Covid Guidelines - Reviewer refusing to publish caches

[+Purplepeopleater]

Has Groundspeak issued policies regarding geocaching during Covid restrictions?  In particular are Reviewers permitted to refuse to publish caches because of lockdowns in regions, even though the restrictions permit leaving home for exercise.

Our local reviewer is refusing to publish geocaches at present even though the regulations permit exercise within a 10 km radius from home.  

Is he permitted to do this?

Edited July 9, 2021 by Purplepeopleater
Grammar

[+lee737]

I think they are. Last year, restrictions weren't as tough, and there was a blanket stoppage of cache publication across the country here until each state allowed non-essential travel. I think you'll find geocaching, although does exercise you, is probably classed more in the game category than straight exercise.....

Edited July 9, 2021 by lee737

[+thebruce0]

AFAIK, publishing in your local region is entirely up to the discretion of your local reviewers. Regional restrictions are all across the board around the world right now, so no blanket rule could apply.  Since being listed on the site can't be seen as HQ condoning people to break laws, there's no reason HQ would universally allow or disallow publishing. So it'd be up to the reviewers, who (likely) know their community very well, to decide what threshold would be reasonable to allow publishing. My region has been up and down, from a complete moratorium on new listings, to only CITO events (being outdoors and not gathering in one place where there'd be gathering limits), and now we're back to publishing all but events: Our reviewers decided that since events cannot strictly have attendance limitations, then events won't be published until our group gathering limits are lifted.  Their choice may not be the same as other reviewers' regions.

 

To be more direct - if your reviewers have decided not the publish during health restrictions, HQ won't tell them to allow new publishing.  Just be patient; keep placing caches (if you can justify it during health regulations) and eventually they'll get published  

 

(We recently had over 1000 listings published in one swoop between 12 and 12:30am one day, and another couple hundred by noon, once our reviewers allowed them again - it was a big day, heh)

 

Edited July 9, 2021 by thebruce0

[+CachedIronSkillet]

The reviewer may believe that the "outdoor exercise" provisions in your area do not allow travel of the type that would occur to do Geocaches.

 

Is there a need to have them published during a lockdown?

[+MartyBartfast]

4 hours ago, Purplepeopleater said:

Our local reviewer is refusing to publish geocaches at present even though the regulations permit exercise within a 10 km radius from home.  

As stated above Groundspeak have left the publishing decisions to the local reviewing teams, who are more in touch with regional restrictions. The UK reviewers were not publishing caches when we had similar restrictions in place.

 

If you really have a beef about it then there is a mechanism for appealing reviewer decisions to GCHQ, you might be better going that route to get an official answer, but I would bet a months beer supply that they will side with the reviewer(s).

 

 

[Keystone]

I looked at your pending cache submission, and I see that your Community Volunteer Reviewer explained that no new caches are being published in your area due to a recently announced lockdown.  The Reviewer Note included a link to a Facebook Group, where a more thorough explanation was provided.  I am quite certain that Geocaching HQ would stand behind the Reviewers' decision on how to handle this lockdown.  Here is the Facebook post, in case you did not follow the link:

 

[Keystone]

For the public announcement by Geocaching HQ regarding placing cache and event publication decisions in the hands of the local Community Volunteer Reviewers, please see this blog post.  The policy has worked very well over the past 16 months, given that public health guidance has varied so greatly around the world in light of changing conditions.  This week's lockdown in the Sydney area is a good example of this.

[+barefootjeff]

9 hours ago, lee737 said:

I think you'll find geocaching, although does exercise you, is probably classed more in the game category than straight exercise.....

 

It does say exercise or outdoor recreation and I think caching would fit under the latter even if it's a P&G:

 

Quote

Exercise and outdoor recreation

• Stay within your local government area or within 10km of your home.
• You can exercise with 1 other person who is not from your household.
• If there are more than 2 people in your household, you can go out together for exercise.
• If you are driving to outdoor exercise and recreation within your local government area or within 10km from your home, you can only share a private vehicle (your car) with other people from your household.

 

That said though, the 10km limit would likely impact the lure of new caches so I think the reviewers made the right call. I just wish the government had made their call a couple of weeks earlier.

[+lee737]

9 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

It does say exercise or outdoor recreation and I think caching would fit under the latter even if it's a P&G:

It does too.... so caching in your LGA/10km is ok. I think the reviewers think the prospect of FTFs might be too much temptation for some to bend the rules though....

 

[+thebruce0]

On 7/9/2021 at 5:53 PM, lee737 said:

I think the reviewers think the prospect of FTFs might be too much temptation for some to bend the rules though....

 

That was pretty much the primary reason our reviewers stopped publishing any listings, after having only denied events when this all started. Once outdoor gatherings of reasonable size (like 5-10) were allowed, the 'risk' of excessive gathering size was lesser. Also publishing so many (~1200 in a half day) made a much wider spread of options available anyway, so even less risk =P