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3 hours ago, Harry Dolphin said:

Found a cache in a cemetery today.  Gravesite for the cacher's late wife (and his in the future).  There is a hole drilled in the bottom of the monument, covered by a rock, with a bison tube inside.  Only a geocacher would drill a hole in the monument, to hide a cache!  48% favorites!  Got a favorite point from me!

I once found a cache that had been placed on a grave marker by family members to honor the deceased. The cemetery had an official policy for flowers, memorial items, holiday decorations, etc., and they placed the cache container as one of their memorial items. The cache listing described the history of the events that led to the deceased coming to America. It was a very nice tribute to the deceased and to others like her.

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On 7/16/2021 at 5:43 PM, cerberus1 said:

:laughing:

We've seen guard rail and lamp post skirt hides with numerous FPs. Most have seen FTF put a FP on them "just because".

 - A group we know FPs each other's cache because they're in their group.  :)

Groundspeak itself says FPs are " a simple way to track and share geocaches that you enjoyed the most."  That's all.

Exactly, that what GS says, and that implies that they are a recommendation.

 

And we all decide on why. A petling in a particularly nice spot is a perfectly good reason. FPs are sometimes given for reasons we may not agree to, but that's just the freedom we have. However, when I know that an FP is just "thanks for the FTF", I try to ignore it for evaluation purposes. I had one cache which had kind of a point. It got an FP for the FTF, none more. I scrapped it pretty quickly.

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On 7/16/2021 at 2:33 PM, niraD said:

Nonsense. Not giving a Favorite Point is not a downvote. It's just saying that the cache isn't in the top 10% Or for some premium members, the top 9%, or the top 8%, or whatever.

Of course it is a downvote! It is a "not in the 10% top" downvote. On a cache that clearly isn't of that quality, it is expected, and rather a missing upvote. For a 5% top cache, it is clearly a downvote.

 

You have 90% FPs on a particularly good cache. In comes the downvoters. 80%, or even 60%. Would that not be a downvote to you?

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8 minutes ago, Ragnemalm said:

Of course it is a downvote! It is a "not in the 10% top" downvote. On a cache that clearly isn't of that quality, it is expected, and rather a missing upvote. For a 5% top cache, it is clearly a downvote.

 

You have 90% FPs on a particularly good cache. In comes the downvoters. 80%, or even 60%. Would that not be a downvote to you?

 

So by your reasoning, we're all forced to downvote at least 90% of the caches we find, no matter how good they are. How do propose we not do that, apart from cancelling our premium membership so that our finds don't count in the FP percentage?

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5 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

So by your reasoning, we're all forced to downvote at least 90% of the caches we find, no matter how good they are. How do propose we not do that, apart from cancelling our premium membership so that our finds don't count in the FP percentage?

No, no, we upvote the 10% best and don't upvote the 90% that are quite that good... Downvoting is when we deliberately downvote obvious top caches.

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14 hours ago, Ragnemalm said:

No, no, we upvote the 10% best and don't upvote the 90% that are quite that good... Downvoting is when we deliberately downvote obvious top caches.

 

That's fine if the caches in your area are neatly divided into two groups, with the vast majority being innumerable trails of rusty mint tins enclosing soggy scraps of paper, and with less than ten percent a fine waterproof container with a good-sized logbook placed in a scenic spot. But that's not the case here, we have a full spectrum of caches ranging from the (thankfully rare) rusty mint tin through to mountain-top all-day hikes, fascinating multis, all manner of puzzles and plenty of novelty containers. Where do you draw the line between the "best", the "quite good" and the medicocre? The average cache (if there is such a thing) around here is like Samuel737's one in the Watagan Mountains or my one looking out over the forest to Mt Wondabyne that I mentioned earlier in this thread, which is why such caches rarely get FPs.

 

On top of that, there's no objective measure of a cache's FP-worthiness. Around where I live, most of the caches are in bushland, usually associated with some scenic attraction like a view, unusual rock formation or waterfall, with almost half the caches being T3 or higher. That's great for someone like me who thrives on caches like that, but for someone less mobile or with a young family, it's probably not so good and they'd likely prefer easy trails of urban 1.5/1.5 caches. But only 13% of the caches here are traditionals with a D/T rating of 1.5/1.5 or less, so this is probably a terrible region for someone like that as they'd clear out all the available caches in one or two weekends. There's an elderly couple here who've given one of my caches an FP because it was at a scenic spot and placed where they could easily reach it, but there's another cacher in his twenties who won't give such a cache an FP unless getting to it is an adrenaline-pumping climb. Those two are mutually exclusive, there's probably no cache anywhere that would get an FP from both no matter how good it is.

 

There's a cache I did fairly early in my caching career, which a group of us visited on a kayaking jaunt up the Hawkesbury River, and involved what was for me some pretty scary rock-climbing. That and our encounter with a death adder halfway up had me pondering the likely prospect of logging my find from a hospital bed or a morgue slab, so even though the others all gave it a "well-earned FP", it didn't get one from me, it was just too far out of my comfort zone. Likewise there's a very craftily-constructed micro in a suburban location that at one point was sitting close to 100% FPs (it's now dropped back to 64%) which didn't get one from me even though I got FTF, largely because of its location on a stormwater drain. Sorry, but such places really don't appeal that much to me, no matter how well constructed the cache.

 

It's the same with my hides. The one I consider my flagship cache is GC62WZJ, a 3/5 field puzzle mystery that has six cryptic virtual waypoints, two of them water-access (hence the T5 rating), spread over a 5km radius and highlighting some of the scenic locations in this area. The final is a themed container located at another scenic spot. Published in 2015, it came equal first in its category in the combined Central Coast/Hunter region Cache of the Year competition and for a couple of years was sitting on 100% FPs. It's now dropped back to 81%, and one of the early finders who didn't give it an FP mentioned in his log that, for him, it was all about filling a rare D/T combination on his grid. He wasn't interested in kayak paddles, scenic views or stories of 19th century bushrangers, his caching specialty was (and probably still is) his stats, and that's fine, caching appeals to a wide variety of interests and no single cache will delight everyone, let alone be in their top ten percent of favourite finds.

 

So not giving an FP isn't a downvote, no matter how good the cache is, because FPs are about each individual's experience and everyone has different favourite things.

Edited by barefootjeff
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13 hours ago, Ragnemalm said:

No, no, we upvote the 10% best and don't upvote the 90% that are quite that good... Downvoting is when we deliberately downvote obvious top caches.

If I didn't make it one of my Favorites, then it isn't obvious (to me) that it is a "top cache".

 

Therefore, I never downvote a cache.

 

And I suspect that precious few geocachers ever downvote a cache.

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On 7/19/2021 at 11:18 AM, Ragnemalm said:

No, no, we upvote the 10% best and don't upvote the 90% that are quite that good... Downvoting is when we deliberately downvote obvious top caches.

 

There is only voting, and not voting. There isn't upvoting, not upvoting, and downvoting. "Top caches" is not an objective bar that applies to everyone. One person's "top cache" (worthy of their upvote) may not be another person's. You can't look at the top 10% of FP receivers and objective say "these are the top caches".  They are the caches with the most FPs. But I know plenty of caches that would be a "top cache" in my books that don't have the top 10% of FPs. 

The status quo is "hasn't received a favourite point" (but may be given one), not "worthy of a favourite point" (but may not be given one).

There is no "downvote".

 

That's like saying in a race of 10 runners where only 1st place gets a prize, claiming all the other runners are "bad runners".  Sure there may be runners who should be another sport, but that 2nd place finisher right on the tail of 1st place isn't "bad" - they merely didn't receive the reward for being the top 10th percentile.

Now if there was a cutoff - you had to qualify, then there'd be an effective downvote. But there isn't in geocaching. (and it's not a race, nor a competition :P)

 

Geocaches only receive a thumbs up if someone thought it was worth giving one. That's all it means. That's all it can mean. No thumbs down. No downvote. You can INFER that not receiving a FP means it's "bad" (ie, not worthy of a "top cache")

 

Maybe "downvote" is just the wrong term to use since it implies something bad or negative, which is not the case.

 

Edited by thebruce0
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