Should caches be easy for the CO to reach?

[+barefootjeff]

In last week's Cache Hider Checklist blog post and again in this week's How to pick a good geocache location one, they've made the point that hides should be easy for the CO to reach:

 

 

 

A bit sad really, because many of the caches I've enjoyed the most have been in places that haven't been easy for me or the CO to reach. If I look down my list of favourites, a lot of them have been extended hikes through rugged terrain or required a kayak paddle, and have gotten an FP from me principally because of that. The same container placed at the parking waypoint would have been just another mundane P&G.

 

Okay, I guess if the goal is to get "many Favorite points" then the best way is to use a novelty container or camo placed close to parking in a densely populated area, preferrably somewhere that's also a tourist hot-spot. Strange, though, that many of the caches featured in the Blog's Cache of the Week, like the recent Arctic Circle Trail, are ones that would be anything but easy for the CO to reach.

[+baer2006]

I assume this is meant to say, that you should not, say, ask a rock-climbing friend to put your cache in the middle of a cliff face, because then you would have to rely on someone else for all maintenance. Or avoid placing a cache using equipment, which you got temporarily, but don't own (e.g. a kayak from a friend).

Other than that, I can't imagine why I cannot access any location for maintenance just as "easily" as when I hid the cache in the first place (aging, both of the environment and myself, ignored for now ). Of course, a T4+ location is by definition not as easy to reach as a T1, and I don't think that GS wants to discourage high-T hides.

[+Max and 99]

I have issues with this blog post for several reasons.

32 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

they've made the point that hides should be easy for the CO to reach:

Yes, considering you're supposed to check on it every 2 weeks it does need to be fairly easy! 😬 

Just kidding! 

[+Lostboy1966]

58 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

many of the caches I've enjoyed the most have been in places that haven't been easy for me or the CO to reach.

Going with the 'everyone is free to play their own way' mantra, I agree. I never put anything out longer than a seven stage multi many years ago. My knees don't let me do that anymore, but even back then I would not have considered the stages as easy to maintain. It was an afternoon long commitment to check on them. And my area is not fortunate enough to have wide open spaces for hides that make the T/D difficulty too high in the first place.

 

1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

if the goal is to get "many Favorite points" then the best way is to use a novelty container

Novelty containers are the reason I play. It's been that way since I signed up, more or less. I just like building them as a hobby, but FPs are nice, not gonna lie. My hides are still placed in what I think are very scenic areas within 10 miles or so of my home coordinates. I try to make them kid-friendly and not too hard to find, and think I'm fortunate to be in an area that allows this, though open space is starting to get scarce.

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, baer2006 said:

I don't think that GS wants to discourage high-T hides.

 

Hmm, everything I've seen so far in this Year of the Hide seems to be doing just that, even if not intentionally, with all their emphasis on creating popular hides raking in heaps of FPs, COs doing frequent maintenance runs and clearing the game board of less popular caches. It does make me wonder where it's all leading.

[+MNTA]

1 hour ago, barefootjeff said:

 

Hmm, everything I've seen so far in this Year of the Hide seems to be doing just that, even if not intentionally, with all their emphasis on creating popular hides raking in heaps of FPs, COs doing frequent maintenance runs and clearing the game board of less popular caches. It does make me wonder where it's all leading.

 

My opinion, easy quick hides for families in local parks. Any CO not active the caches get archived and replaced with newer easy caches to allow folks to not have to drive/walk far.

[+fizzymagic]

IMO, Jeff, Geocaching's blog posts aimed at the level of kindergarten students are unlikely to make geocaching better, but maybe that's just me.  Taking them at face value is not going to make you happy, so do like I do and ignore them.

[+barefootjeff]

19 hours ago, fizzymagic said:

IMO, Jeff, Geocaching's blog posts aimed at the level of kindergarten students are unlikely to make geocaching better, but maybe that's just me.  Taking them at face value is not going to make you happy, so do like I do and ignore them.

 

While that's true enough, those blog posts are the only communication we get from HQ nowadays about where their thinking is heading. They've already hobbled image-based puzzles because of their legal team's fears about web security, to the point where they're now even putting up warning messages on links to images hosted on geocaching.com (which kind of scuttled my most recent multi a week after it was published). I think I'll wait until the Year of the Hide is over before I contemplate any more elaborate or higher terrain hides, since my idea of what constitutes a good hide seems to be mostly at odds with theirs.

Edited February 24, 2022 by barefootjeff

[+niraD]

3 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

I think I'll wait until the Year of the Hide is over before I contemplate any more elaborate or higher terrain hides, since my idea of what constitutes a good hide seems to be mostly at odds with theirs.

This forum really needs a "Sad" response.

[+GeoElmo6000]

15 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

While that's true enough, those blog posts are the only communication we get from HQ nowadays about where their thinking is heading. They've already hobbled image-based puzzles because of their legal team's fears about web security, to the point where they're now even putting up warning messages on links to images hosted on geocaching.com (which kind of scuttled my most recent multi a week after it was published). I think I'll wait until the Year of the Hide is over before I contemplate any more elaborate or higher terrain hides, since my idea of what constitutes a good hide seems to be mostly at odds with theirs.

 

I think you should continue to hide those travel brochure worthy caches and share those amazing pics with us.  Don't let GCHQ's communication stop you, they're focused on newer cachers.  Play the game your way!  

[+barefootjeff]

5 hours ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

 

I think you should continue to hide those travel brochure worthy caches and share those amazing pics with us.  Don't let GCHQ's communication stop you, they're focused on newer cachers.  Play the game your way!  

 

Thanks, but I'm still a bit rattled by what happened with my new multi last month. After two finds immediately following publication, HQ slapped their warning pop-up on my embedded link to an image hosted on geocaching.com (that site's obviously a big security risk) and it's been dead in the water ever since. I have no interest in putting out quick-fire smiley trails of regularly-refreshed guard rail mint tins so I'll just wait until the dust has settled on the Year of the Hide and see what's still possible after that.

[+MNTA]

I'm thinking you are reading too much into the pop-up. They do it for any external link the pictures are hosted on amazon. If you click on the challenge checkers on project-gc the same popup also applies. 

 

Maybe they have a reason who knows it is nothing personal. Maybe just lazy programming or a CYA from the layers.

 

[+barefootjeff]

20 minutes ago, MNTA said:

I'm thinking you are reading too much into the pop-up. They do it for any external link the pictures are hosted on amazon.

 

It's not what I'm reading into the pop-up, it's what other people are reading into it that's of concern. A brand new cache, two finders who apparently enjoyed it the day after publication, then a few days later the pop-up appeared and no-one's been near it in the five weeks since. Of course I don't know for sure if it's the pop-up that's turning people off, it might just be a crappy cache, but had I known beforehand they were going to do that I would have designed it differently. Also the URL I put into my link is https://img.geocaching.com/cache/525b4663-f218-4f62-98ff-b046eab7418f.jpg and that's what appears at the bottom of my browser when the pop-up appears. I have no control over HQ's redirecting such links to amazonaws.com and there's no way I'd be able to use that fact to do anything underhanded either, so as far as I'm concerned it's just as much a geocaching.com URL as the image on the cache page it's linked from, which is also hosted on amazonaws.com. If they want to be consistent, they should put the warning pop-up on all cache pages that have images in them, whether those images have embedded links or not, since those pages are drawing in content from an external site.

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 2/24/2022 at 5:54 PM, barefootjeff said:

After two finds immediately following publication, HQ slapped their warning pop-up on my embedded link to an image hosted on geocaching.com (that site's obviously a big security risk) and it's been dead in the water ever since. I have no interest in putting out quick-fire smiley trails of regularly-refreshed guard rail mint tins so I'll just wait until the dust has settled on the Year of the Hide and see what's still possible after that.

 

A difficult to access cache and a cache down the street can both have embedded links.

[+barefootjeff]

7 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

 

A difficult to access cache and a cache down the street can both have embedded links.

 

Sorry I didn't mean to derail the thread, I only mentioned the embedded links thing as an example of why I couldn't just follow fizzymagic's advice to ignore what HQ are doing to discourage more elaborate caches in favour of a regular turnover of easy-to-make easy-to-reach quick-fire-smiley ones, since it's already having an impact.

 

But this isn't about my caches, they're pretty much irrelevant, it's about the bigger picture. There's already a trend away from the longer hiking caches towards those that are just a quick easy-to-reach drive-by. Maybe most cachers these days see this as a good thing, but to me, a caching landscape totally dominated by such caches wouldn't be very appealing, even if they get refreshed every couple of years. Historically, my region had over 30% of its caches T3 or higher, but in the last three years only 23 of the 90 new hides were T3+ and almost half of those were mine. If I exclude those, the percentage of T3+ caches by other hiders drops to just 17%. Do these higher terrain caches really need further discouragement?

[+JL_HSTRE]

14 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

Do these higher terrain caches really need further discouragement?

 

There are two issues here:

 

1. High terrain and other rural hides

2. Elaborate hides

 

A three stage multi that requires a five hour round trip hike on marked trails is not what I consider elaborate.

 

If you add tools or calculations at each stage that's elaborate. Now your seekers need to be people who not only like to hike, but also those who don't mind the extra work. Same problem with puzzle caches - many geocachers don't want something that feels like homework. 

 

I want Groundspeak to encourage non-urban caching because I believe taking people to greenspace is what geocaching should primarily be about.