A very interesting discussion. I was involved in a bit of a archive/adoption fiasco in SoCal were I placed a new cache in place of and near the location of an older cache that was burned, missing, and all but gone. Blah, Blah, Blad… to make it a short story here’s some info I received after the decsion was made by a reviewer to unarchive/adopt out caches that have been missing etc. from an unactive cacher.
…I thought I would pass on a new(existing) policy posted to one of the Reviewer forums on adoption requests:
If the owner is around they should process the adoption them self at http://www.geocaching.com/adopt/ .
If the owner is not active on the site and the cache is not archived the Reviewer will post a note on the cache page telling the owner that he has 4 weeks to respond or the cache will be either archived or adopted. (Please give both options). After the four weeks have passed if the owner has not responded send me the Information and I will process the adoption. I need the New owners account name and the GC# of the cache.
If the Old owner is still active on the site but ignoring the cache you cannot adopt the cache to someone else without permission of the owner. If they refuse to respond to a 4 week note, archive the cache. This will almost always cause them to respond to you. This assumes that there is a problem with the cache. If there is no problem then someone shouldn’t be asking to adopt the cache of an active user anyway.
With VERY few exceptions we do not adopt archived caches. If someone wants to adopt an archived cache let them place a new cache is the same place instead. Many times the logs and containers are gone on archived caches and there is nothing to adopt. To make it clear, if there is no container or log there is nothing to adopt and the adoption will not be allowed. The person requesting the adoption can place a new cache and cache page.
Grandfathered caches are not adopted. This includes Virtual caches, Moving caches and Web cams.
For purposes of this policy “active on the site” means they have logged on to the site in the last 6 months or respond to your log on their cache page.
This is nothing new. Its the way we have been doing adoptions since Jan 06. I just thought it would be nice to have it written out for all the new reviewers. Let me know if you have any questions.
