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Guidlines are suggestions. If you break one or two life goes on and you are probably not even a rebel.

 

Rules are enforced. They can have exceptions. Normally you get the exception by talking to the rules enforcer.

 

Reality is most of the cache guidlines are rules. They work like rules, they sound like rules, and they are enforced like rules.

 

However I could be wrong.

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In terms of usage though, there is a distinct difference between the two terms. Rules have always been used to declare the absolute boundary for an action. Guidelines, as your definition goes on beyond the bolded words, "a rule", provide guidance but do not have the hard-fast connotation of a declared rule.

 

This is the same of the more physical definition for the two words (guidelines help align letters while rules/rulers have an exact edge).

 

As to the question of the topic, I think there are both rules and guidelines necessary for cache placement. It's not a guideline that a cache contain a log of some sort. It's a rule. But the distance between caches is a guideline (as per my cliff example in the other thread..2 caches less than 528 feet...one at the top of a 400' cliff, the other at the bottom).

 

Beyond that question, I think a lot of the "guidelines" used by the approvers are not actually written out and this leads to potential problems with cache approvals and upset feelings.

 

--

 

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than

the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

-George Bernard Shaw

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Whether you call them rules, guidelines, regulations or suggestions, it is irrelevant since they are all engraved in sand. Regardless of how you describe them, they are all open to the discretion, interpretation, whims and perks of the approvers and TPTB. I think Hydee hit the nail on the head when she said:

quote:
Originally posted by Hydee:

A little honey is relevant in cache approval as it is in everyday life.


While I don’t think it was Hydee’s intention to imply it, sucking up to your approver is probably the most prudent course of action if you want to do anything new, original or outside the box of GC’s white-bread vision of geocaching. Since this is GC’s sandbox, we can either suck-up, suck-it-up, or play in another sandbox.

 

____________

Gorak

 

I love frogs. They taste like chicken. Yum.

 

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been passionate, rebellious, and immature." --Tom Robbins

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IMHO, ju66l3r has it right in his post above.

 

As for his valid observation that the guidelines were not written out in enough detail, we sincerely hope that the new version published yesterday will take care of this.

 

As for rules vs. guidelines, we are frequently asked to make an exception and approve a cache when a person has overlooked something or believes their case should be an exception. The example above, with caches at the top and bottom of a cliff but less than 528 feet apart, is an easy exception to make. So is the 150 foot guideline for railroad tracks, if it's demonstrated that there's a 20-foot wall or a 10-foot fence between the tracks and the nice little park. If the approvers applied the guidelines without any flexibility, I think we'd hear twice as many complaints as are heard now.

 

I think that there's a big difference between Hydee's phrase "a little honey" and Gorak's phrase "sucking up." There are two ways to deal with a guideline problem once the approver has brought it to the cache owner's attention. Owner one responds "Oops, sorry, I did not realize my cache was only 425 feet away from the other cache. I will move it further away, but in 100 feet you hit the riverbank and I really wanted to highlight the view from this spot. Is 500 feet OK?" Owner two responds "I am tired of all your stupid rules. Approve my cache NOW." Take a guess which cache will get archived? I don't think that Owner one was "sucking up" in this hypothetical... just being calm and polite.

 

|x*x-x|x*x-x|x*x-x|x*x-x|x*x-x|x*x-x|x*x-x|

Keystone Approver, Geocaching.com Admin

"Eschewing Entropy and Ensuring Enthalpy in the Groundspeak Forums"

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quote:
Keystone Approver wrote:

I think that there's a big difference between Hydee's phrase "a little honey" and Gorak's phrase "sucking up."


Toe-may-toe, ta-ma-toe -- the only difference is the tone.

 

I've always considered the phrase "a Little honey" to mean "sucking-up". If you want to talk about being reasonable, or respectful, that's a different thing altogether, if you get my drift. Gorak's assessment of the phraseology is on the money.

 

It only stands to reason that if I'm attempting to resolve a difference in a polite manner that I'm going to get a lot further than if I'm being antogonistic. But I won't suck up, nor do I feel that I need to feel obligated to, if I want to get a cache approved. I haven't read the new rules yet, but I truly hope that I'm not going to see something referring to giving the approvers "a little honey".

 

*****

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quote:
I think Hydee hit the nail on the head when she said:
Originally posted by Hydee:

A little honey is relevant in cache approval as it is in everyday life.


While I don’t think it was Hydee’s intention to imply it, sucking up to your approver is probably the most prudent course of action if you want to do anything new, original or outside the box of GC’s white-bread vision of geocaching.

 

She being nicer than I would be, I translate this to mean things will probably go smoother if you don't act like a jerk, basic common courtesy is sufficient to address any issue.

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quote:
Originally posted by Keystone Approver:

I think that there's a big difference between Hydee's phrase "a little honey" and Gorak's phrase "sucking up."


We'll just have to agree to disagree on that point. icon_wink.gif

 

quote:
There are two ways to deal with a guideline problem once the approver has brought it to the cache owner's attention. Owner one responds "Oops, sorry, I did not realize my cache was only 425 feet away from the other cache. I will move it further away, but in 100 feet you hit the riverbank and I really wanted to highlight the view from this spot. Is 500 feet OK?" Owner two responds "I am tired of all your stupid rules. Approve my cache NOW." Take a guess which cache will get archived? I don't think that Owner one was "sucking up" in this hypothetical... just being calm and polite.

 

On this point, I agree with you 110%. There is no reason to be rude or antagonistic with an approver or anyone else you deal with. Nor should you ever have to hear (paraphrasing), "if you don't like it, tough nuts." Being polite is not the same as sucking-up or providing "a little honey". You should always be polite to anyone you are dealing with, but you should never have to suck-up to an approver to get them to think a little bit outside the box. Nor should you have to concede to a "my way or the highway" approach from an approver if your round cache does not fit in their square hole.

 

But as I stated before, its your sandbox.

 

____________

Gorak

 

I love frogs. They taste like chicken. Yum.

 

"Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been passionate, rebellious, and immature." --Tom Robbins

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quote:
Originally posted by Keystone Approver:

There are two ways to deal with a guideline problem once the approver has brought it to the cache owner's attention. Owner one responds "Oops, sorry, I did not realize my cache was only 425 feet away from the other cache. I will move it further away, but in 100 feet you hit the riverbank and I really wanted to highlight the view from this spot. Is 500 feet OK?" Owner two responds "I am tired of all your stupid rules. Approve my cache NOW." Take a guess which cache will get archived? I don't think that Owner one was "sucking up" in this hypothetical... just being calm and polite.


 

Except that owner #1 was, as is very common in today's society, lying through his teeth as he made his polite request with mock sincerity. Owner #2, having had yet another perfectly good cache shot down because of yet another hastily conceived "guideline" implemented because of the action of ONE idiot out of the thousands of responsible geocachers, has become,in true Howard Beale fashion, "mad as hell, and he's not going to take this anymore!!"

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I hazard a guess that the phrase that Hydee may have been looking for was "you can catch more flies with honey than with crap". In my mind, this is wildly debatable because I have seen more crap than honey in my lifetime left out in the reach of flies, so I may be biased.

 

But it would be a bit more to the point of the argument that being kind to the approver as opposed to coarse and rude will get your cache approved instead of archived 9 times out of 10.

 

 

I noticed the rules (as it was commented on in the weekly notice) and read through some key parts that interested me. I think these are much better in their explanation and procedural directions than what we had previously. Hopefully when guidelines change, we will have the benefit of seeing the outdated text in a link for "archived guidelines" which would help put the grandfathered caches in better perspective by comparing the approval date on the cache with the text that was present at the time of approval. This may reduce the number of "how could they allow this?" comments too.

 

I would have commented on this earlier, but I've not been able to login to the forums (although I have been able to login to my cache page) for the past 3 days for some odd reason. The login link at the top keeps timing out on me.

 

Hopefully this (fixing/replacing the forums) is next on the big list of things to do at Groundspeak...

 

--

 

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than

the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.

-George Bernard Shaw

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