Public service announcement/request from a geoaware: Please don't copy earthcaches

[geoawareUSA9]

Some of the other earthcache reviewers and I have been seeing a trend lately of people either wholesale copying other people's earthcaches, or wholesale copying their own earthcaches.

 

Please don't do this.

 

One of the Geological Society of America's guidelines - #3, in fact - is that the earth science feature you're focusing on should be unique. "EarthCaches that duplicate existing EarthCaches or related sites may be rejected. EarthCaches must be developed to provide a unique experience to the location's visitors, and to teach a unique lesson about the feature at the site."

 

If you can copy and paste an entire earthcache lesson from one listing to another, down to the logging questions, and the only thing you need to do is to change the location from, say, Springfield to Shelbyville, then it's not really all that unique.

 

If you care enough about a feature to look into the science behind it and develop a cache about it, please also care enough to try to make your spin on that particular feature different. Copying and pasting work from another cache tells me you don't care, and I'd ask that folks please stop doing this.

 

In my role as a geoaware, nothing makes me happier than publishing a good earthcache, so please keep those submissions coming. But please make sure you're tailoring them to fit what's at the coordinates, so that cachers are getting something different out of the earthcaches they visit.

 

Thanks,

 

Christian

geoawareUSA9

[geoawareUSA9]

p.s. If you've already copied wholesale from your own earthcache or someone else's, and you got it published anyway, please consider going back and doing it right.

[Keystone]

Can people copy and paste your post to share with their local geocaching group, or would that trigger you? 

[geoawareUSA9]

19 hours ago, Keystone said:

Can people copy and paste your post to share with their local geocaching group, or would that trigger you? 

 

If it's linked, then it'll be sourced, which is just fine with me. But either way, I think I'll allow it.

[+terratin]

Thank you! It's such a shame that there are so many genetic ECs out there. No need to actually read the text because it's always the same, no need to think about the questions.

[+Awesnap]

GeoAwareUSA9 busted me on this early on when I started making earthcaches.  He was right (I joke now that I was just testing his "parameter fences" to see what I could get by).  As I already had park permission to list something there, I just buckled down and reconfigured my listing and made it more unique.  It actually made the earthcache lesson much better.

 

Yesterday was thank a volunteer day, so from the bottom of my heart and a day late "Thanks GeoawareUSA9!"