[Team Deejay]

If you want to use your “fake” coordinates for parking or as a reference point, this is fine (although many people may not have these available after solving a desk puzzle). Otherwise, we ask you to place your fake coordinates somewhere that can’t be searched, such as a body of water or a large empty lot, hoping to clue in someone who accidentally put the fake coordinates into their GPS. I’m not a fan of the “middle of the interstate” choice, but it does meet the criteria. The middle of a city street, on the other hand, does not qualify, as some people are more than a little sloppy with their coordinates on street light hides, guardrail hides, and traffic sign hides. Another available option that I don’t see used too often is “inside” a large building (a submitter from Michigan did this). Also, if you manage to pick the only spot in Wisconsin with no bodies of water within 2 miles, we will relax the 2 mile guideline to allow you to place your fake coordinates in a non-searchable location just a bit farther away.

I own one puzzle cache where the fake coordinates are for parking, and once a year, someone tries to find the cache in the parking lot. I have a prewritten “Uh, buddy, you have to solve the puzzle first” note for those occasions.

[Team Deejay]

Congrats! Does this mean Jeremy has a vacancy again?

[Team Deejay]

Or maybe this…My kind of nano!

[Team Deejay]

Of course, you can pick and choose among the available caches to select those that meet your area of interest. Just finding all the caches in the area (like you probably do at home) is not such a good idea any more. It was different in the past, when people only placed caches in places that “someone might want to visit”. This seems to have changed around 2004 or 2005 when people started placing caches in every parking lot, roadside, and every other undesirable location. This development caused many of those who were active in the early days of the sport to walk away. Just take the time to look for caches that sound interesting and aim for those. If everyone is a caching fan, you can stop and get some numbers along the way or in the general area, but if not, just stick with the handpicked choices.

[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.

[Team Deejay]

@seldom|seen wrote:

Anyway, please look at downtown Menasha and provide feedback, good or bad.

I was expecting a smiley face configuration….. 😆

[Team Deejay]

Woohoo! Congrats on your milestone.

[Team Deejay]

When I first started paperless, I bought a used Palm (Palm III if I remember correctly) for $8 off Ebay. I probably saved that cost in paper over the first couple months. I’m now using a Z22 (which I don’t recommend), but that was under $100 new.

[Team Deejay]

@TyeDyeSkyGuy wrote:

@-cheeto- wrote:

I am still curious on why stacking coordinates raises a “red flag” for reviewing and approving new listings.

I’m just guessing here, but I would think any proximity problems with submitted coords (actual or not) would trigger a “red flag”.

Correct. And remember that not every “mystery cache” has bogus coordinates, just like the start of every multi isn’t a physical container. This means that every stacked cache has to be reviewed to make sure it isn’t some sort of ALR cache, monkey puzzle cache, combination lock cache, etc. Basically, it wastes our time.

Of course, you could just try not putting all your caches in close proximity to one another. Just a thought.

[Team Deejay]

I can tell you that when we review caches, doing this generates an instant “red flag” on the cache, immediately placing the cache under extra scrutiny before publication. If that is your objective, go for it.

[Team Deejay]

@Lostby7 wrote:

@Team Deejay wrote:

As far as I know, there is very little impediment to placing earthcaches, other than the rules of earthcache.org, so I really don’t see where the board has a role to play.

Thank you for your candor on this subject; staying silent about a topic which might not be self-flattering is a difficult thing to do and the sign of a true leader. You state you case very well and I agree with the correctness of your statements. However there are impediments to placing EarthCaches in the state and some of these have been overcome by the past BOD (getting placements allowed in SNAs for example). Who is to say other roadblocks will not arise?

Actually, now that I think about it, there are a few spots that are still closed to Earthcaches (and every other cache type for that matter): Apostle Islands NSL, St. Croix NSR, and the federal Fish and Wildlife Sanctuaries. I do feel that the board should take an active role in working to open up these areas for all geocaching. In these three examples, the first two have a much greater likelihood of success than the third. The National Park Service has recently relaxed their rules on geocaching in NPS property, leaving the decision to the management of each individual area. There have already been some talks with St Croix, but, as with all things federal, things are moving very slowly.

The FWSs, however, are much farther from fruition. The USFWS is interpreting a sentence in the legislation with says that the sanctuaries are created for “wildlife centered activities” to mean that geocaching is not allowed because it is not wildlife centered. Note that many other non-wildlife activities are allowed, but they are pretty much stuck on this nationally. Some of you in the western part of the state will note that there are some earthcaches in the Upper Mississippi FWS, but those are placed by the rangers. They will only approve earthcaches placed by refuge personnel. I’m not a fan of this sort of restrictive policy, but I ran it through Groundspeak and they were OK with it, stating that any cache is better than no cache.

My feeling is that we should concentrate efforts on opening up the SNAs to the occasional physical cache, and work on opening up the two NPS areas to all geocaching. Obviously anything we do in this regard will be pretty restrictive at first with regard to container types, permits, distances from trails, required maintenance visits, etc, but I suspect that if we get out in front on this, we will be able to steer the policy to make it satisfactory, much like was done by Brian for the virtual stages in SNAs.

Incidentally, if there are any more areas that prohibit earthcaches for some reason, please let me know.

* I just noticed that I might have set the acronym record on this post, so
SNA = State Natural Area
NPS = National Park Service
FWS = Fish and Wildlife Sanctuary
USFWS = United States Fish and Wildlife Service
NSR = National Scenic Riverway
NSL = National Scenic Lakeshore

[Team Deejay]

I am very much in favor of expanding the roles of the committees. I think where we have failed in the past is that the committees themselves have never physically met or even participated in a teleconference or online chat. Message boards are ok for a group once they have a charge and everyone has a job to do, but regular meetings to allow for real time interchange of ideas is required to have a truly effective team. Additionally, the committees need to establish some tasks to accomplish over the year, and then assign the responsibility for those tasks to the team members. Once this is established, the message boards can be an effective tool for reporting progress, asking for help, suggesting additional projects, etc.

Editing to add that making the 5 non-officer board members part of ALL of the committees is probably overkill. I would suggest that each of these board members should be the leader of one of the committees and responsible for communicating with the rest of the board as to the committee’s progress. Of course, the board members could join as many committees as they like, but I think it would be good to give each a primary focus.

[Team Deejay]

I guess I need to post, even though silence might be a better alternative. The WGA board has a lot of roles: setting up events, running a website, interfacing with government and community organizations, communicating cache placement guidelines, etc. While I am all for quality hides personally, I don’t believe encouraging or discouraging any particular type of hide or cache is the responsibility of the WGA board. You don’t have to spend too much time in these boards to realize that there are a lot of different ideas out there about what constitutes a quality cache. We should let people decide for themselves what types of caches they want to hide (and to find). As far as I know, there is very little impediment to placing earthcaches, other than the rules of earthcache.org, so I really don’t see where the board has a role to play.

[Team Deejay]

@Mister Greenthumb wrote:

@Trudy & the beast wrote:

Trudy & I also logged Four Windows and What in the world, but we changed our logs to memos. We have no need to pad our stats with virtual finds. We also had a recent visit from our German Friends [CaLLiBRi & Jazzy ] since nobody else is pointing their finger. They have been making a tour of the States, logging virtual caches from coast to coast. Since their only Wisconsin cache is Don’t look at your hands, it is a bit blatant. perhaps I should log a virtual find at each of their hides, since they wish to play by that set of rules. I don’t have time to deal with them at the moment (I’m late for work), but I will deal with them tonight, after work.

Maybe instead of just deleting logs we could take the Beast’s idea of just writing a note instead of an “I found it”. I would hope that foreign visitors are searching for interesting things rather than just an unearned smiley.

Unfortunately, you don’t have that option as a cache owner. You can only delete their logs, not edit them in any way. You can, of course, ask them to change it before you delete it. (To save you an email, reviewers can’t edit them either, only delete.)

[Team Deejay]

Actually, I was just informed that the event has been cancelled. Sorry folks.

[Author]

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