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On the 8th day of Christmas my Geocaching Buddy gave to me eight geo-logbooks, seven 35mm film cans, six favorite points, five trackables, four bison tubes, three lost gloves, two skirt lifters and an ammo can in a hollow tree…
Good question.
I can think of four potential places where pathtag info is shown, or could be shown.
One is the tag itself (which of course only has a serial number and maybe a logo). That has very limited information.
The second is at the organization’s website. At the WGA page, for example, there could be a trackables tab which could possibly state something like “The Wisconsin Geocaching Association is promoting this pathtag (or geocoin) as a fund raiser for our organization. The WGA is a volunteer-based organization that exists for the purposes of etc. etc.” Followed by a link to purchase or contact information.
The third place it could be mentioned is on the pathtag page itself. Granted not many “casual” pathtag collectors look at that page, but there’s a whole world of “serious” pathtag people out there, from here to Australia, who do look at those pages and buy or trade pathtags practically every week. Just ask Rawevil, Sweetlife, or Zeeman Clan, who have quite a few pathtag designs under their own username and have traded with others from out of state dozens or hundreds of times.
The fourth place it could be mentioned is on the WGA Facebook site, similar to the screen capture above (although that screen capture is from the pathtag page). Just a simple post advertising a new pathtag (or geocoin), showing the image and mentioning it helps fund the WGA, accompanied by a link or contact, would lead to additional interest.
Lately there seems to be a growing interest, or perhaps a “renaissance” of pathtags. Why not promote it fully when the WGA creates a new one. Just in the past year there have been new tags created by WGA members HamFam (perhaps you’ve heard of them 😉 ), Lacknothing, Rawevil, Zeemanclan, Scooter2010, Brillo17, Uncle Fun, King54130, MavWitt, Videochic, k9zp, Famof5W, Superior Loon, Team~DNF, Scribble Scribe, The Goldie Diggers, the WGA BOD, CaseysPeeps, Labgal13, Icy Paws, jmj-wi, JM Gully, and Scott Damnit.
I myself like to collect pathtags more than geocoins, because pathtags are much more affordable. I pretty much only collect tags from other Wisconsin-based geocachers, as well as the tags from our sister geocaching associations, including the geocaching associations from Alaska, Alabama, Arkansas, Minnesota, Michigan, Florida, Georgia, So California, Texas, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Maryland, Oregon, Oklahoma, and about a dozen more states.
This is one of those times where naughty is nice!
Sigh! On the ‘naughty list’ again 🙁
The Happy Hodag! wrote: I had to go through and see about the few cachers I’ve met from other states, it looks like they barely have 1,000 finds between them. I should also mention that you’re one of the 13, remember meeting at my cache in Lakewood? I think you were with WI.Hibiscus that day.Of course! That’s when we first met your pet hodag!
Turns out I’ve met 13 cachers with 10,000+ finds to their name.
That was an intriguing statistic, so I had to look it up. There are 46 Wisconsin-based geocachers listed at cacherstats.com as having 10,000 finds or more. We have met all but 4 of them and have actually found caches with 24 of them, not counting events attended. We’ve gone caching with people from other states that have over 10k, but I don’t have a good way of tracking that.
Geez . . . just because you hit the 10,000 club . . .
That was a pretty epic day for us. 🙂
FTP! Again.
I think it ruins the spirit of getting a promotional tag to keep it
I agree. Sadly there are those who will keep them in their “collection” rather than sending them out as part of their agreement.
So yet ANOTHER of our ammo can hides….gone. Those things aren’t cheap. Why in the world can’t people leave things alone? So tired of hearing about caches being stolen, gorilla glued, vandalized and all the rest. That brings our total to something like 8 or 9 taken or destroyed. Sigh. Not to mention many other non-can hides that have been taken or trashed. Not all of this is the result of angry raccoons. *eye roll*
Yesterday we received a report that one of our ammo cans has been taken from one of our letterbox hybrids. It was in an area that is off trail and normally not visited by anyone other than deer and rabbits. We attribute it to one of the following:
1. A vast right-wing conspiracy
2. Climate change
3. Someone brought it home to seal it shut with Gorilla Glue
4. Trade war with China
5. Someone borrowed it for their class show-and-tell
6. Muggle who didn’t know what it was and doesn’t know how to read
7. Self-centered *&^%#@$$&!§ who doesn’t care
In any case, we’ll head out back there with a replacement, this time with braided cable to make it more difficult to spontaneously take. In 8 years this is only the 2nd ammo can we’ve lost, along with maybe 5 or 6 other containers.
And we don’t even live in West Salem!
I guess I never thought about CITO souvenirs potentially devaluing the idea of CITOs. It’s an interesting point to ponder. They are one of our favorite things about geocaching, and we’ve participated in quite a few of them, with or without a souvenir as incentive.
I’m sure I’m preaching to the choir here, but the concept of picking up trash while hiking or geocaching seems to be far from most geocacher’s minds. I see CITOs as opportunities to motivate people to clean up our parks and natural areas, to help curtail invasive plant species, to rebuild and repair trails and outdoor areas – and hopefully that one day at a CITO event will spill over to many similar days without any reward other than knowing they left the place better than they found it. Perhaps for some it takes a souvenir to spark their initial interest before they “get” it and become more environmentally responsible.
As for us, we typically host or co-host one or two CITO events each year. For the last five years we’ve followed a nifty format.
1. We select a LARGE park that has great need. 2. Because it’s a LARGE park it’s likely that many people would clump together and certain portions of the park would not have that need addressed, so we mark coordinates where the accumulation of trash or issues are most pressing. 3. We place temporary caches at each of those locations where the trash or issue is great (20 to 40 spots). People have the option of an assignment (with a temp cache) or no assignment/just cleanup wherever. The temporary caches at the respective assignments are theirs to keep and deploy elsewhere, and are easy finds (don’t want people to waste time looking for them when they should be CITOing), with a D/T rating and hint, fully stocked with swag and a log book, with an explanation card of what geocaching is, and clearly labeled as a geocache on the outside. 4. By having these optional assignments (which pretty much everyone wants), we ensure that the park is fully covered instead of parts of it being neglected due to the sheer size of the area. 5. Sometimes a few new “real” caches are placed within a mile or so, sometimes not at all, since the emphasis is not on caches to find but on trash cleanup or some other task.
But why give out the temporary caches? Wouldn’t that also potentially devalue CITOs? Wouldn’t the assignments alone, sans temps, be good enough? Probably. But there is an additional reason for us doing it this way. In the Milwaukee/Waukesha area, there are SO many caches that are placed without proper labels on the outside, even though it’s required in many areas (they don’t want them to be mistaken for bombs). SO many caches in the area have plain sheets of paper for logsheets not stating that they are geocaches. If people receive a ready-to-go cache with a proper label and log book, maybe that too will carry over to their placement habits in the future. We actually have seen this happening. Incidentally, the temp caches are almost all double-walled plastic or stainless steel food thermoses from Goodwill and are fully waterproof. One final reason for the temporary caches – it’s fun!
Here is the updated list of Wisconsin-based geocachers past and present that have created a pathtag. The list continues to grow as we become aware of more of them.
It’s official….I’m on medicare as of today. The Brewers won, so I don’t feel so worn out and old, anyway!
You’ve reached a different kind of milestone!
I would suggest to all geocachers, new and not-so-new, to log all the DNFs, including 1st trip, 2nd trip, etc. Contacting the CO instead of posting a DNF doesn’t help other cachers who may follow after you, especially if the CO didn’t read the email or is inactive.
Having said that, it seems many newer cachers do not post DNFs. If they stick with the game over time, most begin to see the value of DNF logs and start posting them. As far as I’m concerned one never has to apologize for posting a DNF log, but they have some ‘splaining to do if they do not post their DNF. 🙂
We’ve noticed various trends over the years, but not the ones mentioned. We didn’t even know what a “cache health score” was, so I had to look it up:
“Geocaching HQ developed an algorithm which measures the “health” of a geocache to produce a score. The details of the algorithm can’t be shared, but you can imagine that several unaddressed “Needs Maintenance” logs would negatively affect the score, as would a string of DNF’s on a Difficulty 1.5 cache.
Once the score drops below a defined level, an automatic system email is sent to the cache owner, suggesting that the cache may need attention. There are also tools to bring caches with low health scores to the attention of the local Community Volunteer Reviewer. That makes our job easier! Both the cache owner reminders and the reviewer tools have aided in “cleaning up the gameboard.”
Geocaching HQ has refined the algorithm over the past years since it was introduced, based on feedback for false positives and false negatives. Use of the algorithm as one of the factors for awarding Virtual Caches is the first time that the Cache Health Score has been used in a positive way!”
We’ve placed 80-something caches so far and have had a cache disappear here and there, but not often, and mainly in locations that don’t involve much of a hike. I attribute it to teenage cachers with smartphones or muggles serendipitously finding a cache. Any caches that we place in a scenic area that involve a hike are generally safe. We’ve not ever gotten an automatic email from HQ to maintain our caches, so we must be maintaining them at a pace above HQ’s minimum expectations.
As for placing caches, a trend that has been happening here is that some of the more active COs are not placing single caches here and there. Rather they are placing caches only when in a series, 5 to 10 caches or more at a time. We have been among those that have been trending in that direction. Another trend of course is a higher percentage of smartphone cachers.
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