Whereas, the purpose of the WGA Cache of the Month program is to highlight noteworthy caches and to build membership, and whereas the current COTM program has mixed success in achieving these goals.

Whereas, the Board asked the Membership Committee to study the COTM program and provide recommendations for improvements in the COTM program.

And whereas the Membership Committee has provided the board with a recommendation that the Cache of the Month program be amended in the following 7 ways:

1. Post on the COTM page a rule that states, "In order to vote for any cache for COTM, you should have found the cache and logged your find prior to voting." We recommend that monitoring of compliance be the responsibility of the COTM administrator.

2. Post on the COTM page a rule that states, "To be nominated for COTM voting a cache must have been published more than 90 days prior to the nomination." We further recommend that this rule be tightly enforced, either by the software or by the COTM administrator.

3. Initiate a practice where all COTM nominees are notified that the cache has been nominated for COTM. This could either be automated or be the responsibiltiy of the COTM administrator to log a note on the cache page of each COTM nominee that the cache has been nominated.

4. Initiate an additional COTM catagory, labeled as Cache Series of the Month. We also recommend that the COTM page state that "Cache series should not be nominated for COTM. Rather, if you have a series that you would like to nominate, please use the Cache Series nomination process."

5. Change the single COTM to a number of regional COTMs, dividing the state into 4 or 5 regions of approxiamtely similiar cache density. Members could vote in multiple regional COTM contests, provided that they had found the cache they were voting for.

6. Immediately change the COTM software module and remove the automatic function that COTMs are named without review by the COTM administrator. This module should be semi-automatic, with all results reviewed and verified by the COTM administrator prior to publication.

7. Develop a system for nominations for COTM to be made in the month prior to the voting for COTM. The logistics and details of this proposal need to be worked out and the Membership Committee leaves it to the Web Commitee to work out those details.

Be it resolved that the Board adopt all 7 of the recommendations of the Membership Committee and forward those recommendations to the Web Committee and the web master for implementation as soon as reasonably possible, understanding that recommendation 7 has more logistical issues to resolve, so may be implemented later than the other 6 easier to implement recommendations.

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