Here’s the notes I took.
complications they had with Virtuals: – how to know whether or not the place was unique or interesting – started declining in quality – bad ideas were being submitted, but disagreed on criteria/method to “approve” the submitted ideas. Could not draw the line on where to say yes and where to say no so they decided just not to do it.
Decided virtuals could not be filtered by “quality assurance” so they were ceased. But the users cried for them to come back
Challenges were developed under the idea that victuals were intended to recreate an experience that the “hider” was able to appreciate and wanted to share with others. So “Challenges”, in turn, were meant to provide a way for a cacher to share a location based experience that they had. Examples cited are the famous grassy knoll. Where you stand at the site of a piece of history – in the place where you’ve seen all the footage.
Since the reviewers could not figure out how to evaluate virtuals, they decided to let the user community “evaluate” or rate the challenges.
Photo challenge example – pulling the finger of the Lennon statue. For some reason Jeremy is terribly amused by this one. Jeremy goes on to say that a challenge can be a “fun and possibly embarrassing action that you can commit on your friends”
Several other examples that diverge significantly from geocaching as you know it (Location based – GPS needed) Though they keep saying “location based” it’s more of an abstract location than a specific coordinate.
Challenges are equated with physical caches in the sense that you can go to a place and look at geocaching.com to find out “what fun things can I do here” They want to “Turn every location into an adventure”(Jeremy) which may consist of finding a geocache or licking the face of a diseased gerbil, or whatever thing a cacher has imagined. Examples given are things to do at Disney world or exploring a national park where physical caches are not allowed. yet they don’t want it to be a marketing platform.
They particularly point out that Challenges are NOT caches – in fact Jeremy keeps correcting himself when he almost says “cache” in the place of “Challenge”
Admit that it’s sort of an experiment to see how the caching community responds.
Thumbs up and thumbs down placed for user feedback to indicate to other users if it will be any good or not. But not meant for approval/archival purposes. They talk about reporting methods (flagging) for users to communicate bad challenges but no specifics given.
Challenges NOT owned by anyone – can’t delete logs, it belongs to the community. No control or say over results.
Confirms that the find count includes challenges but is broken out in some areas, including the profile and the hover. This was supposed to accommodate those who did AND did not want them applied to their count. Thought that the compromise would please everyone.
Global challenges – worldwide challenges: locationless caches. – just a fun thing to do in any neighborhood. Intended to be just another way to have fun. Intended to spur creativity and celebrate the most creative participants. Only groundspeak can create these. Didn’t want it to be a “Free for all”
Only premium members can create challenges and only once every 24 hours.
Also says – just because you CAN place a cache somewhere doesn’t mean you SHOULD and the same principle applies to challenges – want people to create quality caches. So in other words they are relying on people to police themselves.
Won’t be included in pocket queries / won’t have GPX files. Intended to be used on mobile devides with data plans / wifi.
Existing virtual caches will remain in effect, not converted. but free to be duplicated.
There’s no guidelines but there is “encouraging text” that give some direction to challenges. Example given – the Delorme / county challenges. But then they say that this would fit better in an “achievement system”
That’s the big stuff.
PS – CAN NOT believe they equate doing these things to being a super hero!!! Also can no longer listen to the sound of Jeremy’s voice. And Mr. interviewer, you can stop brown-nosing with Jeremy & Brian. Gag me.
SUMMARY: the “future” of geocaching is so go to a place and have fun. That fun may be finding a container or doing any other random deed that came from another “cacher’s” imagination and is subject only to the quality of what they come up with – good or bad.
Gotta Run – stop being so lazy. yeesh!
