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Adopting Archived Caches


dshifter

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If it's this one, it seems that the challenge changed and became tough to manage (the "atlas" changed?).  If this type is allowed today, you could start a new cache with clear ground rules.

But, yes in certain cases caches can be adopted.  If it was archived by the Cache Owner, it may be unarchived (no guarantee).

Here's adoption info:  https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=38&pgid=54

 

 

Edited by kunarion
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It is unlikely that an archived cache will be unarchived to be adopted.  That requires the reviewer to do the unarchive, and I doubt they will.

It would depend on if it meets current guildelines if you could create a new one with the same requirements.  If I recall correctly, DeLorme challenges are no longer allowed under the newest challenge guidelines.

 

 

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1 hour ago, fuzziebear3 said:

If I recall correctly, DeLorme challenges are no longer allowed under the newest challenge guidelines.

New DeLorme challenges are no longer allowed. Only "countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent)" can be used. DeLorme atlas pages get lumped in with all the other "user-defined mapping polygons" (like USGS quadrangles) and are no longer allowed.

I thought there was a suggestion to revise this (IMHO misguided) decision, but I don't see it in the Website Bug Reports and Feature Discussions forum.

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2 hours ago, dshifter said:

I was just wondering if archived caches can be adopted.  The reason I am asking is that the Idaho DeLorme Challenge cache is archived and I was thinking of bringing it back.

An archived cache won't be unarchived for adoption.

And an archived challenge cache won't be unarchived if the challenge doesn't meet current guidelines.

So, a double whammy in this situation.

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1 hour ago, niraD said:
2 hours ago, fuzziebear3 said:

If I recall correctly, DeLorme challenges are no longer allowed under the newest challenge guidelines.

New DeLorme challenges are no longer allowed. Only "countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent)" can be used. DeLorme atlas pages get lumped in with all the other "user-defined mapping polygons" (like USGS quadrangles) and are no longer allowed.

I thought there was a suggestion to revise this (IMHO misguided) decision, but I don't see it in the Website Bug Reports and Feature Discussions forum.

There were some discussions about revising the user-defined mapping polygons restrictions.  Specifically, I noted that boundaries for for counties or their local equivalent is not coming from data available from the website (as is the case for countries/states).  In the case of counties/states, every cache has a country/state ID, thus a checker merely needs look at the country/state ID to see if it qualifies.  In the case of counties or their local equivalent, there is no countyID associated with a cache.  Instead, a checker would have to use the lat/long coordinates for a cache then use an external service which has boundary information for counties (e.g. geonames) to see which county in which the cache is located.  Given that the boundary information is derived from a non-geocaching data source it doesn't make a lot of sense to allow counties but not other authoritative data source such as USGS quadrangles.  I can understand why GS wouldn't want just any arbitrary list of user-defines polygons, but if the data came from an authoritative source such as geonames it would allows some potential challengs such as those based on USGS quadrants or counties.  Geonames treats counties and local equivalent as second-order administrative divisions.

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3 hours ago, fuzziebear3 said:

If I recall correctly, DeLorme challenges are no longer allowed under the newest challenge guidelines.

You recall it correctly but actually they are allowed also as elevation challenges are allowed.

Quote

"Indeed, elevation is not on Geocaching.com. However, neither are DeLorme or
county data. We think elevation falls into the bucket with DeLorme and
counties. It's fairly standard to determine elevation based on lat/lon,
just as it's standard to determine counties or Delorme data with lat/lon
inforomation."

As you may see, there are new elevation challenges even though elevation is not available on cache descriptions. Same way DeLorme and counties will be allowed.

Edited by arisoft
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1 hour ago, arisoft said:

Same way DeLorme and counties will be allowed.

I do not believe that is accurate.

See: Rock Chalk's comment above, this discussion, and the challenge cache criteria.

The last bullet in each column is specific as to go/no go criteria for challenges based on geographic areas, and this language has not changed since 2016.  A Delorme page is not a country, state, province, county, or county equivalent, therefore, no new Delorme challenges.

Elevation is not a geographic area, so it's not relevant to the discussion. 

capture.JPG

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5 minutes ago, arisoft said:
14 minutes ago, hzoi said:

I do not believe that is accurate.

I know, it is not by the guidelines at all, but as you can see, elevation challenges are accepted as told in the statement I quoted.

OK, but again, elevation is not a geographic area.  That list of acceptable geographic areas is specific. 

Show me a new Delorme challenge and I'll believe that new Delorme challenges are being published.  Until then, you're using an unrelated example to speculate on what might be allowed.  Except you're not presenting it as speculation, you're saying

1 hour ago, arisoft said:

DeLorme and counties will be allowed.

Counties will be allowed: yes, because they're in the list of acceptable geographic areas.

Delorme will be allowed: objection, assumes facts not in evidence.

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10 minutes ago, arisoft said:

If you open any topographic map you can see that elevation indeed is a geographical area.

I also don't believe that's an accurate statement, but let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right, and elevation is a geographic area for the purposes of Groundspeak's challenge cache guidelines.  Please help me locate it in this list, for I just can't seem to find it.

Quote

Challenge cache criteria may be based upon these geographic areas: countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent).

 

Edited by hzoi
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8 minutes ago, Moun10Bike said:

Let me help break through the speculation: No, DeLorme Challenges are no longer permitted (which makes me sad, as I'd love to resurrect an Idaho version myself).

Thanks for the clarification.  I don't want to be right about it, but the rule is pretty clear.

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8 minutes ago, hzoi said:

I also don't believe that's an accurate statement, but let's assume for the sake of argument that you're right, and elevation is a geographic area for the purposes of Groundspeak's challenge cache guidelines.  Please help me locate it in this list, for I just can't seem to find it.

Basically elevation challenges are against these challenge guidelines:

- Challenge cache criteria must come from information broadly available on Geocaching.com

- Challenge cache criteria must be verifiable through information on Geocaching.com.

The statement I quoted, is used as exception to allow challenges based on elevation.

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10 hours ago, arisoft said:

The statement I quoted, is used as exception to allow challenges based on elevation.

You didn't give a source for the quote, as such it's pretty much worthless as you could be quoting some geocacher you met down the pub.

Can you say where that quote came from and when it was said?

Or alternatively give an example of a challenge based on elevation which was  published since they were reinstated?

 

As it's been my understatnding that challenges based on elevation are nolonger allowed.

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51 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

You didn't give a source for the quote, as such it's pretty much worthless as you could be quoting some geocacher you met down the pub.

I understand this. I also know that it is normal to get controversial statements from HQ as it always depends on people behind the statement.

51 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

Can you say where that quote came from and when it was said?

I got it from reviewer who published a new elevation challenge and was consulted with HQ about the matter. I was surprised to see DeLorme mentioned in the same statement as a justification to elevation.

51 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

Or alternatively give an example of a challenge based on elevation which was  published since they were reinstated?

There are many. This is one example which I know pretty well :). https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC7CCZK_das-ist-doch-die-hohe-challenge

51 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

As it's been my understatnding that challenges based on elevation are nolonger allowed.

I think that somebody in the headquarters agrees, but apparently not all.

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On 11/18/2017 at 1:35 AM, arisoft said:

I got it from reviewer who published a new elevation challenge and was consulted with HQ about the matter. I was surprised to see DeLorme mentioned in the same statement as a justification to elevation.

There are many. This is one example which I know pretty well :). https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC7CCZK_das-ist-doch-die-hohe-challenge

My guess would be that the elevation challenge you provided as an example is allowed because it's easily 'proven' by looking at a cacher's Profile Stats page on PGC. It's not as easy to see DeLorme fulfillment.

Perhaps the reviewer you quoted wasn't very familiar with DeLorme challenges and was mistakenly thinking about Counties. This would not be surprising if the Reviewer was in Europe, since DeLorme challenges are mostly a USA thing.

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3 hours ago, noncentric said:

My guess would be that the elevation challenge you provided as an example is allowed because it's easily 'proven' by looking at a cacher's Profile Stats page on PGC. It's not as easy to see DeLorme fulfillment.

You know that challenge cache criteria must come from information broadly available on Geocaching.com. Here is an another more complicated example:

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC7BMTJ_the-astronaut-challenge

3 hours ago, noncentric said:

Perhaps the reviewer you quoted wasn't very familiar with DeLorme challenges and was mistakenly thinking about Counties. This would not be surprising if the Reviewer was in Europe, since DeLorme challenges are mostly a USA thing.

I have no reason to believe that the reviewer quoted HQ incorrectly. It is still possible that insructions have changed afterwards.

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There are 2 different requirements/exceptions being discussed here.

1.  There is the general requirement that the criteria must be "broadly available on geocaching.com....".    

2.   There is a specific "requirement" (what is allowed/not allowed) regarding geographic areas.    Within this, only certain geographic areas are allowed, which includes allowing counties - even though counties are not available on geocaching.com.   

I see statement quoted by the unnamed reviewer.  And I see the logic, if they allow some data which is not on geocaching.com but can be verified with a challenge checker (like counties), why not other data like elevation?     And from the examples given, at least some reviewers are allowing elevation based challenges.   Which from my perspective is good.

For DeLorme (and we have something similar in the UK based on OS maps), those have been clearly rejected previously under the "user defined mapping polygon" rule.    I would love it if Groundspeak would allow these, but I have not seen any allowed, and I would expect them to update the guidelines first.   

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11 hours ago, arisoft said:

You know that challenge cache criteria must come from information broadly available on Geocaching.com. Here is an another more complicated example:

https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC7BMTJ_the-astronaut-challenge

I have no reason to believe that the reviewer quoted HQ incorrectly. It is still possible that insructions have changed afterwards.

While the elevation of a cache may not be as "broadly available" as some other data points, it's apparently available via the API and challenge checkers can access it, so I don't see an issue. Obviously the reviewer didn't either.

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16 minutes ago, The A-Team said:

While the elevation of a cache may not be as "broadly available" as some other data points, it's apparently available via the API and challenge checkers can access it, so I don't see an issue. Obviously the reviewer didn't either.

There is no elevation information in the cache description. No field available to enter this information when cache has been hidden. API can not give this information because there is no such information. County is an another piece of information which does not come from GS servers. Reviewers accepts elevation challenges just because HQ has specifically allowed them. DeLorme could be allowed same way, with permission.

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1.  Elevation-based challenge caches because the altitude of a cache is ascertainable from the coordinates.  Coordinates place a cache at an approximate altitude of X just as coordinates place a cache in County Y.

2.  The subject of this thread is "can archived caches be adopted?" and the answer to that is "no."  If anyone has anything else to contribute on-topic, feel free to post.  Do not post off-topic. Thanks!

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46 minutes ago, Keystone said:

2.  The subject of this thread is "can archived caches be adopted?" and the answer to that is "no."  If anyone has anything else to contribute on-topic, feel free to post.  Do not post off-topic. Thanks!

The OP also included the subject of bringing back archived (DeLorme) challenge caches, so I would expect discussion related to that subject to be on-topic as well.

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59 minutes ago, Keystone said:

1.  Elevation-based challenge caches because the altitude of a cache is ascertainable from the coordinates.  Coordinates place a cache at an approximate altitude of X just as coordinates place a cache in County Y.

OP asked, is it possible to get Idaho DeLorme Challenge cache back. Based on your answer, there is some hope as coordinates place a cache in DeLorme page Z.

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