be part of the core values?

10.2k · June 1, 2012

One other factor that lead to end of virts, is that some land managers were banning physical caches because you could put a vitr there instead. To keep the 'core' value (find container) alive, virts had to die.

Cathy did bring that up (managers banning physical caches, and asking for virts) and so did B+L when he resurrected the discussion on her response. I've always said that issue has merit.

I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching.

Narrow-mindedness, bigotry and provincialism won the day.

Perhaps non waterproof, buried caches hidden on private property containing food items should be part of the core values?

Your on fire the last 24 hours, aren't you?

June 1, 2012

I personally am for virtuals for the sole purpose of historically based caches which cannot support a fun geocache (maybe a micro, but I feel like I have had enough of those as well) that do not fit under an earthcache. But I also realize that virtuals may not be needed since a field puzzle could fill the bill by having someone figure out a puzzle about the topic to find a final stage.

June 1, 2012

Perhaps non waterproof, buried caches hidden on private property containing food items should be part of the core values?

Aren't they? Better move them over to Waymarking before anyone notices.

1k · June 1, 2012

I love virtuals, but only because they are rare and take you to really interesting locations. I do not want them to be brought back.

I have been caching since 2002 and remember the frustration that people had trying to get a new virtual published during the "wow factor" stage. It was frustrating for the cachers and even more frustrating for the reviewers.

Bringing virtual back would not work for several reasons:

1) Reviewers would revolt - they don't want to go back to all the headaches of trying to justify why they subjectively published one virtual and not another.

2) Letting the community review instead - just look at Waymarking or Challenge Caches for examples of why this doesn't work. Eventually every McDonalds or whatever will become a virtual. It would be impossible to wade through the sea of crap to find the good ones.

Some things are just not scalable. It may have worked 10 years ago when geocaching was relatively unheard of, and geocaches/geocachers were scarce, but it's just not possible today.

I've read the arguments that say tighter guidelines would prevent this. It might help prevent them from getting published, but it wouldn't prevent them from being submitted. Whomever was assigned to reviewing them would have a huge task on their hands and would be constantly dealing with unhappy cache submitters when their virtual cache idea was declined.

8k · June 2, 2012

I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching.

Narrow-mindedness, bigotry and provincialism won the day.

I'm not sure that Jeremy has ever indicated that virtuals are inferior to physical geocache. He may have indicated is that virtuals should be reserved for places where you truly can't place a physical cache, and he probably has also justified the "wow" requirement by saying that since the reward of a virtual is the place, that place ought to have some quality that sets it apart. It is clear that for many people finding container (even a nano under lamppost skirt) seems like enough of a reward that the "wow" factor didn't need to apply to physical cache.

But I still believe the purpose of the "Wow" factor was just to make placing a virtual cache and getting approved more difficult, so that virtuals would not replace physical caches as that majority of what was hidden.

Dave came up with his ideas because be began to worry about permission and perception issues with physical caches. Even before 9/11 there was some concern about caches hidden in urban areas being found by non-geocachers and getting reported as suspicious packages. Rather than discussing guideline and review processes and ways to deal with public perception of this brand new activity, it looks to me like he decide that perhaps you could simply post coordinates of neat places and people would go and use GPS to find them.

Of course by linking Woderts.com to Waymarking, I sort of indicate that I think Dave's idea would look more like this than Geocaching.

Dave Ulmer is not God (at least AFAIK that account is not his sock puppet). In the early discussion his was just one voice among many is the discussion of how the activity of geocaching should progress. His wonderts idea did not get much traction. In fact the post you quoted reads more like a geocide note. "If you don't like my idea then I'm going to go play my game somewhere else". I don't know if he actually posted any wondert coordinates or not. Perhaps he was also a bit upset that he hadn't thought of the idea of registering the geocaching.com name as starting a website. But he certainly hadn't learned his lesson and Jeremy soon owned that domain as well.

However, Geocaching.com was soon revisiting the idea of a container-less cache. Some people wanted to put caches in places where they either couldn't get permission or where it would be inappropriate to hide physical caches. As I stated, Jeremy was willing to try almost any thing to grow the game and the geocaching.com website. Virtuals were very successful in allowing caches to be placed in places where a physical cache could not be hidden. But people wanted to use them for more. Some actually wanted something akin to wonderts. They had a place they wanted to share and virtual caches were a way to do so without the need to get permission, place a container, or maintain it.

While these locations may have bee "wonderts" that people enjoyed visiting, may agreed with Dave's decision, that these should be a separate game. Ultimately, Groundspeak came up with a second website. One that was built to support all kinds of coordinate based activity. The initial roll out emphasized something akin to locationless caches. Users would propose categories and people would find places that fit the category and provide the coordinates along with photos and other information. Groundspeak decided to sit back and let the community take this site where they wanted it to go. Only a few of us attempted to create "interesting" categories that played more like virtual caches. So what got created were more and more categories that were simply catalogs of locations. Any chance to attract the geocachers who enjoyed visiting virtuals and discovering the surprises there soon faded.

Eventually Groundspeak decided that there was still a demand for something like the old virtual caches. They came up with challenges. The idea here was to list a place and the provide a challenge to do at that place. This would provide a sense of accomplishment and more of a game like feel than a visit to a waymark. The first attempt was to let this challenge be open - specify any action you wanted done. Those who wanted to bring back virtual caches seem to find many of these actions silly. I suggested a "Learn" activity, that would require answering questions much the way EarthCaches do. That isn't on the list yet, but they are promising something called Discover challenges that are supposed to be more like the old virts.

It is disingenuous to claim that Groundspeak has a narrow-minded, prejudicial, provincial attitude toward virtual caches. They have gone out their way - first to make virtuals work better when they were listed, and later to provide alternatives ways to share locations that address some of the issues that virtuals had. They continue to solicit input from the users to improve these alternatives (and I am sure if there is a good idea for yet another alternative they would entertain that). The provincialism I see is from the crowd that turns up their nose at the these new ways to share interesting locations and who refuse to participate in creating Waymarking categories that meet that need; or to improve the quality of challenges by submitting their own challenges and participating in the forums discussing challenges.

June 2, 2012

I only brought it up because i believe the thinking is flawed. It only has merit if virtuals are considered inferior to "real" caches. Dave Ulmer was already experimenting with virtuals within weeks of placing the first cache, but somehow virtuals are not part of the core value of geocaching.

Narrow-mindedness, bigotry and provincialism won the day.

I'm not sure that Jeremy has ever indicated that virtuals are inferior to physical geocache.

I quoted him earlier. His posts on the topic are still available. It's not like he ever hid his thoughts on the subject. It would be much more useful to actually read what he's said rather than pontificating endlessly about what you think he might have said.

It is disingenuous to claim that Groundspeak has a narrow-minded, prejudicial, provincial attitude toward virtual caches. They have gone out their way - first to make virtuals work better when they were listed.

It is disingenuous to rephrase something so that you can fashion a strawman out of it. It is also disingenuous to ignore or dismiss anything that does not fit into your existing narrative. Go ahead, cling to the non-sensical belief that adding a "wow factor" requirement was an improvement. The anonymous quotes I posted earlier were written by Jeremy and a long-time reviewer. The disdain they are expressing for virtuals is not inferred.

Dave Ulmer might not be God, but he did invent this game and it would be a lot more interesting today if it had been allowed to stay truer to his vision for it.

I've always felt that different locations require creative different

solutions to creating a stash. So far the webmasters of this game are making

the rules and any innovation in stashing is ruled out of bounds and won't be

published on their sites.

8k · June 2, 2012

The anonymous quotes I posted earlier were written by Jeremy and a long-time reviewer. The disdain they are expressing for virtuals is not inferred.

I guess anyone can post some anonymous quotes and attribute them to whom ever they like. I'm sure that you can find quotes from Jeremy you can take out of context and interpret them as saying he has disdain for virtuals.

I was around during the "Wow" period and also when virtuals were grandfathered. While I was not enamored by virtuals when I started geocaching I came to appreciate them and I was a big supporter of keeping them when Jeremy was deciding whether to keep them or move them to another site.

Jeremy did seem to be searching for someome to provide a definition of a virtual cache that differentiated it from a waypoint or waymark. The fact is that most of what was submitted were similar to waymarks in that a person had a location they wanted to share and simply didn't want to go through the hassle of placing a cache there. The fact that Jeremy rejected every definition that was suggested might be take by some as indicating he had already made up his mind. But I don't think this was the case. He certainly recognized that that a significant portion of geocachers enjoyed finding virtual caches and that some of the better ones were on people's favorite lists.

In the end he felt that Waymarking.com would work better for sharing container-less locations than geocaching.com. I was among several who argued that Waymarking categories were not at all like virtual caches and even made this suggestion as way to make my point. However, I didn't stop there, I actually did propose a category that was designed to be more like virtual caches. In doing this I discovered why Jeremy was not satisfied with any of the definitions of virtual cache. Everyone seemed to have their own definition of what made a virtual cache. If you're going to bring something back that would satisfy everyone, you would basically have to accept anything anyone submitted as virtual cache. At that point you might as well stop hiding containers and just have people list coordinates for places. I don't think you really want that.

I understand that many people are dissatisfied with the locations where many geocaches are hidden. They see the grandfathered virtual caches and find that most are in interesting places. Even one stuck in a parking lot has to have some reason for being there. There's often some surprise that you discover after you get to the location. But the point is that this is because during the Wow period, reviewers didn't publish virtuals unless the hider was able to convince them it was wow. People put a lot of work into these virtuals and that's why they are so satisfying. If you bring back virtuals without a Wow you will find that it not nonsense at all to say that the wow requirement improved virtuals.

6.1k · June 2, 2012

Virtuals have been gone for seven years now and people who have no idea what they were like are the ones that always seem to want them to come back. IMO the site has been way too broadminded to allow the grandfathered ones for so long. They should have archived them all and modified Waymarking as needed to satisfy the demand. Instead they have allowed too much of anything on Waymarking causing visiting activity to be almost nothing. We have offset multis with a virtual first stage, puzzles, nanos, and now Challenges along with Waymarks to fill any virtual needs. When these threads pop up it is rather a call to have the remaining virtuals archived. There is a virtual at the Lincoln memorial which has no description of what to do, and no active owner at all and is representative of many of the current virts which are just ownerless couch potato magnets.

It's the rare holy ghost icon and the numerical value that makes virtuals sought after. I can imagine what would occur if Groundspeak decided to team up with Waste Management Systems to create a very special limited dumpster icon to be used only for hides on garbage disposal containers. The forum would be filled with people wanting to know the requirements to obtain and list one of the limited amount of caches to obtain the icon. People who normally would stay away from those hides would be compelled to visit, if only once, to obtain the icon, especially if it was announced that the listings would eventually be locked. :rolleyes:

Edited June 2, 2012 by 4wheelin_fool

6.8k · June 2, 2012

I was around during the "Wow" period and also when virtuals were grandfathered.

Me too.

Jeremy did seem to be searching for someome to provide a definition of a virtual cache that differentiated it from a waypoint or waymark. The fact is that most of what was submitted were similar to waymarks in that a person had a location they wanted to share and simply didn't want to go through the hassle of placing a cache there.

The fact that Jeremy rejected every definition that was suggested might be take by some as indicating he had already made up his mind.

I somehow think that already the idea of defining virtual caches needs end up in something which is similar to the waymark concept in the sense that it sets out a narrow framework which is quite inflexible.

One should not mix up the issues what people consider as virtual cache, how the publication process could work and what makes up a good virtual. In practice there are interdependencies between the answers to these issues, but in theory they are separate.

Personally, I'd say a virtual geocache results from a cache with one or more containers by removing the container and provide an alternative way of logging verification. It is quite obvious for me that this point of view makes no sense to cachers for whom the cache is the container or the at least the defining component.

For a good/nice virtual further conditions have to be satisfied like in the container case. There is no agreement what makes a good cache with a container, so there cannot be one if the container is left out.

My idea of a nice virtual is not synonymous to the wow definition used by the reviewers and it does not require that no container can be placed as there are many locations where a container can be placed, but I either do not want to hide or search for a container there or think that it is a bad idea if people search a container there. There are countries where obtaining permission would end up as life-time job. Already finding out who owns a certain area in a forest (there could be 10 and more different owners within a small forest) is an extremely bureaucratic, time and cost intensive issue (just for the inquiry, not the permission!). As a consequence thereof almost all caches that are placed in some countries are placed where without the property owner being aware of the placement. The few exceptions in forests are mainly cases where the hider owns the property or knows the property owner. I do not think that this situation could be referred to as "do not want to go through the hassle of placing a cache there".

The situation is not everywhere like e.g. it appears to be in Florida

http://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=efa09aeb-e2ac-4aad-8779-725a4aa35eac&wid=c1002b89-d0e4-4ba6-a0d3-804c032850af&ds=2

where there seem to be many areas where it is well known whom to address.

I feel that is very hard to explain to Jeremy and Co what people like myself are missing in Waymarking and challenges as most of them mainly think in terms of traditionals and seem to enjoy things they associate with the term cool.

The fact that neither Waymarking nor challenges do offer additional waypoints, D and T ratings, attributes and other features of geocaches shows clearly that what the creators had in mind differs considerably from what you get when you remove the containers from physical geocaches.

Up to now absolutey nobody provided me with an answer how virtuals like the virtual I own or the virtual that would result from my last cache by removing the container at the end and changing the end would fit into Waymarking or challenges.

In the end he felt that Waymarking.com would work better for sharing container-less locations than geocaching.com.

If the main focus is on sharing and on locations in the singular, I even would agree with him.

What really makes me wonder is however why in the world they did not come up with a PQ system for waymarks and a system that

allows to display geocaches and certain categories of waymarks in one map.

I was among several who argued that Waymarking categories were not at all like virtual caches and even made this suggestion as way to make my point. However, I didn't stop there, I actually did propose a category that was designed to be more like virtual caches. In doing this I discovered why Jeremy was not satisfied with any of the definitions of virtual cache. Everyone seemed to have their own definition of what made a virtual cache.

Everyone has his own definition of a cache ending with a container as well. The result is what we currently see in the world of non-virtual caches.

If you're going to bring something back that would satisfy everyone, you would basically have to accept anything anyone submitted as virtual cache.

Exactly. That happens for non-virtuals at gc.com. Think e.g. of powertrails you have not been allowed for years.

At that point you might as well stop hiding containers and just have people list coordinates for places. I don't think you really want that.

Actually, I think that there are still many people who enjoy hiding and searching containers. For example, for some geocaching is about tricky hideouts and creative containers. Virtuals will not appeal to this audience.

Personally, I would like to set up several projects as virtuals in particular in urban areas and in areas where I do not feel comfortable with going the permission-less approach. There are still caches that I would implement with a container. There are many cases where a container and a log book are the simplest and most appropriate manner of providing log verification.

If the main focus of a geocache is e.g. an educative one as in Earthcaches, then a container and log book is not the ideal verification process - it does not involve an interactive element that support the learning process because it is a one way street.

If you bring back virtuals without a Wow you will find that it not nonsense at all to say that the wow requirement improved virtuals.

I do not need virtuals to return to know that the Wow factor improved virtuals.

That statement and the statement that virtuals have been a real chore for the reviewers are two of the statement around virtuals that I wholeheartedly agree with.

I do not agree with statements like "virtuals are not needed because there is Waymarking and there are challenges".

I feel that the multi stage and mystery character are almost completely left out of Waymarking and challenges.

It also seems to me that a category of virtual educative caches also does not have a good chance to ever get implemented on whatever Groundspeak site as it appears to me that some of the key people at Groundspeak are not very positive about Earthcaches and do not enjoy them themselves.

Earthcaches are however also a good example why I do not like that much the category approach of Waymarking. In Waymarking and in ECs the operating group can set up their individual rules some of which are in no connection with the category itself, but only come out of the personal decision of the people in charge. A good example is the language guideline for ECs which is in place since January 2011 which forces cachers to offer a description in the local language. It is somehow ridiculous and absurd that I am allowed to submit English only physical caches, but I'm not allowed to do the same for Earthcaches (it is not a review process issue!).

Cezanne

6.8k · June 2, 2012

Eventually every McDonalds or whatever will become a virtual. It would be impossible to wade through the sea of crap to find the good ones.

While the argument with respect to the excessive work load for reviewers is valid, the argument about quality does not convince me.

Actually, nowadays most of these places get their physical cache. Locations like McDonalds or a supermarket could at least be of interest as waypoints for some people. In some areas geocaching went that far that every traffic sign that does not fall under the staturation guideline gets its micro or nano. For a typical example of what I'm talking about see this cache

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=2b1315a3-9380-41a4-95c1-178697fe71a4

The cache is at a sign announcing a short parking zone at a heavy traffic road with absolutely nothing around that could be of interest.

From that point of view, I do not think that virtuals could get really worse.

If they would not count into hide/find count, I even believe that many would not be as motivated to hide/search them as they are for physical lame caches as those count.

How do you wade through the sea of crap for physical caches? Shall Groundspeak stop to publish caches at all because there are so many lame submissions?

Of course, there are some possibilities for filtering, but that could apply for virtuals as well if done appropriately.

(Of course it does not work for challenges as they are set up in such a unprofessional way with not even a decent search routine with respect to location not to speak about filters with respect to non-existing further properties. Challenges are apparently implemented for a young audience that owns a smartphone, is standing around bored at some place and decides to check whether there is a challenge nearby that could be done. They are definitely not intended to be visited in the same systematic and planned manner than many apply to their geocaching activities.)

Setting up a decent multi stage virtual or a good educational virtual is much more work than hiding a standard magnetic micro.

If there existed reasonable possibilities to implement such concepts within challenges or Waymarking, I would not care that much about the fact that lots of other submissions there are not of interest to me. The same is true for physical caches as well. The unfortunate thing about virtual geocaches (or whatever someone wants to call them) is that there exists no reasonable platform at all for what I like to see.

Cezanne

Edited June 2, 2012 by cezanne

June 2, 2012

Listed are some of the “issues” I have seen in the past and a way to counter those issues with virtual caches:

1) “Virtual caches can be real caches, just place a micro on them or near them” – Well this is more of a counter issue – many of the virtuals, such as places in DC or pretty much most national historical park type places would not allow a cache to be placed there. So it is not as simple as putting a film can in a crevice.

I definitely agree with this point. There are also times when there would be nowhere to put a cache anyway. So I think this is your strongest argument.

2) “Virtuals locations can be part of a puzzle cache or multi” – Why? In all honesty and bluntness, this is a silly idea simply because a cache like that can get lost in the mix of the other icons. I almost passed up “cacher at the bat” in downtown Louisville (which was a multi that made you read information outside of the Louisville bat factory and museum and took you a block or so away to the final) simply because I didn’t want to take too much time with a multi. I did it regardless. Virtuals seem to stand out more, and we know exactly what they are about. Answer – Bring back the virtual icon holding a green container to let people know it is a virtual that has a final somewhere if we MUST have a physical cache near it”

I disagree with this absolutely. The best Geocaches in my book are ones that take you to a place and teach you about it. Regular caches are boring, but something like your example in Louisville really interests me. Just because you make the mistake of passing up these awesome caches does not mean that you argument is any more valid. Virtuals definitely do not stand out more than a well-thought out multi/puzzle. They only stand out more on the map because of the ghost icon. Also, your idea about the ghost holding a cache is rather stupid. But I guess the icon would be kind of cute.

3) “But it is easy to log a virtual without doing anything if the CO doesn’t log on to verify your answers” – Answer - Fine, have a mechanism in place that for all NEW virtuals, a CO must log in at least every 30 days to GC or else his/her virtual gets disabled.

4) (Here is my favorite) but this is what Waymarking/challenges are about – To paraphrase the general consensus bluntly – challenges are stupid. In fact, they go against just about everything Groundspeak has spoken out about virtuals. There is no real logging ability, no stories to tell, and they simply serve no purpose. Waymarking, again as stated above, just gets overloaded with garbage (and doesn’t apply to our numbers) nor does anyone really do it.

Okay, so I agree that Waymarking is a bad idea, and that challenges are poorly executed. However, I actually do enjoy challenges. From my (admittedly short) experience caching, I feel like the better challenges represent what virtuals were. If anything, we should get a revamped challenges page that places them on a map much like the geocaches. The entire page should be reworked. As far as your logging ability, it all depends on the cacher. I always post a story with my logs, but most people grab the number and go. Unless you are talking about adding the number to your overall total ... in which case, I think you have completely missed the point of geocaching. It's not about a number; it's about the experiences you gain from the world around you.

5) “But virtuals can be anything anyone wishes to make, so they can be equally as silly” – Answer – Have more restrictive listing requirements. A reviewer has the power to accept or deny caches based on rules right? Worried that virtual listing can be subjective? Well everything is subjective. I think we trust our reviewers enough that they have been caching a long time and can use subjectivity to make sure a virtual being listed is worthy of such an icon. Have the requirements for listing a virtual take you someplace with significance or truly unique. Make the virtual listing require photos and answer “why is this cache worth posting” – again, we trust our reviewers to use their experience.

I think this would work well with revamping the Challenges section. I would only add that the reviewer should actually visit the location. I understand that would be a big requirement though, and I'm not sure what the area is that reviewers have to cover. ^^

Like I said above, I'm not a veteran cacher ... but I am an active one. I think that Challenges were a great idea, but poorly executed. They need to be more accessible, and we need to be able to search them from the regular cache page. I don't think reviving virtual caches are the answer to your problem, because they won't live up to what you are remembering them as. Sure, there will be a few who honor the idea of them, but not enough to warrant their return.

June 2, 2012

It's the rare holy ghost icon and the numerical value that makes virtuals sought after. I can imagine what would occur if Groundspeak decided to team up with Waste Management Systems to create a very special limited dumpster icon to be used only for hides on garbage disposal containers. The forum would be filled with people wanting to know the requirements to obtain and list one of the limited amount of caches to obtain the icon. People who normally would stay away from those hides would be compelled to visit, if only once, to obtain the icon, especially if it was announced that the listings would eventually be locked.

This is what I think. I'm skeptical of people who want the virtual to come back because I see it as just another number.

6.8k · June 2, 2012

Okay, so I agree that Waymarking is a bad idea, and that challenges are poorly executed. However, I actually do enjoy challenges. From my (admittedly short) experience caching, I feel like the better challenges represent what virtuals were.

That's interesting. Even though there are many categories in Waymarking that bore me, I feel that Waymarking outperforms challenges by far as it comes to virtuals that are potentially interesting for me (the setup, not the logs of visits as they hardly exist anyway). Challenges are currently a "Happen to be somewhere, take a photo" activity that might get a further even more boring category of the type which results by take a photo replaced by scan a QR code. Unlike challenges there are Waymarking categories which are not about taking and posting photos.

The virtuals I enjoy do not involve taking photos of myself, playing around with smartphones or behave like a children, but learn something about places that I have not known before and which is beyond wikipedia level.

Well-done Earthcaches are a good role model for the type of virtual I'd like to see (but with no fixed topic) and challenges are not suited for that purpose at all.

Cezanne

6.8k · June 2, 2012

Virtuals have been gone for seven years now and people who have no idea what they were like are the ones that always seem to want them to come back.

There is a difference between wishing to have a place to be able to implement one's ideas that are not based on containers and between wanting virtual caches back in the original form. As I have mentioned before I very much liked to be able to implement some of my ideas which are virtual caches, but do not fit into Waymarking and challenges.

I'm not new to geocaching, but around for about the same time as you. I do have the virtual icon on both sides, but are not interested in icons at all. (You could be sure that otherwise I would have hidden a traditional.)

BTW as the icon hunt is regarded: Typical icon hunters are only interested into a cheap way to obtain an icon. I invested much more work in my virtual than I would have had to invest into 20 physical drive in caches. The number of visits to my quite involved virtual is smaller than the number of the visit to the associated mystery/multi cache which is already rather involved.

They should have archived them all and modified Waymarking as needed to satisfy the demand.

Waymarking will never really fit multi stage concepts. Its intent has been to share/categorize single locations or types of objects.

We have offset multis with a virtual first stage, puzzles, nanos, and now Challenges along with Waymarks to fill any virtual needs.

They do not fill any virtual needs, in particular if some does not want to hide a container in certain areas. For example, I neither enjoy hiding nor searching a container in any kind of urban environment, but I enjoy educational virtual multi and mystery caches in these areas. Likewise I'm not willing to drive 20km just to go for the offset final of such a cache whose virtual stages (could be 20 and more virtual stages) are all in an urban area just to be able to log the cache.

It appears to me that you judge everything from your point of view where caches with many stages and very involved caches do not seem to play a large role.

Virtuals like Go to statue A and take a photo can easily be implemented in many other ways. For them no new concept is necessary and also the old virtuals in that category could be replaced by something equivalent from the point iof view of contents. This is not true, however, for all virtuals and it is definitely not true for mine.

Cezanne

June 2, 2012

The anonymous quotes I posted earlier were written by Jeremy and a long-time reviewer. The disdain they are expressing for virtuals is not inferred.

I guess anyone can post some anonymous quotes and attribute them to whom ever they like. I'm sure that you can find quotes from Jeremy you can take out of context and interpret them as saying he has disdain for virtuals.

I'll ignore the hypocrisy of that statement. I guess anyone could search using the those quotes and find their source, but that would mean it wouldn't be so easy to ignore what they are saying.

In the end he felt that Waymarking.com would work better for sharing container-less locations than geocaching.com. I was among several who argued that Waymarking categories were not at all like virtual caches and even made this suggestion as way to make my point. However, I didn't stop there, I actually did propose a category that was designed to be more like virtual caches. In doing this I discovered why Jeremy was not satisfied with any of the definitions of virtual cache. Everyone seemed to have their own definition of what made a virtual cache.

Yes, the original intent was to convert all virtuals to waymarks and move them to Waymarking.com. That was not a popular idea, to put it mildly. Everyone seems to have their own idea about what signing a logbook means, but that has not resulted in the elimination of logbooks.

I don't think you really want that.

I've given up any hope that someone was going to explain why a "wow factor" was imposed on virtual caches, but not on regular caches. What I really want is for people to think about what they are saying instead of blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. I haven't even been advocating in favor of the return of virtuals, but against all the pretenses, contradictions, misinformation, fear and hype surrounding them.

This thread is full of posts from people who either don't like virtuals, or worry that they would proliferate and overwhelm "real" caches. To the first I say, too bad. To the second, I say if Groundspeak provided us with better tools, it wouldn't even be an issue. We could filter out out the things we don't enjoy, puzzles, LPCs, power trails, virtuals, Earthcaches, whatever. Has anyone ever tried to ignore a power trail? it can be done using third party tools (and some sql), but that's not why we pay Groundspeak.

But the real crux of the matter is found in the standard fallback line for virtuals: "they only want the smiley". Pretty funny when you think about it. The uproar that started the second challenges were rolled out was over them beng counted just like "real" caches. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? To quote Jeremy again: "... [it's] resistance to change" (as well as elitism).

Signing up for some website before someone else does not bestow any special insights, but people here sure do like to play that card as if it does. The entire history of geocaching is available online. And it's searchable.

38.2k · June 2, 2012

Moreover, I think that in some countries in Europe containerless forms of geocaches (whatever they are called) could be an answer to
geocaching bans like

http://www.gocacher.de/?p=1598

(unfortunately, the stuff is in German) - it is about a ban of geocaching by a German municipality as a reaction to excessive geocaching in the area due to powertrail forming the text Geocaching Forever on the map). There are other similar bans and new ones will come in the years to come.

I'd say that's more of an argument against power trails than for virtuals.

Actually it is both. On the one hand, powertrails exist and are only part of the problem (there are many others like damage caused by searching for tricky hides) and on the other hand, I had virtuals as a partial solution in mind for being able to continue with the part of the activity which is important for me despite the fact that others parts (the container part) will sooner or later be ruined in these areas.

The container is the only critical component from the legal point of view and typically the one causing all the damage that takes place.

Typically people do not destroy moss, stone walls, tree stumps, etc in order to find virtuals.

Cezanne

The grass and moss don't care if you are there to find a real cache or a virtual, it still gets trampled. Of the 300 plus caches I've owned the one with the most distinct "geo trail" happens to be a virtual.

6.8k · June 2, 2012

The grass and moss don't care if you are there to find a real cache or a virtual, it still gets trampled. Of the 300 plus caches I've owned the one with the most distinct "geo trail" happens to be a virtual.

When I wrote my statement I had in mind on the one hand a hiking multi cache with x virtual stages and no container at the end where all virtual stages are located on hiking trails, not off-trail, and on the other hand the same type of cache with an added container at the end which is typically hidden off-trail. Moreover, to make things worse many hideouts are set up such that finding the container is difficult and thus people start to inspect nearly every possible object. They open bird houses, look behind the bark on trees, remove moss from stones etc because there are caches that are hidden in such a manner. The virtual stages I have in mind do not require any touching of objects and not trampling around in areas which are not visited by non-geocachers.

Take e.g. this example (unfortunately, everything is in German)

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=b6256d96-b1b4-4134-b028-bdd01e8eeae7

A virtual would send people there, but not ask them to search for a number of unknown objects in a sensitive area

(note that the classification as traditional is wrong).

Nearly everyone reports about the caused damages and the honest ones also mention that they themselves contributed to the result as it is unavoidable.

Geotrails are of the more harmless damages caused by geocachers. Often I can recognize that a cache must be in an area just by seeing how the area looks like and that often happens already after 10 visitors.

Imagine e.g. what happens if in a beautiful gorge in an environmental protection area a small fake rock container is hidden on a slope with 10000 possible hideouts and when there are no coordinates, but just a rough verbal description and a misleading hint.

A virtual cache would lead people to the gorge, stress its beauty, but certainly would not require people to search 30 minutes and more off-trail in a very sensitive area.

It might well be that the number of such caches is much smaller in your area as is also certainly true for adventure caches in abandoned structures, climbing caches on active bridges etc

Cezanne

Edited June 2, 2012 by cezanne

6.8k · June 2, 2012

The grass and moss don't care if you are there to find a real cache or a virtual, it still gets trampled. Of the 300 plus caches I've owned the one with the most distinct "geo trail" happens to be a virtual.

When I wrote my statement I had in mind on the one hand a hiking multi cache with x virtual stages and no container at the end where all virtual stages are located on hiking trails, not off-trail, and on the other hand the same type of cache with an added container at the end which is typically hidden off-trail. Moreover, to make things worse many hideouts are set up such that finding the container is difficult and thus people start to inspect nearly every possible object. They open bird houses, look behind the bark on trees, remove moss from stones etc because there are caches that are hidden in such a manner. The virtual stages I have in mind do not require any touching of objects and not trampling around in areas which are not visited by non-geocachers.

Take e.g. this example (unfortunately, everything is in German)

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=b6256d96-b1b4-4134-b028-bdd01e8eeae7

A virtual would send people there, but not ask them to search for a number of unknown objects in a sensitive area

(note that the classification as traditional is wrong).

Geotrails are of the more harmless damages caused by geocachers. Often I can recognize that a cache must be in an area just by seeing how the area looks like and that often happens already after 10 visitors.

Imagine e.g. what happens if in a beautiful gorge in an environmental protection area a small fake rock container is hidden on a slope with 10000 possible hideouts and when there are no coordinates, but just a rough verbal description and a misleading hint.

A virtual cache would lead people to the gorge, stress its beauty, but certainly would not require people to search 30 minutes and more off-trail in a very sensitive area.

Another example are tree climbing caches where the tree does not tolerate many people climbing up there. If I wanted to show cachers a beautiful tree, I would include it as a virtual stage in a cache or try to hide a cache close by and add the location of the tree as waypoint. No damage caused to the tree in this way.

It might well be that the number of such caches is much smaller in your area as is also certainly true for adventure caches in abandoned structures, climbing caches on active bridges etc

I do know that virtual caches do not appeal to everyone. My claim was that they can be a solution in areas where geocaching got banned as the damages caused by caches searching for containers got intolerable.

Due to bad hiding practices in my country, I am also by now very much concerned that near my hideouts there are no objects that cache searchers could want to dismantle or distroy because they once found a cache at such a place. An easily findable hideout does not solve all issues as caches can also be muggled and many cachers do not use hints.

Cezanne

2.7k · June 2, 2012

I've given up any hope that someone was going to explain why a "wow factor" was imposed on virtual caches, but not on regular caches. What I really want is for people to think about what they are saying instead of blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. I haven't even been advocating in favor of the return of virtuals, but against all the pretenses, contradictions, misinformation, fear and hype surrounding them.

You have that backwards. People aren't blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. Groundspeak is summarizing what it is hearing from the community.

The "wow factor" was imposed, IMO, because at the time virtual caches were starting to get out of control. COs were listing roting animals, old shoes and other things that would normally be CITOed. Geocachers companied about those items being listed on a website that was supposed to be for the listing of geocaches. Groundspeak's initial action was to make a "wow factor" requirement.

This thread is full of posts from people who either don't like virtuals, or worry that they would proliferate and overwhelm "real" caches. To the first I say, too bad. To the second, I say if Groundspeak provided us with better tools, it wouldn't even be an issue. We could filter out out the things we don't enjoy, puzzles, LPCs, power trails, virtuals, Earthcaches, whatever. Has anyone ever tried to ignore a power trail? it can be done using third party tools (and some sql), but that's not why we pay Groundspeak.

The original geocaches were posted to newsgroups which are very similar to forums or forwarded around in email. Geocaching.com is essentially the same thing in a much better form. It is a geocache listing service. But none of that changes that a geocache is something in the physical world. Even virtual caches have a physical component. The interesting thing the perfect solution is right in front of everyones face. Waymarking! Make a geocaching category and then make each cache type a subcategory. That way everything will be nicely categorized, easy to find, and easy to sort.

But the real crux of the matter is found in the standard fallback line for virtuals: "they only want the smiley". Pretty funny when you think about it. The uproar that started the second challenges were rolled out was over them beng counted just like "real" caches. Sounds kind of familiar, doesn't it? To quote Jeremy again: "... [it's] resistance to change" (as well as elitism).

I use Geocaching.com because it lists geocaches. If it starts listing other things and it starts getting difficult for me find listings of geocaches then I will start using another geocache listing service. There needs to be standards or it becomes a fee for all and virtually everything will end up listed in the geocache database.

The find count is meaningless for numerous reasons but I still find it annoying when people try to use it as a scoring system or to determine experience level. As far as I'm concerned your Find count should be private like your DNF count is.

June 2, 2012

If there were a reasonable and natural restraint on the number of virtuals, a lot of the problems could be avoided. What if a cacher could only maintain one virtual cache per 1,000 finds or some other limit? At 5M logs per month, that creates at the absolute most 5000 virtuals per month (as opposed to, what, 100K regular caches per month?) or 60,000 per year and it is, no doubt, going to be much less than since I'd venture to guess that most cachers never get close to hitting 1,000 in the first place and many of the numbers guys probably don't like virtuals at all.

Having some requirement of finds isn't perfect -- it has some bias against cachers who are the sort of folks that like big hikes to cool places and in favor of numbers-hounds -- it can and does exclude new cachers from the fun of creating a virtual, but that's life -- and, ultimately, it does place a natural limit on the volume which I think is the fundamental problem.

8k · June 2, 2012

I somehow think that already the idea of defining virtual caches needs end up in something which is similar to the waymark concept in the sense that it sets out a narrow framework which is quite inflexible.

It's funny how we can have two polar opposite views about the flexibility of the Waymarking framework.

I find Waymarking far more flexible than geocaching.com. Waymarking categories are just sets of places that have something in common. Every waymark has a location (geographic coordinates), it has a name and a description, and there is way for people to log if they go to visit the waymark. Each set or category had can have additional information in the way of variables that the category creator defines for that category. There is a rich set of variable types you can chooses from, and while I haven't looked lately, I would not be surprised to find a variable type for recording additional waypoints if a category uses them.

Had geocaching not been invented before Waymarking someone could have defined a category for hidden containers or even one for virtual caches like I linked to above.

You could create a category that corresponds to the multi location virtual caches that tell a story or educate the visitor about some event. Certainly Waymarking lacks a capability to download PQs and it may not be easy to record additional waypoints, but geocaching did not have these features originally either. I recall multi caches and even multi-part virtuals from the time when geocaching.com had neither additional waypoints or pocket queries, so it's hard for me to believe that one could not create waymarks just because some feature is "missing" from the website.

Personally, I'd say a virtual geocache results from a cache with one or more containers by removing the container and provide an alternative way of logging verification. It is quite obvious for me that this point of view makes no sense to cachers for whom the cache is the container or the at least the defining component.

The problem is that it also doesn't make sense to the person who simply wants to bring you to a favorite places. What is the point of the verification method? It is enough to ask to share your impressions in the log? Nor did it make sense to the many people who thought "If I know the answer to the verification question, shouldn't I be able to log a find?"

Granted we have arguments over what constitutes a find of a physical geocache, but I have a harder time with the issue of when you can log a find on virtual. It's not as easy as saying that you have to both visit the location and meet the verification method. Isn't the purpose of the verification method to verify you visited the location?

At that point you might as well stop hiding containers and just have people list coordinates for places. I don't think you really want that.

Actually, I think that there are still many people who enjoy hiding and searching containers. For example, for some geocaching is about tricky hideouts and creative containers. Virtuals will not appeal to this audience.

There has always been a dichotomy in geocaching. On group feels that main objective is to hide containers for people to find and the other feels that the main objective is bring people to cool and interesting places. Okay, that's an over simplification. However, it can be argued that that there are many activities that meant to bring you to interesting places - hiking, biking, Waymarking, touring, etc.

In the early days, geocaching seemed to work rather well at bringing you to new and interesting places. As the number of geocaches has increase, what has happened in that those for whom the main goal is to find container have placed more containers in uninteresting places and have increased the density so that where a series of 10 cache that take you along an historic route in the desert would be interesting, a series of 300 caches on the same road gets viewed as boring. I would argue that without a wow requirement virtual caches would have fared even worse. If I can post a virtual for every mile marker on the highway (there is a marker every .1 miles) why wouldn't I. At least the power trail builder had to get a hold of 300 film cans and print up 300 log strips.

Look at is this way. I'm a newbie getting ready to hid my first cache. I want to make sure I follow the guideline. They say that if I place a physical cache I need to get permission from the land owner/manager. But if I place a virtual then I only need to ensure that the public is allowed to visit the location. I may live in a country where obtaining permission would end up as life-time job. Or I simple may be shy about approaching someone about permission. So I have an easy choice to make. Hide a virtual. Of course if I believe that only caches with containers are real caches, I will still hide a container. But, hey, I'm a newbie. I see lots of these virtual caches and they are listed on Geocaching.com so they must be just as good as a physical cache. I think this would lead to virtual caches far outnumbering physical caches. Add to that that that many land managers will see this and adopt policies against placing physical caches because they believe virtual caches will be easier for them to deal with as well.

June 2, 2012

I've given up any hope that someone was going to explain why a "wow factor" was imposed on virtual caches, but not on regular caches. What I really want is for people to think about what they are saying instead of blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. I haven't even been advocating in favor of the return of virtuals, but against all the pretenses, contradictions, misinformation, fear and hype surrounding them.

You have that backwards. People aren't blindly repeating Groundspeak's line. Groundspeak is summarizing what it is hearing from the community.

The "wow factor" was imposed, IMO, because at the time virtual caches were starting to get out of control. COs were listing roting animals, old shoes and other things that would normally be CITOed. Geocachers companied about those items being listed on a website that was supposed to be for the listing of geocaches. Groundspeak's initial action was to make a "wow factor" requirement.

That doesn't even make sense, especially when you are repeating almost verbatim what CathyH said earlier in the thread. The question remains: why the wow factor only for virtuals?

the perfect solution is right in front of everyones face. Waymarking! Make a geocaching category and then make each cache type a subcategory. That way everything will be nicely categorized, easy to find, and easy to sort.

Yes except the long-neglected Waymarking ghetto is painful to use and the search function is nearly useless. Waymarking is not a solution, it is a punt.

I use Geocaching.com because it lists geocaches. If it starts listing other things and it starts getting difficult for me find listings of geocaches then I will start using another geocache listing service. There needs to be standards or it becomes a fee for all and virtually everything will end up listed in the geocache database.

So there you have it. Virtuals are not geocaches. Why is that so hard for people to admit? That attitude is the reason the "wow factor" was imposed on them in the first place and also the reason they can't be listed any longer. Plus, it's much easier to remove something than it is to develop better search and filtering tools.

BTW, those other listing service all allow virtuals.

6.1k · June 2, 2012

Have an interesting location to share? Currently you can list it on Waymarking, and in several categories if there are some. Then you can place a Challenge in the exact same spot. Next, make it a virtual first stage of a multi. Then hide a nano or a micro there also. It could also be part of a puzzle. But its not good enough, as a genuine virtual ghost icon is needed.

Why??

Edited June 2, 2012 by 4wheelin_fool

June 2, 2012

I am in 100% agreement that GC should include Virtuals, Webcam's, and maybe even Locationless once again. They seemed to exemplify more of the "hunting" part of the game than LPC's, EGG's, JOE's, etc.

Since they made the change a few years back, I logged into the Waymarking site once or twice and hated that the Frog separated them from GC. I'm not going to look in two places to plan a day of caching. And these Challenge things on GC.com are just ridiculous. Almost as pathetic as the Google maps situation.

I wish the OP luck in getting the people at GC HQ to rethink their POV on the topic and bring some fun back into the game by allowing these alternative cache categories once again. Hell, I might even continue as a Premium if they start giving us what we'd like sometime.

June 2, 2012

But its not good enough, as a genuine virtual ghost icon is needed.

Why??

Impugning other people's motives always seems like such a good fallback position.

Since this topic has come up a jillion times already, why not just let the new kids hash it out? Maybe someone will actually come up with a good idea. Instead it's always the same old pile-on and you drive out the all the people who might actually have something to say that is worth listening to. But then again, if your goal is to preserve the status quo, shouting dissenters down is an age-old recipe for success.

An open letter to Groundspeak about Virtuals

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