Bad Caches In Plain Sight

[curlingfan11]

Do you know how if someone places a cache, that they think will be 'evil', but really is very bad? (no offense). For example, a fake electric cover on a pole that holds up a roof. (not an electrical pole or something like that). Any ideas?

[+T.D.M.22]

I don't understand the question....I'm assuming you've got a problem with them.

 

Anyway maybe someone wants to bring people to the location (not just because there's a cache) and they don't know what to do for a cache. Or perhaps it's just something they think won't get muggled- before you started geocaching how many electrical covers did you really pay attention to. Hey, gives me an idea. I'll plce one of those covers, or even an outlet on a tree or something obviously non electrical in a crowded place just to see what happens.

[+dprovan]

Do you know how if someone places a cache, that they think will be 'evil', but really is very bad? (no offense). For example, a fake electric cover on a pole that holds up a roof. (not an electrical pole or something like that). Any ideas?

Ideas? Yeah: more of those. My favorite is a fake electrical cover on a tree.

[+Manville Possum]

My favorite is the fake turd cache in a dog park.

[Keystone]

I'm not seeing a website feature request or bug report, so I am moving this thread to the Geocaching Topics forum.

[+colleda]

I'm not a fan of fake electrical equipment. You just don't know if anyones' gonna take apart real ones.

[+niraD]

I'm not a fan of fake electrical equipment. You just don't know if anyones' gonna take apart real ones.

For the fake electrical equipment caches I've found, I have been able to clearly identify that they were fake before opening anything. Generally, I was holding the cache in my hand to identify that it was fake. I don't really see a problem with these.

[+Isonzo Karst]

For example, a fake electric cover on a pole that holds up a roof. (not an electrical pole or something like that). Any ideas?

 

Not *quite* sure what the request for "ideas" means.

My biggest issue with your example would probably come from how it was attached. Often cachers drive screws into other people's property. I consider this defacement, and am quick to call COs on it.

 

If it has permission, no problem. If it's attached such that it removes readily with no holes or harm to pole, I won't involve myself in permission.

Fake electric, sprinklers, other fake utility are best done where they're conspicuous to geocachers, and largely invisible to non-cachers.

Ie, the ONLY sprinkler, electric with no connections, cover plate on side of tree per dprovan...

 

One day I found an ammo can, hanging from a strap just above waist level on the side of tree. A bit of a walk in on the main trail, to an old, overgrown lumbering road, to a modest bushwhack. Ammo can, plain sight. For some reason, this amused heck out of me. I now own 2 of these. Evil, not so much.... although people do sometimes struggle, "Took me a while to find the darn cache....Finally the cache popped out of the alternate plane of reality it must have been in and I was able to sign the log".

 

[cezanne]

Do you know how if someone places a cache, that they think will be 'evil', but really is very bad? (no offense). For example, a fake electric cover on a pole that holds up a roof. (not an electrical pole or something like that). Any ideas?

 

Why do you know that an evil hide was intended?

I prefer fake electric equipment where it is clear right away that it cannot be real.

 

If the area allows it and a cache does not get easily muggled, caches in plain sight are perfectly fine for me. I'm not interested into searching and I'm not a fan of caches for which geocachers need to search for a longer time.

For me it's about the location and the journey.

[+ByronForestPreserve]

I think I get what you're saying: it would be like a pinecone cache on an oak tree if the CO knew nothing about nature. "They'll never find it!" but it's really obvious. Yes? My problem is that I'm not super comfortable with any utility caches, even if it's "obvious" that something isn't live. In fact, I'm one of only a couple DNFs on a popular cache nearby that seems to point to either a telephone pole or an electrical box (within a few feet of each other). The hint is "You won't be shocked by how easy this is!" and I don't know if that means it's on the electrical box, or that it's not on the electrical box. I gave it a DNF among the 250 finds. I'd 100 times rather get 30'from GZ and see a light post skirt ahead of me than an electrical box. Soooooo...you might think an out-of-place outlet is easy, whereas I might not even try.

[+The Rat]

I'm not 100% clear on what point the OP is making. Do you mean it's not really evil because anyone can tell that it's not really an electrical box, thus bad = lame? Or bad because it brings disrepute on geocachers and geocaching? I have no problem with an electrical box were it can't be a real one, e.g. a tree. I do have a problem with fake infrastructure or devices where they could be real. I personally have broken a sprinkler head in a park (where the hint said it was round, wet, and plastic and that was the only thing I saw meeting that description at GZ) and a light fixture on a shed in another park (the real cache was a fake light fixture on another side of that shed). Then there are the padlock hides, which teach cachers to fiddle with locks which can get them hassled or even arrested and generally end up causing geocaching to get a bad name and be banned. It causes them to fiddle with padlocks or infrastructure even where there is no hide of that nature because, of course, once someone knows that's one place where caches are hidden, then they begin to check those out in other places. I've seen the padlock hides on utility district gates, water pump stations, and chains securing city traffic sawhorses. These aren't evil, they're just bad for geocaching. I put them in the class with fake pipe bombs or rat poison containers. Jerks who hide those ruin it for the rest of us.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Of course, I have my own definitions of evil versus nasty. 'Evil' is where I say "WOW!" after finding the cache. 'Nasty' is where I say "Why did you bother wasting my time with a fake rock in a pile of rocks?" Some cache owners think that bad coords are evil. Nope. Those are just nasty.

The ones cited by the OP are "meh". Seen that. Done that. Boring. (But still finds.)

[+J Grouchy]

Just the other night I found a cache along a recently constructed (and heavily used) multi-use trail. It was visible from the trail...an electrical box strapped to a large tree. Inside was a high quality pelican box. Muggles had obviously been all through the cache, had marked up the log book...filled it with doodles and odd comments. The two trackables the FTF had left (I was only the second person to "find" it) were both gone and someone had left a can of spray paint inside and plastered it with stickers and graffiti. I think the CO probably is not concerned about muggles...probably even expecting them. It was actually in a pretty cool location, on a raised ridge overlooking the trail. It's just unfortunate that it's not really safe for swag or trackables. I'm sure there was no lock in place as it would probably just get cut or broken off the first night. Hard for me to judge whether it's "bad", though. It sort of depends on the intention of the CO and how much muggle-interference he/she expected and was willing to accept.