AL Geoart Craze - get 100+ finds in 5 minutes

[+hikecycletri]

The first one I know of is at a rest stop on I-95 near East Haven, CT. Sit in your car or at a picnic table and answer 110 questions. Many more even larger ones are popping up. I've chosen to avoid them and declined to add my AL to a local effort. Others are loving them. I imagine HQ is giving thought to how they give out AL credits in the future and will need to factor this in.

[+baer2006]

On 1/18/2023 at 1:11 PM, hikecycletri said:

The first one I know of is at a rest stop on I-95 near East Haven, CT. Sit in your car or at a picnic table and answer 110 questions. Many more even larger ones are popping up. I've chosen to avoid them and declined to add my AL to a local effort. Others are loving them. I imagine HQ is giving thought to how they give out AL credits in the future and will need to factor this in.

 

Atomium in Brussels:

 

130+ ALs = 650+ "finds". I cannot imagine anything more dull and stupid in geocaching than sitting on a bench near the Atomium, and tapping answers on the phone for several hours.

IMHO things like this show that GS has handed out way too many AL credits.

[+Max and 99]

Holy moly!

[+TommyGator]

44 minutes ago, baer2006 said:

sitting on a bench near the Atomium, and tapping answers on the phone for several hours.

I suppose that is the "adventure" that the COs want you to experience.

[+JL_HSTRE]

Report, report, report.

[+Gill & Tony]

On 3/5/2023 at 3:34 PM, JL_HSTRE said:

Report, report, report.

Why?

 

Just because you don't like them (and I don't like them either) why should we stop people who do like them from doing them.

 

I don't like power trails of thousands of pill bottles along a road in the desert, some folk do, so let them have them.  I don't like high terrain caches involving huge hikes or long paddles, but other folk  do, so let them have them.

 

That's why we have ended up with totally emasculated challenge caches.  Folk didn't like them, bitched and moaned and persuaded TPTB to prevent any interesting ones from being created.

 

\rant

[+thebruce0]

Because ALs that don't follow guidelines should be reported, just like geocaches that don't. But of course do not report just because you "don't like" something. That is also an abuse of available features. Power trails of thousands of pill bottles (in and of themselves) do not break guidelines, therefore they should not be reported. AL locations that do not require visiting a location are not the same as a power trail pill bottle.

[+Mausebiber]

1 hour ago, thebruce0 said:

AL locations that do not require visiting a location are not the same as a power trail pill bottle.

 

Understand. 

What sense does it make to have a geofencing distance of 100 Km (62 miles)?  If I'm 100 Km from GZ , quite obviously it is considered as "visited"

[+JL_HSTRE]

On 5/10/2023 at 12:03 AM, Gill & Tony said:

That's why we have ended up with totally emasculated challenge caches.  Folk didn't like them, bitched and moaned and persuaded TPTB to prevent any interesting ones from being created.

 

Challenge Caches changed largely because of too many arguments with COs over whether someone had qualified or not.

 

If it was simply because the "interesting" challenges were too hard then Groundspeak would have also restricted complicated puzzle caches too.

 

4 hours ago, Mausebiber said:

What sense does it make to have a geofencing distance of 100 Km (62 miles)?

 

I'd really love to know why that was ever possible to begin with, and why it hasn't been changed. Groundspeak has been frustratingly silent on the issue.

 

@Moun10Bike wont you or another Lackey please address why AL geofencing is so large?

[+ari54321]

5 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

@Moun10Bike wont you or another Lackey please address why AL geofencing is so large?

 

The current 100km limit was intended to allow experimentation with Adventures in areas where there is limited mobile phone connectivity. However, because one of the core aspects of the Adventure Lab platform is that players must physically visit Adventure locations, we plan to reduce the maximum geofence limit to 500 meters in the coming weeks.

 

We are also listening to player and creator feedback as we explore ways to ensure that the Adventure Lab continues to grow sustainably as a location-based game. If you believe that any Adventure violates the Adventure Lab guidelines, please report it in the app using the "Report this Adventure" link (located at the bottom of the Adventure's details screen). We review all reports and take action if necessary.

 

[+Gill & Tony]

8 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

 

Challenge Caches changed largely because of too many arguments with COs over whether someone had qualified or not.

 

If it was simply because the "interesting" challenges were too hard then Groundspeak would have also restricted complicated puzzle caches too.

Apparently challenge caches were about 1% of all caches but accounted for a majority of the disputes being raised to HQ.  That was the official reason for the moratorium.

 

However, that could have been fixed requiring the CO to retroactively add a challenge checker to their listing.  Allow a reasonable time frame for a challenge checker to be developed and added.  Bingo!  No more disputes.  The checker says "yes" or "no".

 

I don't think that difficulty was a major factor in the decision.  As you say, difficulty is a factor in puzzles, challenges, trads and terrain.  Some caches are harder than others.

 

If you look back at the threads on this, people were complaining that challenges based on cache names were bad because a few people were creating caches with gibberish names so others could qualify for challenges.  My favourite challenge of the 79 I found was an alphabetical order challenge.  Find a cache beginning with "A".  At least one day later fins a cache beginning with "B".  Repeat until the alphabet is complete.

 

Lonely cache challenges, which actively encouraged people to go and look for caches which had not been found for a long time, are now banned.

 

Anyway, this is off topic for an AL thread, so I'll stop ranting now.

 

 

[+baer2006]

11 hours ago, ari54321 said:

If you believe that any Adventure violates the Adventure Lab guidelines, please report it in the app using the "Report this Adventure" link (located at the bottom of the Adventure's details screen). We review all reports and take action if necessary.

Ok, challenge accepted . I gave it a shot for one notorious example.

[+thebruce0]

I'm just happy there aren't challenge caches for Adventure completions. They can be included in general count challenges with geocache listings (smiley counts), but they can't be explicitly listed as a required qualifier.  Yet couch-claim AL geoarts and trails are still trending. =/

[+baer2006]

On 5/12/2023 at 9:38 AM, baer2006 said:

On 5/11/2023 at 10:32 PM, ari54321 said:

If you believe that any Adventure violates the Adventure Lab guidelines, please report it in the app using the "Report this Adventure" link (located at the bottom of the Adventure's details screen). We review all reports and take action if necessary.

Ok, challenge accepted . I gave it a shot for one notorious example.

The AL geoart I reported still exists. Therefore it's apparently OK for GS to create ALs, where the questions have nothing to do whatsoever with the location (and can therefore be answered by "virtual visits", i.e. using a location-spoofing app).

[+fizzymagic]

On 5/11/2023 at 4:28 PM, Gill & Tony said:

Apparently challenge caches were about 1% of all caches but accounted for a majority of the disputes being raised to HQ.  That was the official reason for the moratorium\

 I spoke with people intimately connected with the situation.  Your claim is false.

[+baer2006]

52 minutes ago, fizzymagic said:

On 5/12/2023 at 1:28 AM, Gill & Tony said:

Apparently challenge caches were about 1% of all caches but accounted for a majority of the disputes being raised to HQ.  That was the official reason for the moratorium\

 I spoke with people intimately connected with the situation.  Your claim is false.

And the truth is what?

I ask because ...

•  ... I'm generally curious
• ... I tend to be slightly irritated by statements along the lines of "You're wrong, but I won't say what's correct instead"

[+barefootjeff]

1 hour ago, fizzymagic said:

On 5/12/2023 at 9:28 AM, Gill & Tony said:

Apparently challenge caches were about 1% of all caches but accounted for a majority of the disputes being raised to HQ.  That was the official reason for the moratorium\

 I spoke with people intimately connected with the situation.  Your claim is false.

 

According to this official release from HQ in April 2015, that was their stated reason:

 

Quote

Why is a moratorium needed?

 

Challenge caches encourage cachers to set and achieve fun goals. They run the gamut from finding caches on every day of the calendar year to finding one for every Difficult/Terrain combination.

 

However, there are many aspects of challenge caches that can make them frustrating for the community. They are neither a separate cache type nor do they have a specific attribute, so the logging requirements are easily misunderstood. Challenge caches can also be very difficult to publish due to the large amount of subjectivity involved relative to other geocaches. While they account for only ~1% of all geocache submissions, challenge caches comprise the bulk of appeals made to Geocaching HQ.

 

Are you saying HQ lied?

[+Gill & Tony]

1 hour ago, fizzymagic said:

 I spoke with people intimately connected with the situation.  Your claim is false.

And the real reasons were... ?

[+fizzymagic]

20 hours ago, barefootjeff said:

 

According to this official release from HQ in April 2015, that was their stated reason:

 

 

Are you saying HQ lied?

 

Nope.  Re-read the statement I said was false.  The implication was that it was appeals for rejected logs (disputes), not appeals for rejected caches.  It was, in fact, the latter.  The appeals were for rejected challenges, not rejected logs.   Please be more careful in reading in the future.  Thanks!

Edited May 23, 2023 by fizzymagic

[Keystone]

If forum participants want to talk about challenge caches, the General Geocaching Topics forum is the place for that.  This is the Creating Adventures forum.

[+Forest-Ghost]

Has anyone heard anywhere about HQ deleting or removing lab geoart? Or if HQ has any guidelines about it?