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I’m going on record as a knight defending the Kingdom of Sellzup and will do my part to uphold the tradition of chivalry (i.e. upholding the intent of the CO / cache to the best of your ability).
If you’re interested in joining me, please post back to this thread pledging your allegiance to the code of chivalry to show our solidarity as fellow knights defending the Kingdom.
Just humble peasants from Sandland who have ventured east from time to time, but we are strong devotees of the code of chivalry. We cannot contemplate a Selzzup barren and void of the rich tapestry that it has been blessed with these past few years. There is room for all.
I don’t agree with your decision to leave the game but I do understand. I have PM’d you a request for the Pareidolia series and Pinball Wizrd as they are special to me and near to home.
I suggest a sabbatical and return. letting others become caretakers during your leave.
I can’t always think like you and understand but I always appreciate.
Following the signals from space.
@walkingadventure wrote:
I suggest a sabbatical and return. letting others become caretakers during your leave.
A wonderful way of looking at it. Call it cache-sitting if you will. This is what I consider any that may fall under my supervision to be. Be it a short or long sabbatical.
Warning, off-topic post but s|s dragged me in here.
The day I learned of a list of my puzzle solves being shared with others was a disheartening day for me.
Play the game how you want everyone says.
Well having my puzzle cache solves handed to others is not how I want to play the game as a cache owner.
I am glad many have enjoyed what I have created and my sincere apologies to those of you who have solved my puzzles but not had a chance to log them. I have let you down. Hopefully you can still respect me and what I have given back to the geocaching community.
I am not leaving the world of geocaching nor am I archiving all of my caches. I’m just going to focus my free-time on what matters most.
I wish Alex all the luck in finding good homes for his creations. I’ve enjoyed many of them and would not trade those experiences or what I’ve learned from him for anything.
-cheeto-, your comments are on topic, because it’s worth looking at the reasons for the adoption/archival.
We also recently archived a slew of our caches, including a great many of our GB puzzles. I think it’s important for people to understand that this was not done out of spite (i.e., it’s not a case of “we’ll show them!”). Rather, it was simply a case where it was no longer enjoyable on our part to have those caches out there. Now, I can’t speak for you, or for Alex, but I’m taking a guess that the situation is similar.
The “Serenity Prayer” has been brought up several times in various discussions in these forums. And this is a very appropriate prayer. It is worth looking at what can be changed, and what cannot.
As has been pointed out, despite what we might argue the spirit of the law to be, the reality of the guidelines is that finding a cache by any means=found it log.
The reality is that a majority of the geocaching community feels it is ok to log puzzles without solving them, as expressed in the poll on these threads.
The reality is that if puzzle cache owners do not like this, there is nothing they can do about it.
And it goes even farther than that. While players who believe that puzzles should be solved before logging cannot enforce that standard, players who believe otherwise can enforce their views on puzzle owners simply by giving away solve coordinates. As Mrs. gotta run said to me, “What’s the point of having a puzzle cache then?” A very good point indeed. Finally, and most unfortunately, we have clearly seen that some will go out of their way to purposefully turn entire collections of puzzle caches into de facto traditional caches by making coordinate lists freely available.
As always, it is easier to destroy than it is to create.
So, back to the Serenity Prayer. What can be changed? In our case, the type of caches that we choose to put out. This is a game, after all. If a part of it is not enjoyable and we can change that, it simply makes sense to do so.
Or to put it another way, as has been said to us on more than one occasion, “If putting out puzzle caches bothers you so much, stop doing it.” Well, that indeed is good advice.
On the Left Side of the Road...@-cheeto- wrote:
Warning, off-topic post but s|s dragged me in here.
The day I learned of a list of my puzzle solves being shared with others was a disheartening day for me.
Play the game how you want everyone says.
Well having my puzzle cache solves handed to others is not how I want to play the game as a cache owner.
I am glad many have enjoyed what I have created and my sincere apologies to those of you who have solved my puzzles but not had a chance to log them. I have let you down. Hopefully you can still respect me and what I have given back to the geocaching community.
I am not leaving the world of geocaching nor am I archiving all of my caches. I’m just going to focus my free-time on what matters most.
I wish Alex all the luck in finding good homes for his creations. I’ve enjoyed many of them and would not trade those experiences or what I’ve learned from him for anything.
Sorry, -cheeto-, I didn’t meant to mischaracterize your response to the tour, only to point out that you did directly respond to it by archiving many caches that took you many hours to create, as have others in the area. Some view all of this as a spat between two cachers and I want to make it clear that it is a larger rift of caching ethics at play, that the continuing trend of touring unsolved puzzle caches for numbers is going to illicit similar responses in the future.
What matters most to me in this sport is the puzzle itself and it puts me instantly at odds with the basic tenants of the game. This I’ve know and dealt with and while I might roll my eyes when a puzzle is logged by accident or a group of caching buddies logs a puzzle en masse, I’m pretty forgiving – as long as there’s some recognition of the purpose behind the existence of the cache in the first place, which is ALWAYS more that having a slip of paper to sign and a smiley to add to a cache count.
However, when a public invite to a bus tour of unsolved puzzles is posted in these forums and an inquiry about what puzzles someone should start working on is responded to with an open sharing of a huge number of puzzles solves, well that just goes beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior and it’s what’s pushed me to this point. If neither Groundspeak nor the WGA has the capacity to publicly state that this kind of behavior is unacceptable, then my conviction is to quite the game. So far I’ve not seen any public remonstrance, even though both parties are aware of what has transpired.
I’ll just end this by saying the ball is no longer in my court.
There was a poll a while back that asked if you could only do one,hide or find, I think the majority was find. Well if those who hide no longer hide, there will be not be any caches to find. What happens then? A slow death of geocaching? Unlikely. I guess I look at it this way. Geocaching is like a birch tree. It always growing. As it grows, the older branches start to die off. Well, there was a just a big wind storm and a few big branches were just lost from that tree. If the wind continues to blow and cachers continue to pull strips of birch bark off, that tree will start to die faster and all will be left will be an old rotten stump. And then someone comes along, tares up that stump to make room for a parking lot. (As I write this the song Big Yellow Taxi is playing in the background.) I guess some would rather have a parking lot than a Birch Tree
I will disagree with you cheesehead, to the extent that this game is evolving the way the majority of players want it to. There are more caches available today than ever before and new ones being published all the time. The difference that I see is that the majority of new caches that come out seem to be low D/T traditionals. I’m making that claim purely on my observation of notifications that come in my inbox, and not on any research. However, just look at how popular the various “treasure trails” are where people can get hundreds of caches per day. So you can say this is good, or you can say this is bad, but it doesn’t matter because it is what is happening because it is what people want. Supply meets demand.
In other words, the spots that are being vacated by these puzzle caches will be taken up by another cache.
On the Left Side of the Road...Reflecting on this….I had one Puzzle that was VERY hard to solve. I was really pleased with the puzzle and thought it was perhaps my best puzzle…but once I got the feeling that the solves came from answers being passed around I archived it.
I archived it because I no longer got the satisfaction from the cache as an owner. I liked that folks actually solved the puzzle….when it was clear to me that folks were not getting out of the puzzle what I expected, the cache lost value for me….and so it passed into the land of the archived.
So yes as an owner of the puzzles there is a certain degree of fun that comes from having folks do the puzzle the way you wish it done….if that pleasure no longer exists than it is time to say good bye to those puzzles.
The main reason I like to create simple puzzles (not that I have done any recently), is that there is less inclination or need for folks to cheat the puzzle solve.
How many years does it take a tree to grow and die? As I said a few branches. As the older ones die off and fall, there are new ones sprouting and growing till comes a time, they all stop growing and all end up dying.
Some tress continue to grow after some of those branches fall off, but the tree is forever changed. When a branch is broken off, there are usually new sprouts growing from the old limb of the tree. When tree is harvested, new saplings will take it’s place. Over time, one tree dies, then another and then there is no forest. Just Mother Nature’s way.
My point is a a few branches of a tree are pretty minimal. If a few fall off you notice it at first, but over time, they are forgotten, but the tree will always be different from that point on. It will continue to grow, it’s just not the same.
@lostby7 wrote:
when it was clear to me that folks were not getting out of the puzzle what I expected, the cache lost value for me….
Well said.
In the last day I have had individual cachers thank me for my efforts and plead for me to not do what I had done. These are the folks that did see the value.
They enjoyed that “a ha” moment when they found that one sign on calumet street that they just couldn’t spot for months. They enjoyed reliving their childhood years playing the atari video game system as they learned more about it. I am glad they got out of it what I would have wanted to get out of it — if I was the finder. That makes me happy 😀
I look forward to hunting caches in the spots I have freed up. There are many creative cachers living in my area that are putting out some great new caches. It’s time to enjoy them and stop maintaining tour stops.
So far I’ve not seen any public remonstrance, even though both parties are aware of what has transpired.
I have no doubt another tour is being arranged, just so they can be sure to grab every S|S, -cheeto- and gotta run puzzle before they get archived. Not only would it not be a surprise, it would be keeping in line with recent behavior.
While I hate to see a cache (or caches) get archived because of the actions of a few thoughtless people, I do like seeing owners who take the kind of pride in their hides that they’d rather archive them once they feel the spirit of the cache has been lost. It’s just a shame that it’s the same carload of people who have demonstrated that they don’t care about a cache’s intent. They just want a smiley, intent and cache owner be damned.
Although I have little hope of solving most of your puzzles (S|S, cheeto, gotta run, et al) I do enjoy the ones I can solve. It is a tremendous accomplishment what your efforts have done for the Fox Valley and its caching environment. My friend used to live in Seattle and I can tell you that the level of puzzles (and all other types of caches) that exist here rival anything found there. And Seattle is kind of the Mecca of geocaching, so to say we are blessed by the quality of caching we have here in the valley is an understatement. To lose that…to lose that unique experience because of a few boneheads…that would be a big loss to our caching community.
I do hope some middle ground can be reached and that whatever slights or spats that have occurred can be overcome and forgotten. If they can’t and high quality caches (and cache owners) have to pay the archiving price, then we all lose. A cache owner has to abandon a labor of love, a cache seeker is denied a memorable cache, the community has less flavor and the loss is total. We don’t need or want that.
Bruce
Sorry to see that you are leaving Seldom. Being outside the Fox Valley area I dont look at your puzzles often, but when I do I usually end up banging my head on the desktop in gleeful frustration. I think it is safe to say there are few people that as passionate about puzzle caches as you and if for no other reason is a loss to our community that you are leaving.
As a puzzle cache owner I have experienced some of the pass the answer around antics, where on a simple ones I dont mind it, but on harder ones it irritates me. Or when I have a cache that has a combination lock on it as part of the puzzle and have people leave it unlocked.
Sorry to see you go-Bad things is now I will have to archive one of my caches, your WGA avatar is a needed clue on it
@cheezehead wrote:
There was a poll a while back that asked if you could only do one,hide or find, I think the majority was find. Well if those who hide no longer hide, there will be not be any caches to find. What happens then? A slow death of geocaching? Unlikely. …..
Here is the aforementioned poll.
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