Demonising the DNF

[+NanCycle]

2 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

Thanks for all the feedback.  I've been thinking about this, and with this cache and 2 others in the vicinity (the other two I just did a quick check, and both are good) I am going to go ahead and log the OM.  They were all 3 in the mandatory evacuation zone for the Atlas Fire last week, although the fire never got as far as the cache locations.  The wineries nearby were all closed all last week and reopened only recently.  So an OM will ensure that anyone checking will know these particular ones are still in play.

Given this additional information, I think the OM log is definitely in order.

[+barefootjeff]

54 minutes ago, coachstahly said:

23 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

So let me get this straight. In this new age CHS-dominated caching world, not only shouldn't we log a DNF unless we're pretty sure the cache is missing, we shouldn't log an NM if we'd like the CO to check on it either. Sigh.

Log the DNF to indicate that you didn't find it.  I have no problem with that whatsoever, regardless of the rating.  I've DNFed my fair share of easy (1/1, 1.5/1.5) caches, only to have the next cacher find it and log something to the extent that it was an easy find.  The issue I take with the "justification" argument is that  in THIS specific cache example, the CO appears to be diligent and the cache has never gone missing (magnet fell off once?).  Taken all together, I don't think a NM log would be justified because every time it's been right there, per the COs post here as well as the logs on the cache page.

I'm not against NM logs.  They certainly have their place and, used when needed, hasten the demise of a cache with an absent owner, hasten the demise of a cache with a maintenance shirking owner, or get the cache fixed up at some point.  

I also realize that a NM in this particular situation doesn't really matter that much because the CO can easily clear it.  I just think, in this case, it's a bit heavy handed to log a NM, just to get CO verification that it's still there, like it has been every time the CO has checked on it.

Fair enough. The point I was trying to make was that, pre-CHS, a DNF was just an informational log (I didn't find it today) with no consequences, and an NM was just a request for the CO to check on the cache. If you wanted to involve a reviewer, you logged an NA. Now, it seems, DNFs are the maintenance request and NMs are the start of the archival process, so everything's moved along one notch. Is that really a good thing?

[+dprovan]

16 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

So, I have a cache I placed in June 2017.  PMO.  It's had 10 finds in it's (a bit less than) 4 month existence.  No DNF's.  Today I dropped 2 trackables there, adding to the 1 other in it's stated inventory (which I verified was also there).  Left all the pretty decent swag that was there, and logged my trackable drops.  

Should I have logged an OM as well?

To me, this is a no-brainer: you opened the cache and confirmed everything about it is in good working order. That's Owner Maintenance. The only reason not to file an OM is if you just recently filed an earlier OM: that would make a second OM redundant since both you and everyone else already know it was in good shape before you went to drop of these TBs.

I could care less how it affects your cache's health score.

[+dprovan]

9 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Fair enough. The point I was trying to make was that, pre-CHS, a DNF was just an informational log (I didn't find it today) with no consequences, and an NM was just a request for the CO to check on the cache. If you wanted to involve a reviewer, you logged an NA. Now, it seems, DNFs are the maintenance request and NMs are the start of the archival process, so everything's moved along one notch. Is that really a good thing?

No, it's a terrible thing. I think the log types are well chosen to help humans communicate with each other, and I'm sad to see them perverted by a drive to replace human interaction with robotic oversight.

[+CAVinoGal]

4 hours ago, NanCycle said:

6 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

Thanks for all the feedback.  I've been thinking about this, and with this cache and 2 others in the vicinity (the other two I just did a quick check, and both are good) I am going to go ahead and log the OM.  They were all 3 in the mandatory evacuation zone for the Atlas Fire last week, although the fire never got as far as the cache locations.  The wineries nearby were all closed all last week and reopened only recently.  So an OM will ensure that anyone checking will know these particular ones are still in play.

Given this additional information, I think the OM log is definitely in order.

Done.

4 hours ago, dprovan said:

To me, this is a no-brainer: you opened the cache and confirmed everything about it is in good working order. That's Owner Maintenance. The only reason not to file an OM is if you just recently filed an earlier OM: that would make a second OM redundant since both you and everyone else already know it was in good shape before you went to drop of these TBs.

I could care less how it affects your cache's health score.

It may or may not affect the CHS - and it really doesn't matter to me, I was just curious.  And wondering about the best way to log what I did.  In the case of the cache I added trackables to - it was considered owner maintenance because I opened the container, verified contents, and added stuff.  The other 2, I simply verified they were still in place, but due to the circumstances locally (the Atlas Fire aftermath) I did log OM's on both of those as well.

I realize this is off-topic to this thread, but I do thank you all for your input, and helping to train this newbie!!

[+justintim1999]

On 10/19/2017 at 4:10 PM, coachstahly said:

But you didn't say that you'd take a look.  That wasn't the point you raised that I disagreed with.  Instead you said that a NM log would be justified in this situation.  As the CO of that cache, I'm sure I would have taken a look but for me, a NM log, solely because it hasn't been found in a while, isn't warranted or justified, particularly for the cache provided.  A DNF (or a string of DNFs), particularly on a 2.5 D rated (or higher) cache, doesn't mean that it's not there.  If I were the CO of that cache, I'd give it a look but as the seeker that DNFed it, even if I were the 6th or 10th to DNF it, I wouldn't log a NM on it just to get the CO to check on it.  I'd post a note or email the CO, not log a NM asking them to check on the cache.  It seems excessive to me to file the NM on this particular higher rated D cache if all you want to do is have the CO check on it to see if it's there or not.  Surely there's a better way to get the CO to check on it than file something that's going to negatively affect his CHS even more than the DNFs already have.

Let me clarify it for you.  If it were my cache I'd have gone out and checked up on it after the sixth dnf (and that's what the actual cache owner did).   If I were the sixth cacher not to find it I would have posted a NM.  I think both actions are reasonable and justified.  

 

[+justintim1999]

On 10/19/2017 at 5:58 PM, niraD said:

I wouldn't put too much faith in the "over 1000 finds" thing. A lot of people who have high find counts don't enjoy spending much time searching. I've even heard some tout their "5 minute rule" (or "10 minute rule", or whatever), where they move onto the next cache if they haven't found the current one within 5 minutes (or 10 minutes, or whatever).

The experence of the cachers is just one of many factors involved in deciding wheather or not to post a NM or to check up on the cache if your an owner.  

[+justintim1999]

On 10/20/2017 at 0:24 AM, jellis said:

Not that I remember. One of the two listed here had a NA (deleted) by some Charter Member but not experienced in difficult hides. I drove out there and I didn't even have to get out of my car to see it was still there. I should have left the NA on it just to prove even long time cachers can miss an "in plain sight" evil cache.

Of course they can,  everyone has a bad caching day.    Can I ask you why, after the sixth dnf on your one cache, did you decide to check up on it and post a OML?  What was your thought process?

[+justintim1999]

On 10/19/2017 at 6:17 PM, barefootjeff said:

I can think of one reason - PQs are limited to the last 5 logs and in most bushland areas in this part of the world there's no mobile data so, once in the field, that's all I have to go by. In something like the example quoted earlier by niraD, I'd be cursing at all those OM logs.

I'm not advocating posting an OML every week.   I am saying that If you're checking on your cache, for what ever you've decided you should, post an OML   To me the PQ example is just another mountain out of a mole hill serinario.  The only thing posting repsonsible OML's will do is help revieweres do their job more effectivly. 

 Maybe this thread should be obfuscating the Owners Maintanance Log. 

[+barefootjeff]

10 minutes ago, justintim1999 said:

I'm not advocating posting an OML every week.   I am saying that If you're checking on your cache, for what ever you've decided you should, post an OML   To me the PQ example is just another mountain out of a mole hill serinario.  The only thing posting repsonsible OML's will do is help revieweres do their job more effectivly. 

 Maybe this thread should be obfuscating the Owners Maintanance Log.

Here, the only time the reviewers become involved post-publication is if someone posts an NA or if a cache has been left disabled for an excessive amount of time. They've also made it clear that they won't accept NAs for maintenance issues unless there's already been an NM logged which hasn't been responded to in a reasonable amount of time. In neither case is a history of OMs prior to any reported problems of much relevance to the current issue. In this environment, I see OMs mainly being useful to indicate that an NM has been dealt with, to give a heads up to the community about any issues that might have been mentioned in other logs, or after there's been something like a fire, flood or storm that might have impacted the cache. And sure, when a cache gets a spring clean or any proactive repairs are carried out, then an OM's a good idea. But, to me, an OM just for the sake of an OM because I happened to be going past and noticed the cache wasn't missing seems like overkill.

Yes, in other parts of the world where it's been deemed necessary for the reviewers to take a proactive role in flushing out potentially problematic caches that haven't been NA'd (or even NM'd) by the community, perhaps much more frequent OMs are needed to keep them at bay, but to me it still sounds a bit like the town crier walking along the street ringing his bell and saying "it's ten o'clock and all is well."

[+thebruce0]

3 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

3 hours ago, justintim1999 said:

I'm not advocating posting an OML every week.   I am saying that If you're checking on your cache, for what ever you've decided you should, post an OML   To me the PQ example is just another mountain out of a mole hill serinario.  The only thing posting repsonsible OML's will do is help revieweres do their job more effectivly. 

 Maybe this thread should be obfuscating the Owners Maintanance Log.

Here, the only time the reviewers become involved post-publication is if someone posts an NA or if a cache has been left disabled for an excessive amount of time. They've also made it clear that they won't accept NAs for maintenance issues unless there's already been an NM logged which hasn't been responded to in a reasonable amount of time. In neither case is a history of OMs prior to any reported problems of much relevance to the current issue

I think it was in reference to the OM log's affect on the CHS which the reviewers use, so OM logs indirectly 'help reviewers do their job more effectively' by essentially reducing the chance of false positives (caches possibly needing maintenance that actually don't), and thus fewer to proactively address.

[+dprovan]

6 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

Here, the only time the reviewers become involved post-publication is if someone posts an NA or if a cache has been left disabled for an excessive amount of time.

Give it time. The reviewer stayed out of it here, too, for a long time, and we never needed anything else. But this year the reviewer started scanning caches looking for NMs and even strings of DNF and acting unilaterally. I'm conceptually against that, but I can't complain because I haven't really seen our reviewer do anything that wouldn't have been reasonable for a mere mortal to do for the same cache. I'm mainly sorry he feels like he has to spend his time on it. The only difference is that the reviewer starts with disabling, so the cache doesn't have the normal NM/NA periods before the disable/archive steps that the user oriented procedure provided.

Edited October 21, 2017 by dprovan

[Keystone]

To clarify, all reviewers worldwide are obligated to have a system for monitoring caches with low health scores. 

[+dprovan]

55 minutes ago, Keystone said:

To clarify, all reviewers worldwide are obligated to have a system for monitoring caches with low health scores. 

Thanks for the info. I did not know they'd been ordered. I thought they were just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. No wonder it's happening around here even though this area has no need for it.

[+barefootjeff]

20 minutes ago, dprovan said:

1 hour ago, Keystone said:

To clarify, all reviewers worldwide are obligated to have a system for monitoring caches with low health scores. 

Thanks for the info. I did not know they'd been ordered. I thought they were just doing it out of the kindness of their hearts. No wonder it's happening around here even though this area has no need for it.

That's sad to hear, as there are many excellent caches around here with nothing wrong with them that were placed by COs who are no longer active, but which do get their share of DNFs from simply being tough hides.

[Keystone]

1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

That's sad to hear, as there are many excellent caches around here with nothing wrong with them that were placed by COs who are no longer active, but which do get their share of DNFs from simply being tough hides.

That sounds, generically, like a cache that I would skip over and move on to the next cache on my "low health score" list.  And, as I've written about too many times to count, I might even alert the Lackeys who designed the algorithm that I encountered a false positive.  So, you do not need to be sad.

[+coachstahly]

On 10/21/2017 at 5:23 AM, justintim1999 said:

Let me clarify it for you.  If it were my cache I'd have gone out and checked up on it after the sixth dnf (and that's what the actual cache owner did).   If I were the sixth cacher not to find it I would have posted a NM.  I think both actions are reasonable and justified.  

 

Yes to the first part (CO check) but I will continue to disagree with the second part.   If this were a cache with a history of being replaced, by all means I think a NM log would be justified.  This one has NEVER gone missing, per the CO, and the CO is diligent with their maintenance.  Why do 5 successive previous DNFs suddenly justify a NM log for the CO to check on one that's never gone MIA?  Why can't they just mean that the 5 previous seekers (and eventual 6th) just didn't find it instead of immediately assuming that it's not there?  Wouldn't that NM log basically mean we couldn't find it because we don't think it's there?  The seekers are so certain in their abilities to find each cache they look for that they conclude it's missing instead of concluding that they might have just not found it.  In THIS specific example, it's ALWAYS been there.  If something has always been there, then it's faulty logic on the seekers' part to assume that it's not there.  Once that first time happens, however, I have no problem with a subsequent NM log.  It just hasn't happened with this particular cache, which is why I feel it's NOT justified.   

[+coachstahly]

On 10/20/2017 at 5:01 PM, barefootjeff said:

Fair enough. The point I was trying to make was that, pre-CHS, a DNF was just an informational log (I didn't find it today) with no consequences, and an NM was just a request for the CO to check on the cache. If you wanted to involve a reviewer, you logged an NA. Now, it seems, DNFs are the maintenance request and NMs are the start of the archival process, so everything's moved along one notch. Is that really a good thing?

I have never thought of the NM log as a tool to "check" on the cache to verify that it's still there, which is why I rarely post an OM log for a purely visual verification.  Not many in our area use it for that reason as well, which I guess is why I don't think of it as a tool for verification.  As a CO, I'll make checks, like jellis' cache being discussed between myself and justintim, when I think they're warranted so hopefully no one needs to file a NM log for a verification check. To date, I've only had one NM log for verification of the cache and she hadn't even looked for it or filed a DNF.  I'll post notes or contact the CO directly for an extra hint, to give them an idea of where I was searching and what I thought I was searching for, so they can either determine if it might be MIA or if I was wrong in my search area or type of cache I thought it was.

[+CAVinoGal]

On 10/21/2017 at 3:23 AM, barefootjeff said:

... I see OMs mainly being useful to indicate that an NM has been dealt with, to give a heads up to the community about any issues that might have been mentioned in other logs, or after there's been something like a fire, flood or storm that might have impacted the cache. And sure, when a cache gets a spring clean or any proactive repairs are carried out, then an OM's a good idea. But, to me, an OM just for the sake of an OM because I happened to be going past and noticed the cache wasn't missing seems like overkill.

This makes a lot of sense to me.  Thank you

[+justintim1999]

On ‎10‎/‎23‎/‎2017 at 8:24 AM, coachstahly said:

Yes to the first part (CO check) but I will continue to disagree with the second part.   If this were a cache with a history of being replaced, by all means I think a NM log would be justified.  This one has NEVER gone missing, per the CO, and the CO is diligent with their maintenance.  Why do 5 successive previous DNFs suddenly justify a NM log for the CO to check on one that's never gone MIA?  Why can't they just mean that the 5 previous seekers (and eventual 6th) just didn't find it instead of immediately assuming that it's not there?  Wouldn't that NM log basically mean we couldn't find it because we don't think it's there?  The seekers are so certain in their abilities to find each cache they look for that they conclude it's missing instead of concluding that they might have just not found it.  In THIS specific example, it's ALWAYS been there.  If something has always been there, then it's faulty logic on the seekers' part to assume that it's not there.  Once that first time happens, however, I have no problem with a subsequent NM log.  It just hasn't happened with this particular cache, which is why I feel it's NOT justified.   

Past maintenance history is important but it doesn't guarantee the cache will continue to be maintained.   How can anyone know exactly when a cache owner will decide to leave the game.   To me 6 straight dnfs indicates that could be the case.      The cache in question has never had more than 3 dnfs without a find or an OML.    When I see 6 dnfs in a row over a two and a half month period go unanswered by a cache owner who has a history of checking up on it after just two, I begin to wonder.

[+coachstahly]

10 minutes ago, justintim1999 said:

Past maintenance history is important but it doesn't guarantee the cache will continue to be maintained.   How can anyone know exactly when a cache owner will decide to leave the game.   To me 6 straight dnfs indicates that could be the case.      The cache in question has never had more than 3 dnfs without a find or an OML.    When I see 6 dnfs in a row over a two and a half month period go unanswered by a cache owner who has a history of checking up on it after just two, I begin to wonder.

And that's the difference between the two of us.  You assume it's possibly gone because perhaps the CO has moved on while I assume otherwise.  I have no qualms about your reasoning but I think it's a glass half empty vs. a glass half full viewpoint.  I'll assume the best unless there's evidence to the contrary, based on previous logs.

[+justintim1999]

11 minutes ago, justintim1999 said:

Past maintenance history is important but it doesn't guarantee the cache will continue to be maintained.   How can anyone know exactly when a cache owner will decide to leave the game.   To me 6 straight dnfs indicates that could be the case.      The cache in question has never had more than 3 dnfs without a find or an OML.    When I see 6 dnfs in a row over a two and a half month period go unanswered by a cache owner who has a history of checking up on it after just two, I begin to wonder.

Just a side note.   I spent about 15 minutes looking over the logs of this one cache to come to my conclusion.   Massachusetts has about 15,000 caches and I believe only two reviewers.  some of us may not be fans of the cache health score but I'm sure the reviewers are.   

[+justintim1999]

1 hour ago, coachstahly said:

And that's the difference between the two of us.  You assume it's possibly gone because perhaps the CO has moved on while I assume otherwise.  I have no qualms about your reasoning but I think it's a glass half empty vs. a glass half full viewpoint.  I'll assume the best unless there's evidence to the contrary, based on previous logs.

I'm one of the most positive people you'll meet, especially when it comes to geocaching.   The evidence is right there in the log.  Regardless of your personal views,  every cacher has to weight the evidence and make a judgement call.

In this case, If a NM was posted, I wouldn't have second guessed it.     

Edited October 24, 2017 by justintim1999
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