harassment

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

Anyone have any advice for dealing with geocachers who are harassing me?
I'd file a complaint with groundspeak if I knew how.

I own a puzzle cache in which a particular cacher has repeatedly posted notes to the cache complaining about the non-existence of a "geochecker".

He's posted 4 of these notes. I continue to delete his notes. I've emailed him to stop, and I have stated in the email I have no intention of adding a geochecker to the cache.

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:07 pm

Quote:

But still no coordinates checker

Doesn't look like harassment to me....unless there were less friendly posts...or maybe that's not the post / poster of which you speak. I can't blame the person for wanting a coords checker when the puzzle offered three possible solutions...though I see you corrected it now.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

If he's done it 4 times and after I'd say it's harassment.

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:13 pm

Plug the puzzle into an online solver and see if it now has a unique solution...if so send him one final email or post that the puzzle now has only one solution...I'd call his actions irritating but not really harassment. Puzzles bring out the worst in some folks. Irritating some folks is part of the "fun" of owning a puzzle cache...

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:28 pm

Coordinates checkers, Some use them, Some don't. It's all on how you play the game. Some play by there own rules. There are no guidelines on GC.com about them. How did cachers find puzzle caches before checkers were invented?

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:28 pm

Some kind of confirmation would be good either by having the cacher email his/her solve and saying yes or no if there are indeed more than one unique solve. When traveling 60+ miles and finding out you have the wrong coords... anyone would be disappointed. There are checkers available that only allow one attempt per set amount of time.
Geochecker allows 10 in 10 minutes which can often lead to just plugging in numbers until you get SUCCESS. Evince I think allows only one in 10 minutes. Not sure the rate for Geocheck.

WGA Member Joined: 2006-12-23 Posts: 5954

Unfortunately you will get those, even on 1/1 regulars, at some point someone is bound to not like something about it.

You could make it a premium only cache - but its likely that the person is a premium member.

You could say that no one else has needed one but if they want you'd be happy to check their results and maybe drop them a hint. I'd do that specially if they are out of towners and driving a ways...they still have to find the cache which they might fail on anyway.

You could also try to ignore the posts and let them roll, or go the extreme and archive it.

Going to groundspeak at this point will probably get you no where as they are not "offensive" even then I've no idea if they'd do anything. If they did the most they could do would be disable the account but we all know there are "sock puppet" accounts out there.

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:32 pm

labrat_wr wrote:

Not sure the rate for Geocheck.

Iuse Geocheck for most of my puzzles. I do not believe that there is a limit.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

Part of the reason I don't want a checker on there, is, even though it's just a simple suduko, I'd prefer the solution doesn't get exchanged to a bunch of "touring" cachers.

It's funny, really, how a game with no winners can have so many pathetic losers who CHEAT. I won't tolerate them, and I won't go out of my way to make their lives easier.

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:45 pm

Ummm... I just started working on these new sudokus for our next trip to the Rapids. I keep forgetting that this is a puzzle cache until I see the coords in the receiver and go "DUH!" Don't touch it in the next couple of days!

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:48 pm

There is no reason to add a checker...just be sure there is only one solution...or let folks know there are multiple ones...again part of the fun of puzzle ownership...been there done that.

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 8:50 pm

How does not having a geochecker stop anyone from giving the final coords away?

I can't speak for everyone, but a lot of cachers will not attemp to find a puzzle type cache in another city without some verification. Local cachers might know of a location seems reasonable. Out-of-towners will have much less of an idea if a spot is private property, etc.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

I have no idea how people got multiple solutions out of it. I checked out the puzzles before posting them and was unable to get multiple solutions.

One person even said the solutions were so close together it didn't make much of a difference either way. The "beacon" might as well have been spray painted orange or have flashing yellow lights fixed to it.. Or a neon sign with an arrow pointing downward, "Geocache Here".

Given the terrain rating of the cache, I expect it to be pretty obvious. can anyone say guardrail cache?.

WGA Friend Joined: 2010-01-08 Posts: 275

Team Black-Cat wrote:

How does not having a geochecker stop anyone from giving the final coords away?

It doesn't, but it's obviously slowing him down.
The cacher we're talking about here drove right past this cache, grabbing one other less than a half mile down the road. As far as I know, he didn't even make an attempt at the sudoku cache.

Quote:

I can't speak for everyone, but a lot of cachers will not attemp to find a puzzle type cache in another city without some verification. Local cachers might know of a location seems reasonable. Out-of-towners will have much less of an idea if a spot is private property, etc.

If a person wants verification bad enough, they can easily visit a solver site such as http://www.sudokusolver.co.uk/

Posted: Wed Jun 09, 2010 10:14 pm

Many sudokus have multiple solutions. Depending on which numbers can be changed, the resulting coords can be significantly off. Every online "solver" I have seen will stop at the first solution it finds. Most do not indicate that there may be more solutions. With that much ambiguity, I've driven past a few sudoku puzzles also.

On the other hand, Geochecker has saved me from wandering around where I should not have been after doing a sudoku with more than one solution recently.