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Deliberately incorrect coordinates


NanCycle

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From the Release Notes forum thread on the new Solution Checker:

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some COs deliberately give incorrect final coordinates to the reviewer, to prevent a cache being rejected due to proximity issues

I don't see any relationship between this situation and the use of any checker.  Is there something I'm missing here?  

Unless the coordinates are "corrected" post-publication, how is any seeker supposed to find the cache?

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Some puzzle caches don't have a geochecker. It has happened that the CO deliberately entered a wrong location for the hidden "Final Waypoint". The seeker will never be aware of this. There are two basic reasons for such (mis-)behavior by the CO: either avoid a proximity clash with another cache, or the cache is at a "sensitive" location which would probably not be allowed by the reviewer.

With any geochecker, either the new one or one of the existing 3rd party checkers, it's not possible to pull this stunt, at least here in Germany. The reviewer always uses the provided checker to verify the puzzle solution provided by the CO.

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I don't see the language you are quoting in the current thread?

  In any case, if my exotic puzzle solves to a set of coords that I know has a proximity issue, I could simply provide the wrong coords as the Final waypoint. Unless the reviewer actually works through my exotic puzzle, they'd not know.  

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I don't see any relationship between this situation and the use of any checker.  Is there something I'm missing here?

  To use the in-house checker, (or any checker really) my Final waypoint as entered on Geocaching.com must be correct, ie, the puzzle must actually solve to the coords in entered as Final waypoint.

That said, I don't think this really a common issue.

Far more common are changes to stages and finals in the real world that aren't updated on the website, because the CO simply doesn't think about doing it. 

Edited by Isonzo Karst
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My interpretation was that such a cache would have:

  • bogus coordinates: the published coordinates are bogus and don't affect saturation
  • incorrect final waypoint: the official final location meets the saturation guidelines, but is not where the cache is actually hidden
  • actual final location: the actual cache location, which violates the saturation guidelines. The puzzle solution gives these coordinates, and a third-party coordinates checker could use these coordinates if the CO has set one up.
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30 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

With any geochecker, either the new one or one of the existing 3rd party checkers, it's not possible to pull this stunt, at least here in Germany. The reviewer always uses the provided checker to verify the puzzle solution provided by the CO.

No, no, it is quite possible and I've seen it, in fact I've seen caches that are merely puzzles because of the need to "work around" the saturation issue. I haven't even found that many caches in 9 years so it must be prevalent.

Edited by fbingha
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19 minutes ago, fbingha said:

No, no, it is quite possible and I've seen it, in fact I've seen caches that are merely puzzles because of the need to "work around" the saturation issue. I haven't even found that many caches in 9 years so it must be prevalent.

I meant that it's currently not possible where I cache (in Germany) and if the cache has a geochecker. Puzzles without a checker, or older ones where the reviewers didn't routinely verify the checker, are a different thing.

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So, some people say that the Final of their Puzzle is at a different location than where the cache really is, just to fool the reviewer so that it will be published.  And this fake location is not what the solution of the puzzle indicates.  But they put in a checker with the solution of the puzzle indicating the actual coordinates of where the cache really is.  So the checker and the published Final of the puzzle are not the same.  Wow!  I never thought of that as even being possible.

If I were a reviewer and suspected that a CO might be gaming the system this way, I'd sure be tempted to enter the Final coordinates as given into the checker and make sure they worked.  The reviewer wouldn't even have to say "Hey I caught you cheating,"  just "I think you made a mistake in your checker."

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4 hours ago, NanCycle said:

So, some people say that the Final of their Puzzle is at a different location than where the cache really is, just to fool the reviewer so that it will be published.  And this fake location is not what the solution of the puzzle indicates.  But they put in a checker with the solution of the puzzle indicating the actual coordinates of where the cache really is.  So the checker and the published Final of the puzzle are not the same.  Wow!  I never thought of that as even being possible.

It's a fairly widespread problem, more so in some local communities than in others.  If it hasn't happened where you live, consider yourself lucky.  Also, the issue can occur innocently - the original puzzle cache is muggled, the owner finds a new hiding place, updates their puzzle and geochecker, but forgets to edit their Additional Waypoint. 

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If I were a reviewer and suspected that a CO might be gaming the system this way, I'd sure be tempted to enter the Final coordinates as given into the checker and make sure they worked.  The reviewer wouldn't even have to say "Hey I caught you cheating,"  just "I think you made a mistake in your checker."

Yeah, we do that sometimes.  There is more to reviewing a cache than one might think, eh?  So, you can see how a native geochecker, keyed to the "Final" Additional Waypoint, makes life simpler and easier for Reviewers.

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4 hours ago, Keystone said:

 So, you can see how a native geochecker, keyed to the "Final" Additional Waypoint, makes life simpler and easier for Reviewers.

I guess you just unveiled the real reason for developing the in-house checker. So many feature request have been made but never implemented and things that were not requested (except in 2007 and 2009) suddenly appear... :ph34r:

 

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On 10/20/2017 at 8:20 PM, Keystone said:

It's a fairly widespread problem, more so in some local communities than in others.  If it hasn't happened where you live, consider yourself lucky.  Also, the issue can occur innocently - the original puzzle cache is muggled, the owner finds a new hiding place, updates their puzzle and geochecker, but forgets to edit their Additional Waypoint. 

In my local area, we do not have the cache density that would lead to this practice.  (also, most of the puzzle caches are mine.)

In another area 40 or so miles away where I cache frequently, the density is much greater, but I think the only way I would notice is by deliberately looking for it.  When I find a puzzle cache, I'd need to check for other caches being too close to the location.

I currently have one that was muggled and I need to find a new hiding place.  Yeah, there's a lot to remember to change--the puzzle, the Waypoint, and the checker.

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On 10/20/2017 at 10:57 PM, NanCycle said:

If I were a reviewer and suspected that a CO might be gaming the system this way, I'd sure be tempted to enter the Final coordinates as given into the checker and make sure they worked.  The reviewer wouldn't even have to say "Hey I caught you cheating,"  just "I think you made a mistake in your checker."

Mr my local reviewer has been doing this lately, at least some of the time.    Recently I had one using a third party checker, where the puzzle is designed such that you need to enter a keyword into the checker, which then gives you the final coordinates.    I explained this in a reviewer note.   The reviewer must have overlooked the note, as she came back to me and said the final coordinates didn't work in the checker.   Once I explained and pointed out the note it was published.    

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