I don't think challenges are the problem

[+on4bam]

Makes everyone happy.

 

No it won't

 

Fair enough. Why?

 

I can see the challenge lovers happy as they can still find challenge caches and everyone else happy as they get their finds.

 

Pretty much the same as for a puzzle cache.

 

It might make the cacher who doesn't qualify happy as he gets an "easy find" but it's unfair to the cacher who does qualify and may even put a lot of extra effort into qualifying.

Just as an example: Challenge which requires 500 multi's found. Cacher A hates multi's and has zero but logs the challenge cache anyway, cacher B has 490 and goes out an extra day or two to get the remaining 10 and then logs the challenge. You think both logs should be valid? I don't. Why would someone insist on logging a challenge they don't qualify for anyway? Lack of choice of other (non challenge) caches?

 

 

It seems that people (the few on this forum, not the majority that doesn't read/post here) have a problem with challenges that are "to complex" or "to hard". If you do away with challenges for that reason, then what about D5 mysteries? What about multi stage caches with 20+ waypoints and hard to find tags and fieldpuzzles in hard to crack codes (enigma, DNA, Pig latin...).

The argument "to difficult" should never be used.

 

I disagree. The complaint that a challenge is too difficult (or a mystery cache too hard, or a multi with too many waypoints) isn't just that it's too difficult, or the mystery is too hard, or too many stages. The issue, to me, is when it's unnecessarily too difficult. I've done D4 mystery caches that took over a month to solve and enjoyed it. It's easy to create an unsolvable mystery, or a challenge that could only be achieved by a handful of cachers in the world but what's the point?

 

This isn't a contest to see who can create the hardest puzzle, or the challenge which the fewest people will ever qualify. Some challenge cachers have taken the level of complexity and achievability to a level of absurdity.

 

No matter how easy or difficult a puzzle is there will always be people who are unable to solve them. So one cacher's unsolvable mystery may well be solved by another in 2 minutes. It's happened to me too. There are mysteries I looked at several times over several months where I couldn't even see how to begin to solve them when all of a sudden I try another angle and have them solved quickly. Sometimes it has to do with solving a similar mystery where a hint is given or someone writes something in their logs. When we can't go out caching in winter my wife and I spend hours solving mysteries, many of them stay in our database for a long time (just logged one last weekend that was solved 4 years ago) and many are archived before we even get to search for them.

[+Malemotives]

I am so glad that when I started geocaching, I made a conscious decision to ignore challenges/multis. Reading this thread confirms my decision for me.

[+Uncle Alaska]

I am so glad that when I started geocaching, I made a conscious decision to ignore challenges/multis. Reading this thread confirms my decision for me.

 

That's a shame, you are going to miss out on some great caches by excluding multis...

[+Crow-T-Robot]

I am so glad that when I started geocaching, I made a conscious decision to ignore challenges/multis. Reading this thread confirms my decision for me.

 

That's a shame, you are going to miss out on some great caches by excluding multis...

 

...and challenge caches. There are plenty of great challenge caches out there, as well.

[+Roman!]

Makes everyone happy.

 

No it won't

 

Fair enough. Why?

 

I can see the challenge lovers happy as they can still find challenge caches and everyone else happy as they get their finds.

 

Pretty much the same as for a puzzle cache.

 

I spent 9 days on a bus travelling from Vancouver to Maine and back so I could show my reviewer i qualified for a challenge cache I wanted to place, no chance I'd let anyone not qualifying log the cache and it would cheapen my cache if I did.

[+jellis]

The faact that the original moratorium post stated to the effect that a big part of the problem was reviewer workload, I think there are a lot more issues with challenge hide appeals than with find appeals.

 

That does not preclude education from being a big part of the problem, of course. As in any game, knwing the rules is important. The rules around challenges can get rather involved and subject to widely varying interpretation. Education won't necessarily stop a cache hider from having an emotional investment in a particular type of challenge that is never going to be approved, but it could help them figure out a way to structure it in a way that might get approved.

 

In any case, there are always going to be people who refuse to be educated no matter how hard the rest of us try.

 

Austin

Aren't they just as overloaded with Powertrails. Though I like Challenges I believe they are getting out of hand like Virtuals did.

[+on4bam]

I am so glad that when I started geocaching, I made a conscious decision to ignore challenges/multis. Reading this thread confirms my decision for me.

 

You didn't. You have 3 finds on multi's (or 3% of your finds)

 

Aren't they just as overloaded with Powertrails. Though I like Challenges I believe they are getting out of hand like Virtuals did.

 

Wouldn't it be nice to know if the supposed problems with challenges are in certain areas/countries?

At least here in Belgium I don't see an "overload" on challenges (I do see an overload on trads though )

If the problem is in certain countries then why a worldwide moratorium?

[cezanne]

Wouldn't it be nice to know if the supposed problems with challenges are in certain areas/countries?

 

While it is true that there are many challenge caches in some areas (e.g. apparently in some areas of Ontario) while there are

hardly any in other coins of the world or even none at all, the density of challenge caches did not cause the moratorium.

 

At least here in Belgium I don't see an "overload" on challenges (I do see an overload on trads though )

If the problem is in certain countries then why a worldwide moratorium?

 

The total number of challenge caches is not that high in Austria (in comparison to the overall number of caches), but

there have been some challenge cache submissions that led to heavy debates and some also to an appeal process.

For example, a while ago a cacher wanted to publish a lonely cache challenge and got it denied.

The 800 caches a day challenge got first published, then retracted and republished as a 400 caches a day challenge after internal

discussions at Groundspeak. The involved Austrian reviewer somehow thinks that his initiative has also been part of the reason for the

decision to come up with a moratorium. If you can read German you might read this

http://austrian-reviewer.blogspot.co.at/

 

It appears that a larger number of reviewers got tired about the debates with cachers about challenge cache submissions and about the

subjective review criteria for challenge caches which always will lead to a lot of controversy.

 

As your alleged overload of traditionals in Belgium is regarded, I do understand your point as I'm a big fan of multi stage caches too and I too suffer from the decline of such caches around here. However, do not forget that compared to most countries of the world both our countries still have low traditional percentages.

Edited April 29, 2015 by cezanne

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I am so glad that when I started geocaching, I made a conscious decision to ignore challenges/multis. Reading this thread confirms my decision for me.

 

You didn't. You have 3 finds on multi's (or 3% of your finds)

 

Aren't they just as overloaded with Powertrails. Though I like Challenges I believe they are getting out of hand like Virtuals did.

 

Wouldn't it be nice to know if the supposed problems with challenges are in certain areas/countries?

At least here in Belgium I don't see an "overload" on challenges (I do see an overload on trads though )

If the problem is in certain countries then why a worldwide moratorium?

 

It just wouldn't be practical to have different guidelines for different countries/areas. It's a global game with global guidelines. Challenge caches are certainly regional as the craze has caught on in some areas (the monkey see, monkey do effect) but not in others. There are less than 10 within 50 miles of where I live about about 200 miles from here there are hundreds.

 

 

[+thebruce0]

It might make the cacher who doesn't qualify happy as he gets an "easy find" but it's unfair to the cacher who does qualify and may even put a lot of extra effort into qualifying.

Just as an example: Challenge which requires 500 multi's found. Cacher A hates multi's and has zero but logs the challenge cache anyway, cacher B has 490 and goes out an extra day or two to get the remaining 10 and then logs the challenge. You think both logs should be valid? I don't. Why would someone insist on logging a challenge they don't qualify for anyway? Lack of choice of other (non challenge) caches?

If the find and the challenge log are separated, then they can be. The Find only counts as a Find. The first cacher gets the find. The second cacher does too, but only gets the challenge stat if they also qualify.

COs who want the find to be part of the challenge could in theory be given that ability to enforce, so you can't get the Find unless you also qualify (as is currently enforceable, but only with the single Find log)

 

I spent 9 days on a bus travelling from Vancouver to Maine and back so I could show my reviewer i qualified for a challenge cache I wanted to place, no chance I'd let anyone not qualifying log the cache and it would cheapen my cache if I did.

Right and those cases would be the latter - CO locks the find to the qualification (as is currently with the single find log). If you've qualified, post the log; but it's not complete until you also find the cache. The cache also would be entirely filtered out where challenges are not included.

 

I just think that if the find and qualification logs are separated and distinct, the biggest benefit is the ability to add a challenge-specific rating (stars) to let the D/T be accurate to the cache itself. There's also technically the option to allow finding without qualification, for those COs who would still allow people to log the physical cache found regardless of challenge qualification. I know some COs wouldn't prefer or use that; in many cases I myself wouldn't. But at least the ability would be there in theory if GS decided to allow COs to make that choice.

[+Fugads]

Really interesting topic. The comparison of Geocaching to other more established games (Scrabble, D&D etc..) is a good one that is worth pondering. These are all clearly games though, and there is an aspect to geocaching that is more recreational hobby, which has some differences from structured games. I like to think of other recreational hobbies when pondering how geocaching has changed and how it might continue to change. For me, what always comes to mind is rock climbing. It is a hobby that I have participated in for years, and also has seen giant changes over the years. Like geocaching, rock climbing had humble beginnings, being practiced mostly by fringe groups and off the mainstream radar. Within those groups factions occurred, debates would get heated and people would bemoan the ruination of the sport. But that never occurred, and people have continued to enjoy climbing in ever increasing forms and ways. Eventually the sport has become more main stream (cause for whining by some, but celebrated by others) and now is considered a pretty normal activity for people to get into.

 

Every time I see some thread on these forums I immediately make comparisons to climbing. Geocachers complain that D/T ratings are subjective, and are not consistent, climbers complain about climbing ratings. When geocachers go o about what should and shouldn't count as a find, I think of climbers arguing over climbing styles and whether a send was real. Geocachers squabble over FTFs, climbers bicker of first ascents. Occasionally tempers flare and geocachers have terrible things happen to their caches (getting taken or vandalized), the same things happen with climbers over chipping holds and chopping bolts. I feel like just about every issue has some comparison that makes sense to me.

 

What is interesting about this to me is that climbing has been established as a recreational activity for quite a bit longer than geocaching, so in a sense it can provide a framework for seeing how geocaching might also change and grow. Despite controversies in the climbing community, the underlying fun of the sport has kept people at it. I hope the same will be the case for geocaching. There are lots of different kinds of people that call themselves climbers these days, from folks that only boulder, to those that are devoted to mountaineering and on the surface it can look like these are two different hobbies. People who just spend their time bouldering may have very little in common with mountaineers. And yet they can still identify with eachother and come together as a loose knit community. I kind of see geocaching going this way, with different styles or types of geocachers becoming more and more different, yet still coming together as a community just by participating in a geocache hunt. As long as the recreation of going out and finding a cache is fun, people will continue to do so.

 

The biggest difference between geocaching and rock climbing is of course the internet database of geocaches. This is something that is central to geocaching, but something that climbers have long gone without. There are online databases of rock climbs, but these can hardly be considered the heart of the hobby. But for geocaching, the database of caches to be found is the heart of the hobby, and the companies and groups that maintain these end up wielding a good deal of influence over how the hobby evolves. This influence is not to be mistaken for absolute control though, because geocaching is still about individual geocachers hiding and finding caches. The way people end up playing the game will influence the game itself perhaps the stewards of the database are simply playing catch-up, trying to stay abreast of all the myriad of ways in which people have devised to take part. Other times it seems like those stewards are trying to keep the game a certain way, and I don't blame them. They need to figure out ways to keep the systems running and usable, and geocaches which strain their ability to keep everything running smoothly need to be addressed, lest the system fall apart. The fact that these central databases are so key to this recreational hobby is what can make this feel more like a game than a hobby. The owners of the databases need to have rules and structures in order to keep entropy in check. The climbing world doesn't have this problem as much. Rock climbs are etched in stone, much more permanent than a tupperware hidden in the woods. Once the climb is known about and described it can be published in a guidebook, or passed along to other climbers without much worry that it will change in 6 months or a year or longer. And while there is online bragging about what climbs you may have completed, posting about what you've climbed is not a big part of that hobby. in contrast, posting what geocaches you have found is the norm for geocachers. While there are those who hunt geocaches but do not post online logs, I am guessing they are in the minority and geocachers are much more concerned about proving their find online than climbers ever will be.

 

This is all getting very rambling and I risk losing any coherence, but I wanted to finish with some thoughts about where geocaching might go from here. Much like rock climbing, I see geocaching continuing to grow and thrive since it is a fun recreational activity. I see this as the biggest strength of geocaching, that it has an enjoyable recreational activity at its core, that people will continue to participate in in one form or another. As it becomes more and more mainstream, there will be starker differences between different types of geocachers. These different kinds of geocachers will be more immediately recognized, and begin to develop sub communities within the broader community of geocaching, but not so much that they don't consider themselves geocachers. There may even be offshoot databases that cater to different kinds of geocachers, much as there are now bouldering guidebooks, sport climbing guidebooks etc... Debates over find ethics will continue, and even what we now consider a geocache will change (as it already is), but these will be background noises of a thriving community, rather than any death-throes of a dying one. Overall, I'm optimistic about the future of the hobby, one which is still in relative infancy, but one that continues to delight people around the world.