historical photos requirement

[+Arne1]

How about archiving the earthcache because of the photo request ? I found out that in Poland (for the uninitiated - this is in Europe) the US geoaware archived earthcache GC1D3A3 with the justification of the long expired no-photo rule. Players of course disagreed with the procedure and hunted this earthcache until recently. The question is whether the decision to destroy the cache because of the nonsensical requirement to ban photography should be reviewed. I don't know about other geocachers, but I put a photo with every earthcache and every virtual, and I don't care about some American bans that I shouldn't take photos.

[geoawareUSA9]

3 hours ago, Arne1 said:

I found out that in Poland (for the uninitiated - this is in Europe) the US geoaware archived earthcache GC1D3A3 with the justification of the long expired no-photo rule. Players of course disagreed with the procedure and hunted this earthcache until recently.

 

Link to the cache in question

 

First, I agree that Poland is in Europe. (I even have some FTFs there, though they have all sadly been archived.)

 

Second, I'm not sure I agree with your assessment of "recently." The cache was archived almost six years ago, and the latest find was in 2019.

 

Third, please recall that, for several years, it was against the guidelines to require a photo at an earthcache. This was an older cache, placed before mandatory photos were banned on earthcaches. I can't recall when this change was made, but I want to say it was around 2011. The guidelines were changed to allow photos again in 2019, but that was after this cache was already archived.

 

Fourth, I note that reviewer territories and responsibilities change over time. "Sweeping" (following up on caches that appear to have issues) is not necessarily done by every reviewer.

 

3 hours ago, Arne1 said:

I don't know about other geocachers, but I put a photo with every earthcache and every virtual, and I don't care about some American bans that I shouldn't take photos.

 

I don't know about other reviewers, but I don't make up the rules. I do, however, enforce them, and that's what geoawareUSA1 was doing at the time.

 

When the earthcache at issue was published, there was no restriction on requiring photos. When this was later added, reviewers did not seek out earthcache listings that still contained a photo requirement, and so many remained. But if cachers brought it to a reviewer's attention, such as submitting a "needs reviewer attention" (formerly "needs archived"), then reviewers took appropriate action.

 

On 9 September 2017, a geocacher logged that reviewer attention was needed, because this earthcache required photos.

 

On 12 September 2017, a reviewer disabled the listing and gave the owner 30 days to remove the photo requirement.

 

On 13 October 2017, since the owner hadn't taken any action, the reviewer archived the listing.

 

Some time after that, a reviewer noticed that cachers were still logging finds on an archived cache and locked the listing.

 

I'm not sure what the particular reason is for you bringing this up in 2023, since the focus of your ire appears to be largely moot.

 

I hope we can all agree that, if a reviewer contacts a cache owner to let them know their cache is not in compliance with the guidelines, ignoring the reviewer is not the preferred technique.

 

Since this post (a) hinges on a guideline that no longer exists and (b) seems to hint that reviewers should be ignored based solely on their country of origin, I'm not sure how much additional discussion is warranted, but I'll leave the topic open for now.

Edited July 20, 2023 by geoawareUSA9

[geoawareUSA9]

It was bothering me that I couldn't remember the dates when photos could not be mandatory.

 

Groundspeak and the GSA banned photo requirements on earthcaches on 1 January 2011, though even before this, unless a photo was connected to the earthcache lesson, it was deemed optional.

 

This guideline was in effect until 2019, again, well after this cache was archived due to the cache owner's failure to respond to a reviewer.