How can you make this popularity contest even more restrictive and cliquey? Keep submitting premium member caches so not everyone can do or even view the caches that are nominated or win.

I stopped giving groundspeak money for being a premium member, I usually do less than 40 caches a year so It ended up being like a $1 a cache which was not worth it. I was a premium member for years, bought travel bugs, shirts, ect. so It’s not like I haven’t shown my support.

I can see only one reason for making a premium cache, to keep the traffic down in sensitive area. I keep noticing more and more of these useless restrictive caches showing up where they are completely unnecessary & could just be a regular cache.

@hogrod wrote:

I keep noticing more and more of these useless restrictive caches showing up where they are completely unnecessary & could just be a regular cache.

[devilsadvocate]
With the rash of disappearing trackables (especially GeoCoins) and people not re-hiding the caches well enough, maybe these folks that are making “Members Only” caches are trying to reduce the risk of all of that happening?
[/devilsadvocate]

@Van’s Clan wrote:

@hogrod wrote:

I keep noticing more and more of these useless restrictive caches showing up where they are completely unnecessary & could just be a regular cache.

[devilsadvocate]
With the rash of disappearing trackables (especially GeoCoins) and people not re-hiding the caches well enough, maybe these folks that are making “Members Only” caches are trying to reduce the risk of all of that happening?
[/devilsadvocate]

This may be true in some cases. For example, I own just one members only caches, Sallys Savings Bank and Geocoin Exchange. Having it available to members only means that it is less likely to get hit by newbies and less likely to be hit by coin thieves. The ability for the cache owner to see who looked at the cache page is a big disincentive for folks to just showing up to the cache and stealing (and not logging) the geocoins, I have found.

In hindsight, if I would had my monkey puzzle cache “Stereogenesis” as a members only cache then I would not have had it broken open by a newbie cacher.

But generally I agree with the sentiment that Members Only caches are often quite pointless.

zuma

@gotta run wrote:

Who stole the thread? I wanna see April vote tallies…

COTM really does not reresent all of Wisconsin. Just the SE areas. Kinda like the rest of the WGA, BUT seems to be trying to get better. I use to vote and nominate caches, but what’s the point? 98.5% of of WGA members have not found a northern cache and the just the opposite is true also. Other than the 25-50 regulars to browse this site, how many others vote? I know I keep saying this over and over, but it is all about the SE.

@cheezehead wrote:

COTM really does not reresent all of Wisconsin. Just the SE areas. Kinda like the rest of the WGA, BUT seems to be trying to get better.

+1

With 80% of Wisconsin population in SE Wisconsin it’s hard to compete in the rest of the state. We could have an awesome cache that is well worth COTM or COTY, but since we don’t get the attendance to try the cache we will never be able to get the votes needed to ever compete. It’s a shame really. I have done a few caches that I know would be able to compete with anything the SE has to offer.

May I suggest breaking up Wisconsin into a few/several different sections that have their own COTM? That way we are competing in similar census areas.

COTM is pointless plain and simple.

Funny, I am a SE Wisconsin cacher and earlier this year I bought up this problem and I was told by many including some who have posted here that this wasn’t an issue.
Also to note, I voted for the winner because I had done it and felt the series was worthy of note. I seldom cache outside of my home area so I would seldom vote for a cache outside of this area, but if say I do one today in Wausau after the CITO event that I think is worthy I would nominate or vote for it.
I still question why people who have not done a cache can vote for that cache in the COTM