An open letter to Groundspeak about Virtuals

[+nikcap]

That combined with the (current) lack of ownership leaves a lot of work to be done on challenges before they have even a chance of acceptance by old-schoolers like me.

...

Ownership for challenges, a less restricted description length and other types of challenges (than photo challenges and the announced QR-challenges that imitate munzees) would be required. So far there is not a single piece of evidence that Groundspeak is willing to go in this direction. It rather seemed to me that the no ownership concept does not seem to be a matter for debate for Groundspeak.

...

Lack of ownership for challenges does not seem to make many people happy except probably people at Groundspeak.

 

I'm a old timer, I don't mind the owner-less aspect of Challenges. I also don't mind the community thumbs up and thumbs down and flagging concept.

It would be nice if there was an appeals process for Challenges that are unjustly archived.

 

So I'm curious, why is ownership important?

 

I did a quick scan of 10 of the nearest virtual caches from a random spot near where I live. Three have CO's that have checked in during the month of June, three have checked in during 2012. Three haven't logged into GC.com for over a year and one is basically MIA and hasn't checked in since 2006. Of all of these CO's, one one has log found caches on gc.com in the last 4 years. Not that logging into gc.com doesn't mean they aren't responding to emails, but those caches are basically owner-less.

My favorite, it the one that belongs to an "active" player, but the verification information is gone.

 

So, why is ownership important is the community can self-police Challenges?

Edited June 7, 2012 by ekitt10

[+B+L]

Virtuals don't get approved anymore for because a few people decided virtuals weren't geocaches and that was that.

 

You left out a few things. The sequence of events which was the catalyst. The constant debating over what is a cache. The arguements with reviewers. The geocides. The sneaker in the woods. The attempt to build Waymarking as a replacement. The smiley debate about keeping Waymarking separated from Geocaching. The subsequent creation of Challenges. The dead hooker in Reno..

I's all been covered in this thread already. The myth of virtuals has become more important than what actually happened.

[Dulce-Joy]

Virtuals are cumbersome to review and high maintenance, as they require an e-mail to the CO. I am aware of one in which the CO created a sock account and sent the virtual through the adoption process to it (at the time it was possible). Then he just stopped answering e-mails. He was tired of the daily e-mails clogging up his inbox, so they went to the sock e-mail address. After a few years he came into the forum and bragged about how his virtual was so popular.

 

Thus why a review committee not too unlike earth caches could help with that. And a like any cache a CO has to decide if they are able to naintain it. Dont nix a cache simply because it is "hard to maintain" A CO should know his or her limitations and ability to maintain. Most cachers are honest enough to do the work - same goes for earth caches. If we go by the same standards "its hard to review and maintain" the logic can apply to eartch cachers as well, why have them than?

 

 

I'd say that that the Waymarking site would be a good replacement for them. However, the smileys do not count on geocaching.com, making it a completely separate game. Next, the listings are heavily watered down with useless places that are not intended to draw any visits. Not many people want to start playing a separate game in which you are instructed to ignore the majority of listings. There also is no "surprise" factor, which was present on many virts. You do know exactly what is there in all cases, which makes it even more boring.

I hoped you read my orignal post about Waymarking. Plus yes, they dont count towards numbers so people generally wont pay attention to them, plus Waymarking is too cluttered with boring places. Again virts can be subject to that which is why I said, make the guidlines for a virt listing more restrictive - again a review committee - same way earthcaches are done.

 

 

What they COULD do, is to import virtuals that have been a "success" on Waymarking. Only the ones that are popular, and the ones that most of the waymarkers have marked as a favorite. But that will never happen either. So far you have had about 20 people respond to this thread, out of an active 1 million or so cachers, and many already have told you they don't want them back. There are also a few hundred past threads in which this has already been discussed.

 

I think that is a good idea expecpt again, it goes against your very logic of high maint. And again waymerker, not many people pay attention to it, so something that has a high WOW factor, may simply not have it.

And again all 1 million active cachers dont visit the forums, nor did they go to geowoodstock. And again, Groundspeak stated their words "let the community decide" so I amn throwinf the guantlet down - let the community decide - how about an email vote?

Groundspeak is private owned company and last I checked they arent a co-op company.

Yeah, but without us putting the caches out there in the first place, there would be no them. There's got to be give and take.

[+Volvo Man]

As I have recently announced Here, I will shortly be releasing a line of Virtual Cache containers, this should clear up the arguments and pave the way for the return of Virtuals. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a consignment of Air Guitars to shift.

[cezanne]

That combined with the (current) lack of ownership leaves a lot of work to be done on challenges before they have even a chance of acceptance by old-schoolers like me.

...

Ownership for challenges, a less restricted description length and other types of challenges (than photo challenges and the announced QR-challenges that imitate munzees) would be required. So far there is not a single piece of evidence that Groundspeak is willing to go in this direction. It rather seemed to me that the no ownership concept does not seem to be a matter for debate for Groundspeak.

...

Lack of ownership for challenges does not seem to make many people happy except probably people at Groundspeak.

 

I'm a old timer, I don't mind the owner-less aspect of Challenges.

 

Well, you seem to be indifferent, but that's not the same as being happy with the feature (in the sense of really liking it).

 

I also don't mind the community thumbs up and thumbs down and flagging concept.

 

I do not mind it either.

 

It would be nice if there was an appeals process for Challenges that are unjustly archived.

 

It appears to me that this mainly happened during the initial period. I know cachers who back then got their

challenge reactivated.

 

So I'm curious, why is ownership important?

 

It of course depends on the type of challenges envisaged.

For more complex challenges typically the description needs to be updated based on the experience of previous visitors and due to changes over time. There is no change to modify and update the description.

 

For educational challenges which involve asking more complex answers, an automatic checking process is not what supports a reasonable

learning process. If e.g. Earthcaches would be set up in an ownerless manner, they end up as simply showing geologically relevant locations and lose their educational value.

 

I did a quick scan of 10 of the nearest virtual caches from a random spot near where I live. Three have CO's that have checked in during the month of June, three have checked in during 2012. Three haven't logged into GC.com for over a year and one is basically MIA and hasn't checked in since 2006. Of all of these CO's, one one has log found caches on gc.com in the last 4 years. Not that logging into gc.com doesn't mean they aren't responding to emails, but those caches are basically owner-less.

 

That might well be. Simple virtuals with photo requirements at locations where hardly anything is changing might work also without owners. My own virtual e.g. would work very badly and the same is true for many Earthcaches I know.

Moreover, inactive owners are one of the issues raised with virtuals many times. So somehow this is not an ideal situation from the point of view of many cachers.

 

So, why is ownership important is the community can self-police Challenges?

 

For me the main focus is not on policing someone. I provided some arguments for ownership above.

 

Cezanne

[+Volvo Man]

I note several things from the many many threads that have come up over the years on this subject, and every thread is pretty much the same apart from a couple of significant differences:

 

1: The pro camp in each thread are mostly a different group of people to the last bring back virtuals debate.

 

2: Most of the against camp are the same as the last one, and the one before that and the one before that. This list of names changes only very slowly across the years.

 

3: We all know that many reviewers cache under a different name (for valid reasons, no sock puppets here) and I often wonder how many of them post against Virts under their caching profile rather than their reviewing profile. (totally legitimate, but it'd be interesting to know)

 

4: When someone posts solid stats in support of the pro view, they are pretty much ignored by the against camp.

 

5: This is probably the most civilized thread I have seen on this subject to date.

 

6: The arguments used by the against camp never change

 

7: whilst the pro camp use everything that has come up before, there are always a few new arguments for their case.

[+DanOCan]

I managed to make it through the 5 of 18 pages.

 

Virtual caches didn't work.

The WOW factor didn't work.

The remaining Virtuals are popular because they are rare.

 

Over the years my position had changed from "Bring them back" to "I'm OK with the current system" to "Archive and lock all remaining Virtuals".

 

It's only because Virtuals were grandfathered that this debate keeps coming up. It's always about Virtual caches; we rarely see threads asking to bring back Locationless -- at least "rarely" compared to the Virtual debate. Virtuals are dead so bury them.

 

And, for the record, I still enjoy finding Virtuals but that doesn't mean I want to see any new ones.

[+DragonsWest]

Found 6 Virtuals recently. All but one had a decent "Wow" factor. I still seek them out because I enjoy them.

 

The biggest gripe I have about the "Don't Bring Them Back" camp is there are so many great locations, where nothing else can go, it's not an Earthcache by any stretch and no physical placement is possible within 20 or more miles.

 

Yes, I could put a Waymark there, but it's not a Geocache and it's not Geocaching.

 

Yes, I could put a challenge there, but I still view Challenges as glorified Waymarks.

 

I'm biding my time, gathering up these really neat locations and if the day ever comes when we have Virtuals return, I'll be ready.

[Sandy]

This discussion has digressed several times, which multiple posts being reported by forum participants.

Closing this thread with the reminder to all participants that the forum guidelines apply to all posts and all participants.