Criteria for Being a New Virtual CO

[+qtbluemoon]

6 hours ago, Team Microdot said:

So is it one ingredient or two? 

Just one - entitlement is expectation

[+OwenfromKC]

6 hours ago, ZeppelinDT said:

One major flaw with this one is group caching.  

I did think of that too because I have been in a group log as well.  I think a search function could be easily implemented for your name in messages to a CO as part of the algorithm.  Most, I am sure not all, but most messages likely have the cacher names of people listed with the submission of the information. It would introduce error because of manually entered spelling.  I don't think many messages say, "Here is the info for a whole group of people I was with today!" .....or even x people today.   I don't think any CO checking answers would let that fly.  That being said, if a Mega is being held in the area, I could see even a responsible CO just letting logs stand instead of checking every email for every cacher logging.  This is all highly speculative but I guess that is what this thread is for.

Congrats on your Virtual!

Edited August 26, 2017 by OwenfromKC

[+JL_HSTRE]

Someone here in FL who says they got a Virtual Reward only has 8 published caches listed under their account and only 3 are still active, but of those one has 20+ Favorites, one has 40+ Favorites, and one has 80+ Favorites. (Not a criticism, just an observation.)

[+Team DEMP]

22 minutes ago, Joshism said:

Someone here in FL who says they got a Virtual Reward only has 8 published caches listed under their account and only 3 are still active, but of those one has 20+ Favorites, one has 40+ Favorites, and one has 80+ Favorites. (Not a criticism, just an observation.)

Aha - for all those whining / complaining / posting, the answer has been found...

Archive all your caches except 3 and then pay off your friends to give your 3 remaining caches a lot of favorite points. Sit back for 3-33 years and see if they run some other reward that would possibly use the same criteria. 

Edit: In case it wasn't obvious - I could care less how GS determined the 4000 individuals and I'm just glad there's 4000 new quality places to go discover. 

Edited August 26, 2017 by Team DEMP

[+Team Microdot]

2 minutes ago, Team DEMP said:

Aha - for all those whining / complaining / posting, the answer has been found...

Archive all your caches except 3 and then pay off your friends to give your 3 remaining caches a lot of favorite points. Sit back for 3-33 years and see if they run some other reward that would possibly use the same criteria. 

Another way is to adopt old mystery caches which already have lots and lots of favourite points then hand out the solutions to those mystery caches so that they get lots more favourite points. That way you get a reward with virtually zero effort on your part

[+geocat_]

5 hours ago, Joshism said:

Someone here in FL who says they got a Virtual Reward only has 8 published caches listed under their account and only 3 are still active, but of those one has 20+ Favorites, one has 40+ Favorites, and one has 80+ Favorites. (Not a criticism, just an observation.)

Could be a reviewer.  They usually have separate accounts for their own Geocaching finds (apart from the account as a reviewer).  

[+JL_HSTRE]

1 hour ago, geocat_ said:

Could be a reviewer.  They usually have separate accounts for their own Geocaching finds (apart from the account as a reviewer).  

No, we have 4 Reviewers on FL and it's not one of their accounts.

 

[+JL_HSTRE]

Another FL cacher who says they got a Virtual Reward has been caching for a very long time. None of their caches had a huge number of Favorites, but all had some. They also owned a few very old caches. Their caches were a mix of easy and difficult.

It's possible the algorithm takes into account lots of possibilities. Favorites being one of the factors, maybe the biggest factor, shouldn't surprise anyone. Being a long time cacher might be a factor too. Sheer number of hides or active caches clearly isn't important though, nor really should it.

[+AnnaMoritz]

What's wrong with owning and maintaining three geocaches over years, one over 50% favorite points and reacting to DNFs when there are no finds after the DNF in a certain time?

To me the algorithm itself doesn't seem too bad. It doesn't favor quantity over quality.

It tries to find potential owners that already proved they do take care of their geocaches for a longer period of time - and other geocachers like their hides.

Of course there are lots of other owners that also have great geocaches and even geocachers currently not owning active geocaches can be the perfect match for owning a special virtual geocache..

Not saying at all this is the criteria - but looking for the common denominator for the few geocachers -not reviewers or other volunteers- I have already heard they got a new virtual geocache in my country, maybe 10-13% of the expected number for my country - it seems to me that 

all of them own (in this small sample: a moderate number of) well received active geocaches placed years ago (in this small sample at least three years, some for much longer, some also adopted),

no active geocache has unanswered maintenance issues,

all owners (of this sample) have at least one geocache with more than 56% favorite points (the number of owners that own such geocaches is many times greater than the number of virtual geocaches that are given to my country, so it could be only one of the reasons) and

(in this sample) the account is their main player account and they still participate in the game also in finding geocaches.

[+niraD]

16 minutes ago, Joshism said:

It's possible the algorithm takes into account lots of possibilities.

I think this is likely. And I think the actual algorithm is more complicated than most of the speculation being posted.

Given the fact that the new virtual cache listings will remain grandfathered, I think that one of Groundspeak's possible goals would be to identify cache owners who are likely to stick around. So if they could identify members who are likely to get fed up and commit geocide, then the algorithm should avoid selecting those members.

And a number of people who were not selected have pointed to contributions they have made to the geocaching community that go beyond their geocaching.com account's statistics. Sadly, the algorithm was automated, and almost certainly uses only data that is associated with our geocaching.com accounts. It might have included information that isn't very public (like the number of times you've deleted Find logs that were later restored and locked by a lackey), but it certainly doesn't include completely external information (like the amount of money you've spent on the caches you've listed or on the events you've hosted).

[+terratin]

I wonder if owning ECs also plays a role. After all, the 'maintenance' can be fairly similar to virtuals, at least if questions to answer are involved. But whatever the algorithm, I'm sure we'll never find out, which is good. I would honestly not be surprised if there's ever a repeat of this that the algorithm will get tweaked and those that tried to 'play the system' might still miss out.

 

So why not just be happy about these new virtuals? <3

Edited August 26, 2017 by terratin

[+Team Microdot]

4 minutes ago, terratin said:

I wonder if owning ECs also plays a role. After all, the 'maintenance' can be fairly similar to virtuals, at least if questions to answer are involved. But whatever the algorithm, I'm sure we'll never find out, which is good. I would honestly not be surprised if there's ever a repeat of this that the algorithm will get tweaked and those that tried to 'play the system' might still miss out.

 

So why not just be happy about these new virtuals? <3

Nah.

[Blue Square Thing]

21 minutes ago, AnnaMoritz said:

Not saying at all this is the criteria - but looking for the common denominator for the few geocachers -not reviewers or other volunteers- I have already heard they got a new virtual geocache in my country, maybe 10-13% of the expected number for my country - it seems to me that 

all of them own (in this small sample: a moderate number of) well received active geocaches placed years ago (in this small sample at least three years, some for much longer, some also adopted),

no active geocache has unanswered maintenance issues,

all owners (of this sample) have at least one geocache with more than 56% favorite points (the number of owners that own such geocaches is many times greater than the number of virtual geocaches that are given to my country, so it could be only one of the reasons) and

(in this sample) the account is their main player account and they still participate in the game also in finding geocaches.

I'd hazard a guess that they're all premium members as well?

[+AnnaMoritz]

2 minutes ago, Blue Square Thing said:

I'd hazard a guess that they're all premium members as well?

No, not all of them. And I personally don't think that's a criterion.

But in my country premium percentage is very very high for (longtime) quite active players anyway, so I would expect a big majority of owners of new virtual geocaches here to be PM.

[+DocDiTTo]

Maybe the powers that be just asked each reviewer for a list of names of cachers they knew who would probably hide a good virtual, and there was no magic computer algorithm at all.

 

[BlueRajah]

17 minutes ago, DocDiTTo said:

Maybe the powers that be just asked each reviewer for a list of names of cachers they knew who would probably hide a good virtual, and there was no magic computer algorithm at all.

 

Reviewers were not consulted in any way. We are happy about that because it removes us out of the equation. 

[Nomex]

15 minutes ago, BlueRajah said:

Reviewers were not consulted in any way. We are happy about that because it removes us out of the equation. 

I would like to emphatically second this, and crush this rumor before it's unnatural birth.

[Keystone]

59 minutes ago, DocDiTTo said:

Maybe the powers that be just asked each reviewer for a list of names of cachers they knew who would probably hide a good virtual, and there was no magic computer algorithm at all.

 

That would've been a very different list.  But, it doesn't exist.

[+DocDiTTo]

 

1 hour ago, Nomex said:

I would like to emphatically second this, and crush this rumor before it's unnatural birth.

 

Of course I was kidding.   This entire thread is made up of nothing but mere speculation.

[Blue Square Thing]

10 hours ago, AnnaMoritz said:

No, not all of them. And I personally don't think that's a criterion.

But in my country premium percentage is very very high for (longtime) quite active players anyway, so I would expect a big majority of owners of new virtual geocaches here to be PM.

I would expect that as well in most cases. Interesting that some aren't - thank you for looking at that.

[Blue Square Thing]

8 hours ago, DocDiTTo said:

Of course I was kidding.   This entire thread is made up of nothing but mere speculation.

Oh, but three denials in such a short space of time. Makes you think eh?

**:-)**

[+JL_HSTRE]

13 hours ago, Blue Square Thing said:

I'd hazard a guess that they're all premium members as well?

I'm pretty sure the overlap between "responsible and active COs" and "Premium Members" is really high - like 90-95% at least in the US (less so other countries). Not because Premium Members inherently make good COs, but because active cachers usually find PM worthwhile. Correlation not causation.

[Blue Square Thing]

3 hours ago, Joshism said:

I'm pretty sure the overlap between "responsible and active COs" and "Premium Members" is really high - like 90-95% at least in the US (less so other countries). Not because Premium Members inherently make good COs, but because active cachers usually find PM worthwhile. Correlation not causation.

Possibly. I was simply wondering if any ordinary members had been rewarded. I certainly don't see a causation between paying a membership fee and the ability to hide and maintain good quality caches in my area so it's good to see that some ordinary members have been rewarded.

[+TerraViators]

On 8/25/2017 at 10:11 AM, DocDiTTo said:

Or, I guess, waste some time by whining about it in the forums.

Oh, I don't believe geocat_ is whining about the selection process, rather just curious about it.  I'm equally curious.  I'm not in the know at Groundspeak and can't speculate, but I don't know how releasing the algorithm would hurt unless they're protecting  proprietary information.  I believe we've mostly come to accept that the business is not the most transparent to its customer base.

[+geodarts]

I am happy to see new virtuals.   But I still wonder about the algorithm.  A new virtual was placed by someone with three hides (other than a lab cache), only a few virtual finds, and not anything I would recognize as being in the top 4000 for a virtual placement.  Others people who have been rewarded have stated they are not very familiar with virtuals.  That's fine, but it makes me curious.

Being able to place a good traditional is not necessarily an indicator that a good virtual will be placed.   Virtuals are different.   So I wonder about the criteria that Groundspeak thought was important, although I do not expect to ever know.

It will be interesting to see how things develop.  There are some areas in national parks that I have long felt would be great virtuals, where neither traditional caching or earthcaches are appropriate, but I imagine that virtuals in that type of an area will take longer to be developed and released than the initial ones I am seeing.  

I suppose that leaves me curiouser and curiouser.  In the meantime I am looking at the old virtuals in the area of our upcoming trip and appreciate that they have remained part of our game for so long.   I hope the new ones will similarly endure.

 

 

[+DocDiTTo]

10 hours ago, Blue Square Thing said:

Oh, but three denials in such a short space of time. Makes you think eh?

**:-)**

Ah yes, the conspiracies abound.    I guess when you're on the receiving end of angst as much as the reviewers are you tend to be more sensitive of anything that could cast you in a bad light.  I should have thought about that before I posted.  I was kidding, but I can see how someone might take that silly idea and run with it as if it were gospel truth. 

[+thebruce0]

16 hours ago, geodarts said:

Being able to place a good traditional is not necessarily an indicator that a good virtual will be placed.

And no one claimed the selection process would be perfect. Many listings will remain unused, and most likely the vast majority of new virtuals will have their decriers saying they're somehow not "worth" the listing or they could have placed better. All new virtuals will have quality that people may or may not love. But that's the nature of the game. The process was to provide the best chance at having up to another 4000 great virtuals for people to find.

Not every virtual reward owner is guaranteed to place a great new virtual.

Not every new virtual is guaranteed to be great.

So we the community and whine about the not-so-good, or encourage and enjoy what we ourselves may consider to be good. ce'st la vie.

[+AnnaMoritz]

On 27.8.2017 at 0:25 AM, AnnaMoritz said:

(in this sample) the account is their main player account and they still participate in the game also in finding geocaches.

This still seems to be the case for all the Austrians I know they got a Virtual. But there also exist some accounts with zero finds that own highly acclaimed geocaches in Austria.

In Germany someone already mentioned they got a Virtual for their group account that has no finds, but has high percentage of favorite points. 

An algorithm - in contrast to the geocaching community- and in a few cases even the community - isn't very likely to know whether another player and which player(s) is/are behind an account with zero finds, so there has to be another way to determine what counts for being an "active cacher" (according to the announcement) than also finding geocaches, maybe geocache maintenance activity,lifetime of a geocache are are suffiicient factors anyhow, who knows ...

[+geodarts]

4 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

But that's the nature of the game. The process was to provide the best chance at having up to another 4000 great virtuals for people to find.

I don't think this thread was aimed at anything other than curiosity at the process used.  I might have used different criterion than Groundspeak, or I might not have.    Like many mysterious things, it will probably not be answered.

So yes.   People will place different kinds of virtuals.   And I will seek out most that come my way, as I have always done.   I hope the process will be successful enough to provide for other "rewards" in the future.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 28, 2017 by geodarts

[+J Grouchy]

I've noticed they generally seem to be spread out fairly well...so I have to assume geography (CO home area) was also a factor. 

[+thebruce0]

Another point about favorite points that just came to mind - areas that are heavy with group caching, where an entire group (of whatever various sizes) head out to log caches on a list, in the vast majority of those cases only a handful of cachers at most will actually consider giving favourite points. That's fairly common, and it can heavily weigh against a cache favourited percentage unless the CO contacts each of the finders and asks if they felt it worth offering a point; and as we know a CO resorting to that action is 'taboo'.   It's more likely a cacher will award an FP if they're the one to do all the work and finding, in relation to groups of cachers where most are following the person who has the coordinates or knows the cache.

So community makeup and caching habits can also have an effect on favourite points awarded and find/fav ratio.

[+igator210]

If there are 10 people in a room and I throw 10 $100 bills in the air, someone is still going to complain. They will complain that I didn't thrown it correctly. They will complain I didn't throw 20 bills. They will complain the air drafts skewed the throw to favor someone else. They will complain that they should have gotten more than someone else.

Next time? There won't be a next time.

[+AnnaMoritz]

The funny (some see it as sad) side of the selection is that quite a few say 'I really don't know what to do with a virtual' as they concentrate on handcrafted special containers, others say 'in fact I stopped hiding caches years ago' or 'I don't want to deal with the way people log virtuals'. But others are enthusiastic and have big plans.

I personally think that bringing some of the virtuals given to countries with a lot of virtuals to countries that don't have virtuals yet would be fine, 

 

Reading the whole first post of this announcement once more I think what lets the result of the algorithm look like having a random component is announced and intentionally done like this making 'overall cache quality' one of the main components, 'overall' being the word that get's overlooked or underestimated and that leads to disbelief or miscontent of certain players.

 

A very simplified and exaggerated example with small numbers: a country rewards its 3 best participants at Olympic games.

Athlete A started in 10 competitions and won 4 gold medals, 1 silver and 5 bronze. 

Athlete B started in 3 competitions and won 3 gold medals. 

Athlete C started in 3 competitions and won 3 silver medals. 

Ahtlete D started in 1 competition and won 1 silver medal.

Athlete E started in 5 competitions an won 1 silver medal. 

All other participants didn't make it into the medal ranks.

Most would expect the order A B C D+E and rewards go to A, B and C and most are likely to accept the statement 'we rewarded our three best participants'.

 

BUT if the best 3 participants are chosen according to their 'overall performance' the result is different. 'Overall performance' for example has this very simple algorithm: gold is 3 points, silver is 2 points, bronze is 1 point, other rankings 0 points, the average of your points count.

Athlete A has (4*3+1*2+5*1)/10=1.9, athlete  B scores 3*3/3=3, athlete C has 3*2/3=2, athlete D 1*2/1=2, athlete E 1*2/5=0.2

The resulting order is B C+D A E, rewards go to B, C, D

You are surprised that the athlete with most gold medals didn't get a reward?

That is because 1 silver in 1 competition is a 'better overall performance' according to that algorithm than 4 gold, 1 silver and 5 bronze in 10 competitions.

While I'm convinced that 'we are rewarding three of our medal winners' is accepted widely this case, I don't believe there will be overwhelming consent for 'we rewarded our three best participants'.

 

And I would suspect the same applies to 'we rewarded the top 1% hiders'. Maybe it is really a cultural thing, but for thinking systems where the way of wording implies a lot there seems to be a significant gap between what people expected to mean 'we choose the top 1%, might have missed a few' and what they saw looking at the results.

The algorithm did what is was meant to do, rank by overall cache quality and cache health. Like it or not. Also by an algorithm that might be perceived as fairer the current selection should be among the top 5-6%, which is a good choice anyway.

 

 

[+NYPaddleCacher]

6 hours ago, Team Microdot said:

6 hours ago, irisisleuk said:

I just sincerely hope someone at Groundspeak agrees with me that using (undefined) statistics to define who should get a reward and who not, leads to emotions (in some cultures) that have a negative effect on geocaching communities. In my humble opinion its better to leave statistics out of the game as much as possible, especially with respect to communication that can easily be misinterpreted with such a diverse group as geocachers.

Speaking as someone who didn't get selected for a Virtual Award I would bet money that no matter what selection criteria had been applied, someone would be upset.

I wasn't selected either, and I wasn't expecting that I would be selected and am perfectly fine with that.  I have, however, seen a few reports of some that were selected by people that wondered how they were chosen.  For example, I saw one example of a geocacher that started after 2010 and only had 5 hides.   I know of someone else that got the award that hasn't hidden a cache in 3 years, hasn't found one since April, and was permanently banned from the forums.

It's not clear when or if GS will give out any additional awards but one way to do it would be to simply accept nominations for geocachers that have contributed much to the game.  Of course, I would still expect nominations to still be "approved".  I haven't been paying close attention but does the notion of "Geocacher  of the Month" still exist?  If I recall, that was based on nominations.  

[+noncentric]

2 hours ago, Sanders_Sooners said:

Unfortunate side effect of the Virtual Rewards program....  Starting to notice cachers archiving caches that have no history of DNF's, I assume to increase their Favorite Point ratio for the chance at another round of Virtuals.

If CO's are indeed archiving caches only because they want to increase their FP ratio, then I think they certainly should not be given a reward*.  The rewards are intended to go to cachers that contribute to their community. To me, CO's that are simply trying to reward themselves are not interested in contributing to the community, but only to themselves. They're willing to remove caches from the community simply to boost their own egos/scores/rewards. That is not a contribution to the geocaching community.

And again, I still haven't seen where it was stated that FP's were a factor in the rewards.  I need to go read through the other thread and listen to the podcast.

*I really don't expect that rewards will be given out again anyway, considering the reception to the current rewards.

[+Team Microdot]

4 minutes ago, noncentric said:

If CO's are indeed archiving caches only because they want to increase their FP ratio, then I think they certainly should not be given a reward*.  The rewards are intended to go to cachers that contribute to their community. To me, CO's that are simply trying to reward themselves are not interested in contributing to the community, but only to themselves. They're willing to remove caches from the community simply to boost their own egos/scores/rewards. That is not a contribution to the geocaching community.

 

I wasn't aware that cache owners were required to entirely sacrifice their own enjoyment in favour of a life of unwavering servitude to 'the caching community'.

Doesn't sound very appealing if I'm honest.

[+noncentric]

3 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

10 minutes ago, noncentric said:

If CO's are indeed archiving caches only because they want to increase their FP ratio, then I think they certainly should not be given a reward*.  The rewards are intended to go to cachers that contribute to their community. To me, CO's that are simply trying to reward themselves are not interested in contributing to the community, but only to themselves. They're willing to remove caches from the community simply to boost their own egos/scores/rewards. That is not a contribution to the geocaching community.

 

I wasn't aware that cache owners were required to entirely sacrifice their own enjoyment in favour of a life of unwavering servitude to 'the caching community'.

Doesn't sound very appealing if I'm honest.

I am truly perplexed by what you're saying. 

How does NOT archiving caches ONLY to increase an FP ratio equate to 'entirely sacrificing their own enjoyment'?

Was I not clear in the post that you quoted?

[+Team Microdot]

3 minutes ago, noncentric said:

I am truly perplexed by what you're saying. 

How does NOT archiving caches ONLY to increase an FP ratio equate to 'entirely sacrificing their own enjoyment'?

Was I not clear in the post that you quoted?

It seems not.

It seems that you're advocating the castigation of people who have previously gone to the time trouble and expense to place caches for the enjoyment of others but then subsequently decide to retire their less popular caches.

 

[+noncentric]

1 minute ago, Team Microdot said:

It seems not.

It seems that you're advocating the castigation of people who have previously gone to the time trouble and expense to place caches for the enjoyment of others but then subsequently decide to retire their less popular caches.

 

If the ONLY reason they "subsequently decide to retire their less popular caches" is because they want to manipulate their FP percentage IN ORDER TO get a reward, then I think they are thinking more of themselves than of their community. The "castigation" you're inferring was meant for CO's that only care about getting the reward and would archive caches without problems ONLY to increase their chances at getting that reward, which was the hypothesis in Sanders_Sooner's post that I quoted.

If a CO wants to archive their caches because they just don't want to maintain them anymore, or because there's something amiss with the location, or whatever else - then that's fine and those are not situations that I was referring to. Hope that is more clear, even if you still don't agree with me.

[+Team Microdot]

3 minutes ago, noncentric said:

If the ONLY reason they "subsequently decide to retire their less popular caches" is because they want to manipulate their FP percentage IN ORDER TO get a reward, then I think they are thinking more of themselves than of their community. The "castigation" you're inferring was meant for CO's that only care about getting the reward and would archive caches without problems ONLY to increase their chances at getting that reward, which was the hypothesis in Sanders_Sooner's post that I quoted.

If a CO wants to archive their caches because they just don't want to maintain them anymore, or because there's something amiss with the location, or whatever else - then that's fine and those are not situations that I was referring to. Hope that is more clear, even if you still don't agree with me.

Even if this theory were to prove in any way true, wouldn't said CO's simply heeding the messages inherent in the award scheme anyway? Modelling their cache ownership on those same standards and methods practiced by the top 1%?

And yet, in doing so they become less deserving of the reward granted to those original champions?

[Keystone]

In the original blog post announcing the Virtual Rewards, Geocaching HQ promised to update the blog if necessary due to further developments.  Today, they've done that.  Here is the update, and it's relevant to the selection criteria used in the algorithm, which is the subject of this thread.

Quote

August 30, 2017 Update:

Geocaching HQ values all cache hiders for the amazing contributions they make to this game. We apologize for any offense this promotion has caused you or any others in the community. It was certainly not our intent to upset anyone. In fact, it was our intent to do something positive for the global geocaching community. Based on feedback we’ve received, we have updated this blog post to remove the emphasis on “top 1% of cache hiders” and replaced it with “the top 1% of the results from our algorithm” as this description more accurately describes the selected group of geocache hiders. Using the phrase “top 1% of cache hiders” was inaccurate and unfortunately caused confusion among geocachers worldwide. We regret this choice of words and have adjusted the language in this blog post to more clearly describe the process.  

For this promotion, we used an algorithm that selected a very small number of cache hiders who fit a specific set of cache quality criteria. We’re hoping that by only releasing 4,000 Virtual Rewards we can help minimize the previous problems with Virtual Caches while still giving the community more Virtuals. For 12 years, the community has asked for Virtuals to return. Because of the many previous problems with Virtuals, we cannot open Virtuals up for all cache hiders. But we did want to find a creative solution to offer some Virtuals.  We have never done anything like this before. If it is successful, we may consider a similar project for the future. If we do something similar, we will change the algorithm to offer a new set of cache hiders an opportunity. Hopefully you will be one of them!

Cache quality means many things to a hider, a finder, and the community. For this promotion, the algorithm included many factors but it heavily favored cache quality over quantity. Among these factors were percentage of Favorite points on active caches (not the total number of Favorite points) and current geocache Health Score.

We know there are many more amazing hiders in the geocaching community than those chosen to receive a Virtual Reward. Your contribution to the game is highly valued by us and the geocaching community alike. Just because your username or a friend’s username wasn’t selected by the algorithm doesn’t mean that you are not a great hider and we apologize for giving anyone this impression.

We will continue to do our best to serve the global geocaching community and game of geocaching and we appreciate your support and understanding. Thank you for your contributions to the game we all love!

 

[+noncentric]

7 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

15 minutes ago, noncentric said:

If the ONLY reason they "subsequently decide to retire their less popular caches" is because they want to manipulate their FP percentage IN ORDER TO get a reward, then I think they are thinking more of themselves than of their community. The "castigation" you're inferring was meant for CO's that only care about getting the reward and would archive caches without problems ONLY to increase their chances at getting that reward, which was the hypothesis in Sanders_Sooner's post that I quoted.

If a CO wants to archive their caches because they just don't want to maintain them anymore, or because there's something amiss with the location, or whatever else - then that's fine and those are not situations that I was referring to. Hope that is more clear, even if you still don't agree with me.

Even if this theory were to prove in any way true, wouldn't said CO's simply heeding the messages inherent in the award scheme anyway? Modelling their cache ownership on those same standards and methods practiced by the top 1%?

And yet, in doing so they become less deserving of the reward granted to those original champions?

Agreed. It was just a hypothesis. No way to know if it's true or not.

IF the theory were true, then here are my reasons for why I think it's still NOT a community-focused behavior by a CO:

(1) the CO's don't know what really determines the reward, so they'd just be guessing at whether archiving caches would help or not (I don't want to get too far OT on this, since there is the other thread about it)

(2) if the CO's believe that higher FP percentages will garner them a reward, then would it be good to archive caches that have a 10-20 FP% so their overall FP% skews towards their caches with 40-50 FP%?  Just because a CO doesn't have a high FP% doesn't mean that their caches are not a benefit to the community

(3) if the CO's believe that higher FP percentages will garner them a reward, then will they retain caches that have a high FP%, even if those caches have unresolved maintenance issues, while archiving caches that do not have maintenance issues but have a lower FP%?  If so, then that would be a disservice as well.

Of course, this is all hypothetical.  My point was the intent behind archiving caches. If the intent is solely to gain a reward, rather than to provide enjoyment to the community (which should in itself be a reward), then I think the CO is being a bit 'selfish'. Not sure there's much else I can say about this.

[+noncentric]

Did my posts in the past hour get moved into this thread?  I haven't even read the first post in this topic, so am confused how I ended up posting in here.

[Keystone]

4 minutes ago, noncentric said:

Did my posts in the past hour get moved into this thread?  I haven't even read the first post in this topic, so am confused how I ended up posting in here.

In the main thread, I have posted twice to say that speculations and complaints about the selection algorithm should be placed in this thread.  After my most recent post, I moved subsequent posts that disregarded my advice.  I also edited my post to explain that I did that.

I decided that moving the side topic postings to this separate thread was preferable to telling people to stop participating in the main discussion, issuing warnings or posting suspensions for going off on tangents, etc.

[+Team Microdot]

8 minutes ago, noncentric said:

Agreed. It was just a hypothesis. No way to know if it's true or not.

IF the theory were true, then here are my reasons for why I think it's still NOT a community-focused behavior by a CO:

(1) the CO's don't know what really determines the reward, so they'd just be guessing at whether archiving caches would help or not (I don't want to get too far OT on this, since there is the other thread about it)

(2) if the CO's believe that higher FP percentages will garner them a reward, then would it be good to archive caches that have a 10-20 FP% so their overall FP% skews towards their caches with 40-50 FP%?  Just because a CO doesn't have a high FP% doesn't mean that their caches are not a benefit to the community

(3) if the CO's believe that higher FP percentages will garner them a reward, then will they retain caches that have a high FP%, even if those caches have unresolved maintenance issues, while archiving caches that do not have maintenance issues but have a lower FP%?  If so, then that would be a disservice as well.

Of course, this is all hypothetical.  My point was the intent behind archiving caches. If the intent is solely to gain a reward, rather than to provide enjoyment to the community (which should in itself be a reward), then I think the CO is being a bit 'selfish'. Not sure there's much else I can say about this.

You're really reaching with #3 which of course would be thwarted by the health score anyway.

And in any case the award program sends a very clear message about which cache ownership profile is MOST community-focused so I'm still confused how emulating that profile could be seen as NOT community-focused.

If you're looking for a great example of where community spirit is absent just look at the amount of scorn being flung at anyone less than 100% jubilant about any aspect of the reward program.

[+barefootjeff]

31 minutes ago, Keystone said:

Among these factors were percentage of Favorite points on active caches (not the total number of Favorite points) and current geocache Health Score.

Knowing that the Cache Health Score has a strong emphasis on DNFs as an indicator of unhealthy caches, out of curiosity I just looked through the other caches of the two recipients who've so far had virtuals published in my area and yep, sure enough, they have a miniscule number of DNFs across all their hides.

[+Team Microdot]

11 minutes ago, noncentric said:

Did my posts in the past hour get moved into this thread?  I haven't even read the first post in this topic, so am confused how I ended up posting in here.

Looks like it.

Looks like the other thread is now largely focused on snarky posts about what a terrible person anyone who isn't over the moon about the rewards program is. 

[+niraD]

8 minutes ago, Team Microdot said:

And in any case the award program sends a very clear message about which cache ownership profile is MOST community-focused

It does?

I honestly don't see that. If anything, all the debate about what the selection criteria might have been demonstrates to me that the message is anything but "very clear". And the message is muddled further when people start looking at the cache ownership behavior of people who received a Virtual Reward not by being a "top 1% of the algorithm" cache owner, but by being an active community volunteer.

[+Team Microdot]

7 minutes ago, niraD said:

It does?

I honestly don't see that. If anything, all the debate about what the selection criteria might have been demonstrates to me that the message is anything but "very clear". And the message is muddled further when people start looking at the cache ownership behavior of people who received a Virtual Reward not by being a "top 1% of the algorithm" cache owner, but by being an active community volunteer.

Then don't muddle it further by giving consideration to irrelevant data?

Edited August 30, 2017 by Team Microdot

[+noncentric]

35 minutes ago, Keystone said:

In the main thread, I have posted twice to say that speculations and complaints about the selection algorithm should be placed in this thread.  After my most recent post, I moved subsequent posts that disregarded my advice.  I also edited my post to explain that I did that.

I decided that moving the side topic postings to this separate thread was preferable to telling people to stop participating in the main discussion, issuing warnings or posting suspensions for going off on tangents, etc.

Ah, okay. Thanks. It's all getting a bit convoluted. I tried to avoid going OT in the original thread that I responded to, but got a bit carried away.  Now I really need to read through this topic, which I'll get around to later today, before saying anything else.