+SurdiVisio Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 Hello fellow geocachers, I've enjoyed discovering 2 of those mob-caches down under in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Would have loved to create one of these myself. I am sure that many more caches have ulitiised the external linked functionality at geotrailsw.com/mob/. Unfortunately that has now been retired, so I wonder if there are similar functionality out there? It would be a shame to have all these archived, or re-edited as simple caches. I only found out yesterday when one of the unvisited caches (where I was yet to log a find) was edited yesterday (by email notifications) to use a 3rd-party jigsaw puzzle to get the coordinates. A nice interim solution, but would like to have the mobcache option - to bring 2 or more people together. For me, it was a pleasure to meet a geocacher with over 40,000 finds when celebrating my 250th find. Ta, SurdiVisio 1 Quote Link to comment
Keystone Posted January 27 Share Posted January 27 I'm writing to confirm that the creator of the Mob Cache functionality decided to turn off the website. If someone else steps forward to offer similar functionality, it would need to be vetted in the same manner as the Mob Cache website was reviewed nine years ago. 1 4 Quote Link to comment
+ChileHead Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 I created the functionality many years ago when lab caches were first coming out, as an example of my own sort of "lab". After getting it vetted by HQ, I released my own as well as functionality for people to create their own. Since then, I have made almost no changes to the code I released, which honestly was just a big old hack. I wrote it on a rainy day while on vacation in the Adirondacks wondering "I wonder if ..." Well it's lasted longer than I expected, but the poor choice of implementation on my side with polling back to the server was causing some issues on the server side off and on. Rather than fix it I decided to retire this fun experiment, about 8 years after I thought I would retire it. Thanks to all who played with it and created their own. After retiring it I found out that there were many more out there than I had expected and I apologize for the sudden retirement. It may come back some day if I decide to rewrite it. I thought after I retired over 4 years ago from a full time software job I would have more time to create and maintain similar projects, but somehow my days are getting filled with other activities! Side note: When I first released this, some random person came across it and wanted to use it for other purposes. They didn't say what the purposes were, but from their email domain I concluded it was for, let's say, anonymous group encounters in the woods. I chuckled, and never responded. I should do a database dump to see if there are any non-geocaching purposes out there. 3 1 3 1 Quote Link to comment
+SurdiVisio Posted January 28 Author Share Posted January 28 1 hour ago, JL_HSTRE said: What is a "mob cache"? You go to a posted set of coordinates as a virtual spot. Cache description says how many others (geocachers or muggles) required to join you. Then you all open the linked mob cache to get the coordinates of Ground Zero where the actual cache is hidden. Great fun with fellow geocachers joining for the occasion or the day! Ditto for introducing new players. Or drag your family members and their phones for a lovely outing. 1 Quote Link to comment
Keystone Posted January 28 Share Posted January 28 Owners of Mob Caches should do one of the following: Temporarily Disable the cache page, so that people don't go searching for it, and see whether replacement functionality becomes available in the coming weeks or months. Archive the cache page, which would preserve the cache history experienced by prior finders. Change the "Mystery" to some other design. Some Community Volunteer Reviewers are already disabling cache pages, in order to alert the owners to the end of the Mob Cache functionality on which the cache solution depended. 2 1 Quote Link to comment
+xandryyte Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 I wish I knew about these types of caches before it was too late. 1 1 Quote Link to comment
+CAVinoGal Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 (edited) I've only done one of these, and it looks like the CO has already disabled it. It was a fun when we did it - a new type of multi for us, and our group got the FTF too. Our logs tell the story... https://www.geocaching.com/geocache/GC82HQV_the-downtown-mob-cache My log (FTF) https://coord.info/GLXV77XB Edited January 29 by CAVinoGal Typo Quote Link to comment
+thebruce0 Posted January 29 Share Posted January 29 They are fun to do and a technical marvel, however similar to Jigidi they also need a good amount of code and tricks to thwart cheating. That's why this one lasted as long as it did. It worked sufficiently well to get people to do it more than the work to hack it Good job ChileHead, thanks for the fun addition to the community. Quote Link to comment
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