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Grid filling challenge caches (365 days, cache type)


cezanne

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Someone pointed me to this thread on the project-gc challenge checker forum

http://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,3468

and I need to admit that like target I cannot understand why challenge caches that ask for filling the 365 day grid (without February 29) are allowed only for the cache types traditional and mystery but not for multi caches as has been pointed out by OReviewer.

 

None of the rules in the guidelines refers to that case and since it seems to be a general decision it cannot refer to areas where there are not enough multi caches and not enough cachers which will be able to satisfy the requirements.

 

It's quite unfortunate that apparently there are so many hidden rules and whenever someone comes up with something not yet covered in the rule set, new hidden rules are added.

 

I'm closer to having filled the 365 day grid with multi caches than with mystery caches (I have never worked on any of the two goals). So why has HQ decided that multi cache grid filling caches are not allowed and why is this is not mentioned in the guidelines?

 

I'd appreciate a reply from someone who knows about the background and can provide a clarification about something which makes several people wonder.

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The detailed challenge cache guidelines have been updated relatively frequently since the end of the moratorium earlier this year. However, they are not updated in real time, and they aren't necessarily updated to reflect the details of each and every cache appeal submitted to Geocaching HQ.

 

In this case, the individual challenge cache appeal took place less than one month ago.

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The detailed challenge cache guidelines have been updated relatively frequently since the end of the moratorium earlier this year. However, they are not updated in real time, and they aren't necessarily updated to reflect the details of each and every cache appeal submitted to Geocaching HQ.

 

In this case, the individual challenge cache appeal took place less than one month ago.

 

Thanks for your reply. Can anyone provide insight why this was a case that led to an appeal (there must have been an argument why the challenge cache got rejected) and insight into the reasons provided by HQ when handling the appeal? It surprised me a log that such a challenge is not in full compliance with the current guidelines and their spirit.

 

I really cannot think of any reason why to treat multi caches differently than mysteries other than individual preferences if it is not something applies only to certain regions but worldwide.

Edited by cezanne
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The detailed challenge cache guidelines have been updated relatively frequently since the end of the moratorium earlier this year. However, they are not updated in real time, and they aren't necessarily updated to reflect the details of each and every cache appeal submitted to Geocaching HQ.

 

In this case, the individual challenge cache appeal took place less than one month ago.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?"

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The detailed challenge cache guidelines have been updated relatively frequently since the end of the moratorium earlier this year. However, they are not updated in real time, and they aren't necessarily updated to reflect the details of each and every cache appeal submitted to Geocaching HQ.

 

In this case, the individual challenge cache appeal took place less than one month ago.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?"

Perhaps I'm reading the supporting links differently, but the OP on PGC wants a checker built for individual cache types for a 365 day streak. The Help Center article explicitly excludes streaks for individual cache types. It appears that all cache types must be included in any streak challenge submission.

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The detailed challenge cache guidelines have been updated relatively frequently since the end of the moratorium earlier this year. However, they are not updated in real time, and they aren't necessarily updated to reflect the details of each and every cache appeal submitted to Geocaching HQ.

 

In this case, the individual challenge cache appeal took place less than one month ago.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?"

Perhaps I'm reading the supporting links differently, but the OP on PGC wants a checker built for individual cache types for a 365 day streak. The Help Center article explicitly excludes streaks for individual cache types. It appears that all cache types must be included in any streak challenge submission.

From the quoted thread on project-gc:

HQ has only approved traditional and/or mystery caches for a 365-grid (non-streak). They said no to multi.
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Perhaps I'm reading the supporting links differently, but the OP on PGC wants a checker built for individual cache types for a 365 day streak. The Help Center article explicitly excludes streaks for individual cache types. It appears that all cache types must be included in any streak challenge submission.

 

No, the OP on PGC does not want a streak checker (type restrictions are not allowed there anyhow). He wanted a challenge cache where you need to have found a multi cache for each of the 365 days which exist in every year - it does not matter in which year you filled a day with a multi cache.

It seems completely arbitrary to me to allow such challenge caches for traditionals and mysteries but not for multi caches (except of course in areas with hardly any multi caches, but here the decision is apparently a worldwide one - the OP comes from Germany).

 

The people at PGC cannot understand why the multi case is not allowed either - typically they already advise cachers who ask for a checker in advance that something will not be allowed or advise them to ask - this did not happen here. The no seems to have come out of the nowhere.

Edited by cezanne
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Perhaps I'm reading the supporting links differently, but the OP on PGC wants a checker built for individual cache types for a 365 day streak. The Help Center article explicitly excludes streaks for individual cache types. It appears that all cache types must be included in any streak challenge submission.

I believe you are reading it wrong, or at least not the way I read it. The person wants you to fill in your 365 day grid (non-streak so the fill ins can be from any year). This kind of challenge isn't really touched upon in the guidelines other than the leap day part of it.

 

Originally, the challenge I sent to HQ was fill in your grid with 3x mystery caches a day. When I sent it to Appeals it was for two reasons:

1) Is a specific cache type 365-nonstreak grid an okay challenge?

2) Advice on "are there enough qualifiers being published of said type in a given area"

 

The answer I got was due to what is being published in the area and generally (not sure about globally), there are enough traditionals and mystery caches being published to meet this challenge going forward.

 

I decided to do a little data mining. Just a snap shot of one state. I ran a lot of PQs to get all of the caches in PA last month.

 

The entire state which is bigger than what I would consider the region for a cacher, there are

-1197 Multi caches

-3755 Mystery caches

-21 Letterboxes

-20 Earthcaches

 

What more, in 2016 to date published:

-87 Multi caches

-466 Mystery caches

-151 Letterboxes

-237 Earthcaches

 

Based on all this, I think the 'ruling' makes sense to me.

 

I also think that if you provide appeals info for ones area to show it is doable and that there are more than enough caches to do it and caches being published to make it feasible, they may allow it. You can understand why they might not allow some of the others though. It would be near impossible to fill in say a yearly grid of virtual or webcams or letterboxes.

 

Edit: they also said 1x a day max for these kinds of challenges.

 

My opinion is it can become a slippery slope of how many is too many; as you can see has happened with the 2+x Fizzy, etc.

Edited by OReviewer
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The detailed challenge cache guidelines have been updated relatively frequently since the end of the moratorium earlier this year. However, they are not updated in real time, and they aren't necessarily updated to reflect the details of each and every cache appeal submitted to Geocaching HQ.

 

In this case, the individual challenge cache appeal took place less than one month ago.

 

Maybe I'm missing something, but how does that answer the question...namely, why are multi-caches excluded from the 365 day challenge? Perhaps a better question is "what reason can be given for excluding them?"

What you missed is that cezanne asked a two-part question: "So why has HQ decided that multi cache grid filling caches are not allowed and why is this is not mentioned in the guidelines?" (Emphasis added)

 

I felt comfortable answering the second part of the question, as I knew the outcome of the appeal and the timing of it, and I'm familiar with the periodic updates to the linked challenge cache guidance. I wanted to rebut the assertion that there are hidden, secret guidelines.

 

I was not comfortable in explaining the reasoning because I did not participate directly in the dialogue of the appeal. Fortunately OReviewer has posted to answer that portion of the question.

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Originally, the challenge I sent to HQ was fill in your grid with 3x mystery caches a day. When I sent it to Appeals it was for two reasons:

1) Is a specific cache type 365-nonstreak grid an okay challenge?

2) Advice on "are there enough qualifiers being published of said type in a given area"

 

Thanks for the clarification. I now understand that there has been an appeal case in your review territority that was totally unrelated to the request for a challenge checker by oberi a cacher from Germany on the project-gc challenge checker forum.

 

 

The answer I got was due to what is being published in the area and generally (not sure about globally), there are enough traditionals and mystery caches being published to meet this challenge going forward.

 

I decided to do a little data mining. Just a snap shot of one state. I ran a lot of PQs to get all of the caches in PA last month.

 

So the above then seems to say that the specific appeal dealt with a concrete challenge cache in the US.

 

So my new question is this:

 

Has HQ decided in general that multi grid filling challenge caches (just assume the requirement is to find a single multi cache for each of the 365 days) are forbidden?

 

If not, I find it a bit misleading that you posted your reply to a thread coming from someone from Germany from an area where there exist sufficiently many multi caches.

 

As I said, without ever having looked at my grids I'm closer to having filled all days with multi caches than with mysteries and it would not take me that long if I wanted to fill my multi grid completely (not that I have this ambition).

 

PA is a large area, indeed. However compare the numbers for PA you obtained with the numbers only for the city of Vienna (not that large and much smaller than the usual caching area of regular cachers):

 

2357 50.3 Traditional Cache

1249 26.7 Unknown Cache

736 15.7 Multi-cache

15 0.3 Wherigo Cache

14 0.3 Letterbox Hybrid

11 0.2 Earthcache

10 0.2 Webcam Cache

 

While still traditionals and mysteries are more frequent the difference to multi caches is not that large (and do not forget the relative smallness of Vienna).

 

 

I also think that if you provide appeals info for ones area to show it is doable and that there are more than enough caches to do it and caches being published to make it feasible, they may allow it. You can understand why they might not allow some of the others though. It would be near impossible to fill in say a yearly grid of virtual or webcams or letterboxes.

 

Actually your post in reply to oberi's post created the impression that there is a hard rule that multi caches are not allowed for such challenge caches. Why would then someone go for appeal? Typically appeal will be used when there are borderline cases where one can interpret a guideline differently or when not all aspects seem to be have been taken into account. Anything else seems to be a waste of time.

 

In any case I think that a fill the grid with multi caches challenge cache is much easier for many cachers than say find 10000 traditionals which I guess will be easily approved in most cache dense countries.

 

The "fill the grid with multi caches" challenge caches would be one where most cachers have to do at least a bit of work and only very few would already qualify before they become aware of a challenge and that seems to be the only real appeal of challenge caches.

 

 

Edit: they also said 1x a day max for these kinds of challenges.

 

My opinion is it can become a slippery slope of how many is too many; as you can see has happened with the 2+x Fizzy, etc.

 

I agree with that rule but think that it would be helpful if they added such new rules very quickly to the guidelines.

Edited by cezanne
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If not, I find it a bit misleading that you posted your reply to a thread coming from someone from Germany from an area where there exist sufficiently many multi caches.

It may or may not be misleading. I don't know that their response isn't global. I know my interpretation of what they said read to me as global. Do I know if they did any data mining or comparisons; no.

 

The point of appeals is to be a second view and to relook at and reinterpret earlier decisions if someone feels there is an issue. I think it makes sense to look at a challenge like this more regionally but at the same time, the answer, even with different data could be the same. Maybe they decided that multi caches are a dying type and shouldn't be used. Or maybe they want less regional policy and want something that is either yes or no so they have to deal with less back and forth. I can't and won't speak for them. I can just say, their response seemed like a global response to using other icon types in a 365 non-streak fill in the grid.

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If not, I find it a bit misleading that you posted your reply to a thread coming from someone from Germany from an area where there exist sufficiently many multi caches.

It may or may not be misleading. I don't know that their response isn't global. I know my interpretation of what they said read to me as global. Do I know if they did any data mining or comparisons; no.

 

The point of appeals is to be a second view and to relook at and reinterpret earlier decisions if someone feels there is an issue. I think it makes sense to look at a challenge like this more regionally but at the same time, the answer, even with different data could be the same. Maybe they decided that multi caches are a dying type and shouldn't be used. Or maybe they want less regional policy and want something that is either yes or no so they have to deal with less back and forth. I can't and won't speak for them. I can just say, their response seemed like a global response to using other icon types in a 365 non-streak fill in the grid.

 

Ok thanks for yet another clarification. I misunderstood what you wrote before in the sense that you believed it to be a local response. I hope that in this light what I wrote makes sense to you.

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What you missed is that cezanne asked a two-part question: "So why has HQ decided that multi cache grid filling caches are not allowed and why is this is not mentioned in the guidelines?" (Emphasis added)

I hope you took J Grouchy's input to heart. I, too, read your response as evasive, so you might want to be a little clearer about what you're doing when you address a secondary question.

 

On topic, I'm impressed with cezanne's attempts to get written clarification. When I read the OP, it was obvious that they were just applying the arbitrary "it can't be too hard" guideline, so I had no expectation that anything more specific would be put into the guidelines.

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There is one such challenge for even the 366 days calendar in Czech Republic, has 24 finders up to now: Challenge Forest - Everday Yellow

 

There is also a similar Challenge Forest- Everyday Green for traditionals and 47 finders Challenge Forest - Everyday Blue for Unknown caches with 31 finders.

 

So while in Czech Republic it might be slightly easier to fill the Unknown calendar the Multi calendar it is clearly doable, the challenges are all rated D5.

 

I would think that fulfilling that challenge without knowing about it is sort of unlikely, from the three Austrians that found more than 3000 multi-caches two stand at 364 days and one at 365 days. As unlikely as fulfilling the GC6GEZ0 Find 5 Confluence caches in 3 Countries challenge. It isn't too difficult at all, so no problem with it, but simply no one was thinking about it before except the owner.

 

But there are a lot of geocachers locally that only need less than ten more days for filling their multi calendar and abundance who need less that 30 days. Once it is known there is a challenge people start filling their grids, otherwise you might continue finding the 'wrong' cachetypes for a certain day years over years, even with a ten year streak. I would bet that after one year there would be at least 30 finders also in Austria.

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On topic, I'm impressed with cezanne's attempts to get written clarification. When I read the OP, it was obvious that they were just applying the arbitrary "it can't be too hard" guideline, so I had no expectation that anything more specific would be put into the guidelines.

The problem is that Groundspeak sometimes likes to put into the guidelines their own definition of "too hard" in ways that don't really match the "attainable by a reasonable number of [local] cachers" definition.

 

Asking cachers to find a cache on a Leap Day is "too hard," even if hundreds of people in your region have done so.

 

Asking cachers to find a 366-day streak (of any cache type) is "too hard," even if dozens of people in your region have done so.

 

Asking cachers to find a 7-day streak of Unknown caches is "too hard," even if many people in your region have done so.

 

Asking cachers to find two caches per day (of any cache type) for seven consecutive days is "too hard," even if plenty of people in your region have done so.

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it would be helpful if they added such new rules very quickly to the guidelines.

I agree with this part completely.

 

I've often thought it would be very useful to have a Forum section similar to the Release Notes forum but just for guideline change announcements. Quite often there may be subtle changes in the language of a guideline or restrictions added that aren't noticed until someone attempts to have a cache published which violates the new guideline.

 

 

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On topic, I'm impressed with cezanne's attempts to get written clarification.

 

One of the reasons that I decided to give it a try was that multi caches are at my heart and another reasons was that Rock Chalk bothered to respond to the recent empty circle challenge thread.

 

I still would appreciate if we could get some insight into the rationale behind this different treatment of multi caches and whether it's indeed a global decision.

 

While I often do not share what I think is behind many of the new rules for challenge caches, I can in many cases understand the rationale behind them which in many cases seem to be an attempt to make the reviewing process less prone to debates.

However in this case it rather seems to me that it makes things more difficult and with nothing to win for the reviewing team and GS.

 

I also think that just having a look at the absolute number of caches of a particular type in a certain region is not the only point of view one should take in this case. When mysteries are acceptable it should also be taken into account that there are quite some among them that are very hard and not at reach for most cachers (which does not mean that I think that they should not be there) and that many cachers do not like to solve puzzles. In my opinion multi caches are an often overlooked option to offer something to those who are not number cachers and who wish to spend their main time outdoors in particular regions which are not in the nowhere so that traditionals very often degrade to drive in caches.

 

Actually I'm a bit sad about what seems like a bias against multi caches to me - I thought that it should be in the interest of Groundspeak not to favour mystery caches over multi caches (which most probably is not what HQ has in mind but as which it might come across in the end).

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