What proportion of your found caches are now archived?

[+Isonzo Karst]

Since you are tracking active caches only you are missing all the old ones that didn't last long. Junk caches were placed in the early years too. PQ 1 is tracking the survivors, those caches placed well enough to last a long time and presumably receiving community help to stay alive where the owners have gone dark.

 

A broad sampling that includes archived and active caches from each time period would be needed to get a truer picture of the rate of archival.

 

I'm going to disagree with this analysis, although perhaps this just a matter of terminology?

 

If Don J is running his queries weekly, he can readily determine archive rates, by noting the difference between the returned numbers from Week 1 to week 2. If in one week the query returns 987 caches and he runs it again and gets 962 caches, 25 caches in that area/placed date range were archived. Even if he's missing temp disabled, because he's not asking to see them(?), and those temp disabled numbers rise and fall, over time, his query is still a good indicator of archive rates for each query period.

 

As he adjusts dates to keep his query number near 990, that does complicate matters, but likely still allows for some decent analysis of different archive rates for different periods. If a person wanted to do it, using GSAK would work best - take the older queries for each date range, and then check against the numbers of caches returned from same placed-date range in newer queries.

Edited May 21, 2013 by Isonzo Karst

[+IcyMann]

17,8% of my finds are archived. That's way more than I thought, but it seems that it's not much.

[+paleolith]

Excluding events, 73 of my 648 finds (since mid 2007) have been archived, 11%. Perhaps this fairly low percentage reflects the fact that I prefer backwoods hides, and among the non-backwoods ones is a well-maintained series of almost 50 caches. (It's definitely NOT a power trail.) Carrying this further, I wondered if high-terrain caches would have survived better, but I found that of my finds with terrain 3 or higher, 29 of 283, or 10%, have been archived, basically the same as for all my finds.

 

Edward

[+Sagefox]

I appreciate your analysis. It does give me a better perspective on this. Note that my first post on the subject was in response to the idea that the older caches should be getting archived at a faster rate and I noted that they have been around this long for a reason. They are the survivors.

 

Yes, I see more clearly now what you are reporting and why.

 

Since you are tracking active caches only you are missing all the old ones that didn't last long. Junk caches were placed in the early years too... A broad sampling that includes archived and active caches from each time period would be needed to get a truer picture of the rate of archival.

 

I'm going to disagree with this analysis, although perhaps this just a matter of terminology?

 

 

Yes, it may be a terminology vortex. Don J and I are actually saying the same thing in regard to the active older caches: They are the survivors and it is not surprising that they are outperforming the newer ones.

 

I got sidetracked by thinking about the comparative life spans of caches placed in different time periods. This is not what Don J's study was about.

[+Don_J]

I appreciate your analysis. It does give me a better perspective on this. Note that my first post on the subject was in response to the idea that the older caches should be getting archived at a faster rate and I noted that they have been around this long for a reason. They are the survivors.

 

Yes, I see more clearly now what you are reporting and why.

 

Since you are tracking active caches only you are missing all the old ones that didn't last long. Junk caches were placed in the early years too... A broad sampling that includes archived and active caches from each time period would be needed to get a truer picture of the rate of archival.

 

I'm going to disagree with this analysis, although perhaps this just a matter of terminology?

 

 

Yes, it may be a terminology vortex. Don J and I are actually saying the same thing in regard to the active older caches: They are the survivors and it is not surprising that they are outperforming the newer ones.

 

I got sidetracked by thinking about the comparative life spans of caches placed in different time periods. This is not what Don J's study was about.

 

Again, not a study but an observation. You did point out something that I did not consider. I guessing that I set up the PQs sometime around late 2010, early 2011. If I had done this when I started in 2005, it's possible that I would see that anomaly for an earlier period. It's very possible that it is a moving target. This would actually make sense as not all caches and not all cachers are created equally. A bad cache owned by a cacher that has lost interest will have a limited life cycle, whereas a good cache in a good location can go on indefinitely with or without an active owner. Once the bad caches are weeded out of a time period, that period should somewhat stabilize and the higher archival rate would theoretically move along to the next period.

[+DonDemos]

I've been caching on and off since 2002 (albeit with one large hiatus) and about 40 of my 750 have been archived (about 5%) including every find I made in 2002. Interesting topic!