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Lillme

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I received the usual - your cache has a new log email. It had a very detailed report :-

 

Log:

Headed to the High Desert with Team DNF to explore the CCC power trail and a few other local caches. It was a beautiful spring day. Caches are in good shape, roads and coords are good. We replaced a few that were likely gone with the wind. Flaglady and I had loads of laughs, just like the old days when she lived here. Thanks to mpark65 for coordinating our adventure. Thanks Lillme for adding lots of smileys [:D] to my day with your series. I appreciate your hard work in setting this up.

 

He even mention my username in the log.

 

When I checked the cache page ... there was no log which was kind of puzzling, so I did a bit of digging.

 

I am in the UK, the logger was in California. On that very same day, he logged nearly 1000 finds, almost all in California.

 

He has 79,000 plus 'finds', sometimes more than 2000 in a day and in nearly every country in the world.

 

I reported the log to HQ but they are seemingly not interested. So, I messaged the logger. He replied - it was a mistake, now deleted. A very detailed log for a 'mistake''

 

He has been a member since 2005 but is quite clearly an armchair logger. Why do HQ not kick these people out?

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56 minutes ago, Lillme said:

I reported the log to HQ but they are seemingly not interested. So, I messaged the logger. He replied - it was a mistake, now deleted. A very detailed log for a 'mistake''

"Mistaken" log has been deleted.  Case closed, at least as far as HQ is concerned.  As far as the detailed log, every log on the CCC series (in California) that was logged is the same - with a code to pull the cache owners name and add it to the log (easy to do with a template in GSAK or other programs).  Somehow one of your caches got pulled into the mix for that days logs - you caught the error, the cacher corrected it.  It happens.

Edited by CAVinoGal
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23 minutes ago, CAVinoGal said:

"Mistaken" log has been deleted.  Case closed, at least as far as HQ is concerned.  As far as the detailed log, every log on the CCC series (in California) that was logged is the same - with a code to pull the cache owners name and add it to the log (easy to do with a template in GSAK or other programs).  Somehow one of your caches got pulled into the mix for that days logs - you caught the error, the cacher corrected it.  It happens.

Interesting ... I wish I could log that many caches in one day! Quite unbelievable - literally.

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I can't stand team copy & paste logs on my caches.  If they found the cache it's their right to do a boring copy & paste log, but those logs are just dumb.

 

"Signed as Team XYZ, one of x number of caches, thanks to all the cache owners to make this game fun."  :blink:

 

Everyone plays for their own reason, but I find less than 100 each year and I can look back at probably 90% of the caches of the 1300 caches I've found and remember the experience of finding them.  I log enough of a story for each cache that if I don't remember right away, I can remember by reading what I wrote on the online log.

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7 hours ago, Lillme said:

He has been a member since 2005 but is quite clearly an armchair logger.

I think not, at least not in the usual sense. The team that this cacher belonged to that day consisted of like a dozen people, traveling in several cars. What they likely did was to stop with only one car at each cache, having divided them beforehand. This may be questionable, and certainly pointless, but it's not armchair logging. And not against the rules, I think. At least it is very common that people form temporary teams, for instance during events, and that they sign each log only once with the team name.

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Pointless thought experiment: if someone with a stupid amount of excess money hired a bunch of people to go running around putting stamps / signatures in caches and log them under the one account, would it be possible for one account to "find" all the caches in the country? That would be the logical extreme of team finding? Assuming an even spread of 1,000 team members per state (as a raw average, some states are bigger or smaller or have higher or lower cache density), being paid $500 per week and it took a month for each team member to log all the caches in their area then it'd only cost a hundred million dollars and employ fifty thousand people to log all caches in the USA - and only for four weeks.

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1 hour ago, Darwin473 said:

Pointless thought experiment: if someone with a stupid amount of excess money hired a bunch of people to go running around putting stamps / signatures in caches and log them under the one account, would it be possible for one account to "find" all the caches in the country? That would be the logical extreme of team finding? Assuming an even spread of 1,000 team members per state (as a raw average, some states are bigger or smaller or have higher or lower cache density), being paid $500 per week and it took a month for each team member to log all the caches in their area then it'd only cost a hundred million dollars and employ fifty thousand people to log all caches in the USA - and only for four weeks.

 

I don't think you'd have to pay them to do this.

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9 hours ago, ChriBli said:

What they likely did was to stop with only one car at each cache, having divided them beforehand. This may be questionable, and certainly pointless, but it's not armchair logging. And not against the rules, I think.

 

Rules...

 

Quote

You can log caches online as "Found" after you visited the coordinates and signed the logbook.

 

There are some cutting off the corners among players. Visiting the coordinates is one of them and signing the logbook is another. This rule is generally reduced to new form: "You can log caches online as "Found" after your (group) nickname is in the logbook."

 

 

Edited by arisoft
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7 hours ago, Darwin473 said:

Pointless thought experiment: if someone with a stupid amount of excess money hired a bunch of people to go running around putting stamps / signatures in caches and log them under the one account, would it be possible for one account to "find" all the caches in the country?

Suggest this to Elon Musk.

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18 hours ago, Lillme said:

Interesting ... I wish I could log that many caches in one day! Quite unbelievable - literally.

 

Park & grab powertrails, especially with divide & conquer or leapfrogging, make ridiculous numbers possible.

 

It's been a decade since the Ventura Kids and the original ET Highway really got the floodgates flowing. 

 

14 hours ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

Everyone plays for their own reason, but I find less than 100 each year and I can look back at probably 90% of the caches of the 1300 caches I've found and remember the experience of finding them.  I log enough of a story for each cache that if I don't remember right away, I can remember by reading what I wrote on the online log.

 

My friend I started geocaching with would write 1-2 sentence logs because he could never think of much to say. That's how he explained it to me.

 

Writing is a skill most people neither have naturally nor develop through experience and practice. They don't know how to communicate their experiences in writing. I did journaling for a decade before geocaching and it helped a lot.

 

There are lots of people who skip Earthcaches, puzzles, and the like because they "feel like homework." I expect most of those people also think log writing feels like homework. It certainly requires time and effort. Finding 10-20 caches in a full day, spread over several parks and other locations, can take an hour or more to write good logs.

 

So if you got rid of power trails and cut the number of other traditional caches in half there would still be a lot of cut-n-paste logs (especially since GSAK exists).

 

I have a good memory, but started carrying a small spiral notepad with me while geocaching. It helps me log in the correct order, note any maintenance issues, and mark down anything notable for my log later - what I saw, what I thought about.

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21 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

I have a good memory, but started carrying a small spiral notepad with me while geocaching. It helps me log in the correct order, note any maintenance issues, and mark down anything notable for my log later - what I saw, what I thought about.

+1.... I've always used the notepad, initially I needed it for navigation when the kids were younger, now my 12 year old can reliably navigate us across towns deftly switching between GPSr and iPhone (not so when he was 5!), now I just use it to jog down notes..... I always try and leave something unique in every log.....

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On 5/1/2022 at 4:34 AM, Lillme said:

Okay, I get this team thing ... although I think they are stretching it way beyond what is reasonable.

But there's another question. Forming teams to log finds in countries you have never even been to.

 

We used to see this a lot in the "all nations" forums...    What is the question?

People calling for "partners" to work with, to "exchange" caches", but many were just adding the others name to their new hide.  

We don't see this as much anymore, and some may simply be more creative in requests, but numbers have never really meant anything...

 

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4 hours ago, Lillme said:

I thought 79,000 'finds' was a lot, but I have now been shown one with 218,864 'finds'. Needless to say, his stats are hidden from view.

I've met Alamogul. I've never geocached with him, but I know people who have. They said that it's really hard to keep up with him. He moves quickly, he finds caches quickly, he signs logs quickly, and he's moving again to the next cache quickly.

 

I'd quibble over some of his find count, specifically the numbers trail caches where he (like most geocachers who do those trails) used the "three cache monte" technique of swapping the container with one with a pre-signed log, and then signing the log in the original container on the way to the next cache. But that's a tiny fraction of his finds; there just aren't that many numbers trails.

 

He finds so many caches because he is retired and healthy, travels a LOT, spends a LOT of time geocaching, and has been geocaching for a long time. Plus, as I mentioned, he is fast.

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Well I have been geocaching with Alamogul and what nariD says is true.

Alamogul  signs the log and is starting up the car before you even have your pen out. Having to have a stent only stopped him from caching for a couple weeks about 10years ago.

Was at a georally  where there were 35 new caches around town. Everyone went to a few places to get info to solve all 35. We all went to a central location to solve the coords. I was in his car (4 of us). He suggested that everybody would start near where we were  so lets start at the other end of town. We ended up getting 25 of the 35 FTFs.

Edited by Wacka
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25 minutes ago, Wacka said:

signs the log and is starting up the car before you even have your pen out.

 

I followed a power cacher when he and his wife came through town.  Part of the time, I was riding in their van, because it was easier than trying to keep up.  There was a "4 Difficulty" Micro that I'd searched & pondered about for years, and I was telling the story of my adventures on that one, and all the likely hiding spots I had searched... [and he made quick a phone call]... and this one is quite puzzling, lots of DNFs... [he now has the cache in hand, signing the log, ready to leave]... Yeah, definitely a challenge, so get ready because it's going to be super tough and for sure I'll be scouring this spot for a few more years if I ever find it, and... oh wait.  That's where it is? 

 

And off they went.

 

Edited by kunarion
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8 hours ago, Lillme said:

I thought 79,000 'finds' was a lot, but I have now been shown one with 218,864 'finds'. Needless to say, his stats are hidden from view.

A geocacher in our local group has 101,000+, (caching since 2006) and we have cached with him and his wife, and his finds are legitimate.  He's retired, goes out for those FTF's, attends local events, and travels as well.  We saw his signature on a cache 2,500 miles from here on the East coast when we found it a couple years back!  He hand writes his signature on each log, or is part of a group, but he definitely is THERE, at the cache, when the log is signed, or he is the one signing it for the group.

 

It IS possible to have that many finds.  Maybe not for me or for you, but it can be done.

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The simple caches are almost always legit. I think most people's concerns or doubts are quantities of high terrain caches.  An easy way to accrue high terrain finds is via challenge caches (often misrated for the physical cache to find for sake of the challenge), or tree climbs where you're with someone who climbs. Paddle caching is another easy way, but not typically a super-fast way to increase the find count.  So it's possible, but I find it harder to believe that someone with oodles of high terrain caches has only found caches where there's a "loophole" to physical requirements towards a legitimate find.

As for high D's? Puzzle solving (c/o friends or shared final coordinates) and challenge qualifications are easy ways to accrue high D finds.  All that said, it's not unreasonable to believe that people with 100-200,000 finds has been to every cache.  Can't make any judgment call on the famous top finders though, just my thoughts on stats :)

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I had accidently done something like that a few years ago. Was caching in Texas and saw a new souvenir from Minnesota, A state I had never cached in. I had slipped a digit when poking in the GC code. I corrected the error and asked Groundspeak to remove the souvenir( since I had not earned it) If It were not for the state souvenir I may never have noticed my error.   Not all erroneous logs are armchair logging. Some like mine are simple human error. If I had not noticed my error, I would have appreciated an email from a CO to allow me to correct my error before someone contacts Groundspeak to have me censured.

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15 hours ago, niraD said:

Start with the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page.

 

16 hours ago, majordude said:

Report where... to whom?

 

Yes, MajorDude, we do actively work to keep the hobby from sliding into entropy, unlike most other aspects of non-critical life.

 

We, as a collective, think it's up to all responsible participants to help keep the wolves from the hobbynical door, so to speak.

 

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This doesn't help the discussion. Ignore me if you want.
I opened this thread thinking it'd be lifting the lid on how people cheat, sharing trade secrets, location faking software, how to armchair log and get away with it, all that jazz.
I was ready to be shocked and appauled but also curious on the HOW, not on the mimicking.
I was PLEASANTLY SURPRISED it was about dealing with other cheaters and helping the integrity of the game. Sure it doesn't hurt me if another armchair logs, but it sure does irk. This topic may have been covered A LOT but it still is kinda nice to see people care about the integrity of the game and that I'm not alone in the irking sensation of the armchair loggers.

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On 4/30/2022 at 4:06 PM, GeoElmo6000 said:

I can't stand team copy & paste logs on my caches.  If they found the cache it's their right to do a boring copy & paste log, but those logs are just dumb.

 

I'm a lot more likely to write a longer, more detailed log when I find a cache that's clearly had some effort expended on its construction, hide, and so on. A bison tossed in the weeds at the side of the road every tenth of a mile will get a copy and paste of something like "EZ find." That's just how I usually do it. YMMV

 

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