Recently adopted a trail , should I archived and restart?

[+TheRolphsUk 4]

So I have recently adopted a trail which had been in place for a long time, it was left to die and hardly anyone visited anymore most likely because the caches were never maintained.

I have been there today (The caches are currently disabled by me) and I have removed all the caches all of which were either broken, or soaking wet logs. I have some fantastic ideas and thought maybe archiving the current trail and resetting my own (I have today got all new GPS coordinations for where I would hide mine) this would hopefully encouarge past visitors to come back again?

I know I won't get anything reviewed until the reviewers are back but that's good as it gives me time to get ready as I am making some very inventive custom caches. 

what would you do in this situation?

Thank you  

[+niraD 3177]

10 minutes ago, TheRolphsUk said:

So I have recently adopted a trail which had been in place for a long time, it was left to die and hardly anyone visited anymore most likely because the caches were never maintained.[...]

what would you do in this situation?

Why did you adopt the caches in the first place?

 

When I adopted a cache, there was something about the cache that I especially liked, that I wanted to keep going. I made changes to the cache (replacing a missing container with a very different container, updating the description, etc.), but I kept the original cache listing, and I kept the aspects of the original cache that I thought were important. But I wouldn't have adopted it, only to archive it and list a new cache at the same location.

[+Max and 99 2148]

22 minutes ago, TheRolphsUk said:

So I have recently adopted a trail which had been in place for a long time, it was left to die and hardly anyone visited anymore most likely because the caches were never maintained.

I have been there today (The caches are currently disabled by me) and I have removed all the caches all of which were either broken, or soaking wet logs. I have some fantastic ideas and thought maybe archiving the current trail and resetting my own (I have today got all new GPS coordinations for where I would hide mine) this would hopefully encouarge past visitors to come back again?

I know I won't get anything reviewed until the reviewers are back but that's good as it gives me time to get ready as I am making some very inventive custom caches. 

what would you do in this situation?

Thank you  

I don't get it. What was your purpose in adopting them? Were you just trying to guarantee a spot when you placed your own?

Edited November 10 by Max and 99

[+Max and 99 2148]

You say that he kindly allowed you to adopt them, but was there any understanding between you and the previous owner? Why would he adopt them to you if you were just going to get rid of them? Wouldn't he just archive them so that they're still under his account? 

 

Edited November 10 by Max and 99

[+cerberus1 3224]

35 minutes ago, TheRolphsUk said:

So I have recently adopted a trail which had been in place for a long time, it was left to die and hardly anyone visited anymore most likely because the caches were never maintained.

I have been there today (The caches are currently disabled by me) and I have removed all the caches all of which were either broken, or soaking wet logs. I have some fantastic ideas and thought maybe archiving the current trail and resetting my own (I have today got all new GPS coordinations for where I would hide mine) this would hopefully encouarge past visitors to come back again?

I know I won't get anything reviewed until the reviewers are back but that's good as it gives me time to get ready as I am making some very inventive custom caches. 

what would you do in this situation?

 

Here, caches that haven't been found in some time is simply because the locals did them all.  Now they await visitors.  

If I was going to adopt caches, I would have fixed/replaced what was needed, and changed the name of owner on the cache page.  

If it was really awesome, I'd mention thanks to the CO for letting me adopt it on the cache page.

  -  But I agree with the others.  You seem to have "adopted" caches just to can them, and start anew on your "now saved for you" trail ? 

[Keystone 3364]

I moved this thread to the proper forum, as it doesn't relate to Getting Started in geocaching.

[+lee737 335]

1 hour ago, TheRolphsUk said:

it was left to die and hardly anyone visited anymore most likely because the caches were never maintained.

It seems as though the previous CO was finished with their trail, so I'd feel free to archive and reboot.... if this is something I was considering I would probably have mentioned this to the CO when adopting though, in case they were against it for some reason.... 'I might just clean it out, archive and rehide.... what do you think?'

[+IceColdUK 991]

As far as I can see the only person that would have any reason to be disappointed is the previous CO.  It probably would have been better to have discussed this with them before you adopted the caches, but it’s not too late.

 

Present it positively, without knocking their caches obviously, and see whether they have any objections...

[+MNTA 194]

I'm opposed to adopting unless the community as a whole specifically values the cache. Most don't fall into this category but some do. 

 

Once a cache runs its course best to archive and start a new. Gives all the local cachers another chance at finding a nearby cache and hopefully some new enjoyment in returning to the area. 

[+dprovan 1508]

I agree with the other people wondering why you adopted to begin with, but ignoring that, it sounds like you'll replace the series with something better, so I don't think anyone can complain.

 

Well...there's one person that can complain, and that's the original CO who approved you adopting it. If they're OK with you replacing the series, then have at. If the original CO objects, then we need to have another conversation. I'm hoping the original CO approves because I don't think that other conversation will be very interesting.

[+Max and 99 2148]

37 minutes ago, dprovan said:

I'm hoping the original CO approves because I don't think that other conversation will be very interesting.

Sure would be interesting! 😬

[+MNTA 194]

The former CO gave up all rights and ownership of the trail. That is the risk they take. You are the owner do as you like and what you think is right for you and your community. Had the caches been originally archived the world would have continued spinning around sun, and if you archive them life will go on as well. Though you did imply you'd take care of them the decision is yours. 

 

For the other folks here so if someone adopts a cache are they indebted to supporting that cache forever? 

[+arisoft 812]

14 hours ago, TheRolphsUk said:

what would you do in this situation?

 

I would place my unpublished caches in the area which is going to be archived by someone else. Just remember that anyone can reserve this space and you, as a new owner of the archived cache, are not privileged to have this place for you new caches if there is competition.

[Unit473L 94]

I don't have any issues with the old caches (which were not being maintained and falling into disrepair) being cleared out and new caches being placed.

 

Just as placing a cache out in public runs the risk of someone coming along and breaking it or taking it, so does adopting a cache out. Personally, if I approached someone to take over their cache, I'd be honest and upfront about my intentions. But if my situation changed or I suddenly had a new plan which I thought was better, I wouldn't feel any pressing need to go running back to the old CO to beg their permission.

 

If it was a much-loved cache which had something unique and wonderful about it (funky custom-built container, really clever hide, elaborate gadget cache, etc) with lots of regular visitors then I'd expect a bit of community outrage. But if it's just a series of lock-n-locks needing refurbishing anyway ... may as well create some new caches that locals can get out and discover rather than spending a lot of time and effort propping up old caches that locals found years earlier.

 

As an addendum - if there is a group of caches and you plan on re-setting all new ones, I'd spread out when they get published rather than releasing them all at once. Give a few people a shot at getting those FTF's rather than one power grabber charging out and picking up the whole lot.

[+niraD 3177]

5 hours ago, MNTA said:

For the other folks here so if someone adopts a cache are they indebted to supporting that cache forever? 

Of course not. I archived the cache I adopted when the garden it was in was sold to developers. Caches don't live forever, and adopting a cache doesn't change that.

 

But I wouldn't have adopted it and then immediately archived it.

[+cerberus1 3224]

7 hours ago, MNTA said:

The former CO gave up all rights and ownership of the trail. That is the risk they take. 

 - snip -

For the other folks here so if someone adopts a cache are they indebted to supporting that cache forever? 

 

Yep.  Why many we know say they'll archive their caches, rather than find they later become "lesser" than what they presented.  

Unfortunately the OP hasn't stated whether they talked about this with the original owner beforehand. 

 - They were all still in play,  even with the OP saying they were "left to die"...

 

Of course not, but if the area is special enough, a simple watch on those caches still in play would have done the same.   

[+coachstahly 682]

8 hours ago, MNTA said:

For the other folks here so if someone adopts a cache are they indebted to supporting that cache forever?

 

That depends upons the agreement between the adoptee and the original CO.  If the original CO says, "Please keep the cache going.", then yes.  If the CO says "Do what you'd like.", then no.  I have adopted a cache from the second CO to "own" it and was told that there was a slim possibility that the original CO might want it back.  That mandates, at least to me, that I'm supporting that cache until such time as the first CO wants it back or the area is developed and the cache isn't viable anymore.

 

12 hours ago, MNTA said:

I'm opposed to adopting unless the community as a whole specifically values the cache. Most don't fall into this category but some do. 

 

If you're against maintaining a cache that wasn't yours to begin with because it apparently has no value to the community, then why would you support someone placing a new cache and maintaining it when the entire community won't value it either.  Why can't just some of the community value the cache and find it a viable cache to keep going?

 

22 hours ago, TheRolphsUk said:

I have some fantastic ideas and thought maybe archiving the current trail and resetting my own (I have today got all new GPS coordinations for where I would hide mine) this would hopefully encouarge past visitors to come back again?

 

That's well and good but I, like many of the earlier posters, wonder what the purpose of adopting these caches is if you have no intention of keeping them going and refreshing/maintaining them.  Did you and the CO have any sort of talk about the original CO's desires regarding these caches?

[+Max and 99 2148]

23 hours ago, TheRolphsUk said:

what would you do in this situation?

Since you asked us for our opinions, I hope you come back to read them and respond. 

[+dprovan 1508]

9 hours ago, MNTA said:

The former CO gave up all rights and ownership of the trail.

I grant that the previous CO has no rights here. That doesn't mean the current CO shouldn't seek and consider the original CO's opinion. The original CO agreed to adopt over the caches to the new CO. Did the original CO think there were provisions to that agreement, whether stated or implicit? In the end, the caches are the new CO's to do as they please with, but it strikes me as rude to do something with them that will disappoint the CO who trusted the new CO to take care of them. Besides, the new CO thinks she has a much better idea. How hard could it be to get that the original CO's approval?

 

10 hours ago, Max and 99 said:

11 hours ago, dprovan said:

I'm hoping the original CO approves because I don't think that other conversation will be very interesting.

Sure would be interesting! 😬

Meh. If the original CO doesn't like the idea -- or, worse, the original CO is no longer in the game so this will be all about how other people feel about it -- then I expect the conversation to just fall into the same old arguments about whether power trails or old caches are good or bad. I don't think that would be interesting, particularly in this case where, according to the OP, the series has been forgotten and abandoned, but the arguments here in favor of it will be imagining a popular, well maintained series.

[+dennistubaplayer 11]

I personally think this kind of cheating- I wouldn't do this myself. Let's say your friend got a cool new corvette and out of jelousy you falsly report a non-existant expired inspection sticker to get it towed away. C'mon, man!

Edited November 11 by dennistubaplayer

[+lee737 335]

30 minutes ago, dennistubaplayer said:

I personally think this kind of cheating- I wouldn't do this myself. Let's say your friend got a cool new corvette and out of jelousy you falsly report a non-existant expired inspection sticker to get it towed away. C'mon, man!

I might have missed something, but I think this is a pretty bad analogy.... cheating?? C'mon man!

[+colleda 836]

On 11/11/2020 at 5:51 AM, TheRolphsUk said:

So I have recently adopted a trail which had been in place for a long time, it was left to die and hardly anyone visited anymore most likely because the caches were never maintained.

I have been there today (The caches are currently disabled by me) and I have removed all the caches all of which were either broken, or soaking wet logs. I have some fantastic ideas and thought maybe archiving the current trail and resetting my own (I have today got all new GPS coordinations for where I would hide mine) this would hopefully encouarge past visitors to come back again?

I know I won't get anything reviewed until the reviewers are back but that's good as it gives me time to get ready as I am making some very inventive custom caches. 

what would you do in this situation?

Thank you  

I'll say go for it. Sounds like you can turn these unloved caches into something that can be enjoyed anew by many.

 

[+MNTA 194]

10 hours ago, coachstahly said:

 

If you're against maintaining a cache that wasn't yours to begin with because it apparently has no value to the community, then why would you support someone placing a new cache and maintaining it when the entire community won't value it either.  Why can't just some of the community value the cache and find it a viable cache to keep going?

 

 

 

 

You are missing the point I feel. Placing new caches gives the opportunity for new and old finders to go out and make a find. If caches never go away and new ones aren't placed then you fall into a trap of this game dying out unless you want to travel further and further from your home to enjoy this game.  

 

Now the entire community might not value a LPC or GRC but some folks like any caches they can find.

 

Also from the OP it sounds like the trail was not maintained well at all. A new cache has a possibility of being maintained and not falling into disrepair. If the CO decides to not maintain their cache it will eventually be archived. 

[+cerberus1 3224]

6 minutes ago, MNTA said:

You are missing the point I feel. Placing new caches gives the opportunity for new and old finders to go out and make a find.

If caches never go away and new ones aren't placed then you fall into a trap of this game dying out unless you want to travel further and further from your home to enjoy this game.  

 

You know, I think I did this twice...     

 - Going to the same, "recycled" areas, some to the exact same spot (rinse/repeat...), isn't a fun location game (to me).  

Even the logs from "numbers" folks kinda say "thanks for the smiley, but nothing to see here".

I prefer to leave my area because of all the "this is just for a smiley" hides nearby.    

[+barefootjeff 3709]

4 hours ago, MNTA said:

You are missing the point I feel. Placing new caches gives the opportunity for new and old finders to go out and make a find. If caches never go away and new ones aren't placed then you fall into a trap of this game dying out unless you want to travel further and further from your home to enjoy this game.  

 

The older caches will still be new experiences for newcomers to the game, assuming they remain in good repair. Longer term players have two options: they can moderate their find rate to be less than or equal to the rate at which new caches appear in their area, or, as you say, they'll have to start travelling further afield. I fall into the second category as my find rate is averaging about 150 caches a year but in the past 12 months there have only been 33 new caches published in my region (excluding my own and excluding ALs). So a lot of my caching activity now is doing routine visits to my own hides and creating new ones (I've hidden 6 in the last 12 months), with occasional 50km-plus drives north or south to find some interesting-looking caches. Just occasionally there's a cry of oh wow, a new local cache has been published! accompanied by a mad dash out the door.

 

In the almost 8 years I've been caching, I've archived 8 of my hides and none of those vacated spots have had anyone else hide a new one close by. All those archivals were due to problems with the location, though, either repeated muggling or natural calamaties like floods, falling trees or a rockfall, so maybe that's not a fair assessment. But most of the new caches here are in urban parks so there's very little competition for the attractive higher terrain locations. I think I'm about the only local here hiding T3+ caches now, although there've been 3 in the last year that were hidden in this region by outsiders. There's one other fairly prolific hider down this end of the Central Coast but he only does urban caches. Most of the newbies are only interesting in finding urban ones so maybe that's a good thing.

Edited November 12 by barefootjeff

[+cerberus1 3224]

7 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

The older caches will still be new experiences for newcomers to the game, assuming they remain in good repair.

Longer term players have two options: they can moderate their find rate to be less than or equal to the rate at which new caches appear in their area, or, as you say, they'll have to start travelling further afield. 

 

Yep, and longtime players often have very-old caches set as a vacation destination.          

"Pioneer" and "Legacy" caches (2000- 2004 ?) come to mind as caches even the site wishes to keep if possible.

 

 

 

[+coachstahly 682]

11 hours ago, MNTA said:

Placing new caches gives the opportunity for new and old finders to go out and make a find.

 

I don't disagree with this but it's my understanding that adopted caches are adopted in order to keep them going and allow a new CO of the adopted cache the opportunity to own and maintain caches that the original CO put out and can no longer find the time to care for as needed.  If the goal was new caches, decline the adoption, place a cache along the trail and wait for the original CO to archive them (or the local reviewer if it gets to that point).

 

11 hours ago, MNTA said:

Now the entire community might not value a LPC or GRC but some folks like any caches they can find.

 

So it's OK for only some of the community to value and enjoy this new cache but it's necessary for the entirety of the community to value and enjoy an adopted cache in order to keep it going? It seems like the +1 (or if you prefer, the opportunity to find a new cache) is the main factor behind this thought.

 

11 hours ago, MNTA said:

Also from the OP it sounds like the trail was not maintained well at all. A new cache has a possibility of being maintained and not falling into disrepair. 

 

And the original CO, knowing (for whatever reason) that they weren't able to maintain them as needed, opted to put them up for adoption, hoping for someone else to maintain them.  This newly adopted cache now has a strong probability of being maintained and not falling into disrepair.

 

11 hours ago, MNTA said:

If the CO decides to not maintain their cache it will eventually be archived. 

 

This is correct but the adoption process is what allows caches like this to be maintained properly, in order to avoid archival.  If the goal is to put out new caches along the trail, then the caches should go through the process in place and potential COs should wait until they're archived before putting out new ones.

 

All of this discussion is irrelevant and hypothetical because we don't know what type of understanding exists between the OP and the CO that gave up the caches for adoption.  It appears that the OP and the original CO may not have had that discussion, at least based on what I'm reading in the original post. Knowing that dynamic will either make new caches a realistic choice or no choice at all, at least as I see it.

Edited November 12 by coachstahly
Clarification

[+JL_HSTRE 538]

When adopting a series of caches you may find some are no longer viable - not just the container but the location.

 

If I planned to replace the series I would ask the CO to archive and promise to remove the old caches.

 

If I adopted the series I might replace some of it, but I would keep most of it unchanged. Especially any caches where the container didn't need to be replaced. 

[+CachedIronSkillet 39]

I would not archive the oldest cache on the trail.  That one I would maintain.  As for the others, I'd keep any that were worthy of a favorite... but they'd really need to be worthy of one - not just a thank-you favorite.

 

Then I'd make sure any cache I played was significantly better than what was in the area before.  This could mean an extremely interesting container, or even a gadget.

 

Finally, I'd only place regulars / ammo cans.  Downsized caches suck.  Everyone loves an ammo can sized container - and if it isn't ammo can size to shoebox size it isn't a regular.  Don't label a pencil box as regular.

 

[+niraD 3177]

27 minutes ago, CachedIronSkillet said:

Everyone loves an ammo can sized container

Meh... They usually protect their contents well, but so do a lot of smaller containers. But ammo cans and similar size containers usually aren't hidden in very interesting ways. The clever hides that I enjoy are usually smaller (often much smaller) containers.

[+cerberus1 3224]

11 minutes ago, niraD said:

Meh... They usually protect their contents well, but so do a lot of smaller containers. But ammo cans and similar size containers usually aren't hidden in very interesting ways. The clever hides that I enjoy are usually smaller (often much smaller) containers.

 

Kinda agree.  Sounds nice, but since we don't know what this area's like, we can't really say what fits.    

I prefer ammo cans to others, but appreciate that with any container on longer hikes I like so much, it's probably not going to be one of those "clever hides" too.

 

[+barefootjeff 3709]

4 hours ago, CachedIronSkillet said:

Finally, I'd only place regulars / ammo cans.  Downsized caches suck.  Everyone loves an ammo can sized container - and if it isn't ammo can size to shoebox size it isn't a regular.  Don't label a pencil box as regular.

 

I size my container based on what will fit in the hiding place. For example, this one in honeycombing inside a small cave is a 1 litre metal cash box:

 

 

An ammo can simply wouldn't fit in that space. On another one inside a cave, the honeycombing is much smaller so I had to use one of these 100ml decon containers:

I don't really care what size a container is as long as it does its job of keeping the logbook dry and the logbook is big enough to cope with the number of finders the cache gets.

Edited November 12 by barefootjeff

[+K13 997]

The prior CO didn't care enough to maintain the series, so why should you care to keep those caches going? Get your new caches ready and archive the old ones.

[+Lynx Humble 400]

36 minutes ago, K13 said:

The prior CO didn't care enough to maintain the series, so why should you care to keep those caches going? Get your new caches ready and archive the old ones.

If the previous CO cared enough for someone to adopt them I would found strange that CO would be ok for that someone to archive them the following week instead of doing it himself.

 

But we will never know the OP never came back to this topic...

[+dprovan 1508]

12 hours ago, K13 said:

The prior CO didn't care enough to maintain the series, so why should you care to keep those caches going? Get your new caches ready and archive the old ones.

If the CO cared enough about the series to adopt it to someone else, do you think he might have hoped -- or even gotten promises -- that the new owner would maintain the caches?