A seasonal plea to post your DNFs

[Trekkin and Birdin]

I know, I know, we’ve debated this one endlessly, but with the piles of craphas on the ground now (craphas arrived=snow), I’d like once more to respectfully ask everyone to log DNFs. If you gave reasonable search and came up empty, don’t be afraid to own that. For all the usual reasons, they should be logged, but also….it helps people who are planning a caching trip to narrow down their choices. If one without any kind of icon, or even the winter friendly icon, is showing up as a DNF, maybe it can wait till spring. We’ve dug through and plowed along without regard to those things, but it sure does help to know others have had troubles recently.

Logging DNFs does not mean you’re a bad cacher. It’s more likely to mean you’re somewhat honest. (I simply cannot go to the extent that any cachers are completely honest, because in my experience……we lie like rugs, LOL)

[Lostby7]

I DNFd all these today…

The 5 for 5 Gauntlet #3U
The 5 for 5 Gauntlet #4H
SPELL CHECKER
ZH53051-01 Village Of Menomonee Falls
…:::FunLand:::…
WSQ St. Paul’s
IAT Bridge to the Past

Oh wait you mean log them online at CG?
…I did that too.

[Lostby7]

Just got an email thanking me for DNFing their cache…he has taken down the winter friendly attribute as a result.
“I removed the winter friendly attribute. I guess I didn’t take the plow factor into effect. I hope I didn’t waste too much of your time on that one. Thanks for posting the DNF so I could fix the problem.”

[SammyClaws]

While I appreciate your request for logging DNF’s, I do not believe its dishonesty. In our case not logging a DNF is a lack of confidence. Many times we have found caches with one or more DNF’s on them. So we will hunt for a cache regardless.

If at the end of the day we truley believe that a cache is missing we do contact the cache owner.

But of the caches we have not found, very few have been missing. Most often it is our mistake; we have a preconcieved notion of where the cache should be.

For example one that we looked for several times turned out to be on a picnic table in a shelter with 20 other pcinic tables. We never bothered looking at them since they move, but the noob that did find the cache apparently didnt know that. (Of course when the moved all the picnic tables to another shelter it was gone for good)

Other times we have found a cache in seconds that we spent a half hour on during a previous visit.

I am sure others have their reasons for not logging a DNF, but those are ours.

[Trekkin and Birdin]

I’m not suggesting that every DNF has gone missing. Usually they haven’t. Most often, we’ll have that same experience of spending forever the first time, only to return and find it right away. My comment was more of a nudge to those who never log a DNF for fear they’ll be viewed as a “bad cacher.”

Quite the opposite. It’s said that many of the worst spellers write a lot. Same thing here. Those who cache often will have a greater than average share of DNFs. Right now we’re over 250 ourselves. No, those don’t make us happy, but we feel it’s only fair to let others, cache owners and other cachers, know that for us, at least, it was a challenge to “not find.”

Let’s not even talk about how many of those are 1/1s! Many, actually. Ugh!

[jerrys dad]

As long as I make the effort I’ll log the DNF. I;ll do it even if I DNF the same one multiple times. I usually have one of those going all the time.

[raslas]

If we feel we have given it an honest effort we will log a DNF. On the other hand if we don’t feel that we actually looked hard for it, we will wait until we’ve had a chance to REALLY look for it before logging a DNF.

[Todd300]

I’ll post a note if I was in the area if I didn’t make an effort, saying there may be too many muggles, ice is unsafe, too much water around it, etc.

[TheBalks]

I always log my dnf’s, 51 DNF’s to my 359 finds. I even log multiple dnf’s on the same cache. I like getting the dnf logs on my hides as much as the founds, so I have indication if I need to check on my caches.

[Author]

Posts