Virtual caches, Earthcaches and Waymarks

[+honymand]

Hi,

 

I can't know it of course, but I'd think that quite a lot of geocachers are happy with and even interested in nature. However, registering a site of botanical, zoological or ecological interest can be quite difficult, and for each feature introduced which may possibly allow this some limitations are also imposed which makes it in fact not possible.

 

I realize there is nothing in the rules to prevent you from placing a regular cache, but then there are lots of reasons anyway why you may not. First of all it may be prohibited or simply unwise for conservancy reasons to place a physical cache, or no proper hiding place may be available or another cache may already be too close - but a cache with a completely different purpose.

 

Then you could make an "unknown" cache leading the geocacher to the area but with the physical placed somewhere else. And this is possible of course, but you don't avoid making it more difficult for the finder and you have to invent some kind of puzzle which may (depending on your skills as riddler...) appear out of place.

 

Example: I can easily create caches that lead people to visit different species of trees in order to learn about trees. If the locality near one beech is unavailable or impractical I find myself another beech. But I cannot easily create caches that lead people to visit specific trees, such as very large or old specimens. If the locality near the oldest tree in Denmark is unavailable or impractical, I just can't find another oldest tree!

 

Then there are/were the different kinds of non-physical caches or waymarks.

 

1) Old virtual caches: Yes, I can see why they've been grandfathered. No rules really - means chaos, also they were to some degree disregarded by cachers.

 

2) Earthcaches: That is a good idea, but you have to ask yourself - why aren't they just waymarks? And another question: Why only geology? I know for a fact that there are earthcaches around which cover sites primarily of ecological importance, but making a geology-centered description made them accepted anyway. Make no mistake: I'd like to keep the earthcaches, but broaden the accepted types of sites so people don't have to tweak their description.

 

3) Challenges: Replaced virtual caches and were quickly turned into waymarks. I do think they had some merit. Not as popular as caches, but not completely disregarded either.

 

4) Waymarks: The rule that you must select a category at the lowest level causes havoc in some cases. Look that the two categories "Natural Lakes" and "Plants" which are two very broad categories. Natural Lakes have no subcategories which means you can waymark Lake Huron or any local lake. Plants on the other hand have subcategories which means that lots of botical interesting sites cannot be registered as waymarks unless they are gardens, flower fields or house carnivorous plants - that seems to me as a pretty random collection. Waymarks WOULD be a great thing it you could either register on diffrerent levels of categories or it was easier to create new categories (I don't really get the voting system - in the end people will vote with their feet, if no one really registers any waymarks or nobody finds them - then and only then can a category be declared void).

 

What I am hoping for here is one of two

1) Broaden the criteria for earthcaches, at least to include also sites of general ecological importance

2) Make it easier to register plant/animal/ecology centered waymarks - one way or another

 

Best regards,

Hans Olav

[+T.D.M.22]

I won't spam for the others, but an earth cache is just that. You wouldn't expect a waymark for a historical building to be at the

Bottom of the ocean. It would be at a historical building. Earth caches also have a seperate, independent set of reviewers, and sponsers whose goal was to do that.

 

And, challenges are not waymarks. Sure they shared some locations, but so do physical caches.

[+Touchstone]

Link for reference:

 

Why are Earthcaches limited to geology?

[+honymand]

Link for reference:

 

Why are Earthcaches limited to geology?

 

I read that link, but in my humble opinion it basically states that: We asked people with knowledge of geology to review caches about geology.

 

I fully understand that it would be odd to ask people of the United States Geological Society to review caches relating to zoology, but it beckons the question

- Isn't there a Society of Zoology

- Have they been asked to review Zoocaches?

- Did they say no, ok, nothing to do about that then...

 

But I bet they weren't ever asked.

 

It is very clear that the limitation to earth sciences was chosen willfully - I just don't see why this limitation is in place! OK, I see why it is in place for Earthcaches, but why isn't there a Zoocaches type (for instance)?

 

Best regards, Hans Olav

[+MartyBartfast]

 

I fully understand that it would be odd to ask people of the United States Geological Society to review caches relating to zoology, but it beckons the question

- Isn't there a Society of Zoology

- Have they been asked to review Zoocaches?

- Did they say no, ok, nothing to do about that then...

 

But I bet they weren't ever asked.

 

It is very clear that the limitation to earth sciences was chosen willfully - I just don't see why this limitation is in place! OK, I see why it is in place for Earthcaches, but why isn't there a Zoocaches type (for instance)?

 

I may be wrong but I believe it was the Geological Society of America who came up with the idea of Earthcaches, not Groundspeak. So it's not a case of Groundspeak wilfully choosing earth sciences, it was earth sciences which wilfully chose Groundspeak.

 

Perhaps if the Zoological/Historical society of America approached GS with a proposal then it might be adopted, but TBH I don't think those societies would see geocaching fit with their agenda as closely as the Geological society does.

[+honymand]

 

I may be wrong but I believe it was the Geological Society of America who came up with the idea of Earthcaches, not Groundspeak. So it's not a case of Groundspeak wilfully choosing earth sciences, it was earth sciences which wilfully chose Groundspeak.

 

Perhaps if the Zoological/Historical society of America approached GS with a proposal then it might be adopted, but TBH I don't think those societies would see geocaching fit with their agenda as closely as the Geological society does.

 

Point taken - so I can only hope they'll be willing to make changes to the way Waymarking categories are defined.

[Nomex]

Marty is correct. It's not a matter of Groundspeak making changes, it's a matter of some professional association willing to work with Grounspeak to make this happen. Not all Associations are as forward thinking as the GSA

[+tozainamboku]

Link for reference:

 

Why are Earthcaches limited to geology?

 

I read that link, but in my humble opinion it basically states that: We asked people with knowledge of geology to review caches about geology.

 

I fully understand that it would be odd to ask people of the United States Geological Society to review caches relating to zoology, but it beckons the question

- Isn't there a Society of Zoology

- Have they been asked to review Zoocaches?

- Did they say no, ok, nothing to do about that then...

 

But I bet they weren't ever asked.

 

It is very clear that the limitation to earth sciences was chosen willfully - I just don't see why this limitation is in place! OK, I see why it is in place for Earthcaches, but why isn't there a Zoocaches type (for instance)?

 

Best regards, Hans Olav

A little history of EarthCaches and Waymarking is useful.

 

Originally Groundspeak was far more open to variations. Geocaching was new and Groundspeak was looking for was to grow the sport. So someone suggested that if a location was not suitable for a physical cache you could have some object that was already at the location and some way other than signing a log book to verify that people found that object. That was birth of the virtual cache.

 

What happened was that people started to use the virtual cache to register locations of special interest - whether scientific, historic, or cultural. It was extremely difficult for some reason to make it clear that geocaching was about finding things, preferably using GPS, and not a place for sharing locations.

 

Other people used the virtual cache to simply avoid having to hide and maintain a physical geocache. It was far to easy to find a common object with some unique identifier and use it for a virtual cache.

 

Groundspeak added a "wow" requirement for virtual caches. A virtual cache had to be novel, of interest to other players, and have a special historic, community or geocaching quality that set it apart from everyday subjects. While this new guideline allowed reviewers to limit virtual caches that lacked any interest and were just being placed because someone was too lazy to hide a physical cache, it also seemed to encourage the use of virtual caches as a way to register interesting places and miss the core idea of geocaching - to find something.

 

In the meantime, the Geological Society of America was looking for a way to promote the geological sciences. Someone there thought that geocaching would be a good fit for what they wanted to do. So they came to Groundspeak with a proposal for EarthCaches. The registration and review of EarthCaches would be handled by GSA people and Geocaching.com would provide a listing services.

 

It seems a bit strange that EarthCache were added as a new cache type and not some alternative game like US Benchmarks that were added a few years earlier. My guess is that back then a new cache type was the easiest way to implement anything.

 

Groundspeak however was still looking for a solution to virtual and locationless caches. They came up with Waymarking as system that combined these two features and dealt with the idea of being able to register places of interest to share with others, instead of caches for people to find.

 

It is true, as you point out, that it is often difficult to find the Waymarking category to use to register some particular place.

 

I think it was always seen that there would be overlap between some Waymarking categories and that some location might get listed in multiple categories.

 

As far as I know there is no rule that you must select the most specific category. The hierarchical organization means there there are layers in the hierarchy that aren't categories which allow listings. So you do need to drill down into the hierarchy to find categories whey you can list waymarks.

 

I've never had a problem determining if a category allows listing, but perhaps there could be better ways to indicate this.

 

I think a bigger issue is that many category managers are trying to help you find a category. It may be that a category owner rejects your submission because they know a "better" category to use. It would be nice if the submission could be routed to the other category. However different categories have different criteria - particularly in defining category specific variables - so that often you would have to re-enter the waymarks to provide the data in a different format.

 

There are also cases where your waymark doesn't fit any existing categories. Creating new categories is a little difficult for some to tackle: you need to be a premium member, you need to recruit a group of premium members to be officers, you need to put out your proposal for review, the proposal is voted on (unless your idea is really close to an existing class or so far out that it would have little interest, my guess is that the vote is always going to be to add the category).

 

I do think that it is a good idea to discuss improvements to how categories are arranged and perhaps how to make it easier to create new categories in the Waymarking section of the forum.

Edited September 7, 2014 by tozainamboku

[+honymand]

Thank you tozainamboku for clarifying and telling the whole story, but there are a few errors when it comes to Waymarking.

 

If I create a waymark and add a category with subcategories I get this message:

You must continue selecting categories until you reach the deepest subcategory.

 

So if I select "Nature", then "Plants" I have to select either "Carnivorous plants", "Flower fields" or "Gardens" - no other options. And as this is a very short list of very specific sites there is no way I could for instance register a location of say orchids without first having a new category approved. And that is a problem - as soon as you add a few subcategories you effectively rule out everything else in the parent category!

 

And about creating new categories that's not at all easy - at least not anymore - I've had two suggestions rejected, and on grounds that fit on already existing categories.

[+J Grouchy]

I realize there is nothing in the rules to prevent you from placing a regular cache, but then there are lots of reasons anyway why you may not. First of all it may be prohibited or simply unwise for conservancy reasons to place a physical cache, or no proper hiding place may be available or another cache may already be too close - but a cache with a completely different purpose.

 

There are ways to deal with that using the current system:

 

1 - Mystery Cache with the point of interest at the posted coordinates. A local cacher here uses trees and local flora as a part of many of his puzzles. Examples: http://coord.info/GC2MYMN , http://coord.info/GC4807E ,

 

2 - Multi-cache with virtual stages...same principle as above, but perhaps using informational signage or other data on-site to provide coordinates to the next stage.