[SUGGESTION] A Separate Summary Page For Circuits

[+newsboy5331]

By circuits, what I mean is a series of caches which are placed on or near connected footpaths (trails) so that cachers can park up and enjoy a walk (or bike ride) in the outdoors and return to where they parked. Such circuits could have anything from five caches to as many as the CO thinks can be accommodated in the area available. A practical maximum, however, to allow for time constraints and cachers' stamina and to maintain interest and variety of hides and containers is probably of the order of 20/30.

 

There are, of course, thousands of such circuits set out.I have experience only of the U.K. where our wonderful footpath network lends itself admirably to this type of cache setting, but I've no doubt it is available wherever geocaching is enjoyed. When you start to put your circuit on line you need somewhere to set out general comments about what prompted you to do the circuit, general comments about the terrain, its length, whether it is particularly suitable for some geocachers and not others , in short anything that pertains to the circuit as a whole. The only place this information can go is in the description and you immediately run up against the problem that the first section is limited to 500 characters which is never enough so you have to spill over into the second section. That in itself is a little odd but not a problem, but then what do you do ? You really only need this general information once so do you put it only on the page for the first cache ( as I do) or do you put it on every cache page as other COs have done. This seems to me to be a waste of time and resources. Its also illogical to put general information on the first cache page because it does not necessarily apply to that cache.

 

When the circuit is published and cachers start to do the circuit they then come up against another problem. Where do they post their review ? Some include it on the last cache page, some on the first. They like to award a favourite point for the whole experience. Where do they put it ? First or last cache ? Neither might warrant a favourite point in itself so that distorts the favourite point system.

 

So I come back to the reason for this suggestion. I think there should be a separate cache page for the circuit as a whole which could contain all the general comments, the review of the circuit as a whole and the favourite point if appropriate. It would need to list the caches which are part of the circuit and each of those would contain a link to the summary cache page.

 

I have put this suggestion to Groundspeak Support directly and their response was that as it is a concept that affects many geocachers I should post it in the forums. So what do the rest of you think ?

[AZcachemeister]

You have some good points there.

 

In the few cases I have seen where something like this would apply, the CO has set up a particular cache to receive comments and Favorite Points, and expects the rest of the series to get cut-and-paste logs.

 

I would expect a 'cache page' that isn't directly tied to a particular, specific cache to only cause confusion, and possibly mayhem.

 

I would encourage these 'circuit placers' to specify such a cache for the purpose, and usually I would expect it to be #1 of the series.

 

Another idea would be a 'bonus cache' that could only be found once you had completed the whole series (or at least the greater part of the series).

[team tisri]

Interesting idea, although I think it could be easily implemented as AZCacheMeister mentioned with the owner of the series requesting full detailed logs to be posted against a particular cache. Personally I'd normally write a detailed log against the last cache in the series I attempted, only writing anything specific against each particular cache if it were particularly memorable (and in the case of a series they often aren't).

 

Sometimes that means I hunt a series, DNF the last one (or the bonus) and write a long detailed DNF saying I didn't find that one but did enjoy the series as a whole and any particular reasons as to why.