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How long term is long term?


HuwAdamson

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Geocaching hiding guidelines make it clear that caches should be available for the long term. The example they use is 'Temporary caches intended to stay active for fewer than three months will not be published.' What I'm not sure about is whether this is a good cut off point to use, or or bare minimum. Would a geocache that was only expected to last six months be poor form? Nine months? I'd like to make some caches, but my future plans after July are up in the air. I'd like to get a sense of whether it's worth placing some now, or if relatively short lived caches would be technically within the guidelines, but would generally be frowned upon.

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In my opinion, if you consider them permanent caches and don't expect to take them down unless you have to, that's long term. I would not expect you to consider that your life might possibly change in the near future. In other words, it's good enough for me that there is a foreseeable future in which the cache is active for years and years: it doesn't have to be *all* foreseeable futures.

 

Besides, there's no particular reason for you to archive an active cache in good condition just because you move out of the area.

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In the opening blog post in January for the Year of the Hide, HQ recommended archiving caches that have become less popular to refresh the game board and make way for newer and better caches, so perhaps the idea of "cache permanence" has become a bit more pragmatic. Three months is the absolute minimum, but beyond that it would depend on the nature of the cache (urban P&G vs more remote hike) and the community's expectations.

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As you know, per the listing guidelines, "long term" = at least 3 months ;-)

https://www.geocaching.com/play/guidelines#accessible

 

 

This dates from long long ago, when people submitted and had published temporary caches for events. Quite common in the USA mid west.  This was  pre-cache saturation rule, so  these were often quite close together,. as well.   A waste of site resources to get these published for a day or two, so "long term" language was born. 

 

Anyway, hide for season is fine

 

Also, you can hide, submit, get published, then archive immediately.  Any reason that = 'I don't want to own this now" is fine.  If you do archive before 3 months, you won't be allowed to hide another cache at the same location for a while, at least until that original 3 month time is over.

 I've archived shortly after publish when a bird nested just above my hide. Never did bring a cache back there. 

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There are many areas with annual events were caches are out for about 9 months then archived in preparation for the next year's hides.

 

However, while definitely allowed, I don't know if that rate of churn is actually healthy for the hobby.

 

A problem with a lot of other GPS games is they encourage revisiting the same places over and over again. 

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6 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

There are many areas with annual events were caches are out for about 9 months then archived in preparation for the next year's hides.

 

However, while definitely allowed, I don't know if that rate of churn is actually healthy for the hobby.

 

A problem with a lot of other GPS games is they encourage revisiting the same places over and over again. 

One way to avoid that is to move the event every year like MOGA. 2022 in Illinois, 2023 in Michigan with several other moves previously.   GC9BX4C

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11 minutes ago, Smitherington said:

One way to avoid that is to move the event every year like MOGA.

Another is to stop hiding caches specifically for events, which IMHO is more in keeping with the event guidelines that an event is "a gathering of geocachers, focusing on the social aspect of geocaching" and not for finding geocaches. I find that it pretty much defeats the supposed purpose of an event when a bunch of "attendees" run off to find the geocaches hidden for that event.

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