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Planetary Pursuit?


J Grouchy

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26 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

This was one of the first things I commented about when the promom began. But... Challenge caches are regular caches that are intended to have shelf life. They put that rule in place so that on the long term, geocachers wouldn't be encouraged "not to cache" at any arbitrary point in time.  This promo is a short run 3 week stint, so if for the period between the announcement and the promo start people hold off on some finds just for points, it's not a long term "loss", just a shift of finds for a short period of time, which is why I believe they had no concern about it in this context.

Maybe, but to me that almost works the opposite way.  Challenge caches are meant to be long-term, which means you can start and stop working on meeting the challenge whenever you'd like.  There promos pop up periodically and with specifics that aren't explained until shortly before the promotion starts, so you never really know what you need to "reserve" until it's too late.  This promo is perfect example.  If you've already found all the puzzles and high FP caches in your area, it's pretty unlikely that there will be enough "new" puzzles and high FP caches placed in time to be relevant, so if you haven't planned ahead by reserving a bunch of caches, then you're just flat out of luck.  At least with challenge caches you can say "Well, I don't qualify now, but if I start working on it now I can go log the Challenge in a year."

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Sure but that's a problem with temporary promotional periods in general for the context of geocaching.
NO campaign that encourages people to target their finds will be perfect because everyone only has access to caches they haven't yet found, so everyone starts off on different footing. Always. So I'm merely addressing the "putting caching on hold for later" contrast between a short-term temporary promotional run by Groundspeak and a long term geocache listing owned by a geocacher.

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56 minutes ago, thebruce0 said:

So I'm merely addressing the "putting caching on hold for later" contrast between a short-term temporary promotional run by Groundspeak and a long term geocache listing owned by a geocacher.

Yeah, I mean, I get that... I guess what I'm saying is more just that the more of these promotions they do, the more I'm seeing people trying to sort of guess what types of caches will be the focus of the next promotion and then intentionally putting those caches on hold for extended periods of time in anticipation of whatever next promotion comes up.

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me personally, I've been pretty active for a while and have had a bunch of different cache types "cleared out" from my local area for a while, but this promotion in particular is the first time I've really felt like having completed all the local caches has really put me at a disadvantage.  Maybe it's just because this time around the bar is a bit higher, but in the past, even after having found nearly all of my local caches, I've always been able to find a way to still score enough "points" or to do whatever I had to do to get all the applicable souvenirs.  This time around though I've really struggled (which may also have to do with the fact that we got slammed with a big snowstorm right when the promotion started).  I don't know that I'd realistically be able to meet the point levels without using some TB drops this time around.

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38 minutes ago, ZeppelinDT said:

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me personally, I've been pretty active for a while and have had a bunch of different cache types "cleared out" from my local area for a while, but this promotion in particular is the first time I've really felt like having completed all the local caches has really put me at a disadvantage.

I guess I can understand that - with a challenge cache at least you can do it any time, so if your area is cleared out, you can at least have the chocie to attempt the challenge once some region within a good distance provide qualification.  With a limited promotion you don't have that option, and may very well miss out on exclusive perks (for whatever they're worth to anyone).  I get that now... so I understand your issue with temporary target-based geocaching promotions in general, it makes sense.

Maybe that's one reason why they allowed TB drops to accrue points :P

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In part I guess the promotion did work, because I found a great series of puzzles about two hours north of me, solved them all in anticipation of this, and planned a trip up there to go find them all (and, while not giving me 500 points, they would have been enough so that I could have gotten about half-way there and then just used some newer local caches and events to get me across the finish line).  Problem with that was the massive snowstorm that hit, which killed those plans completely.  There were 12 new local, easy, snow-friendly puzzles that were published specifically to help people get points for this challenge, but the problem with that is I'm the one who hid them!

There's always a workaround for this type of thing, and I feel like if you really want the souvenirs, you'll get them.  So really my goal is just to sort of explain the alternate perspectives.

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3 hours ago, ZeppelinDT said:

I can't speak for anybody else, but for me personally, I've been pretty active for a while and have had a bunch of different cache types "cleared out" from my local area for a while, but this promotion in particular is the first time I've really felt like having completed all the local caches has really put me at a disadvantage.

You aren't alone. Up until not that long ago, I had found all the Virtual and Letterbox Hybrid caches within comfortable driving range. There has since been a new cache published for each of these types within range, but I plan to save these just in case I need one for an upcoming promotion. I typically do the same thing with EarthCaches, but luckily there are a few locals who like to create EarthCaches, and I can find one of my saved ECs once a newer one gets published, so they don't sit unfound forever.

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4 hours ago, Tungstène said:

I must confess I have all the answers of an earthcache ready to be sent to its owner for months. I'm just waiting for next earthcache day. Shame on me! 

Please note that it's generally agreed-upon that you should log an EarthCache find for the date on which you visited the cache location, not an unrelated date in the future. See this recent discussion, where there was unanimous agreement. Saving answers wouldn't do you any good for future souvenirs or promotions, because you'd be backdating your log to a date outside of the date range for which that souvenir/promotion is active.

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On 3/29/2018 at 10:38 AM, ZeppelinDT said:

At least with challenge caches you can say "Well, I don't qualify now, but if I start working on it now I can go log the Challenge in a year."

I remember hearing about the Fizzy and Jasmer challenge caches when I first started in 2007.  I still don't qualify for either of them.  As challenges go, I would prefer the kind that would take a long time to complete over one with some weird criteria, so someone places a bunch of caches that can be found that will satisfy the criteria.

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On 3/29/2018 at 7:17 AM, ZeppelinDT said:

 The problem is that I don't really have that option because I've exhausted all the high FP caches and all the puzzles in my local area (i.e., within less than an hour's drive in any direction).

I guess I'm fortunate in that I am relatively new to geocaching, and we live in a cache dense area, so I have lots of puzzles, as well as all other types to find.  We can target highly favorited just about anywhere we go in a 50 mile radius and have more caches than we can possibly do.  Even 10 miles gives us a lot of unfound cache options.

Add to that the fact that we are traveling this week and caching as we go, so there are new (to us) caches all along our route.  We grabbed a puzzle, a highly favorited traditional and two just plain old traditionals today for 40 points. 

But I do see your point; for those who have found all the caches local to you or in a comfortable driving radius, it's not nearly as easy to accumulate the points.

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Getting all souvenirs was very easy. I did nothing out of the ordinary, just cached as usual and it turned out I already "got 'm all". As usual, I immediately "hid 'm all" as the promotions are not worth "remembering" if you just get them without an effort.

 

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1 hour ago, on4bam said:

Getting all souvenirs was very easy. I did nothing out of the ordinary, just cached as usual and it turned out I already "got 'm all". As usual, I immediately "hid 'm all" as the promotions are not worth "remembering" if you just get them without an effort.

That's why you get the souvenir so you do not forget the effort you made for this task :P

Edited by arisoft
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1 hour ago, on4bam said:

Getting all souvenirs was very easy. I did nothing out of the ordinary, just cached as usual and it turned out I already "got 'm all". As usual, I immediately "hid 'm all" as the promotions are not worth "remembering" if you just get them without an effort.

 

Intrigued, I had a look at your souvenirs page. Couldn't you make the same case for all those "find a cache on xxxx day" souvenirs, where a single find qualifies you? and I seem to remember reading you're from Belgium (apologies if I remember incorrectly), so you could make the same case for the Belgium souvenir, and probably France, Netherlands, Austria,.....

 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, MartyBartfast said:

Intrigued, I had a look at your souvenirs page. Couldn't you make the same case for all those "find a cache on xxxx day" souvenirs, where a single find qualifies you? and I seem to remember reading you're from Belgium (apologies if I remember incorrectly), so you could make the same case for the Belgium souvenir, and probably France, Netherlands, Austria,.....

For find a cache on (12-12-12 for instance) we did go out. Effort made. I make an exception for country souvenirs as it's hard to not cache in one's own country. France took an effort, only just over an hour away and yet we hardly get there. Austria? Why would you think it's no effort? It's a 1.5 hour flight or about 10 hour drive.

I agree "effort" may be fuzzy at times though.

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22 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:
On 3/29/2018 at 10:38 AM, ZeppelinDT said:

At least with challenge caches you can say "Well, I don't qualify now, but if I start working on it now I can go log the Challenge in a year."

I remember hearing about the Fizzy and Jasmer challenge caches when I first started in 2007.  I still don't qualify for either of them.

If you are able to meet up at The Spot Wednesday, you'll see me finally qualify* for the Jasmer.  It's only taken us 11 years!

*Well, almost qualify.  After all, it's 1 April, so now I need another month.

Fizzy we qualified for a while back, I made a point of qualifying for it when we first started.  Then we lost qualifications and regained qualifications for a while, because challenges weren't big in Europe yet and people kept changing cache ratings.  I'm glad I qualified for it before we had our daughter.  For some reason, I wasn't as worried about doing dumb things like swimming the Rhein when I could have widowed my wife in a foreign country, as I am now of leaving a widow and child behind.  I guess I can thank some primordial parenting instinct for this.  (Or maturity, or something.)

22 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

As challenges go, I would prefer the kind that would take a long time to complete over one with some weird criteria, so someone places a bunch of caches that can be found that will satisfy the criteria.

Absolutely.  This is what I love about Delorme and county challenges.  Since we move around for my job every couple of years, we get a new set of Delorme and county challenges to complete every couple years - and when the movers drive off, we start the timer to complete them before the next move.  :laughing:

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4 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

and I seem to remember reading you're from Belgium (apologies if I remember incorrectly), so you could make the same case for the Belgium souvenir, and probably France, Netherlands, Austria,.....

The difference between a souvenir for Belgium, France, the Netherlands, or Austria and the Planetary Pursuit is that one has to actually visit those locations and find a cache to obtain the souvenir.  As far as I know, nobody has found a cache on another planet.

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Geez.  You slip up even once (log a cache) and you get an unwanted badge.  (That's not a souvenir; souvenirs are for places you've been to.)  Then you've gotta remember where that turning-off-badges control panel is hidden.  (No need to reply, thanks, I found it.)

TIP:  If you post a Note, then change it to a Found, you don't get points and badges.  But don't slip up.

BTW, where I live, "points" has a bad connotation.  Too many on your driver's license and you lose it.

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29 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

Geez.  You slip up even once (log a cache) and you get an unwanted badge.  (That's not a souvenir; souvenirs are for places you've been to.)  Then you've gotta remember where that turning-off-badges control panel is hidden.  (No need to reply, thanks, I found it.)

TIP:  If you post a Note, then change it to a Found, you don't get points and badges.  But don't slip up.

BTW, where I live, "points" has a bad connotation.  Too many on your driver's license and you lose it.

Thanks for the tip.  May try that.    :)

I've been holding on to a couple trackables too long, between weather and this latest promotion's end date.  Explained earlier we didn't cache for thirty days once, because the other 2/3rds thinks of her souvenirs as remembrances of where we've been, or particular days important to her.

The site sends cryptic messages in notifications, the blog, etc., making you curious to simply look at what everyone's talking about, which now enters you in a promotion.  That (to us) isn't playing nice.

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8 minutes ago, cerberus1 said:

The site sends cryptic messages in notifications, the blog, etc., making you curious to simply look at what everyone's talking about, which now enters you in a promotion.

I think they broke a web-design rule there.  Anything that changes state (you're enrolled, purchase approved, etc.) isn't supposed to happen by simply viewing a page.  That's whittling away at trust, and fading trust makes people go elsewhere.

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Had no problems doing this challenge.  Had some solved/unfound puzzles, a few events and some caches with lots of favorites to chase down.  Took a couple days to complete.  That said, I live near one of North America's larges urban areas and there are caches popping up all the time.

These sort of things probably do not work well for geocachers who live in places like Frankfort, SD. I've heard griping from people who live in such remote areas ("Yeah, we'll find a cache or two, might have to drive forty miles to do it, but there's not an Earthcache or anything with like that in the county.")

Time to strap on that thinking cap and find a way to encourage caching related activities which work well, no matter where you are.

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17 minutes ago, DragonsWest said:

...These sort of things probably do not work well for geocachers who live in places like Frankfort, SD. I've heard griping from people who live in such remote areas ("Yeah, we'll find a cache or two, might have to drive forty miles to do it, but there's not an Earthcache or anything with like that in the county.")

Time to strap on that thinking cap and find a way to encourage caching related activities which work well, no matter where you are.

To my way of thinking this particular programme does work well, no matter where you are.

Find 1 cache for 5 points and you get a souvenir, so everyone gets to participate.

Find another cache for 5 points and you get a second souvenir, so just about everyone gets a chance to "up their game" a bit.

Even the third souvenir only needs 20 points, so a maximum of 4 trad finds over the course of 3 weeks required, the majority of cachers should be able to manage that. 

The scoring then continues to escalate so those who are really into it, and have the opportunity can gain more/all souvenirs.

 

Unless you're suggesting that everyone should be entitled to get all 10 souvenirs, in which case it would have to be made so trivially easy that for most of the community there would be absolutely no effort required and there would be little point running any promotion and GS might as well just give out the souvenirs to everyone who has an account.

 

 

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We have a few of the souvenirs but wont get them all even though we've just had a Mega event over Easter and there are over 125 mystery (Geo Art) caches within an hours drive or less. We've only managed to solve and find 5 after the promotion announcement (and 13 before). We suck at puzzles. We did buy Cully Long's book How to Puzzle Cache from the Mega Geocaching stand so things may improve on that score. We didn't get all of the August souvenirs a while back either but the sky didn't fall in.

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5 hours ago, DragonsWest said:

Had no problems doing this challenge.  Had some solved/unfound puzzles, a few events and some caches with lots of favorites to chase down.  Took a couple days to complete.  That said, I live near one of North America's larges urban areas and there are caches popping up all the time.

These sort of things probably do not work well for geocachers who live in places like Frankfort, SD. I've heard griping from people who live in such remote areas ("Yeah, we'll find a cache or two, might have to drive forty miles to do it, but there's not an Earthcache or anything with like that in the county.")

Time to strap on that thinking cap and find a way to encourage caching related activities which work well, no matter where you are.

I had no problems either.  We had a Cache Machine right in the middle of the promo, with the caches on the way over and back plus those on the CM I got 485 point that weekend.  One quick trip out for a mystery I'd solved months ago and I was golden.  And that was driving over the mountains AWAY from Seattle... 

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9 hours ago, DragonsWest said:

Had no problems doing this challenge.  Had some solved/unfound puzzles, a few events and some caches with lots of favorites to chase down.  Took a couple days to complete.  That said, I live near one of North America's larges urban areas and there are caches popping up all the time.

These sort of things probably do not work well for geocachers who live in places like Frankfort, SD. I've heard griping from people who live in such remote areas ("Yeah, we'll find a cache or two, might have to drive forty miles to do it, but there's not an Earthcache or anything with like that in the county.")

Time to strap on that thinking cap and find a way to encourage caching related activities which work well, no matter where you are.

Here here on that--even in some pretty populated areas (ie my home in Cen. FL), it's been a challenge, and I've seen more than just myself resorting to using a lot of TBs to make up the difference for the caches we've already found/can't get to with the drive. I miss the Mary Hyde and GCHQ promos myself--at least those made it a fun challenge over several weeks, not something that felt like work in just 3 weeks!:blink:

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10 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

Unless you're suggesting that everyone should be entitled to get all 10 souvenirs, in which case it would have to be made so trivially easy that for most of the community there would be absolutely no effort required and there would be little point running any promotion and GS might as well just give out the souvenirs to everyone who has an account.

 

 

If only I could upvote this part of your post a hundred times!

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14 hours ago, Saved by God's grace said:

Here here on that--even in some pretty populated areas (ie my home in Cen. FL), it's been a challenge, and I've seen more than just myself resorting to using a lot of TBs to make up the difference for the caches we've already found/can't get to with the drive. I miss the Mary Hyde and GCHQ promos myself--at least those made it a fun challenge over several weeks, not something that felt like work in just 3 weeks!:blink:

True dat.  In the local lingo, Blast Radius is ascribed the perimeter distance on must drive (multiply by mountain factor driving where applicable) to find some caches.  I've cleared out most of what could be found withing at least ten miles.  To accomplish the full run of points I had to make two runs to where the caches be, about 200 miles total driving over the two days.  I didn't lament the time so much as I had an open schedule.

I've been to Central Florida (Geowoodstock and around Melbourne) and caches were plentiful, though some where not to be found (probably eaten by pythons or cacheraptors)  I came away from Florida with something like 125 finds, which I thought was pretty weak, considering the cache density.  Admittedly I did stop by the Space Coast Geo Store to jaw a bit, which probably cost me a couple dozen finds.

I recognize not everyone is going to get these things, let alone the sole cache necessary to score one souvenir.  I've been some places where the dormant equivalent of geocachers tossed in the towel after getting tired of hiding caches for the same finders and their caches are only found rarely by people visiting or passing through (lots of lonely caches out there.)  Reigniting that fire in dormant cachers is what I wonder about - not some idiot participation medal, such as some people on here think I mean.  We've met them, the people who tried the game out for a while, but now say, 'meh' (emphasis on the lowercase 'm')

I'm a member of a nonprofit geocaching organisation and we are working to increase education and engagement, not an easy thing, when you put your mind to it.  It's a great game and if there were some more ways to generate interest we could think of we'd be on them like cats on a crate of sardines.  We are working on it, though!  Never give up! :)

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Planetary Pursuit Rescue Mission has launched

by Janelle

Planetary Pursuit Rescue Mission has launched.

To give geocachers more time to complete their missions, Planetary Pursuit has been extended for an additional week. Please make sure to log all your finds before Monday, April 16, at noon UTC to earn your Friend League points and Planetary Pursuit souvenirs.  

Since launching Planetary Pursuit three weeks ago, tens of thousands of Geocaching Explorers have blasted into space to log new geocaches and conquer extraterrestrial geocaching adventures.

But Signal, we had a problem.

Due to the overwhelming popularity of Planetary Pursuit, Geocaching.com, the Geocaching® apps, and API partners experienced intermittent outages. We know many of you were counting on geocaching and logging your finds, especially during peak weekend times. We hope extending Planetary Pursuit for another week gives you the opportunity to achieve your Official Space Explorer badge.

Thank you for all the stellar feedbackgood and badregarding Planetary Pursuit and accompanying technical issues. We received thousands of comments, suggestions, and questions from enthusiastic geocachers all over our planet. We thank you and wish you well in completing your mission.

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Forgive me, I don't have time to read this entire thread, but I just want to say,

 

THANK YOU to the folks at geocaching.com. I think they hit a home run with this one, at least for me.

We did some cache runs that were JUST the high point caches. Wow. What a difference that made. We found some really amazing caches we had no idea were out there.

The best thing about it was that I went with someone new to caching, who plans on hiding some caches soon. So now that we've seen the best, those caches are going to be a lot better, I'm sure of it.

We had some really great caching days too. I think going out and hitting all the high favorite point caches is something I'm going to be doing a lot more of.

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20 minutes ago, Sol seaker said:

We did some cache runs that were JUST the high point caches. Wow. What a difference that made. We found some really amazing caches we had no idea were out there.

No need for promotions to do that. You can do that whole year long. On top of that, just doing those high(er) quality caches you'll get souvenirs (if interested) without doing any effort, you'll get them for doing what you always do ;)

 

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5 hours ago, on4bam said:
5 hours ago, Sol seaker said:

We did some cache runs that were JUST the high point caches. Wow. What a difference that made. We found some really amazing caches we had no idea were out there.

No need for promotions to do that. You can do that whole year long. On top of that, just doing those high(er) quality caches you'll get souvenirs (if interested) without doing any effort, you'll get them for doing what you always do ;)

Indeed! But it was thanks to the promotion that got them to do it in the first place, so if they continue to do in the future, that's a win.

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3 hours ago, Harry Dolphin said:

Well, I think that's the greatest number of finds on my mystery caches in that time period!  

Interesting, the only finds I've had on any of my mystery/unknown caches were on my challenge cache and they were by a group of three people in the area attending the Lake Macquarie Mega over Easter, with no mention of planets in their logs. I had a handful of finds on my traditionals and multis over the period, but again these appear more related to the Mega and Easter travellers than the promotion.

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On 4/9/2018 at 2:08 AM, Sol seaker said:

Forgive me, I don't have time to read this entire thread, but I just want to say,

 

THANK YOU to the folks at geocaching.com. I think they hit a home run with this one, at least for me.

We did some cache runs that were JUST the high point caches. Wow. What a difference that made. We found some really amazing caches we had no idea were out there.

The best thing about it was that I went with someone new to caching, who plans on hiding some caches soon. So now that we've seen the best, those caches are going to be a lot better, I'm sure of it.

We had some really great caching days too. I think going out and hitting all the high favorite point caches is something I'm going to be doing a lot more of.

I seriously do not mean any offense by asking you this.. you've been caching for 9 years, you're only discovering this now? Or were you being facetious?

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Can I suggest another option for future souvenir based contests like "Planetary Pursuit"?  My thoughts are to include an opportunity to get points for doing one or more maintenance when someone else had reported that your cache needs maintenance or the geocache had had 2 consecutive DNFs the reward would be limited to one cache per day and that no two caches could count within a mile of another cache used for the challenge.  A little motivation could do a lot to keep geocaching as much fun as possible for all users.

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7 minutes ago, Misha said:

Can I suggest another option for future souvenir based contests like "Planetary Pursuit"?  My thoughts are to include an opportunity to get points for doing one or more maintenance when someone else had reported that your cache needs maintenance or the geocache had had 2 consecutive DNFs the reward would be limited to one cache per day and that no two caches could count within a mile of another cache used for the challenge.  A little motivation could do a lot to keep geocaching as much fun as possible for all users.

Sorry, I vote no.

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Most COs do maintenance without any expectation of "reward".    Maybe I just don't get it, but I don't see how one needs to be "motivated" to simply maintain their caches (as agreed to).

If an unmaintained piece of carp gets a proper action log on it, that (to me) would keep geocaching fun for all users.  :)

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