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Prize for loooooongggg logs?


dealfarms1

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Greetings all,

 

Is there a "prize" or something for writing the most words when logging a find?  We have a player in our area that includes a long list of facts about Texas on every online log they sign, regardless if the facts have any connection to the cache except it is in Texas.  This weekend we logged a cache where the player had written a couple of paragraphs and then a sentence saying "ignore the rest of this log" which was followed by 7-8 paragraphs of gibberish.   Just curious if this is an aspect of the game that I've overlooked.

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5 minutes ago, dealfarms1 said:

Greetings all,

 

Is there a "prize" or something for writing the most words when logging a find?  We have a player in our area that includes a long list of facts about Texas on every online log they sign, regardless if the facts have any connection to the cache except it is in Texas.  This weekend we logged a cache where the player had written a couple of paragraphs and then a sentence saying "ignore the rest of this log" which was followed by 7-8 paragraphs of gibberish.   Just curious if this is an aspect of the game that I've overlooked.

I've gotten many many of these totally gibberish logs, and several have stated up front in the log that the purpose is to meet a min. word/log challenge. It is utterly ridiculous, in my opinion.

So yes, there is a "prize" on a third-party site.

You'll find other forum threads about this same subject.

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I've managed to maintain my "Diamond" badge for log length, at 112 words average per log, without having to resort to adding gibberish to annoy other readers.  Sometimes I write less, like when there is nothing remarkable about the cache except that it colors in a new county on my map or I found it in a parking lot to kill time while waiting for someone.  Those are balanced out by choosing awesome caches with lots of favorite points and D/T stars, where writing a log that is both lengthy and on-topic is easy.

 

Many areas have that one logger who adds the "paragraphs of gibberish."  The one thing they seem to have in common is the inclusion of an apology and explanation for the irrelevant content.  To me, that is just an invitation to laugh quietly at them.

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3 hours ago, The Leprechauns said:

I've managed to maintain my "Diamond" badge for log length, at 112 words average per log, without having to resort to adding gibberish to annoy other readers.  Sometimes I write less, like when there is nothing remarkable about the cache except that it colors in a new county on my map or I found it in a parking lot to kill time while waiting for someone.  Those are balanced out by choosing awesome caches with lots of favorite points and D/T stars, where writing a log that is both lengthy and on-topic is easy.

 

Many areas have that one logger who adds the "paragraphs of gibberish."  The one thing they seem to have in common is the inclusion of an apology and explanation for the irrelevant content.  To me, that is just an invitation to laugh quietly at them.

 

I find the paragraphs saying "hey, thanks but I prefer to find caches to writing logs" and then filling in the cache owner's name and date using a macro or something are even more boring. Especially when they fill the log with sets of emojis; and then their buddy who found the cache at the same time does the same thing. Ugh - find one log by them and you've found them all just about.

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1 hour ago, lee737 said:

Claiming a project-GC badge... IMO its sort of funny, but only a small step above straight-out armchair logging of caches to fraudulently claim a different badge....

 

Project-GC agrees:

 

https://project-gc.com/w/The_Author

 

The Author 

 

The original intent when implementing this Badge was obviously to make Geocachers write better/longer logs. Sadly some Geocachers instead chose to write long irrelevant logs, or even pasting texts which doesn't even have to do with Geocaching. Due to these reasons the possibility to loop this Badge was removed with the 4.x release.

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47 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

I have no clue what that means (loop this badge). Can someone explain?

It means you qualify for the badge an extra time. If you find 1 cache of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you complete "The Matrix Cacher" badge. If you find 2 caches of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you "loop" the badge once. If you find 3 caches of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you "loop" the badge again. And so on.

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6 minutes ago, niraD said:

It means you qualify for the badge an extra time. If you find 1 cache of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you complete "The Matrix Cacher" badge. If you find 2 caches of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you "loop" the badge once. If you find 3 caches of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you "loop" the badge again. And so on.

Thanks! Now it makes sense you can only earn it once. 

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54 minutes ago, Max and 99 said:

I have no clue what that means (loop this badge). Can someone explain?

Many of the badges can get a number attached showing how many times a diamond level has been reached. For example, it takes 60 Wherigo to earn a Diamond for WIGs. A small circle with a number two on the diamond badge would indicate it had been looped twice, i.e. at least 120 WIGs had been found. The wordiness award requires 100 words AVERAGE for a diamond award. Sure glad they eliminated the looping for it!

 

 

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2 hours ago, baer2006 said:

I don't understand why they didn't just remove the badge completely. It's obvious, that it's totally meaningless.

 

It is not meaningless, but people made it meaningless.

Once I asked a guy why he is doing it, and if he knows that he clearly cheats the way for the badge. He answered "I know, but there is a badge so I have to get it". What can you do..

Edited by sernikk
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2 hours ago, Max and 99 said:
2 hours ago, niraD said:

It means you qualify for the badge an extra time. If you find 1 cache of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you complete "The Matrix Cacher" badge. If you find 2 caches of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you "loop" the badge once. If you find 3 caches of every difficulty-terrain combination, then you "loop" the badge again. And so on.

Thanks! Now it makes sense you can only earn it once. 

One hundred average words per log is easily achievable for a conscientious logger like me who takes the time to write a story about why I sought the cache, as well as the experience I had at ground zero.  Of course, I always include a thank you to the cache owner.  Once you get to two hundred average words (the badge"s "loop" amount), it is awfully darn difficult to maintain without shenanigans - especially if you are finding park and grabs and power trails.  As a benchmark, this post (not counting the quote) has a length of exactly one hundred words.

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1 hour ago, The Leprechauns said:

One hundred average words per log is easily achievable for a conscientious logger like me who takes the time to write a story about why I sought the cache, as well as the experience I had at ground zero.  Of course, I always include a thank you to the cache owner.  Once you get to two hundred average words (the badge"s "loop" amount), it is awfully darn difficult to maintain without shenanigans - especially if you are finding park and grabs and power trails.  As a benchmark, this post (not counting the quote) has a length of exactly one hundred words.

 

I was surprised to see that I'm at that badge's top level, with an average 105 words per log, as those badges and belts are something I rarely look at and don't take much interest in. Just a curiosity, really. There are no power trails locally and most of the caches I do aren't even close to being P&Gs, so while there are some where's there's not much to say, a fair number I could just about write a novel about my experience in getting to GZ and back again. For the same reason, I also tend to post a lot of photos with my logs and I miss being able to do that with AL logs.

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11 hours ago, JustFindingOurWay said:

Many of the badges can get a number attached showing how many times a diamond level has been reached. For example, it takes 60 Wherigo to earn a Diamond for WIGs. A small circle with a number two on the diamond badge would indicate it had been looped twice, i.e. at least 120 WIGs had been found. The wordiness award requires 100 words AVERAGE for a diamond award. Sure glad they eliminated the looping for it!

 

I still don't understand it. How do you loop your AVERAGE? Do you loop it if the average is at least 200 words?

 

I also aksed one guy why he does that nonsense. He even said that he might think about changig his way of logging. Sadly, but not surprisingly, he still logs the same way with impolite and inappropriate logs.

 

 

 

 

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15 minutes ago, terratin said:

Some automatization there would be great: if your log is 70% or more the same than others on that day then only one counts fully

 

I'm not sure how that would work. On most of my caching days I only find one cache, but when there's more than one, often there's a special one I'm targeting and the others are just finds along the way. For example, on the 8th of September I did a long AL plus bonus that took most of the day but there were a couple of other caches near one of the AL's locations that I nabbed as well. These are my log lengths on those:

  • AL bonus - 333 words
  • Side cache 1 -  77 words
  • Side cache 2 - 63 words

Are you saying that only one of those should count towards my average, presumably the shortest one?

 

At the other extreme are those days of doing some of the geoart caches from a recent mega. Most of those are under 30 words unless I have a bit more of an adventure (or misadventure) getting to them to write about.

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41 minutes ago, terratin said:

Some automatization there would be great: if your log is 70% or more the same than others on that day then only one counts fully :antenna:
I think I'm at 72 or so. I even managed to go up 1 word on average this year for some reason. :laughing:

 

I believe people have owned up to dragging in random text from wikipedia articles to pad logs as well - I don't know if that's also automated or not.

 

If people need to pad logs out to make themselves feel better or something then there's nothing very much anyone else can do about it. Just ignore them.

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I just had a great idea that would promote better logs in a positive fashion. 

 

Log entries need... a “Like ?” button. Similar to Facebook, this forum, and other places. 
 

had some great logs on my caches today and I’d love to be able to “like” good log entries.  It would be a nice way to repay finders for taking the time to write a good log.  Anyone reading the log entry could hit the like button, not just the CO.
 

this would encourage better log entries in a meaningful way other than word length. 
 

then make log likes some type of statistic. Quantity or percentage, etc. 

 

Thanks.  

 

 

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10 minutes ago, HoochDog said:

I just had a great idea that would promote better logs in a positive fashion. 

 

Log entries need... a “Like ?” button. Similar to Facebook, this forum, and other places. 
 

had some great logs on my caches today and I’d love to be able to “like” good log entries.  It would be a nice way to repay finders for taking the time to write a good log.  Anyone reading the log entry could hit the like button, not just the CO.
 

this would encourage better log entries in a meaningful way other than word length. 
 

then make log likes some type of statistic. Quantity or percentage, etc. 

 

Thanks.  

 

 

Nooooooooo.

In case I wasn't clear, Nooooooooo.

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2 hours ago, CAVinoGal said:

It already exists on a trial basis in Canada and one other country, I believe.

image.png.0bca09a0662502335446ec101081cfb4.png

 

Shouldn't the Helpful logo be changed to bumping elbows now?

 

elbows.jpg.1e9ff1a817ffbbae0103b1d0c82ccd67.jpg

 

Somehow I can't see this having any impact on the verbose badge-seekers but it would likely fuel angst from those whose logs don't get "liked". I can imagine the nastygrams from disgruntled finders wanting to know what I didn't like about their logs. We've already had someone on the forums recently saying that not giving a cache an FP is downvoting it.

 

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3 minutes ago, funkymunkyzone said:

Pretty surprised to see I have an average of 91 words...  I guess I'm not *quite* as brief as I thought I was.  However, with >13000 finds, getting that extra 9 to go up to diamond level will be hard.  Can't say I'm tempted even in the slightest way, however, to start pasting in the contents of wikipedia into my logs!  *LAME*

This is why they do it - they realise after x-thousand finds of 'TFTC' that to bring up the average requires a huge number of words over a lot of logs..... Funny - I'm on 91 too.... :)

 

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12 hours ago, funkymunkyzone said:

Pretty surprised to see I have an average of 91 words...  I guess I'm not *quite* as brief as I thought I was.  However, with >13000 finds, getting that extra 9 to go up to diamond level will be hard.  Can't say I'm tempted even in the slightest way, however, to start pasting in the contents of wikipedia into my logs!  *LAME*

 

Pasting wikipedia, copying strings that are not even text, writing TFTC in 123 languages, is a big, big shame, when doing it only for stats.

 

But there are situations where having some text of your log the same for xyz caches and that's not weird tbh. Going on a powertrail with every cache being the same, you have no story to share about each individual cache, but about the whole series. The same goes when you are doing a longer trip and you want to share experience about it in your log, part of your log will always be the same, but it is still something to read, something that may be interesting for the owner or others.

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7 hours ago, sernikk said:

But there are situations where having some text of your log the same for xyz caches and that's not weird tbh.

 

Fair enough. But there are limits to this when it just gets annoying too - I tend to have a common sentence or two/three for sections of a day or the day, depending on what we're doing. Then a unique sentence or ten for each find (depending on the find).

Sometimes you see logs where someone on a trip writes out a full essay about the whole week or two, and that becomes the log for the 200 finds during that time, that's a definite irk....

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41 minutes ago, lee737 said:
8 hours ago, sernikk said:

But there are situations where having some text of your log the same for xyz caches and that's not weird tbh.

 

Fair enough. But there are limits to this when it just gets annoying too - I tend to have a common sentence or two/three for sections of a day or the day, depending on what we're doing. Then a unique sentence or ten for each find (depending on the find).

 

 

Yes, I do pretty much the same. There was a group kayak trip down the Hawkesbury a few years back, taking in four caches. Some of the others posted the same full story in each log but I broke it up, with a few words of introduction followed by an account of just the bit from the previous cache to that one. At the end of each one (except the last) I put something like "this tale continues in my log on GC12345".

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2 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Yes, I do pretty much the same. There was a group kayak trip down the Hawkesbury a few years back, taking in four caches. Some of the others posted the same full story in each log but I broke it up, with a few words of introduction followed by an account of just the bit from the previous cache to that one. At the end of each one (except the last) I put something like "this tale continues in my log on GC12345".

I have five lots of series caches. If a cacher finds more than one cache in a series (on the same day) I would prefer a copy paste plus unique log on, say, the first find, then only the unique log for the rest.

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My logs, with the sentence-or-two preamble are as much for me than for anything else - I like being able to look back at our old logs, sometimes I see a cache we've found and can't really recall much from the name/map, but my log will usually remind me what we were there for....

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On 11/2/2020 at 8:42 AM, dealfarms1 said:

Greetings all,

 

Is there a "prize" or something for writing the most words when logging a find?  We have a player in our area that includes a long list of facts about Texas on every online log they sign, regardless if the facts have any connection to the cache except it is in Texas.  This weekend we logged a cache where the player had written a couple of paragraphs and then a sentence saying "ignore the rest of this log" which was followed by 7-8 paragraphs of gibberish.   Just curious if this is an aspect of the game that I've overlooked.

 

Is it a cut and paste or each one an individual post?

 

Per mygeocachingprofile.com our posts are 240 characters or 45 words. 

 

It beats TFTH and the rest of the alphabet of acronyms.

 

But full disclosure I have been tired or the geocache was not overly memorable so I have used TFTH too. 

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22 minutes ago, brodiebunch said:

Is it a cut and paste or each one an individual post?

Project GC also has a stat for Log Similarity - the lower your % the better, or the more unique your logs are.  So these cut n paste or Thanks for the cache in multiple languages tacked on to each log is going to raise that similarity % number.  Ideally you would have a decent log length, and low similarity %.

 

I just looked at my stats (and I do try to write individual logs, even on a long caching day, and write about  each individual cache) - (just over 2000 finds for both of us, since 3/2017)

Log Length, words: Total words: 137,485, Average: 69, (Total characters: 702,617)
Longest: GC4FF33 256, Shortest: GC4ME00 3
Log similarity: 35% (Lower score equals more variance)

 

Compared to hubby's, who pays even less attention than I do to this stat:

Log Length, words: Total words: 43,039, Average: 21, (Total characters: 222,955)
Longest: GC4G270 600, Shortest: GC5EDH2 1
Log similarity: 63% (Lower score equals more variance)

 

Note: I don't really pay much attention to this stat, I log the way I log...I didn't even know this existed till a year or so ago.  At some point, I started adding Find #, timestamp, and who I was with at the end of each log.  It's interesting, hubby usually logs just a Thanks for the cache, and notes his find # and timestamp.  I write more of a story, and going back even 6 months, he can't recall specific caches and locations, his logs tell him nothing.  I can go back and usually picture the location, the hide, the day ... because of details I noted in my log.  But that's his "style", and he logs on the spot on his phone, almost necessitating a short and to the point log.  I typically log a draft with a couple of keywords, and flesh it out on the laptop at home.  If we cache together (95% of the time, we do) you can get a full picture by reading BOTH of our logs!

Edited by CAVinoGal
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16 hours ago, brodiebunch said:

 

Is it a cut and paste or each one an individual post?

 

Per mygeocachingprofile.com our posts are 240 characters or 45 words. 

 

It beats TFTH and the rest of the alphabet of acronyms.

 

But full disclosure I have been tired or the geocache was not overly memorable so I have used TFTH too. 

 

The person who is in our area usually writes at least a couple of sentences that are somewhat specific to the cache being logged and then C & P a long list of facts about Texas to the end of each post.  As a fellow Texan I understand the urge to brag about our great state, but I was having a hard time wrapping my head around why they would include the list on every log. 

 

I have logged my share of TFTC/TFTH logs especially on LPC or power trail caches, but I do try to always write at least a sentence or two that are relevant to the specific cache.

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