Cache of the Month

[cheezehead]

@kansas64 wrote:

Suggestion then:
To nominate and to vote on COTM the parties have to have done the cache? BOD what do you think?

And just who is going to be the COTM Police?
There are bigger things to worry about like the Logo, logging Temps, Stacking. and Puzzle Tours

[zuma]

@kansas64 wrote:

Suggestion then:
To nominate and to vote on COTM the parties have to have done the cache? BOD what do you think?

There was enthusiastic cheating last month. There were 37 votes for the cache that won COTM. However, the cache was only found 17 times.

I also will tell you that 8 of the 37 votes for last month’s winner were by people who joined the WGA the same day as they cast their vote, from folks we have otherwise not heard from.

Obviously, this is an issue that the BOD will need to address. Most troubling is the fact that the same individual is trying to tamper with the BOD election as well.

z

[hogrod]

I have always liked cache of the month, as it usually highlights some great locations. One issue I have is the nominating of premium caches, since that leaves out all non-premium geocachers ability to find the cache or even see the cache page.

Maybe I’m biased as a nonpaying geocaching.com member, but doing less than 100 caches a year I really don’t need pocket queries.

[Jeremy]

@zuma wrote:

There was enthusiastic cheating last month. There were 37 votes for the cache that won COTM. However, the cache was only found 17 times.

I also will tell you that 8 of the 37 votes for last month’s winner were by people who joined the WGA the same day as they cast their vote, from folks we have otherwise not heard from

All the votes for the January 2009 COTM were certified as legitimate, and no cheating occurred. Plus even without these votes from new users or non-finders (again, all of which are legit under the current rules), the cache in question still would have had enough votes to win.

As for whether COTM votes from non-finders should be allowed, the Board will definitely consider restricting this going forward. It would add an extra layer of administration / checking / policing to the COTM contests which I’m not sure is really necessary.

[RSplash40]

@Jeremy wrote:

It would add an extra layer of administration / checking / policing to the COTM contests which I’m not sure is really necessary.

I’ll put my vote on not necessary as well, without a whole bunch of stipulations, rules, guidelines, etc I can’t see how COTM can be improved or made “more legit” and thereby take the fun out of another aspect of this “game”. Though I don’t really agree with the BOD in general, I dont think they should be spending time policing COTM.

I was frustrated early on that it seemed that only higher population density area’s were winning on some pretty uninteresting caches. As time passed though people seemed to at least start picking higher quality caches(be it cool hides, clever puzzle, etc) to nominate and some won. Maybe its just a change in thinking overall?

So in short, leave it alone, everyone should realize that it is a popularity contest where the votes may get skewed, thats what it has been, what it will be, and its just fine that way.

[Mister Greenthumb]

As I previously mentioned I found and nominated the January COTM for Dr. Dolittle who is a good friend. While I usually don’t vote for COTM since most have not been nearby, I nominated Ron’s more as a tribute to his movie puzzles which are very popular here. To me the COTM award isn’t that big of a deal since I knew that the winner usually had a very small number of votes. However, I was very troubled when I saw Ron’s solicitation for BOD votes, especially since it was also done as a log on someone else’s cache page. I would hate to see the BOD spend time on monitoring the COTM voting, but messing with the BOD votes should be top priority. Unfortunately a small number of the membership votes now, but I do believe that they do vote well informed. I personally got to talk to every member running this year and made my decision based on that. It would be disasterous it the BOD election turned into a popularity contest. I feel somewhat resposible for some of this controversy and apologize to all WGA members if I offended you. I’m proud to be a WGA member and strive to represent them resposibly in all of my geocaching activities.

Mister Greenthumb
Bill

[zuma]

Hi Bill,

Thanks Bill so much for your forthrightness. I really appreciate it. As far as the COTM goes, I agree with you that we really dont have the resources to be the “COTM cops.” It was just remarkable that last month’s winner had 37 votes, when it was only visited 17 times. That is kind of dead give away that something was fishy. On top of that, 8 of the votes came from totally new names who joined the WGA and voted for COTM the same day.

I agree that the solicitation of votes on cache pages is probably not a good thing, and a number of people emailed me (and other board members) of this irregularity. So, we are aware of it.

I would prefer that people would do what you did: take the time to talk to each candidate, find out what they believe, and then make an informed choice when voting. I have no idea who you voted for, but I do know that you did an excellent job of learning about each candidate, and I respect that. Thank you very much.

zuma

[Trekkin and Birdin]

I’m going to sound like a broken record here, but I’ll try to be a Neil Young broken record, LOL, except I’m more of a melody person and can never remember the words!

Bill, I know that along with zuma, I and probably each and every person running thanks you for your willingness to be upfront on this issue. Policing the COTM is not a job I think the WGA needs to take on, and the real issue here has come out. Thank you so much for your honesty, and also for the way you have chosen to become informed and make your choices based on that information. I hope we get a chance to meet along the trail again, and I hope I can sit and really study Vicki’s awesome pathtag bracelet. A girl has to admire jewelry, after all! 🙄

[seldom|seen]

I’m opinionated about many things and the COTM is one of the issues that gets me fired up. Just like many other aspects of this sport, once the intent is side-stepped in favor of nepotism, the value of the results is lessened and cheapened.

The existing COTM is flawed for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the difficulty of getting an objective swath of caches across the state every month that have been visited by enough cachers for a fair contest. I agree that for the most part, caches that get nominated are worth it. But there are times when a ho-hum cache gets nominated, and even wins, when there are literally dozens of better and more creative caches within a mile of the winner.

I long ago proposed, and many others before me, a simple objective ranking system for caches that could be used to determine the best and brightest in the state. A system that would allow isolated, but exceptional caches to carry as much weight as a good and frequently visited one. The tougher the cache, the less likely it will get enough votes to trump a more accessible, but perhaps not as good one.

I was told a year ago that some form of evaluative voting and ranking system was in the works. I still think that this could be a valuable tool, for many reasons, even beyond COTM, and yes I understand that it too will be subject to the same miss-use and abuse. But what it would do it remove the favoritism aspect of the COTM, since no one would be nominating caches anymore and cache owner’s would know their caches were caches were up for COTM until the month-end evaluation of cache rankings.

I don’t know specifically how you’d set up the system to do this and by what time and area constraints caches would be evaluated, perhaps it’s all too complicated to pull off, but it is an idea worth exploring and since i haven’t heard or seem anything on the subject for over a year…. consider this a bump.

[thepharmgirl]

@seldom|seen wrote:

I long ago proposed, and many others before me, a simple objective ranking system for caches that could be used to determine the best and brightest in the state.

Hmm, that’s an interesting idea… Maybe the GC.com folks should include that. Like, at the same time you log that you found a cache, you could “score” it right away if you wanted to.

Although… I’m not sure how I’d feel if I saw the results and everyone thought my caches sucked. 😯 My feelings might be hurt. ha.

Or do you mean just rank the ones that are nominated as the best?

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

There are a lot of good opinions here on what should be done. I agree with many of them, but also think it should just be left alone.

In 2006, one of my caches was nominated, and then won cache of the month. It went on to win cache of the year after some controversy involving the same thing we are speaking of here. At the time I was in my rookie year of caching, and was so excited to be noticed by my peers, that I absolutely solicited votes. I couldn’t see past the thought of winning when I was so new to the sport. I even went so far as to have my wife sign up for the WGA and vote for our own cache. She did come back and check out the WGA forums for a few months afterward, but hasn’t been back since. I still wonder if we would have won without her vote. It’s my * next to my name. I learned a lot from that experience.

Not long after the COTY win, I had another cache come up for COTM. Toward the end of the voting I urged all of my caching buddies who had not done my cache to rescind their votes. Whether they did or not, I don’t know, but I did lose.

I was nominated again for COTM this past month. I didn’t solicit any votes, in fact it was a friend that brought it up in a local forum, and all I did was ask that people do my cache.

We need to remember the reason we all got into this sport, which is I believe for fun. There seems to be so many issues as of late, that some of the fun, at least for me, has gone out of this sport.
[/quote]

[Sagasu]

TyeDyeSkyGuy wrote:

We need to remember the reason we all got into this sport, which is I believe for fun. There seems to be so many issues as of late, that some of the fun, at least for me, has gone out of this sport.

Agreed. Not everything in life can be perfect, and COM is an example. Still, it offers a way to notice a cache and make a free choice of doing one for fun based on what one reads in the cache listing and logs, as well as hearing opinions directly from others. The BOD election might be a little different matter and deserve more scrutiny on how the ballots are cast.

[TyeDyeSkyGuy]

@Sagasu wrote:

TyeDyeSkyGuy wrote:

We need to remember the reason we all got into this sport, which is I believe for fun. There seems to be so many issues as of late, that some of the fun, at least for me, has gone out of this sport.

The BOD election might be a little different matter and deserve more scrutiny on how the ballots are cast.

Very True. Maybe in this case there should be a 6 month membership requirement before you can vote in the BOD elections.

[gotta run]

I wouldn’t take COTM too seriously. It’s just for fun. You don’t get a prize. Well, I guess there’s a blue ribbon, but you even have to go hunting to figure out where that is.

@seldom|seen wrote:

I long ago proposed, and many others before me, a simple objective ranking system for caches that could be used to determine the best and brightest in the state…I was told a year ago that some form of evaluative voting and ranking system was in the works.

I’m very skeptical that this kind of system would be used. I’ve seen cache rating links on sites and quite frequently the number of evaluations is a mere fraction of the total logs, if there are any evaluations at all.

Half the time people won’t take more time on a cache than it takes to log “Easy cache for our team to find.”

On the Left Side of the Road...

[Team Deejay]

I’m not sure who indicated that there was a “ranking” system in the works for geocaching.com, but I can tell you that this is not true at this time. The last time I saw it discussed, the issue of people using the rating system to attack people or pad votes for their friends caches made the topic something that GS thought was better left alone. I personally would have liked such a system, but I understand their thinking.

[Author]

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