Manifestly false date placed on new cache

[patdhill]

A new cache has been published near me http://coord.info/GC4HWQ6 where the CO has used 11/03/2001 as the date placed. Don't think it's a typo as I've been told that date is the only one not achievable in the UK.

 

I can understand giving people the ability to backdate the date placed to a reasonable extent so that as a valid feature but to be able to do it by over 10 years seems to be getting to the realm of bug.

 

I can't find anything in the guidelines about this and nothing I can see in past forum posts.

 

I've not seen this before on a cache but if a precident is set then filling up your date placed grid is going to become pretty easy soon if sock puppet accounts are going to the used so the real person can get a tick in a box.

[+Bear and Ragged]

Saw the same one. Turned up in my 'oldest caches' PQ.

 

Shame, as I correct the date in GSAK to when it was published, and then use GSAK to block the cache so it's not entered in future imports!

 

Don't mind 'some' leeway in changing the Date Placed, but I think GS need to limit how far back it can be done.

 

It's cheating, and as is said elsewhere on the forums, "You're only cheating yourself"

[Pup Patrol]

I've been seeing the "placed" date being edited in order to get an older cache back into the "newly published" listings.

 

While perusing the "newest listed in Ontario" and in the new cache listings in the newsletter, caches have popped up that are more than a year old. The cache owner has changed the "placed" date to one that is in the last week or so, and in that way has their cache show up as "new". When you look at the cache page, you discover that the cache has been found lots of times since it was published.

 

I'm surprised that the "placed" date field can be edited/messed with. Seems like something that should not be available for dishonesty.

 

 

B.

[+J Grouchy]

Yeah...seems like 30 days ought to be the limit. I can see that being reasonable if it was placed and something came up where either the owner was unable to create the page immediately or some extra work was involved for a multi- or mystery cache to get it up and running. Twelve and a half years is an obvious attempt to either fulfill some sort of challenge or to be pulled up in a PQ or search.

[+Don_J]

A new cache has been published near me http://coord.info/GC4HWQ6 where the CO has used 11/03/2001 as the date placed. Don't think it's a typo as I've been told that date is the only one not achievable in the UK.

 

I can understand giving people the ability to backdate the date placed to a reasonable extent so that as a valid feature but to be able to do it by over 10 years seems to be getting to the realm of bug.

 

I can't find anything in the guidelines about this and nothing I can see in past forum posts.

 

I've not seen this before on a cache but if a precident is set then filling up your date placed grid is going to become pretty easy soon if sock puppet accounts are going to the used so the real person can get a tick in a box.

 

So, who owns the local Jasmer Challenge? If it were me, I'd put it right in my cache description that GC# is not eligible because it was intentionally created to cheat the challenge.

 

It's really kind of sad, but when I started caching in 2005, one of the things that drew me in was that the people I was playing the game with seemed to have certain level of integrity. As more started playing, we would hear things that people may or may not be doing this and that.

 

Now, 8 years later, players just blatantly cheat the game and dismiss it as, "that's the way I play". Creating a cache today and saying it was placed 12 years ago, so others can say that they found a cache that was placed 12 years ago, thus allowing them to cheat and log another cache owner's challenge, points to the integrity of everyone involved.

[patdhill]

Looks like in this case the CO has seen sense and changed the date to something recent. Still think it would be a good idea to restrict how far back you can change the date placed and locking it once the cache is published. No doubt there will be some complication I've not thought of that would stop this.

[+L0ne.R]

A new cache has been published near me http://coord.info/GC4HWQ6 where the CO has used 11/03/2001 as the date placed. Don't think it's a typo as I've been told that date is the only one not achievable in the UK.

 

I can understand giving people the ability to backdate the date placed to a reasonable extent so that as a valid feature but to be able to do it by over 10 years seems to be getting to the realm of bug.

 

I can't find anything in the guidelines about this and nothing I can see in past forum posts.

 

I've not seen this before on a cache but if a precedent is set then filling up your date placed grid is going to become pretty easy soon if sock puppet accounts are going to the used so the real person can get a tick in a box.

 

So, who owns the local Jasmer Challenge? If it were me, I'd put it right in my cache description that GC# is not eligible because it was intentionally created to cheat the challenge.

 

It's really kind of sad, but when I started caching in 2005, one of the things that drew me in was that the people I was playing the game with seemed to have certain level of integrity. As more started playing, we would hear things that people may or may not be doing this and that.

 

Now, 8 years later, players just blatantly cheat the game and dismiss it as, "that's the way I play". Creating a cache today and saying it was placed 12 years ago, so others can say that they found a cache that was placed 12 years ago, thus allowing them to cheat and log another cache owner's challenge, points to the integrity of everyone involved.

 

Yet another reason challenge caches aren't good for the game. Too much emphasis on statistics. Too much competition. Too much messing around with publication dates, found dates, terrain ratings and difficulty ratings and not using them as they were intended.

[+The Leprechauns]

I have a draft cache page that I created when I hid the container in June 2011. I still haven't submitted the cache for publication, because I'm still working on the design. I want to make it an "intercache" once I figure out how to do that. But when I do submit the listing, I will keep the June 2011 date because that's the "date hidden."

 

So, that's an example of an "old" date that is not "manifestly false." Why impose roadblocks to legitimate uses of the date field?

 

Another example is if I hid a "private cache." The best cache I've ever hidden is only available for members of my church - it has a religious agenda and cannot be published here. But suppose later on I figure out a way to at least list the final cache container - I ought to be able to do that, and I'd use the 2008 date when I first placed the container.

 

A third example is if I used an alternative listing site (which I don't). But suppose I felt lonely because nobody ever logs a find on the cache I listed at AlternativeCaching.com. I could cross-list it here, years later, and have an FTF within an hour.

 

I think it's far better to just point at the "cheater" cache, snicker quietly, and ignore it in favor of a legit qualifying cache for any challenges I'm working on. For example, I found a 5/5 cache that's a "Liar's Cache." I wouldn't use this for my Fizzy Challenge, so I found another cache that required wading across a river and bushwacking through underbrush on an island to earn that grid.

[team tisri]

Looks like in this case the CO has seen sense and changed the date to something recent. Still think it would be a good idea to restrict how far back you can change the date placed and locking it once the cache is published. No doubt there will be some complication I've not thought of that would stop this.

 

I like the idea of being able to set the "placed date" so it can be used as part of a puzzle, but there comes a point when it's hard to see why it needs to be more than a year or so in the past. I'd be inclined to say that anything more than a few weeks in the past should be automatically disallowed for anything other than puzzles, and for puzzles it should need to be specifically justified why that date is needed (i.e. why a more recent date wouldn't work). Even then I'd say if it's more than a couple of years in the past it should be disallowed anyway, or some wag will just create a simple puzzle where the date is set to the northing or some such.

[+L0ne.R]

I have a draft cache page that I created when I hid the container in June 2011. I still haven't submitted the cache for publication, because I'm still working on the design. I want to make it an "intercache" once I figure out how to do that. But when I do submit the listing, I will keep the June 2011 date because that's the "date hidden."

 

So, that's an example of an "old" date that is not "manifestly false." Why impose roadblocks to legitimate uses of the date field?

 

Another example is if I hid a "private cache." The best cache I've ever hidden is only available for members of my church - it has a religious agenda and cannot be published here. But suppose later on I figure out a way to at least list the final cache container - I ought to be able to do that, and I'd use the 2008 date when I first placed the container.

 

A third example is if I used an alternative listing site (which I don't). But suppose I felt lonely because nobody ever logs a find on the cache I listed at AlternativeCaching.com. I could cross-list it here, years later, and have an FTF within an hour.

 

I think it's far better to just point at the "cheater" cache, snicker quietly, and ignore it in favor of a legit qualifying cache for any challenges I'm working on. For example, I found a 5/5 cache that's a "Liar's Cache." I wouldn't use this for my Fizzy Challenge, so I found another cache that required wading across a river and bushwacking through underbrush on an island to earn that grid.

 

The only reason I can see 'date hidden' mattering would be for the month, not the year. If the cache was hidden in the summer it could mean that it may be impossible to locate under 2 feet of snow and ice in the winter. Why does the year it was placed outdoors (before publication) matter to the community?

[+Don_J]

I have a draft cache page that I created when I hid the container in June 2011. I still haven't submitted the cache for publication, because I'm still working on the design. I want to make it an "intercache" once I figure out how to do that. But when I do submit the listing, I will keep the June 2011 date because that's the "date hidden."

 

So, that's an example of an "old" date that is not "manifestly false." Why impose roadblocks to legitimate uses of the date field?

 

Another example is if I hid a "private cache." The best cache I've ever hidden is only available for members of my church - it has a religious agenda and cannot be published here. But suppose later on I figure out a way to at least list the final cache container - I ought to be able to do that, and I'd use the 2008 date when I first placed the container.

 

A third example is if I used an alternative listing site (which I don't). But suppose I felt lonely because nobody ever logs a find on the cache I listed at AlternativeCaching.com. I could cross-list it here, years later, and have an FTF within an hour.

 

I think it's far better to just point at the "cheater" cache, snicker quietly, and ignore it in favor of a legit qualifying cache for any challenges I'm working on. For example, I found a 5/5 cache that's a "Liar's Cache." I wouldn't use this for my Fizzy Challenge, so I found another cache that required wading across a river and bushwacking through underbrush on an island to earn that grid.

 

The only reason I can see 'date hidden' mattering would be for the month, not the year. If the cache was hidden in the summer it could mean that it may be impossible to locate under 2 feet of snow and ice in the winter. Why does the year it was placed outdoors (before publication) matter to the community?

 

The year it was hidden can tell me a great bit about what to expect. Obviously caching has changed over the years and so has the caches that people are hiding.

[+dprovan]

So, who owns the local Jasmer Challenge? If it were me, I'd put it right in my cache description that GC# is not eligible because it was intentionally created to cheat the challenge.

This seems quite reasonable, particularly when one consider that this will be very rare for such a cache to be so dated, and even rarer for anyone to try to use the bogus date to meet the challenge. Well, at least one hopes these cases will be very rare. My biggest fear here is that challenge owners will "defend" their challenge by making the requirements more complicated, such as making me look at the publication date instead of the hidden date. Perfectly reasonable, but one huge pain in the rear.

 

In fact, I would have no problem with the CO of the Jasmer Challenge rejecting the cache without publicly declaring that they will, even to the point of rejecting the find when the issue is pointed out long after the find is logged and implicitly accepted. And I'm hoping that that wouldn't be a problem for anyone looking at the resulting appeal.

[+Don_J]

So, who owns the local Jasmer Challenge? If it were me, I'd put it right in my cache description that GC# is not eligible because it was intentionally created to cheat the challenge.

This seems quite reasonable, particularly when one consider that this will be very rare for such a cache to be so dated, and even rarer for anyone to try to use the bogus date to meet the challenge. Well, at least one hopes these cases will be very rare. My biggest fear here is that challenge owners will "defend" their challenge by making the requirements more complicated, such as making me look at the publication date instead of the hidden date. Perfectly reasonable, but one huge pain in the rear.

 

In fact, I would have no problem with the CO of the Jasmer Challenge rejecting the cache without publicly declaring that they will, even to the point of rejecting the find when the issue is pointed out long after the find is logged and implicitly accepted. And I'm hoping that that wouldn't be a problem for anyone looking at the resulting appeal.

 

Pointing it out would hopefully stop others from trying the same thing.

[+SSO JOAT]

Play the game the way you want and stop worrying about how others do it.

 

I know of caches that have been hidden out there for over 3 years that still have not been published. When they do get published, the data for placed date and published date will both be readily available on the listing. Most humans should easily be able to tell them apart by the labels. Why would anyone suggest that these two dates need to be the same or even close to each other? If they have to be close, what is the point in even having a placed date?

 

If you think your little challenge thingie is going to be somehow compromised by someone putting a particular date in the hidden field, then use the dang published date for your side game and remove the tinkering element. Ta-da!

[stebu]

If you think your little challenge thingie is going to be somehow compromised by someone putting a particular date in the hidden field, then use the dang published date for your side game and remove the tinkering element. Ta-da!

Just out of curiosity, how can you get the published date from the website?

Only way I can think of is to look at the published log, but that's not very practical. Is there an easier way?

[+Don_J]

If you think your little challenge thingie is going to be somehow compromised by someone putting a particular date in the hidden field, then use the dang published date for your side game and remove the tinkering element. Ta-da!

Just out of curiosity, how can you get the published date from the website?

Only way I can think of is to look at the published log, but that's not very practical. Is there an easier way?

 

I don't believe that there is a published date in the database, therefore, it's not in a GPX file nor available from the api. It can only be tracked manually by looking for the Published log, and caches published prior to late 2005 did not have a Publish log.

[+cheech gang]

If you think your little challenge thingie is going to be somehow compromised by someone putting a particular date in the hidden field, then use the dang published date for your side game and remove the tinkering element. Ta-da!

 

Where is the "Ta-da!" undo button?

[+SSO JOAT]

If GSAK can't do it, then it doesn't need to be done.

 

If you really can't figure out the publish date, then continue to use the hide date and stop complaining about it.

 

If you see one of these rare caches that has an old hide date with a recent publish date and you think it is dishonest, then make the conscious decision to not find that cache and thereby not use it to complete your little challenge thingie. TA-DA!!!

 

How YOU play the game is up to YOU. Remember, you are only "competing" against yourself and nobody else out here really cares about your "stats".

 

(why u gotta try to make life so complicated?)

 

[+NYPaddleCacher]

 

The only reason I can see 'date hidden' mattering would be for the month, not the year. If the cache was hidden in the summer it could mean that it may be impossible to locate under 2 feet of snow and ice in the winter.

 

That kinds of depends on which hemisphere you live in.

 

 

[+Don_J]

If GSAK can't do it, then it doesn't need to be done.

 

If you really can't figure out the publish date, then continue to use the hide date and stop complaining about it.

 

If you see one of these rare caches that has an old hide date with a recent publish date and you think it is dishonest, then make the conscious decision to not find that cache and thereby not use it to complete your little challenge thingie. TA-DA!!!

 

How YOU play the game is up to YOU. Remember, you are only "competing" against yourself and nobody else out here really cares about your "stats".

 

(why u gotta try to make life so complicated?)

 

 

You seem to be taking this personally. Nobody cares if you list a cache that you hid three years ago as being placed three years ago. I'm sure that your reputation in the community would make it clear that you were not doing it to cheat on a challenge cache that you had no interest in.

 

When some starts geocaching in 2012 and then lists a cache and says that it was hidden in 2000, specifically so his friends can complete a very difficult challenge cache, it deserves at least a raised eyebrow. Obviously, it's quite different than your situation.

 

Does Groundspeak need to regulate it? Heck no. In fact, maybe we need more cheating. If the challenge owners get frustrated, we might end up with less silly challenges where the real challenge is not to find the caches but to figure out how to have GSAK tell you if you have found the caches.

Edited September 13, 2013 by Don_J

[+Don_J]

 

The only reason I can see 'date hidden' mattering would be for the month, not the year. If the cache was hidden in the summer it could mean that it may be impossible to locate under 2 feet of snow and ice in the winter.

 

That kinds of depends on which hemisphere you live in.

 

Why?

[+J Grouchy]

Play the game the way you want and stop worrying about how others do it.

 

I see this statement a lot around here. It's easy to say, but using data falsely lessens the value of what others try to do the "right" way. Sure, maybe YOU know you did it the right way, but nobody else cares because they stopped worrying about how others did it and look only at the numbers in front of them. Playing the game poorly, whether sanctioned by GS or not, brings everyone else down a bit.

 

Stop worrying about how others don't sign the log...

Stop worrying about someone claiming a find on a cache they didn't find and just assumed was missing...

Stop worrying about armchair caching for power trails...

 

It adds up to something we SHOULD worry about if we want this game/hobby/pastime/sport to keep any integrity.