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Planting becoming a very difficult task.


Rocky Balboa

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I'm finding planting a new cache is becoming more and more difficult.

 

Twice over the past few months I have checked the location of a place I wanted to use for a new hide via the search facility linked to planting new caches. Both times they have revealed nothing anywhere near my chosen spot, so I have headed out, planted and returned home to post the pages, only to be told that a member only cache is too close to my spot.

 

The checking facility does not show non paid users member only caches which makes it like a lucky dip trying to plant.

 

I understand the need for Geocaching.com to offer paid membership - They, like every business have costs, however I feel like I am being more and more forced into paying a monthly fee for really poor reasons.

 

Can I suggest that Geocaching.com add member only caches to the search facility to save both planter time and money and the time of their hardworking reviewers. I understand that membership is very common and many people won't relate to this but I am sure I am not the only person who has wasted hours planting a cache only to be told it can't be where you want it.

 

This whole situation is made worse by being told that if it's moved a few hundred feet it will become ok. Areas are already far too saturated in my opinion and I plant for a reason - to introduce people to interesting spots/view/history, not random footpaths or alleyways close to another cache for the sake of it. Please just tell me that the spots already gone so that I don't need to waste my time.....

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To be clear, the conflict was with a hidden waypoint associated with a multicache that started nearby the OP's desired location. That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone, whether basic member or premium member. As Manville Possum noted, a "coordinates check" is a good way to minimize that risk in a cache-saturated area.

 

A traditional cache in the immediate area is easy to detect by a basic member, even if it is marked "Premium Members Only" so that the basic member cannot view the details of the cache listing.

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This confirms my point that planting, at times, is a guessing game.

 

Must also re-state that this in no way is aimed at moderators who do a difficult and time consuming job for little if nothing in return.

 

If this morning I had been given the opportunity to check a cache site and seen that something was already in place then I would not have wasted 4/5 hours or so creating a camouflaged container; driving to the site and finding a suitable location spending hard earned petrol money on the way and then spending more time creating a cache page.

 

This situation could very easily be remedied by simply showing all the locations which will prompt an unacceptable site.

 

Like I said before, It's not just my time being wasted, it is also the time of the mods.

 

I like the idea of being able to request a check through local mods prior to planting, however this option is not suggested on the planting page. Perhaps this way of doing things could become the norm? I had this same situation a few months back and had to drive back out to move a cache due to a member cache already being there. I don't believe the current way of doing things is ideal for anyone.

 

Must also add that member only caches do not show AT ALL for non members on the app making things even more complicated!

Edited by Rocky Balboa
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This situation could very easily be remedied by simply showing all the locations which will prompt an unacceptable site.

Doing this would "spoil" every puzzle cache, multi-cache, Wherigo cache and a fair portion of letterbox hybrid caches.

 

Must also add that member only caches do not show AT ALL for non members on the app making things even more complicated!

They show up just fine at home on your computer, where lots of good cache planning ought to take place. Alternatively, exit the app and use the website on your mobile device, by doing a "nearest caches" search on your proposed coordinates.

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'That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone'

 

I'm sorry, I didn't envisage this becoming a cheap digs exchange. I find the tone of the last response poor for someone connected with Geocaching.com.

 

I've cached for over 14 years and happily praised the hobby to friends, family, tv and newspaper during that time so perhaps some regard for long term users is in order.

 

I have wasted a lot of time and money today. Letting a planter know that he is planning on dropping a cache within almost 200 meters of someones mystery or multi does not ruin anything. If I told you I had planted a cache within 200m of my house there is no way you would find it, particularly since 99% of caches today seem to be nanos...

 

All I suggest is saving the time of those people dedicated to your sport and those who give up their time to help you, by letting them know that there is no point putting a cache in situ because you already KNOW it will be rejected. If that is a bad idea then I honestly don't know why I bother...

 

'They show up just fine at home on your computer, where lots of good cache planning ought to take place.' - Patronizing and out of place considering all suggested actions were followed prior to venturing out. Not appreciated.

Edited by Rocky Balboa
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I've cached for over 14 years and happily praised the hobby to friends, family, tv and newspaper during that time so perhaps some regard for long term users is in order.

 

 

I've been caching for about ten years, own over 100 PMO hides, and have learned to use the system here. It works for most of us, and none of us are special here. I don't even mention geocaching to outsiders, but I do support the site by paying to use it. :D

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I've cached for over 14 years and happily praised the hobby to friends, family, tv and newspaper during that time so perhaps some regard for long term users is in order.

 

 

I've been caching for about ten years, own over 100 PMO hides, and have learned to use the system here. It works for most of us, and none of us are special here. I don't even mention geocaching to outsiders, but I do support the site by paying to use it. :D

 

That's great, but as stated above by a moderator - 'That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone' and frankly it shouldn't - whether you have been caching for 15 years or 3 days. Like you say, no one is special, and no one should be penalized for attempting to hide caches. I believe that Geocaching should make this process simple and straight forward. There was literally nothing else I could have done today to ease the process other than pre making the cache page - something which is NOT advised when following the obvious links on the geocaching site for planting a cache.

 

And p.s I supported the site by paying for the original app which was withdrawn. I'm now expected to pay again... but that's another subject.

 

This isn't about money, or length of use (although I do believe patronizing long time users is a somewhat childish approach) it's about common sense and improving the usability.

Edited by Rocky Balboa
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I've cached for over 14 years and happily praised the hobby to friends, family, tv and newspaper during that time so perhaps some regard for long term users is in order.

 

 

I've been caching for about ten years, own over 100 PMO hides, and have learned to use the system here. It works for most of us, and none of us are special here. I don't even mention geocaching to outsiders, but I do support the site by paying to use it. :D

 

That's great, but as stated above by a moderator - 'That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone' and frankly it shouldn't - whether you have been caching for 15 years or 3 days. Like you say, no one is special, and no one should be penalized for attempting to hide caches. I believe that Geocaching should make this process simple and straight forward. There was literally nothing else I could have done today to ease the process other than pre making the cache page - something which is NOT advised when following the obvious links on the geocaching site for planting a cache.

 

And p.s I supported the site by paying for the original app which was withdrawn. I'm now expected to pay again... but that's another subject.

 

This isn't about money, or length of use (although I do believe patronizing long time users is a somewhat childish approach) it's about common sense and improving the usability.

 

I'm just not getting your point, but it sounds like the area that you are "planting" caches as you say, is already over saturated badly. :unsure:

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'That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone'

 

I'm sorry, I didn't envisage this becoming a cheap digs exchange. I find the tone of the last response poor for someone connected with Geocaching.com.

 

I've cached for over 14 years and happily praised the hobby to friends, family, tv and newspaper during that time so perhaps some regard for long term users is in order.

 

I have wasted a lot of time and money today. Letting a planter know that he is planning on dropping a cache within almost 200 meters of someones mystery or multi does not ruin anything. If I told you I had planted a cache within 200m of my house there is no way you would find it, particularly since 99% of caches today seem to be nanos...

 

All I suggest is saving the time of those people dedicated to your sport and those who give up their time to help you, by letting them know that there is no point putting a cache in situ because you already KNOW it will be rejected. If that is a bad idea then I honestly don't know why I bother...

 

'They show up just fine at home on your computer, where lots of good cache planning ought to take place.' - Patronizing and out of place considering all suggested actions were followed prior to venturing out. Not appreciated.

 

Hope you stick with it and master what you desire to create as I've certainly enjoyed your work in the past.

 

Like you I have met with the problem you are experiencing and that adds another dimension to my earlier post comments too. That being "reserved placement" i.e. cache pages initiated but not yet published. One of those cost me a couple of hundred miles and several weeks wait before I could resite my cache.

 

The only way I can see things could be made easier would be to scrap the display of circles on the submission form or any distance visualation.

Theory being a test location submitted would just throw a "Location Currently available" or "Cache Separation Exceeded" reply when tested against all current and reserved and/or restricted (unallowable) positions.

Less chance of anyone playing battleships or even knowing to which cache any sub element applied.

 

Perhaps the way forward is to propose a schema as above, or to your own thoughts and push that forward in a new thread.

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'That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone'

 

I'm sorry, I didn't envisage this becoming a cheap digs exchange. I find the tone of the last response poor for someone connected with Geocaching.com.

 

I've cached for over 14 years and happily praised the hobby to friends, family, tv and newspaper during that time so perhaps some regard for long term users is in order.

 

I have wasted a lot of time and money today. Letting a planter know that he is planning on dropping a cache within almost 200 meters of someones mystery or multi does not ruin anything. If I told you I had planted a cache within 200m of my house there is no way you would find it, particularly since 99% of caches today seem to be nanos...

 

All I suggest is saving the time of those people dedicated to your sport and those who give up their time to help you, by letting them know that there is no point putting a cache in situ because you already KNOW it will be rejected. If that is a bad idea then I honestly don't know why I bother...

 

'They show up just fine at home on your computer, where lots of good cache planning ought to take place.' - Patronizing and out of place considering all suggested actions were followed prior to venturing out. Not appreciated.

 

Patronizing to work with the system? Keystone has given great advice. Work within the system. Use your computer to locate acceptable places to hide a cache. That works! (Except, of course, for mystery, multi and some letterbox hybrids.)

I've hidden 102 caches, and never run into that problem. Try working on-line with your computer, and you won't have that problem.

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Actually, in some ways I don't mind. It means that potential COs should visit a spot twice. Once to survey and take coordinates. A second time to place their cache after the OK from a coordinate check. We might get better cache ownership if the cache owner doesn't 'johnny-appleseed' their hides. Lots of people carry containers, drop it, take a waypoint, submit the cache then never go back.

 

But it might be fair to potential cache owners to warn them and suggest up front, maybe a lead-in page to the submission form, that they should perform a coordinate check in cache dense areas, then go hide their container.

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I like the idea of being able to request a check through local mods prior to planting, however this option is not suggested on the planting page.

 

The planting page, as it is referred to in this subforum, usually has basic information to guide people through the process in submitting a Listing. Coordinate checks are mentioned in one or two Help Center articles, I believe, where most of the expanded information can be found. Here's a link to one such article for reference:

 

http://support.Groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=199

 

If you live in an area saturated with caches, or have a few community members fond of placing nothing but Puzzles and Multi's, it might be your best option to reduce the frustration.

 

Good luck!

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No Harry Dolphin, you missed the point...

 

Thank you for the advice Touchstone. I will certainly take this approach if I hide another. Unfortunately, hailing from the days when picking up a single cache would involve anything between a 15 and 50 mile round trip, and doing most of my planting at this time means that area saturation was never something I had to worry about. The game evolves, and rightly so. I firmly believe this whole issue could be resolved with a simple yes/no on the check page though as someone else suggested above.

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I agree that getting a cache published now is more complicated than it was in the past. More caches already out there, more documentation in many more places on Geocaching.com, more listing guidelines, and in many places, more land manager policy. The cache report form has a lot text as well.

 

When you first were hiding, there wasn't a cache saturation guideline, that came in about the time I started hiding, March 2003

 

As the game has grown, the documentation on this site has grown. Once, there were a couple of pages of hiding and finding advice, and the FAQs in the Getting Started forum. The guidelines were shorter, a person could read them in a few minutes.

 

Now, following all the links provided from the guidelines and reading all of that could take a long afternoon.

 

The first sentence of the guidelines links to the Regional policies wiki; a person could work through it to get to specifics of land manager policy for their area, but not that many do.

 

The guideines intro has links that would take you to the "1.14. Check for minimum distance" article, where you'd learn about about asking for a coords check. But you'd need to read that intro, and click all the links, and follow one link to another.

 

The planning map has this explanation, "The map below displays visible locations that are already taken by existing geocaches. The map does not display hidden waypoints and some other potential obstacles to hiding a geocache." And then the next page, the Location page says, "to make sure it doesn’t conflict with other visible waypoints", but not that many seem to understand what they're being told there - ie, the significance of "visible waypoints".

 

It's a lot to plant a hide for a "light fun activity" ;-)

 

I disagree with your notion of any kind of "pass fail" on the planning map. I guarantee that it would kill all staged hides PDQ, as it would be child's play to battleship locations.

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First of all I don't see anything wrong with Keystone's response 'That sort of bad luck can happen to anyone'. I think the point was for this case it doesn't matter if you are premium or not, anyone could have the same issue.

 

And has been explained, if stages of multi caches, puzzle caches, Wherigos etc were considered by the tool, it would spoil those caches. One could mis-use the tool to find out where they are.

 

It is frustrating to have a cache turned down, but there is no solution other than asking for a coordinate check.

 

Personally, unless I am planning something particularly complicated (e.g. with lots of stages), I hide the cache and submit it. If it clashes, I'll pick it up and move it. But I've found pretty much all the caches in my area, so I know where the clashes are. I can still get unlucky - there might be caches in progress not submitted yet, these don't show either (obviously).

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