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Virtual Cache Expectations


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A suggestion for bringing back Virtuals: on the CSP, ahve the Virtual option. HOWEVER > when that choice is make - the hider has to PAY FOR IT. How much? I'm not sure, Groundspeak would need to think on that one (I'm thinking about $15 - $20). A non-refundable fee, that's the price of the review. If the virtual is rejected (and I suspect most would be) you'r

I'd do this differently. Anyone could hide a virt.

 

However these virtuals would be hidden from all players unless they pay a fee to view virtuals.

 

Now of course, these virtuals haven't been reviewed so there may be some that aren't "wow". Here's where the voting comes in. If you paid the fee to see virtual caches you can also vote on virtual caches. Once a certain number of votes have been cast (or perhaps after a certain period of time), virtuals that don't get some minimum percentage of positive votes are automatically archived.

 

If fizzymagic is right, nobody would want to pay money to Groundspeak so that they can do the work Groundspeak ought to be be doing (or at least sucker some volunteers into doing). :unsure:

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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

Because other sites have less than 5% the amount of users.

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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

Because other sites have less than 5% the amount of users.

 

So they must be the top 5% in intelligence? They are smart enough to think before placing caches.

 

John

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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

Because other sites have less than 5% the amount of users.

 

So they must be the top 5% in intelligence? They are smart enough to think before placing caches.

 

John

 

No, because they have like 5 caches total.

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John (my hubby) just saw what I was posting and says, The "Virts would totally dominate the game in very short order" is just like the Micros Have totally dominated the game in very short order!

 

Do not integrate them into the find count for physical caches and I'm quite sure that they will not dominate.

 

Cezanne

 

Not only would they not dominate, geocachers would quickly forget what it was that they liked so much about virtuals and they'd go the way of Waymarking, challenges and benchmarking. A niche game that only a small number of people participate in.

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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

Because other sites have less than 5% the amount of users.

 

So they must be the top 5% in intelligence? They are smart enough to think before placing caches.

 

John

Do you find yourself being incapable of staying in context often?

 

OC.com is for the most part a partial mirror of here and half the time the true CO didn't upload them there. The Virts I bothered to look at there where weaker than the ones that made me dislike them here. The closest cache to me has been there since 2010 it has 2 logs. The first log is only there because the user uploaded their finds. Since 2010 that same cache has 46 logs here. Within 20 miles of my location there is still only 2 caches that aren't mirrors of my own and when a new cache does pop up within 40 miles, according to GSAK I have already done it as a GC.

There seem to be 4 types of users there.

Users who aren't using due to the severe lack of uniqueness.

Users who have been banned from GC.com.

Users who found out that they allow Virts and placed some.

Users who found out that they allow Virts and either saw how lame they where or that they weren't being made fast enough.

There are also zero virts in the state, so YUP YUP Michiganders on OC.com are doing it right.

 

OC.us, when looking at the caches there, they tend to be more unique to the site, but they have even less than OC.com.

When it comes to virts, they have 12 in Michigan with an average of 0.75 finds.

 

TC is simply effete.

 

None of the other sites have enough users to matter. When you only have 100 users in say 96,716 square miles on a given site they really cant inundate it with crap even if they produce 100% crap.

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John (my hubby) just saw what I was posting and says, The "Virts would totally dominate the game in very short order" is just like the Micros Have totally dominated the game in very short order!

 

Do not integrate them into the find count for physical caches and I'm quite sure that they will not dominate.

 

Cezanne

 

Not only would they not dominate, geocachers would quickly forget what it was that they liked so much about virtuals and they'd go the way of Waymarking, challenges and benchmarking. A niche game that only a small number of people participate in.

YUP YUP. I think that number runners are the reason that virts haven't skyrocketed on the other sites. Even though out of those who want Virts back, they are supposedly the minority.

Well that and when it comes to exposure the other sites are statistically insignificant. Tho I would be waaaaay more impressed with a person who found 5k OC.us than I would with one who found 5k GC.

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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

Because other sites have less than 5% the amount of users.

 

So they must be the top 5% in intelligence? They are smart enough to think before placing caches.

 

John

Do you find yourself being incapable of staying in context often?

 

OC.com is for the most part a partial mirror of here and half the time the true CO didn't upload them there. The Virts I bothered to look at there where weaker than the ones that made me dislike them here. The closest cache to me has been there since 2010 it has 2 logs. The first log is only there because the user uploaded their finds. Since 2010 that same cache has 46 logs here. Within 20 miles of my location there is still only 2 caches that aren't mirrors of my own and when a new cache does pop up within 40 miles, according to GSAK I have already done it as a GC.

There seem to be 4 types of users there.

Users who aren't using due to the severe lack of uniqueness.

Users who have been banned from GC.com.

Users who found out that they allow Virts and placed some.

Users who found out that they allow Virts and either saw how lame they where or that they weren't being made fast enough.

There are also zero virts in the state, so YUP YUP Michiganders on OC.com are doing it right.

 

OC.us, when looking at the caches there, they tend to be more unique to the site, but they have even less than OC.com.

When it comes to virts, they have 12 in Michigan with an average of 0.75 finds.

 

TC is simply effete.

 

None of the other sites have enough users to matter. When you only have 100 users in say 96,716 square miles on a given site they really cant inundate it with crap even if they produce 100% crap.

 

I did NOT mention the name of any of the sites that do allow virtuals.

 

You should not just pick and choose which site was not mentioned. There are several sites that do allow virtuals and none seem to be over-run by them.

 

Gc.com promised the return of something that would replace the original virtuals, and what they have offered the players is a freaking joke. If they would have listened to what was offered in the thread on bringing them back, they could have saved themselves a lot of work and embarrassment. There were quite a few suggestions on how to control virtuals and they chose the worst of the bunch and then they promised to improve things. Sounds like that was a flat out lie to the customers! Nothing has been done to "improve" "Challenges", just promises that we are working on it.

 

Challenges had the opportunity to have some really great virtuals created, but the way they are handled has made most folks feel that GC can't be bothered with correcting that which is screwed up, so you just have to live with it. NOT!

 

We did 'create' several challenges, but nobody knows where they are (except us), so why waste more time and effort if GC will not correct the situation.

 

The opportunity is there to have and control virtuals if GC would just listen to their customers.

 

Thanks for the run down on OC, I won't bother wasting any of my time on those sites. It is nice to know that the minor sites can't do anything right.

 

John

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Challenges had the opportunity to have some really great virtuals created, but the way they are handled has made most folks feel that GC can't be bothered with correcting that which is screwed up, so you just have to live with it.

Patience, young grasshopper. There have been some big issues that have come up over the last year that took development time away from things like Challenges. The Google Maps license change was the biggest one. I'd much rather have a site that works than one that has a bunch of interesting features that don't work properly.

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Do not integrate them into the find count for physical caches and I'm quite sure that they will not dominate.

 

Cezanne

 

Not only would they not dominate, geocachers would quickly forget what it was that they liked so much about virtuals and they'd go the way of Waymarking, challenges and benchmarking. A niche game that only a small number of people participate in.

 

Still it would be worth a try to offer something cache-like with a reasonable interface which is not the case for waymarks and challenges. Benchmarks are not available in most countries anyway.

 

Challenges in my area appeal to a totally different audience than educational caches would appeal to.

Challenges get their visits, but from a different audience than the one I have in mind.

 

Cezanne

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Challenges had the opportunity to have some really great virtuals created, but the way they are handled has made most folks feel that GC can't be bothered with correcting that which is screwed up, so you just have to live with it.

Patience, young grasshopper. There have been some big issues that have come up over the last year that took development time away from things like Challenges. The Google Maps license change was the biggest one. I'd much rather have a site that works than one that has a bunch of interesting features that don't work properly.

 

But it would have been so easy to take what is already available for caches and use it for challenges. Integration into the maps, PQs, ignore lists, bookmark lists, a decent search routine, attributes and many other things.

 

The fact that none of these features have been used demonstrates that the idea was to come up with something different with in some sense as many differences to geocaches as possible.

 

Cezanne

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But it would have been so easy to take what is already available for caches and use it for challenges. Integration into the maps, PQs, ignore lists, bookmark lists, a decent search routine, attributes and many other things.

 

The fact that none of these features have been used demonstrates that the idea was to come up with something different with in some sense as many differences to geocaches as possible.

I can't disagree with you.

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Kudos to some of the Florida folks who in the last month have been making a concerted effort to put out many new Photo Challenges at neat locations.

 

With their own count like benchmarks and a global setting to hide them.

Then people who honestly like will have them.

Numbers purists wont bunch their boxers.

 

Challenges have a separate count that appears next to your Found count. If you haven't done any Challenges it doesn't appear at all.

 

They don't show up on Geocaching Maps and on your stats they are now displayed on a separate tab.

 

Seems Challenges meet the criteria to be "invisible" to the haters, but they keep hating away.

Edited by Joshism
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Challenges in my area appeal to a totally different audience than educational caches would appeal to.

Challenges get their visits, but from a different audience than the one I have in mind.

We haven't seen what Discover Challenge are going to look like.

 

One of the fist things I recommend when challenges came out was a Challenge type for educational experiences like EarthCaches. I'm hopeful that Discover will be like this but I'm not sure.

 

At the same time it was announced that Discover challenges were coming, the old Action type was grandfathered.

 

I kinda liked the Action Challenge. It was catchall and provide a place where people could experiment with different ideas. (Of course fizzymagic isn't interested in Groundspeak providing a lab for geocachers to experiment. Instead they should have come up with an idea we would all like right away).

 

My guess it that Action challenges were grandfathered because they were just too open ended. This resulted in some challenges that were deemed too silly or perhaps inappropriate for a family friendly website. Second, many action challenges were not verifiable. They got a lot of complaints that people where "cheating" and claiming challenges they didn't complete.

 

Now, most people know my stand. I don't really care if something is verifiable and if someone wants to claim the completed some action challenge then who cares. But I certainly can understand that there needed to be limits on what can be asked if you wanted to post it on this website.

 

My guess is that Discover will be to answer some question that can only be answered by someone who goes to the location. There may even be a way to enter you answer when you log it. This most certainly won't eliminate bogus challenge logging, but it may give people who worry about such stuff a better feeling that Action challenges where no verification was required at all.

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John (my hubby) just saw what I was posting and says, The "Virts would totally dominate the game in very short order" is just like the Micros Have totally dominated the game in very short order!

 

Do not integrate them into the find count for physical caches and I'm quite sure that they will not dominate.

 

Cezanne

 

Not only would they not dominate, geocachers would quickly forget what it was that they liked so much about virtuals and they'd go the way of Waymarking, challenges and benchmarking. A niche game that only a small number of people participate in.

 

Might be a niche game, however, if you are in Yellowstone and are not doing Virts. and E.C's you might as well leave your unit in the trunk. (There are places for these types and need not be disparaged)

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Seems Challenges meet the criteria to be "invisible" to the haters, but they keep hating away.

Both Challenges and Waymarks have attracted groups who enjoy these activities. The fact that they are kept somewhat separate from geocaching means that those who want there to be a container to find and a log sheet to sign are pretty happy as well.

 

The "haters" as you call them are the people who found virtual caches something that was a integral part of geocaching. When virtual caches could be published (even when this was difficult because of the "Wow" requirement that allowed reviewer to turn down most every virtual submitted), if someone had a place that was special and where the virtual concept seemed a better than a physical cache, they could submit a virtual cache. Sometimes it might even get published. Those who wanted to visit "interesting" places when they when geocaching, found that virtuals were almost always in interesting places, while with physical caches it was more hit or miss.

 

The replacements for virtual caches will never satisfy these people. For them the replacement needs to be integrated with geocaching just as much as the original virtuals. And that of course means push back from those who feel that virtuals interfere too much with traditional physical caches.

 

The main issue has been that given a choice between submitting a virtual and hiding a physical cache, the virtual will win out because there is no container to prepare, no maintenance required, and no need to ask permission. If the policy of virtual not counting for saturation remains, that's one more thing that would favor virtuals.

 

Of course, there are ways to limit virtuals. The "Wow" requirement was one of these. One could limit the number of virtuals anyone could hide (with severe punishment like a permanent ban for using a sock puppet to get around this). One could have saturation limits on virtuals that are more severe (w.g., must be .1 mile from any existing physical cache and 1 mile from any other virtual cache).

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Geocachers are a very creative group and have figured out in the past how to accomplish many things within the structure of the Geoaching.com website.

 

I find myself agreeing with toz here.

 

Geocachers were given the Waymark format, and if what has been done with it doesn't suit us, who is to blame?

 

Same goes for Challenges. The rollout was a bit disappointing, but honestly a minimal effort could have produced some good ones and the tables might have turned (and they still might...if the ownerless aspect gets corrected :anibad: ).

 

I'm sure there are Waymarks and even Challenges I might enjoy, but honestly my hands are full dealing with Geocaches and Benchmarks. If there were a decent way to sort and download interesting Waymarks, I would find it much easier to participate. I could even see myself spending $$ on a Waymarking app! :o

So, by not contributing I am not helping improve Waymarks and Challenges...thus I have no basis to complain about their quality...or lack of it.

 

We have been given TWO containerless geolocation formats that are as close as we are likely to get for replacements of virtuals.

No, they are not the same.

It will never be the same.

You can't go back.

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Kudos to some of the Florida folks who in the last month have been making a concerted effort to put out many new Photo Challenges at neat locations.

 

With their own count like benchmarks and a global setting to hide them.

Then people who honestly like will have them.

Numbers purists wont bunch their boxers.

 

Challenges have a separate count that appears next to your Found count. If you haven't done any Challenges it doesn't appear at all.

 

They don't show up on Geocaching Maps and on your stats they are now displayed on a separate tab.

 

Seems Challenges meet the criteria to be "invisible" to the haters, but they keep hating away.

I haven't noticed an "I hate challenges/verts" what I see is them descending upon threads that others start. Heck, they should almost be applauded for not starting an anti thread every other week. Seems like those who pine for them will start a new thread about a week after the last one dropped off the first page.

 

Now I use to be a virt hater but because they don't interfere with the max display on the map anymore they are relegated to simply being disliked for not being caches.

I acknowledge there are things that could improve the system but I think that the true issue is GS knows that no matter what they implement it will only be a sieve not a filter. If you put crap in a sieve and add water it will get through.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I feel sorry for the people who get told to "Make challenges work for you" I tried to follow that advice with Waymarking and not only got rejected but disrespected for it. Trying to make it so people dont have the same child waypoint taking up space on their GPSr 20 times isn't a stupid idea, even twice is once to many.

Edited by Vater_Araignee
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What is soooo wrong about "easy to find, and practically immortal"? Not NO, but YES!

Don't forget "easy to hide". If there wasn't any restriction like the WOW factor, I would fully expect the maps to be cluttered with innumerable poor virtuals in very short order. Remember, the proximity guideline doesn't apply to virtuals. They could be placed anywhere, no matter how saturated an area may already be. As you mentioned, there are many people these days that are willing to put minimal effort, time, and expense into placing a micro. What if they then didn't need to put any effort/time/expense into placing caches? Do you really believe that people wouldn't jump all over a cache type with no restrictions?

 

They put no effort, expense, time, and quality in micros now, so what is the difference? If they get archived, they are left as litter!

 

Other sites allow virtuals and don't seem to have the "problems" you describe.

 

John

Because other sites have less than 5% the amount of users.

 

So they must be the top 5% in intelligence? They are smart enough to think before placing caches.

 

John

 

No, because they have like 5 caches total.

 

Now wait a minute here. I just placed 4 "vacation" virtuals last month on an alternative website that still accepts them. Two in Indiana, and Two in Ohio. They are all excellent, if I don't say so myself. :laughing: As an advocate, and long time user of alternative Geocaching websites, I can confidently say, I see very few lame ones posted. I think you can, in part, attribute this to having the whole "wow factor" thing pounded into our heads over the years over here.

 

But who can argue against the fact that if they were brought back here, every historical Marker in America would be virtual by now? I do agree that if they were brought back here, of if they never went away, they would have pretty much taken over, and be the dominant cache type on the website.

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(Of course fizzymagic isn't interested in Groundspeak providing a lab for geocachers to experiment. Instead they should have come up with an idea we would all like right away).

 

I would have thought you would know by now how much I dislike having opinions attributed to me that I do not hold. Please do not ever do that again. Thanks.

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(Of course fizzymagic isn't interested in Groundspeak providing a lab for geocachers to experiment. Instead they should have come up with an idea we would all like right away).

 

I would have thought you would know by now how much I dislike having opinions attributed to me that I do not hold. Please do not ever do that again. Thanks.

I apologize. I know I've been guilty before as well, of not only putting words in your mouth but also with others. When I wrote it, I knew it wasn't exactly what you said, but it seemed to fit, since I was talking about how Challenges had an open design that allow users to figure out different ways to make Challenges.

 

Looking back I see that you actually said that I think that we as customers have the responsibility to figure out how to enjoy whatever Groundspeak deigns to give us. Since that isn't precisely what I said, I guess I should complain about you attributing opinions to me that I do not hold. I don't think Groundspeak expects everyone to enjoy every feature they add to the website. But I do see where they have, on several occasions, left it up to the community to figure out details and determine the direction new feature go.

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I'm sure there are Waymarks and even Challenges I might enjoy, but honestly my hands are full dealing with Geocaches and Benchmarks.

 

As my area is concerned, there are no waymarks and no challenges that are interesting for me.

Some of them might well be interesting for tourists, but not for me as I know the area well.

 

In order to come up with something of interest to me, multi, mystery and educational aspects are missing.

 

So, by not contributing I am not helping improve Waymarks and Challenges...thus I have no basis to complain about their quality...or lack of it.

 

It is not the lack of quality that keeps me from using Waymarking and challenges.

 

We have been given TWO containerless geolocation formats that are as close as we are likely to get for replacements of virtuals.

No, they are not the same.

It will never be the same.

You can't go back.

 

They do not need to be the same. I do not understand, however, why it is not possible to provide a home also for those for whom the aspects I mentioned above are important. Challenges remind me of a geocache world where only single stage caches exist (and in contrast to the early times no alternative usage is possible) and where each description is allowed to contain only ten sentences which never can be changed with the added annoyance of photo verification. I'm not interested in photography at all.

 

 

Cezanne

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Challenges in my area appeal to a totally different audience than educational caches would appeal to.

Challenges get their visits, but from a different audience than the one I have in mind.

We haven't seen what Discover Challenge are going to look like.

 

That's true, but without ownership (editing of the description) and without an extended (unlimited) length for the description, there is not much hope for something Earthcache-like.

All the replies that came from Groundspeak in the phase right after the launch of challenges make me believe that for them the no-ownership concept and the restricted length of challenges are something hard-coded they do not intend to change.

 

Their idea about discover challenges (if they ever happen to show up at all) seems to be well suited for simple questions like tell me the first word on the sign at the location.

 

One of the fist things I recommend when challenges came out was a Challenge type for educational experiences like EarthCaches. I'm hopeful that Discover will be like this but I'm not sure.

 

I'd like such challenges, but for the reasons mentioned above, I do not think that the discover challenges will work that way.

 

I kinda liked the Action Challenge. It was catchall and provide a place where people could experiment with different ideas. (Of course fizzymagic isn't interested in Groundspeak providing a lab for geocachers to experiment. Instead they should have come up with an idea we would all like right away).

 

I did not mind that action challenges existed, but again for the reasons mentioned above they have not been useful for educational purposes either.

 

Now, most people know my stand. I don't really care if something is verifiable and if someone wants to claim the completed some action challenge then who cares. But I certainly can understand that there needed to be limits on what can be asked if you wanted to post it on this website.

 

I like to read logs and if I have to search for the logs of those writing about a true experience within crap, I get frustrated. So for me it is important that the number of logs not related to a true experience stays small.

 

My guess is that Discover will be to answer some question that can only be answered by someone who goes to the location. There may even be a way to enter you answer when you log it. This most certainly won't eliminate bogus challenge logging, but it may give people who worry about such stuff a better feeling that Action challenges where no verification was required at all.

 

I agree. For EC-like setups, however. much more is required than simply that, and that's a fundamental issue and not just a minor tweaking which might happen in the future when challenges evolve.

 

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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That's too bad because I thought that with a little tweaking, they had the potential to be a viable substitute for virtuals and eventually something far better.

 

I could not agree less. I think that the no-ownership concept (no editing of descriptions, very restricted length, no control over logs) is what is the key aspect that will never allow for a viable substitute. Personally, for me a further important aspect is the lacking flexibility of challenges (no multi and mystery aspects implementable, only photo verification). Puzzle elements do not work without controls over the logs - one needs to be able to delete spoiler logs quickly. Having negative evaluations on them does not help at all.

 

There are challenges around me and the reason why I do not visit them is not that they do not provide me with smileys, but rather than taking photos at locations known to me for almost my whole life is very boring for me - it is as boring as it would be for me to scan munzees.

 

In fact, from my point of view challenges are worse than waymarks in any almost aspect I can think and already waymarks are not a sustitute for virtuals.

 

Cezanne

 

As I said, with tweaking it could have been a viable alternative. Tweaking would include things like owner control over logs and the listing. As far as the lack of a mystery or multi aspects, I don't recall many virtuals that had that. And I'm not getting your objection to snapping photos, as that is exactly what many virtuals require.

 

As I see it, the difference between snapping photos on a virtual and on a challenge is that many still consider challenges to be a type of geocache. Forgetting the fact that neither requires a container the purpose of requiring a photo for a virtual is to provide evidence that the location was actually visited. However, in the case of challenges there is a FAQ entry which reads:

 

How do I prove that I completed a Challenge?

 

Challenges run on the honor system. Say you completed it? We believe you. After all, you're only cheating yourself!

 

Yet, virtually every Challenge created asks those that complete it to "take a photo of yourself or your GPS". While including a photo of an interesting object or scenic location is a nice addition to a log, the only purpose of an inclusion of "yourself or your GPS" could be to provide photographic evidence that you were at the the location, something that the FAQs specifically state is not required. For those that are not out with someone else you either have to ask a stranger to take a photo or you end up with an arms length photo so that you or your gps are in the picture (effectively reducing the quality in what might otherwise be a nice picture).

 

If it were up to me, I'd go beyond "not counting challenges as a find" and remove all instances where the number of challenges completed is shown. As long as there is a "count" of the number of completions there are many that are going to try to increase that number to a high value, which then introduces the need for one to provide proof that the challenge was completed (rather than accept that challenges are run on the honor system). Eliminating any sort of "completed" count might promote that notion that it's not about how many challenges one completes, but how one completes challenges.

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If it were up to me, I'd go beyond "not counting challenges as a find" and remove all instances where the number of challenges completed is shown. As long as there is a "count" of the number of completions there are many that are going to try to increase that number to a high value, which then introduces the need for one to provide proof that the challenge was completed (rather than accept that challenges are run on the honor system). Eliminating any sort of "completed" count might promote that notion that it's not about how many challenges one completes, but how one completes challenges.

 

One could certainly do that, but the outcome would appeal to me even less. I'm not interested into the creativity aspect, and my logs typically reflect my own experience. I'm not interested into entertaining other people or prove them that I'm creative (which I'm not by the way).

 

When I wrote that I do not like to take photos, I did not only mean the typical type of log proof, but photos in general. There might be special days when I take a camera with me and happen to take a few shots, but this normally is not part of my physical activities.

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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As my area is concerned, there are no waymarks and no challenges that are interesting for me.

Some of them might well be interesting for tourists, but not for me as I know the area well.

 

In order to come up with something of interest to me, multi, mystery and educational aspects are missing.

 

Again, how many virtuals had those aspects? I've never seen a multi or mystery virtual (not saying there aren't any, but they are very rare). Some virtuals are educational, many are not.

 

I suspect that your quarrel should be more with the people who submit challenges in your area. I had no problem creating an educational challenge and I even added a multi aspectto it. Nothing prevents anyone else from doing that. The only possible issue is that photo challenges only allow for one verification photo, so you need to trust that those who complete the challenge visited all of the stages.

 

When I wrote that I do not like to take photos, I did not only mean the typical type of log proof, but photos in general. There might be special days when I take a camera with me and happen to take a few shots, but this normally is not part of my physical activities.

 

Since many virtuals also require photographic proof of a visit I don't see your issue. Do you avoid those virtuals or grudgingly bring your camera along for proof of your visit?

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As my area is concerned, there are no waymarks and no challenges that are interesting for me.

Some of them might well be interesting for tourists, but not for me as I know the area well.

 

In order to come up with something of interest to me, multi, mystery and educational aspects are missing.

 

Again, how many virtuals had those aspects? I've never seen a multi or mystery virtual (not saying there aren't any, but they are very rare). Some virtuals are educational, many are not.

 

My own virtual, all Earthcaches that I find interesting, all caches that I would like to implement as virtual ones (including some existing ones) and quite a number of

existing physical caches where the owners would have preferred a containerless implementation do have this property.

 

I like the Earthcache concept and I feel that for educational caches containers distract the attention from what's really at the focus. The disadvantage with Earthcaches is

that they are limited to a narrow field and that the guidelines are somehow limiting (e.g. they force the usage of a local language). I do like to combine many areas of interest,

history, art, sciences etc in a flexible way.

 

I like caches like that one

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=dc8e2869-d48d-4aa9-b608-b1794c9e405c

First you have to solve two puzzles to find a list of tree names and then you have to find the order in which this tree species arise in the Graz city park along the given route where in most cases the major task is to recognize the trees as often no signs are provided.

The container at the end is the unnecessary part of such a cache and if the cache would be mine I would want to do it in a containerless manner.

I learnt a lot about certain tree species and how to recognize them when doing that cache and I would not have learnt the same if I just were sent to some locations and told some informations about the trees to be found there. The latter would have been typical book knowledge without me getting involved in the process itself and without requiring me to check what I really need to manage a given task.

 

There are other caches where the container really contributes, but not in this case and also not in case of my last cache

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_details.aspx?guid=928f7922-25d6-4550-a902-044043baf0bb

and also not in case of the new projects I have in mind.

 

 

I suspect that your quarrel should be more with the people who submit challenges in your area.

 

No, definitely not. There exist both challenges and waymarks that are comparable to yours.

 

Moreover, some part of my frustration comes from having several ideas that I would like to implement in a containerless manner, but they do not fit.

 

I had no problem creating an educational challenge and I even added a multi aspectto it.

 

I do believe that you had no problem with creating this challenge, but that's definitely not what I have in mind.

Such locations and wikipedia style of information are already known to me in my home area. I do appreciate to learn about what is not readily available by using google or reading the 0815 travel guide from the library.

 

Moreover, with educational I had in mind that one is asked questions which ones needs to answer to help the learning process like in good Earthcaches, not proving that one has visited the location.

 

For example, when visiting to the remainings of an ancient castle or to a Gothic church, it could be about teaching how and where one can recognize certain elements.

 

 

Nothing prevents anyone else from doing that. The only possible issue is that photo challenges only allow for one verification photo, so you need to trust that those who complete the challenge visited all of the stages.

 

The visit is just a necessary requirement for the learning process which plays the key role for me - it is not about the visit.

With my existing virtual for example, I typically provide the visitors with additional information and let them know what they have not got fully correct and where they can find further information. That sort of procedure also fits well what the GSA has in mind for the Earthcache logging process. My virtual somehow followed this philosophy before Earthcache existed and without dealing with geology topics.

 

Since many virtuals also require photographic proof of a visit I don't see your issue. Do you avoid those virtuals or grudgingly bring your camera along for proof of your visit?

 

Actually, when Earthcaches still could ask for mandatory photos, I brought along a camera grudgingly (if I did not forget it which happened quite a number of times where I then had to skip the cache) and took a photo if the EC had something else to offer. There are hardly any existing virtuals in the countries that I visit often. Many of the US virtuals that ask for photos are not the reason why I would like to have a viable susbtitute for virtuals. Many typical US virtuals indeed can be easily implemented as waymarks or challenges - these are typically not attractive for me. With those vistuals the issue is just that there is no wow-control available, but that's not my main concern as I'm used to filtering for physical caches as well.

 

Cezanne

Edited by cezanne
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