Unofficial Caches

[+narcissa]

I'm just not following your line of thinking here.

That's OK, I figured that out some time ago that you have trouble following dissenting thoughts from your own. Carry on.

 

What I have trouble seeing is why your personal griping is relevant to the topic at hand. If my writing is truly "inflammatory," either ignore it, or report it to the mod and move on.

 

Perhaps you enjoy being advertised to at every turn, and don't mind seeing every aspect of your daily life turned into a marketing opportunity. Bully for you. I have experienced ways in which this game has been used commercially in a manner I find to be exploitative. That is the correct word, and I chose it for a reason. I know small business owners who were bilked out of thousands of dollars by a geocaching business promotion venture. That's exploiting.

 

Back to the original point, it sounds like the owners of these "unofficial" geocaches are attempting something that would run afoul of the commercialism guidelines, and I am happy that those guidelines continue to be in place.

[+JPreto]

Isn´t a throwdown an "unofficial" cache placed near a "offical" cache if someone thinks it is gone missing?

[cezanne]

Isn´t a throwdown an "unofficial" cache placed near a "offical" cache if someone thinks it is gone missing?

 

In any case this would be a better use of the term inofficial than to use it for caches that are not listed on gc.com. A cache from

Groundspeak's data base is not any more official as a cache from any other caching data base or a privat cache.

[cezanne]

Back to the original point, it sounds like the owners of these "unofficial" geocaches are attempting something that would run afoul of the commercialism guidelines, and I am happy that those guidelines continue to be in place.

 

I guess however that they are place to protect Groundspeak's interests, but anyway I do not mind that there are there.

 

I just wonder whether you do not have any issues with how Groundspeak promotes geocaching in here

http://www.geocaching.com/travel/

The difference is Groundspeak gets paid.

 

In any case I think that the discussed geocaches are better off outside of gc.com for many reasons, but then one also cannot complain about distance conflicts.

[+narcissa]

Back to the original point, it sounds like the owners of these "unofficial" geocaches are attempting something that would run afoul of the commercialism guidelines, and I am happy that those guidelines continue to be in place.

 

I guess however that they are place to protect Groundspeak's interests, but anyway I do not mind that there are there.

 

I just wonder whether you do not have any issues with how Groundspeak promotes geocaching in here

http://www.geocaching.com/travel/

The difference is Groundspeak gets paid.

 

In any case I think that the discussed geocaches are better off outside of gc.com for many reasons, but then one also cannot complain about distance conflicts.

 

For me, the difference is that I have chosen to be a customer of Groundspeak, and I know that Groundspeak makes money but also invests money in improving the site. They also appoint the army of reviewers and manage the geocaching guidelines that keep the game from being a complete trainwreck.

 

I did not choose to be a customer of Jim-Bob's Bed and Breakfast and Gas Bar, and I don't want to have a geocache trick me into interacting with it.

[cezanne]

For me, the difference is that I have chosen to be a customer of Groundspeak, and I know that Groundspeak makes money but also invests money in improving the site.

 

That's true but still no reason to try to sell geocaching to tourism offices and other associations of this kind.

Among others they (at least indirectly) promote power trails like the ET trail which in my opinion harms geocaching more than

a few caches in a village can ever do.

 

 

I did not choose to be a customer of Jim-Bob's Bed and Breakfast and Gas Bar, and I don't want to have a geocache trick me into interacting with it.

 

I would not either, but the activities mentioned on the web site referred to in the first post do not appear to trick anyone into anything.

If a store which sells sports clothing and assecoirs rents a climbing tower for a special action day and all who visit the shop regardless of

whether they buy something or not can use the climbing tower and take part in other activities as well, I would not refer this as exploiting the sport of

climbing and I guess no one would. Like in the geocaching example, the target audience is a different one anyway. Experienced climbers will not come to

the shop to use the climbing tower.

 

So to come back to your example: I'm not in favour of a geocache listed on gc.com that requires one to interact with Jim-Bob's Bed and Breakfast, but do not have any issue

with Jim-Bob's Bed and Breakfast having a private cache for whoever among their guests want to go for it. The idea would not be to convince experienced cachers to become guests, but

rather to offer an additional activity among others for the guests that they might want to try out (in addition to many others like guided hikes, movie evenings ec). For me this is far from exploiting geocaching as an activity.

 

Cezanne

Edited October 1, 2014 by cezanne

[+wmpastor]

Here's an Unofficial Cache (part of another community event) that just caused a bomb scare. No permission for the restaurant site? "I thought the Chamber of Commerce asked."

 

 

Geocaching stash box causes bomb scare

By: Ben Benton | October 4, 2014

A geocaching stash box triggered a bomb scare Monday in Manchester, Tenn., that closed down a quarter-mile of Hillsboro Boulevard and caused the evacuation of the Jiffy Burger, Hardee's and the Manchester Public Library for about four hours.

 

Turns out the box left behind at the Jiffy Burger was part of a planned geocaching tour in Tennessee, partially planned by a local civic tourism agency, but local officials aren't laughing much.

 

An employee at the Jiffy Burger saw a man get out of his vehicle, remove a package, walk around behind the restaurant and place it by the heat and air-conditioning unit that has gas lines running to it, Manchester Police Maj. Bill Sipe said.

 

Jiffy Burger folks called the police chief, who sent an officer to check out the report, and that led to evacuation of the restaurants and library while the Tennessee Highway Patrol's bomb squad responded to the restaurant.

 

The package, a military ammo box, was X-rayed, but officers still couldn't tell what the box contained, Sipe said.

 

Bomb squad officials used a water cannon to blast the box's lid off so officers could see inside.

 

"It turned out to be a geocach-type program where they leave various items at different places and people go find these items using GPS coordinates," he said.

 

The box contained a notepad for geocachers to sign, some toy spiders, a badge and other odds and ends, he said. The box had a geocaching emblem on it but the emblem was facing the wall of the building.

 

Sipe said the man who placed the box called the police department later Monday night to explain what happened and let officials know he was working with state tourism officials on a planned geocaching tour.

 

The man said he didn't tell Jiffy Burger folks what he was doing and thought the local Chamber of Commerce had taken care of making contact.

 

Sipe said no charges are being filed since there was no criminal intent, though the Jiffy Burger and Hardee's probably lost money in the evacuation.

 

Tracy St. John, one of the owners of the Jiffy Burger with her mother, Nancy Pennington, described the uproar created by the surprise left at the restaurant as "a mess."

 

"I think the whole town was shut down," said St. John, who was in Alabama on Monday while her father, David Pennington, relayed by phone a play-by-play of what was happening at the restaurant.

 

According to reports in the Manchester Times, the Manchester Tourism and Community Development Commission had discussed the geocaching effort for almost a year as part of a "Jack Geocaching Trail" under the South Central Tennessee Tourism Association.

 

The association website says the project is the first "GeoTour" in Tennessee and the Jack GeoTour "went live" in August.

 

[4wheelin_fool]

Bomb squad shuts down town due to tourism project?

[+wmpastor]

Bomb squad shuts down town due to tourism project?

Yeah. The unofficial caches were meant to boost business, but the bomb scare meant less hamburger sales near GZ, due to the ominous ammo can filled with fake spiders strategically placed near the gas pipe to the building. And what's *really* scary is that law enforcement can't see the fake spiders when they x-ray the cache!

Edited October 4, 2014 by wmpastor

[+jwmoe1973]

Tourism and Visitors Bureau offices are some of the worst, even when their caches are officially listed here... SMH.