I tried to publish a cache that taught you about Recycling. Recycling is mandated by city ordinance in the City of appleton so it’s sort of a law, right? Well, according to Groundspeak, recycling is an “Agenda” and therefore cannot be the subject nature for a cache. Well.. it actually can be the subject of a cache as long as you don’t recommend (or even hint at recomending) that someone recycle versus throw it in the garbage dump. Of course we all know present caches don’t set precedence which I could come up with many caches that would not comply with this relatively new “Agenda” rule.

Btw, this was a cache to be published in coordination with my CITO event last year. CITO is apparently an “Agenda” that Groundspeak allows but they don’t follow through with that mentality. It’s interesting that many corporations around the US are “going green” and here we have one that thinks recommending someone recycle (in essence recommending you obey the city law in Appleton) is an agenda.

Part of the reason this cache was being published was because in many CITO’s, recycling is not done. In our event we ended up filling an entire city garbage can with recyclable cans and plastics. Which were recycled.

I appealed to Groundspeak with the content that was rejected (stating much of the above in my appeal) and lost. I gave up and even archived the failed non-published listing. Then was convinced to alter the cache page and try again.

You can now see the resulting active cache here ( GC1B245 ). The name was one of the items that had to be changed to get it published. So in a move of utter discontent with the whole thing, I came up with the cache name you see now.

This puzzle cache was solveable at the CITO event with resources that were printed and brought to the event and one of the sources of info is the actual brochure that Outagamie County puts out regarding recycling.

In the end I did get it published but getting there was the tough part. Who would have thought?

And for the record, the quote on the item at ground zero was purely coincidental. This cache is not a comment on the quote at ground zero. Some have thought so and I haven’t had the heart to break it to them that the cache theme is truely about recycling. The location was chosen because it was close to the CITO. 😀

I would have to say that probably 75% of mine are rejected on my first go around. It usually takes 3 or 4 revisions to get them honed down to the point of being publishable. At first I was very frustrated with this fact, but over time came to appreciate that my caches got better, the more they got rejected. Clang Boom Steam is a perfect example of this. It is another great cache, but only started out a single stage in the park. After numerous proximity issues and attempts (I think the count was 8 ), I finally took it out of the park and made it into something entirely different. The cache is now much more memorable for it.

Most of the time they get rejected because I am not far enough away from other caches. While the proximity guideline is just that, the saturation in the valley has necessitated pretty tight constraints on the reviewers and it is pretty rare that I get a cache published if it’s less than 515′ feet from the next one. I do get a tiny bit of grace if it’s between 516 and 528, which I appreciate, since nearly every one of mine end up being squeezed between others. I must drive the reviewers crazy!

Some of the time it is just because the puzzle is too obtuse or difficult to follow. Other times it is because I need permission where I wouldn’t expect to need it.

But, there are a few instances where the Idea itself was just NOT going to fly no matter what I did.

In fact, I just had one published today, Jim’s Place, about a homeless guy. The wording of the cache was suggestive of “an agenda”, much like -cheeto-‘s, and after several rounds of removing wording that one might consider a “call to action”, it was still getting rejected. My own statement of commiting time to the homeless cause was seen as a blanket call for all cachers to do so. So, I pulled the wording off the cache and put it on a TB that CAN have an agenda, but because it was tied to a cache, it was still rejected. I finally pulled off any language suggesting that anyone even “think” about the plight of homeless people and it got published. (I am happy that I was able to convince -cheeto- to place his – he was pretty upset about the whole affair and it took some convincing).

Copyrightstown was another one. That cache is all about copyright infringement. I couldn’t make the case that the use of pictured logo’s was educational in nature, because I am not a certified institution, and therefore had to grossly modify the listing which had 6 really interesting case of copyright infringement pictured. I probably had 8 hours invested in the graphics, research and write-up (pretty typical for an s|s cache) and was pretty hot about that one. In the end the cache wound up being about the first case of infringement only, so it is still a good cache and still educational.

I also like caches based on Remote Sensing, my “Nadar” series (look it up). But rule changes have made them more difficult to publish now and some of my favorite caches wouldn’t get published today without an additional puzzle component. Head Case, I’d Walk a Mile, Hyde’s Web – i just love these and have at least 3 more Nadar’s in the works. The most recent one to get published was Head East, which was initially just about finding the “big smiley face”. I had to add the puzzle part to get it published, but I do hope some of you use Terrabrowser to locate the “smiley”. It’s really fun to see unexpected stuff like that in remote imagery.

The funny thing is, every one of my caches has an “agenda”. I am here to do more than entertain, although that’s part of it, I am here to educate, share my life experiences and expand the limits of the sport. That’s my agenda. I am not here to stick containers in the woods so people can go out and have a “light, fun experience” although I’d venture to guess that most cachers have more fun doing my darker kayholder caches then the light fun ammo cans in the woods, full of junk.

Now, I take it in stride. I respect the job of the reviewers and the time they have to invest in mine. I know if I submit a cache and don’t hear back the same day that they are likely having a pow-wow trying to figure out what to do about seldom’s newest cache.

There was one that got completely quashed. “The Fizzmaker” which was going to be a cache with Giz where you had to conduct the Mentos and Diet Soda experiment to see how high you could get your fizz to go.

No amount of convincing got me to a resolution on that one and I had to completely change it to “I’ll Come Bounding Back”, which is still a fun one for kids, but not what I had intended.

The good news it that I found the perfect spot for this one and just have to wait until spring to try getting it published again.