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Challenge cache ideas that seem good but don't get past the reviewer


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1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

 

I'm curious, then, because there's a mystery cache with Challenge in the title and a Project-GC challenge checker requiring finds on five caches that have been unfound for 365+ days. It was published today but it doesn't have the Challenge Cache attribute (or any attributes at all for that matter).

 

So is it a challenge cache or just a mystery with an unenforcable ALR?

 

That's unfortunate, since I accurately stated the guidance provided to Reviewers by Geocaching HQ.  Please understand that there is a lot of subjectivity in the challenge cache guidelines.  There is always an opportunity to be clearer in the guidance given to cache hiders.  The challenge cache document in the Help Center is updated several times each year to provide specific examples.  Perhaps a future update might address lonely cache challenges as another example of a challenge design that is dependent on the actions of others, and may promote competition.

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6 minutes ago, Keystone said:

 

That's unfortunate, since I accurately stated the guidance provided to Reviewers by Geocaching HQ.  Please understand that there is a lot of subjectivity in the challenge cache guidelines.  There is always an opportunity to be clearer in the guidance given to cache hiders.  The challenge cache document in the Help Center is updated several times each year to provide specific examples.  Perhaps a future update might address lonely cache challenges as another example of a challenge design that is dependent on the actions of others, and may promote competition.

 

What bothers me more is that there are still challenge caches being published without the challenge cache attribute, which kind of defeats its purpose. In Australia it appears there have been four since the attribute became mandatory, three published in mid September and this latest one today.

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5 hours ago, MNTA said:

My vote is for any challenge that requires manual checking and actual work to figure out if you qualify. Even if a checker exists or not.

 

 

 

I remember some challenges that required manual checking, because they were published before the rule change. Some challenges are easy to check, but some of them are as disgusting as it gets. I'm pretty happy that you need to have a checker now.

Edited by sernikk
typo
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7 hours ago, Keystone said:

 

That's unfortunate, since I accurately stated the guidance provided to Reviewers by Geocaching HQ.  Please understand that there is a lot of subjectivity in the challenge cache guidelines.  There is always an opportunity to be clearer in the guidance given to cache hiders.  The challenge cache document in the Help Center is updated several times each year to provide specific examples.  Perhaps a future update might address lonely cache challenges as another example of a challenge design that is dependent on the actions of others, and may promote competition.

Yeah if Groundspeak ban lonely cache challenge it should be clear in the guidelines. When I tried to publish one last year I got denied even if there are dozens of them published post-memorendum.

 

Too bad they are banned there are so many lonely cache in my province. 1000+ of them not found in over 4 yrs.

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I frequently visiting the Project-GC Checker request forum, just to see what what people are trying to create. For Lonely Caches, there has been a shift in the definition. The traditional definition of "The gap between my find and the previous find" gets denied. People have redefined lonely as some arbitrary amount of found logs a caches gets in a year. There have been a few other variations too, but not enough for me to offhand remember what the requests were. 

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20 minutes ago, igator210 said:

I frequently visiting the Project-GC Checker request forum, just to see what what people are trying to create. For Lonely Caches, there has been a shift in the definition. The traditional definition of "The gap between my find and the previous find" gets denied. People have redefined lonely as some arbitrary amount of found logs a caches gets in a year. There have been a few other variations too, but not enough for me to offhand remember what the requests were. 

 

I recently saw this but also saw it denied by the Washington State Reviewer (Barking Frogz) for the same reason that Keystone mentioned above: your qualification is dependent on the aggregate number of finds and can change over time.

 

For instance you find a cache on 01 JAN 20 that has less than 1 find per year on average ( 8 finds since it was placed in 2012) and you now qualify for a Challenge that requires a loneliness score of "no more than 1 find on average per year." You're ecstatic and plan to go find the challenge cache next weekend. Then on 03 January a group of 5 cachers come through and log that cache. You no longer qualify because the average rate just increased from 1/year to 1.6/year. You no longer qualify AND this means that your past qualifications may also actively change. AKA you may log the cache and qualify on Monday, but on Tuesday you no longer qualify. That'd be a nightmare for reviewers/HQ to deal with.

That being said I'm not quite sure how I see finding lonely caches to be a competition in and of itself. The above scenario is consistently dependent on other cachers and qualifications are always in flux until the cache is archived. However, with a lonely cache it's at a discrete moment in time: i.e. either the cache is lonely when you find it or it's not, the actions of any other cachers after you ink the log in no way affect your qualification. Are we saying its a competition to FIND lonely caches? If so I think that would easy to work around - you can always say that the challenge is to find a cache which has not been found in x amount of days since the last find on the day you found it (i.e. if two groups of people go to the same lonely cache on the same day then they can all claim it as lonely) because it was lonely ON the day that you found it. 
 

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That's correct.  For this reason, "Lonely Cache Challenges" still are not being published.  Even if there is no outrigh "competition," qualifying is dependent on the action (or inaction) of other geocachers.

 

To your point Keystone, I realize I'm being slightly pedantic here, but every challenge is based on the action or inaction of other cachers.

 

  1. If I qualify for a challenge saying "find 10 D5/T5 caches" and I qualify for said cache, my qualification is dependent on those 10 COs to not change their D/T rating - which does happen from time to time as the nature of the hide location changes.
  2. If I'm trying to qualify for a challenge that is "find 10 LARGE containers" I'm depending on a CO to not update their cache when a large inevitably gets muggled and they replace it with a regular or a small. In order to preserve statistics and prevent challenge cache qualifications from being dependent on other cachers, should we encourage COs to not conduct required owner maintenance (i.e. update their listing)?
  3. Or (as in another example used here) if I'm trying to find a challenge cache that requires someone to find a cache north of the Artic Circle and south of the Antarctic Circle, I'm dependent on enough other cachers having also completed that same task for it to even be published in the first place. 

To butcher a lovely saying by someone much smarter than I am: No cacher is an island. 

 

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Challenge criteria must be positive and require that a geocaching goal be achieved.


Overall I understand GS had issues with challenge pre-moratorium, but to issue guidance saying that challenge caches can't be published if qualification is dependent on the action (or inaction) of another cacher is a bit extreme. Lonely Cache Challenges are particularly well suited to the guideline updates post-moratorium that I've quoted above.

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2 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

Too bad they are banned there are so many lonely cache in my province. 1000+ of them not found in over 4 yrs.

I'm still sorry GS decided to go this way, so I also think it's too bad they're banned. But given that GS did go this way and the overall philosophy they've adopted and expressed, the lonely cache is definitely ruled out. The problem is that although 1000+ lonely caches is a lot, it's still a limited resource. Publish a challenge requiring 100 lonely cache finds, and 10 people in your area can go out and qualify, but everyone after that is out of luck. I'm guessing that's not a real problem in your area in practice, but even assuming it is, *I* don't have a problem with it, and, in fact, I think that "risk" is well worth the advantage of encouraging those 1000+ caches to be visited. But I also understand why GS forbids it even as I disagree with their position.

 

By the way, as a practical matter, what I've noticed is that many people -- including me -- who start pursuing lonely caches because of a lonely cache challenge end up discovering that lonely caches are particularly delicious finds, so we keep looking for them -- and "using them up" -- long after we've met the requirement.

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2 hours ago, dprovan said:

The problem is that although 1000+ lonely caches is a lot, it's still a limited resource. Publish a challenge requiring 100 lonely cache finds, and 10 people in your area can go out and qualify, but everyone after that is out of luck

 

No, they just have to be patient and wait for other caches to pass the lonliness threshold. At the moment, six of my caches haven't been found for over a year and it was much the same a year ago except it was a different six caches.

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1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

 

No, they just have to be patient and wait for other caches to pass the lonliness threshold. At the moment, six of my caches haven't been found for over a year and it was much the same a year ago except it was a different six caches.

 

Exactly this - I don't think I'd call a lonely cache a finite resource... it's a renewable resource. 

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18 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I'm curious, then, because there's a mystery cache with Challenge in the title and a Project-GC challenge checker requiring finds on five caches that have been unfound for 365+ days. It was published today but it doesn't have the Challenge Cache attribute (or any attributes at all for that matter).

 

As mentioned in the updates, the attribute isn't automatically added, and thus the attribute isn't the 'defining property' of a challenge cache, only an indicator. It's up to cache owners to add it (and/or regional reviewers to recommend or choose to enforce it).  It may be the latter is intended to be the way of things - in that all challenge caches should be required to have the attribute, but I don't believe that's in writing. And we all know reviewers are dogs, they can make mistakes, and cache owners can edit post-publish as well. So we as cachers can't trust that all challenge caches will always have the attribute. (just like tree climbs, or river wading, or front porch, or ,.......)

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6 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

 

As mentioned in the updates, the attribute isn't automatically added, and thus the attribute isn't the 'defining property' of a challenge cache, only an indicator. It's up to cache owners to add it (and/or regional reviewers to recommend or choose to enforce it).  It may be the latter is intended to be the way of things - in that all challenge caches should be required to have the attribute, but I don't believe that's in writing. And we all know reviewers are dogs, they can make mistakes, and cache owners can edit post-publish as well. So we as cachers can't trust that all challenge caches will always have the attribute. (just like tree climbs, or river wading, or front porch, or ,.......)

 

The Help Centre was amended to make the attribute mandatory for challenge caches pretty much as soon as it was introduced.

 

image.png.031c25753488fe9d96952c64b5982944.png

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12 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

No, they just have to be patient and wait for other caches to pass the lonliness threshold. At the moment, six of my caches haven't been found for over a year and it was much the same a year ago except it was a different six caches.

As with a lot of things, GS's thinking here is static: right at this instant, there are a fixed number of lonely caches, so people seeking to satisfy the requirement will be competing for them. From that point of view, the loser loses, and that's not allowed. It doesn't matter if the loser will be able to find a lonely cache next year.

 

I'm not supporting that idea, I'm just explaining it. As I've often said, I think the general idea of forbidding any kind of challenge is unustified, so I'm not convinced by any specific justification.

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13 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

No, they just have to be patient and wait for other caches to pass the lonliness threshold.

Perhaps part of GS's thinking is that this would then lead to people NOT finding some caches, and one of the criteria for challenges was that they shouldn't discourage people going out.

 

E.G. last week I went out and among my finds were 3 lonely caches (one was 2 years) and 1 which was 5 days short of a year. If there was a lonely cache challenge then hypothetically I might have not searched for that one intending to go for it this week, then someone else might beat me to it so I might not bother going back at all; if there were others taking a similar approach that cache could end up losing a handful of finders who would otherwise have searched for it while in the area.

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10 hours ago, MartyBartfast said:

E.G. last week I went out and among my finds were 3 lonely caches (one was 2 years) and 1 which was 5 days short of a year. If there was a lonely cache challenge then hypothetically I might have not searched for that one intending to go for it this week, then someone else might beat me to it so I might not bother going back at all; if there were others taking a similar approach that cache could end up losing a handful of finders who would otherwise have searched for it while in the area.

I understand your example. I think it does reflect GS's thinking, and I don't mean to criticize it. But it's a great example of why I think GS's stand on forbidding particular challenge types is silly. If...might...might...might...if others...could end up... By the time I get to the end, Bad Result seems so unlikely to begin with, and the impact is so trivial anyway, that I could care less even if Bad Result did happen.

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12 hours ago, dprovan said:

As with a lot of things, GS's thinking here is static: right at this instant, there are a fixed number of lonely caches, so people seeking to satisfy the requirement will be competing for them. From that point of view, the loser loses, and that's not allowed. It doesn't matter if the loser will be able to find a lonely cache next year.

 

 

I wonder if cachers in some areas might be able to make a stronger argument for this type of cache.

Within 50 miles of my home there are 288 caches that haven't been found for over 2 years.  By the end of the year, 24 more will qualify.  

If the challenge is to find, say, 5 caches that have not been logged in over 24 months,  then the pool is replenished almost as quickly as it is depleted.  And that would be for cachers with NO caches that currently qualify.

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19 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

The Help Centre was amended to make the attribute mandatory for challenge caches pretty much as soon as it was introduced.

 

image.png.031c25753488fe9d96952c64b5982944.png

 

Yep, but they're not automatically added, which means if there's a challenge cache published without the attribute, either (as mentioned)

* the cache owner and reviewer missed that it wasn't applied

* the cache owner removed it post-publish

But yeah, to adjust my wording a bit, it should be the defining property of a challenge cache, because it's required, but not automated. Thus assuming it IS the defining property means you might miss some - like this one that doesn't have the attribute.  It's less reliable than looking for a cache type; it's more reliable than looking for say "Parking nearby" attribute caches; but probably as reliable as searching for "Wireless receiver required" attribute (likewise not automated, but still required) :)

 

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On 11/7/2020 at 1:11 PM, egroeg said:

I wonder if cachers in some areas might be able to make a stronger argument for this type of cache.

I'd claim that all cachers in all areas could make a strong argument for lonely cache challenges. But that doesn't matter. GS's position is absolute: it might cause trouble for some people somewhere, so no one anywhere is allowed to do it.

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47 minutes ago, Corp Of Discovery said:

Not a challenge idea per se- I wanted to incorporate a simple field puzzle on a challenge cache and it got nixed. Thought that was odd...

 

Not odd, because the cache must have visible coordinates in the cache description. Listed or visible final waypoint. You may add a combination lock to the cache container and use a field puzzle to find the right key.

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15 hours ago, dprovan said:

I'd claim that all cachers in all areas could make a strong argument for lonely cache challenges. But that doesn't matter. GS's position is absolute: it might cause trouble for some people somewhere, so no one anywhere is allowed to do it.

 

Is that worse than, "it doesn't cause trouble for some, therefore it doesn't matter if it causes trouble for anyone else"?

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On 11/9/2020 at 1:19 PM, arisoft said:

 

Not odd, because the cache must have visible coordinates in the cache description. Listed or visible final waypoint. You may add a combination lock to the cache container and use a field puzzle to find the right key.

Odd in that most mystery caches are puzzles, not at the posted coordinates and that the mystery cache type pretty much started out that way. Odd in that it's the only subset of mystery caches you are not able to have at different coords as those on the cache page. Just another reason why challenges should be their own type I guess...

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On 11/9/2020 at 11:20 AM, NYPaddleCacher said:
On 11/8/2020 at 8:18 PM, dprovan said:

I'd claim that all cachers in all areas could make a strong argument for lonely cache challenges. But that doesn't matter. GS's position is absolute: it might cause trouble for some people somewhere, so no one anywhere is allowed to do it.

Is that worse than, "it doesn't cause trouble for some, therefore it doesn't matter if it causes trouble for anyone else"?

You've hit the nail on the head: how much trouble is too much trouble. Since I've never had any trouble with challenge caches myself nor seen any indication of trouble other than here in the forums, they caused me no trouble at all. How much trouble that someone somewhere else is reportedly having is enough trouble to justify taking away some kinds of challenges that many people were enjoying? And how does GS show that there really is that much trouble and nothing other than elimination of the challenge type can be done about it?

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1 hour ago, Corp Of Discovery said:

Odd in that most mystery caches are puzzles, not at the posted coordinates and that the mystery cache type pretty much started out that way. Odd in that it's the only subset of mystery caches you are not able to have at different coords as those on the cache page. Just another reason why challenges should be their own type I guess...

I agree with what you're saying, but just to try and end the back-and-forth: arisoft is just pointing out that this has been a rule for challenge caches for a few years now. It's not odd in general, it's just odd because you didn't know about the rule. There are justifications for the rule that make me consider it not odd in any universal sense even though I don't agree with it, but that's another topic.

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On 11/11/2020 at 1:27 PM, dprovan said:

You've hit the nail on the head: how much trouble is too much trouble. Since I've never had any trouble with challenge caches myself nor seen any indication of trouble other than here in the forums, they caused me no trouble at all. How much trouble that someone somewhere else is reportedly having is enough trouble to justify taking away some kinds of challenges that many people were enjoying? And how does GS show that there really is that much trouble and nothing other than elimination of the challenge type can be done about it?

 

So you actually *do* believe "if it's not a problem for me, it's not a problem that should be addressed".  Suppose instead of geocaching we were talking about food, and specifically how the very poor go hungry and under nourished.   Perhaps, that isn't something that you have ever experienced first hand, but would be it right for a rich person to suggest that nothing should be done about hungry and under nourished because they've always had enough money for food?

 

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3 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

So you actually *do* believe "if it's not a problem for me, it's not a problem that should be addressed".

No. What I believe is if the solution is a problem for other people, there has to be a justification for which problem is solved and which people have to deal with a problem. It's entirely immaterial which side *I* happen to be on.

 

No idea what socialism has to do with this conversation.

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14 hours ago, dprovan said:

No. What I believe is if the solution is a problem for other people, there has to be a justification for which problem is solved and which people have to deal with a problem. It's entirely immaterial which side *I* happen to be on.

 

No idea what socialism has to do with this conversation.

 

It was an analogy.    Hunger and malnutrition isn't a problem for someone that has enough money to adequately feed their family.  That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to help those that are hungry and malnutrition get the food they need.    She we just tell them to just deal with their problem?   So you don't have a problem with Challenge caches.    Some do.   

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4 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

It was an analogy.    Hunger and malnutrition isn't a problem for someone that has enough money to adequately feed their family.  That doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to help those that are hungry and malnutrition get the food they need.    She we just tell them to just deal with their problem?   So you don't have a problem with Challenge caches.    Some do.   

Sorry, I don't see it. Who in the context of challenges is, allegorically speaking, hungry and malnourished?

 

I mean, if I actually saw a socialist take that applied here, obviously I'd argue against it since socialist arguments are inherently illogical, but I don't see how it applies even allegorically.

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On 11/6/2020 at 12:46 AM, Keystone said:

The challenge cache document in the Help Center is updated several times each year to provide specific examples.  Perhaps a future update might address lonely cache challenges as another example of a challenge design that is dependent on the actions of others, and may promote competition.

 

I noticed today that the Help Center document on challenge caches has, indeed, been updated this past week:

 

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1 hour ago, Keystone said:

I noticed today that the Help Center document on challenge caches has, indeed, been updated this past week:

 

That's a bit sad, as lonely caches are only a competition if they're a scarce resource. Within 100km of my home (a reasonable distance to travel to find qualifying caches) there are 6721 active caches and 374 of those (about 5.6%) haven't been found in over a year. I doubt the number of cachers here who'd be interested in such a challenge would make much of a dent in that supply, especially as new ones are added to the pool each day.

Edited by barefootjeff
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2 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

That's a bit sad, as lonely caches are only a competition if they're a scarce resource. Within 100km of my home (a reasonable distance to travel to find qualifying caches) there are 6721 active caches and 374 of those (about 5.6%) haven't been found in over a year. I doubt the number of cachers here who'd be interested in such a challenge would make much of a dent in that supply, especially as new ones are added to the pool each day.

Yeah I agree it's a shame. I guess it was too complicated to implement...

 

But yeah I don't know why Groundspeak called that a competition to find a cache that no one went for a long time. There are no race unlike FTF.

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5 hours ago, Lynx Humble said:

But yeah I don't know why Groundspeak called that a competition to find a cache that no one went for a long time. There are no race unlike FTF.

It's exactly the same situation as an FTF. If I find it today, then you can't be FTF when you find it tomorrow. If I find it today, then it won't be a lonely cache when you find it tomorrow.

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8 hours ago, niraD said:

It's exactly the same situation as an FTF. If I find it today, then you can't be FTF when you find it tomorrow. If I find it today, then it won't be a lonely cache when you find it tomorrow.

I still don't think it's a competition when they're thousands of lonely cache available in my area versus a dozen of FTF

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20 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

That's a bit sad, as lonely caches are only a competition if they're a scarce resource. Within 100km of my home (a reasonable distance to travel to find qualifying caches) there are 6721 active caches and 374 of those (about 5.6%) haven't been found in over a year.

 

I think the point is, "lonely" is more a category definition - lonely by how long isn't defined. For your area, lonely for a year may not be lonely. But if someone then makes a lonely cache challenge there for a 5 year gap (more rare), then it becomes a "competition" by the definition again. So by not defining it as "1 year lonely" (or 6 months or 10 years), they're just saying the concept of lonely/unfound lonely caches is itself 'competitive' - success or failure reliant on other geocachers' activities.

Edited by thebruce0
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1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

 

I think the point is, "lonely" is more a category definition - lonely by how long isn't defined. For your area, lonely for a year may not be lonely. But if someone then makes a lonely cache challenge there for a 5 year gap (more rare), then it becomes a "competition" by the definition again. So by not defining it as "1 year lonely" (or 6 months or 10 years), they're just saying the concept of lonely/unfound lonely caches is itself 'competitive' - success or failure reliant on other geocachers' activities.

 

So, if we don't define "lonely" or don't even mention the word "lonely" do you think there would be a better chance?

Define the challenge as "Find 5 caches where the total months since the previous log is 50 or more".  With judicious selection of caches, a cache that hasn't been found for 1 or 2 months might still be used to qualify.  1 or 2 months is hardly "lonely".

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1 minute ago, egroeg said:

Define the challenge as "Find 5 caches where the total months since the previous log is 50 or more"

Nope, that's what lonely is - defined by an arbitrary quantity of time periods since a different geocacher's find log. Doesn't matter how many, or whether you literally say "lonely". It's the concept that's not allowed.

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1 hour ago, egroeg said:

So, if we don't define "lonely" or don't even mention the word "lonely" do you think there would be a better chance?

Define the challenge as "Find 5 caches where the total months since the previous log is 50 or more".

So, if we don't define "FTF" or don't even mention the term "FTF" do you think there would be a better chance?

Define the challenge as "Find 5 caches where the number of previous finds since publication is 0".

 

Nope.

 

If I found a cache yesterday, and therefore you cannot use your find today for the challenge, then it is competition (as Groundspeak is using the term) and the challenge will not be allowed.

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2 hours ago, thebruce0 said:

 

I think the point is, "lonely" is more a category definition - lonely by how long isn't defined. For your area, lonely for a year may not be lonely. But if someone then makes a lonely cache challenge there for a 5 year gap (more rare), then it becomes a "competition" by the definition again. So by not defining it as "1 year lonely" (or 6 months or 10 years), they're just saying the concept of lonely/unfound lonely caches is itself 'competitive' - success or failure reliant on other geocachers' activities.

 

With all new challenges, the CO already has to convince the reviewer that there's an adequate amount of qualifying caches:

image.png.82219a883055462df6eba99dc9b6e72c.png

so the same rule could be used to ensure that, for whatever the challenge requirement is, the pool of lonely caches in the area is big enough to prevent it turning into a competition. The only difference here is that the pool of qualifying caches is constantly changing so maybe that's considered problematic.

Edited by barefootjeff
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34 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

With all new challenges, the CO already has to convince the reviewer that there's an adequate amount of qualifying caches:

image.png.82219a883055462df6eba99dc9b6e72c.png

so the same rule could be used to ensure that, for whatever the challenge requirement is, the pool of lonely caches in the area is big enough to prevent it turning into a competition. The only difference here is that the pool of qualifying caches is constantly changing so maybe that's considered problematic.

 

Not really. Quantity of qualifying caches where it doesn't change based on geocachers' find logs is different than.. well, that. 

 

If you're required to find 5/5 caches, the owner needs to demonstrate there are sufficient to reasonable qualify - and that amount won't change based on who logs them found and when.

Likewise, it doesn't matter if there are hundreds of "lonely" caches nearby given some arbitrary time requirement, their qualifier status is based on other geocachers' activity, so the challenge is disallowed. What if a group of cachers went out to target all the lonely caches in a weekend? Suddenly the pool may drop to a handful for another person aiming to qualify for the challenge.

 

So it's not about the amount of time, and it's not about the amount of qualifying caches - it's simply that the pool of qualifying caches can change based on the find activity of other geocachers; thus, "competition" (the word HQ chose to describe).

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On 11/14/2020 at 9:41 PM, Keystone said:

I noticed today that the Help Center document on challenge caches has, indeed, been updated this past week:


 

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Competition rather than achievement; examples, challenge based on "First to Finds" or lonely caches are competitions.


”Competition rather than achievement. Example: challenges based on "First to Finds" or lonely caches are competitions.”


Grammar aside, I think it would be better to define what you mean by competition rather than just provide two examples and make people infer it. Also please consider explaining what a ”lonely cache” is as that term is probably not at all established in non-English communities.

 

On the original topic of the thread, I thought territory was an awesome idea for a challenge and I’m upset that a) it wasn’t accepted and b) the ”no checker” rule for optional challenges makes it impossible for those as well. 

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Another way to look at the concept of "competition" is to say "challenges cannot be dependent on the actions (or inactions) of other geocachers."

 

Recall that one reason for the current, rather restrictive, challenge cache guidelines is the high volume of appeals generated by the subject.  HQ does not like spending time on playing referee for issues like "he wasn't really the FTF, we signed first" or "the challenge cache owner won't allow our find on the lonely cache because someone else found it an hour before we did."

 

So, the concept of "competition" appears in the chart that gives challenge cache guidance.  No attempt is made at providing a comprehensive definition, in order to keep an already long table from getting even longer.  The cited challenge types, which now includes "lonely cache challenges" are merely illustrative examples.

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I tried to get a challenge cache published where you had to have found 90 plus counties in Australia but it got knocked back 6 times so I scrapped the idea in the end. Not sure why it was not allowed as GC7NT8H and GC702W4 are both within 5km of my house and both include the same type of challenge. Dont get me wrong I think the reviewers do an amazing often thankless job but I didnt understand why I could not get it published.

 

 

 

 

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24 minutes ago, DARKSIDEDAN said:

90 plus counties in Australia but it got knocked back 6 times so I scrapped the idea in the end. Not sure why it was not allowed

 

I'd be curious as to what the reviewer told  you about, "why it was not allowed". "Knocked back 6 times", means that there was a fair amount of back and forth.

If there are 2 similar within 5km of your house, then that's reason enough. But I'm guessing that's not it.

 

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2 hours ago, Isonzo Karst said:

 

I'd be curious as to what the reviewer told  you about, "why it was not allowed". "Knocked back 6 times", means that there was a fair amount of back and forth.

If there are 2 similar within 5km of your house, then that's reason enough. But I'm guessing that's not it.

 

Well GC702W4 requires 95 counties. Too similar in my opinion.

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