Needs Maintenance Attributes

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 6:14 pm

In my never ending quest to keep up with missing, damaged, and otherwise unloggable caches, I have begun looking at caches where the Needs Maintenance attribute is set. When I filtered my list for caches with this attribute, I found that more than 8% of all caches in the state have this attribute set! It is pretty clear that many people do not understand how this attribute works.

This attribute gets set when someone posts a "Needs Maintenance" log on a cache. Once you have maintained your cache (assuming it needs it), you can clear this attribute by either posting an Owner Maintenance log or simply going into the "Edit Attributes" link on your cache page and changing the setting from "Yes" to "None" (just like any other attribute). Note that deleting the NM log does nothing to the attribute.

Now, I realize that some of these NM logs people post are for stupid things, such as complaints about insects flying around a cache or that the difficulty rating is incorrect. That said, when you leave this attribute on your cache, there are some people who will filter these caches out and not look for them. Even worse, this attribute will eventually draw the attention of a reviewer who might notice that you haven't posted any maintenance information on your cache since someone complained about your wet log 6 months ago and start it down the road to being archived. You can really help out by keeping this attribute clear as you perform maintenance on your caches.

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:11 pm

Thanks for the info!

Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 3:32 pm

I cannot tell you how many times I have had to contact a CO and ask them to remove an NM attribute from their cache. I have seen it where there may be up to 6 months of logged finds since it was turned on. They sometimes seem to not understand why I or anyone would filter out based on that flag.

I know that I have passed up some pretty good caches because of it. Thanks for posting this and i hope that it does some good.

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2013 8:31 pm

Thanks for this information. I didn't realize I needed to delete the attribute. Sometimes "a new cacher" will put a NEEDS Maint. log on it for a silly reason. I ignore it or delete their log. You have educated me and I appreciate that. Thanks.

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 1:45 pm

Thought I would check back in and let you know of my progress. Out of the 2000+ caches with the NM attribute set, I have managed to process about 650 of them. Of these, around 85% were fine and I just reset the attrtibute for the owner, 10% needed maintenance but had not reached the level of reviewer action and maybe 5% got started down the road to Archiveville. I would note, however, that of the 650 caches processed, I have found exactly TWO listing where the NM attribute had already been cleared by the owner (Thanks Mofongo!) For everybody else, please clean up your listings so they don't show Needs maintenance if you are maintaining them.

Posted: Mon Jan 21, 2013 2:11 pm

Thanks Team Deejay,

I was aware of the feature yet never knew what a wide spread problem it was. This will definitely be an area I highlight in future geocaching classes I teach.