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New Cache Request Denied


OldA'sFan

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I recently submitted a cache for review which was denied by the reviewer. The cache was to be located in a park dedicated to veterans in Tracy, CA. In fact, the park is named Veterans Park. It’s a lovely park with a small plaza that has plaques honoring the five branches of our military. The floor of the plaza is made up of bricks which have the name, branch of service, and years of service of individuals from the Tracy area that have served in the military. My plan was to have an offset multiple cache that would have a simple puzzle about the five branches of our military. It is my understanding that the reviewer feels I have a political agenda of some sort based on the title and statements in the cache description.

 

The reviewer and I have communicated several times. I have assured the reviewer that I have no “agenda” or political motive of any kind. I just want to honor my granddaughter (who is in the US Air Force) and all the other men and women that are serving or that have served in our armed forces. The reviewer has been very respectful and patient, and I appreciate the time and effort that he/she has devoted. Before appealing to Groundspeak I would like to get some feedback from the forum. I want to make sure that I’m not “off base” in my belief that the cache should be published. Below is the link to the cache. Your feedback would really be appreciated. Thanks in advance for your help.

 

OldA’sFan

 

GC20EZ9

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...22-d09849697b32

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It is my understanding that the reviewer feels I have a political agenda of some sort based on the title and statements in the cache description.

 

Can't comment unless we see the title and description.

 

I have assured the reviewer that I have no “agenda” or political motive of any kind. I just want to honor my granddaughter (who is in the US Air Force) and all the other men and women that are serving or that have served in our armed forces.

 

Ah - now I can comment... the bolded part IS your agenda. The Reviewer is right. Change the title, remove the agenda from the description, let the place and its message speak for itself.

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It is my understanding that the reviewer feels I have a political agenda of some sort based on the title and statements in the cache description.

 

Can't comment unless we see the title and description.

 

I have assured the reviewer that I have no “agenda” or political motive of any kind. I just want to honor my granddaughter (who is in the US Air Force) and all the other men and women that are serving or that have served in our armed forces.

 

Ah - now I can comment... the bolded part IS your agenda. The Reviewer is right. Change the title, remove the agenda from the description, let the place and its message speak for itself.

 

I don't think just wanting to honor members of the military will trip the agenda trigger. I'm guessing there is some specific verbiage in the description that is doing this. There probably is a way to both honor the granddaughter and avoid hitting the agenda wall. There are plenty of recently released caches in our own area that manage to do this very well. I'm guessing that if the OP isn't able to see where the conflict is now that just telling them to remove it isn't going to solve the problem.

 

But, yes, we will need to see the text to show you where you're having a problem.

Edited by Castle Mischief
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Ah - now I can comment... the bolded part IS your agenda. The Reviewer is right. Change the title, remove the agenda from the description, let the place and its message speak for itself.

 

I hope this is not the case. I once created a cache in honor of my dead dog and it went through. Just what IS the agenda?

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Not to go off-topic.........

 

I do not think that our opinion matters that much. I see this as a debatable issue between you the reviewer and GS, not the general public.

 

Sorry, but that is my opinion (and we know what opinions are like). ;)

 

Putting it out on the forums IS the proper appeal process.

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I'll speculate for both of us CM. I'm going to guess that there is some text beyond "honoring our citizens who have served or are serving in the Armed Forces" since this is in a Veterans' Park.

 

My advice, lose any language that suggests what others should do or feel when they are in this special place. Simply bringing them there should be sufficient.

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Caches to honour an individual (person, dog, etc) generally don't trigger the "agenda" guideline. Once you try to honour a group, and especially if the wording suggests that the cache seeker might like to do the same thing, it's fairly easy to cross the line. (In both cases, "YMMV" applies.) You might not think that anything as simple as honouring service personnel could be seen as an agenda, but that's generally how Groundspeak, the lackeys, and the reviewers will see it.

 

The line between an acceptable and an unacceptable agenda has to be drwan somewhere (example: "this cache honours the gallant SS officers who fought to keep the Bolsheviks from invading our beloved German fatherland in 1945" ;)), and Groundspeak has made the choice to draw that line right at the top of the page. This means that a number of causes which almost nobody on the planet would object to are excluded, as are causes which might be controversial internationally but which 99.9% of the people likely to visit the cache would support.

 

Groundspeak has absolutely no tree-hugging pinko liberal hippy peacenik agenda; indeed, the company President is an Air Force veteran. Keeping agendas - even great ones - off cache pages is the best guarantee of keeping this game free for everyone, in the same way that keeping established religion out of the US Constitution is the best way to guarantee freedom of religion.

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So lets see if I understand this. I could say

 

"this cache is to honor my grand father L/Sjt. James Stanley Taylor, MM - 693221 who served in the 54th Kootenay Battalion in the CEF during WWI"

 

But I couldn't say

 

"This cache is to honor the 54th Kootenay Battalion of the CEF that my grandfather, L/Sjt. James Stanley Taylor, MM - 693221, served in"

 

Or is even mentioning the unit ect going over the agenda line?

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So lets see if I understand this. I could say

 

"this cache is to honor my grand father L/Sjt. James Stanley Taylor, MM - 693221 who served in the 54th Kootenay Battalion in the CEF during WWI"

 

But I couldn't say

 

"This cache is to honor the 54th Kootenay Battalion of the CEF that my grandfather, L/Sjt. James Stanley Taylor, MM - 693221, served in"

 

Or is even mentioning the unit ect going over the agenda line?

Good question. Maybe a reviewer or GS lackey will post an official (or semi-official) interpretation of the agenda guidelines.

 

In the meantime, I don't really see an agenda in either one of those. But language like "Please take a moment to honor..." seems to be considered an inappropriate agenda.

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So lets see if I understand this. I could say

 

"this cache is to honor my grand father L/Sjt. James Stanley Taylor, MM - 693221 who served in the 54th Kootenay Battalion in the CEF during WWI"

 

But I couldn't say

 

"This cache is to honor the 54th Kootenay Battalion of the CEF that my grandfather, L/Sjt. James Stanley Taylor, MM - 693221, served in"

 

Or is even mentioning the unit ect going over the agenda line?

There is no exhaustive list of exactly what can be mentioned. Is a named platoon or battalion OK but a named division or army group or armed service not? I don't know. (I wonder why one would actually want to honour a specific battalion, but not its regiment or brigade, especially going three generations back.)

 

You can certainly improve the likelihood that your cache listing will be accepted by some combination of the following:

- Reducing or eliminating tributes in general (personally, if someone decided that the way to honour my life was to place a geocache, even a really nice one, I'd be rather unimpressed)

- Avoiding language which invites the cache seeker to "pray for", "think about", "reflect on", "join with me in", etc etc.

- Keeping tributes personal (meaning, about a specific individual rather than a larger group, and not about all the things which that individual believed in).

 

Incidentally, most of the issues are to do with the wording on the cache page. To take another example, there is no general problem with a cache being placed at a church, even if the cache is located one foot from a huge marquee which says "Jesus Saves", and even if the cache placer hopes that the seeker will take note of that sign. What you can't do is to use Groundspeak's web server and bandwidth to advance your message, free of charge, via the cache listing page. (If you shell out a couple of bucks for a TB tag, you can - subject only to minimum considerations of family-friendliness - knock yourself out on the TB page.)

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I want to thank all of you that have made comments. Your comments have been very helpful. I want to especially thank Riviouverur for a very logical explanation. While I don't completely agree with the guidelines I now understand why they are in place. I will ask the reviewer to activate the cache and make changes to the title and to the description. Again, thanks to all of you. This is a great forum.

 

OldA'sFan

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Thank you to the OP for being respectful and constructive, both in your forum thread and in your dealings with your local reviewer. Often, when a cause is near and dear, it is easy to become emotional about a cache being "rejected."

 

Reviewers LOVE to push the "publish" button and we HATE to hold up a cache over a guidelines issue. I think that is especially true when there is an "agenda" issue. It is extra hard when the agenda is one which the reviewer happens to support strongly, or disagree with strongly.

 

It helps to remember that it's just a box in the woods, at the end of the day.

 

Enjoy the logs on your new cache, which I'm sure will be published soon.

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I'm actually the worst offender when I create a cache and try to get it published. LOL. I love history and I want people to know *why* I'm placing the cache. I inevitably get all wordy and I end up including words that should know by now would scream agenda.

 

Actually,I just made a new cache and after reading this thread, I realized that hot dog..butter my buns and call me a biscuit...I did it again! lol I think I managed to edit it before Keystone caught me again. :blink:

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I'm actually the worst offender when I create a cache and try to get it published. LOL. I love history and I want people to know *why* I'm placing the cache. I inevitably get all wordy and I end up including words that should know by now would scream agenda.

 

Actually,I just made a new cache and after reading this thread, I realized that hot dog..butter my buns and call me a biscuit...I did it again! lol I think I managed to edit it before Keystone caught me again. :blink:

 

Well, don't worry... Groundspeak has absolutely no tree-hugging pinko liberal hippy peacenik agenda.

 

(I love that phrase!!)

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Ok..I have NO idea how I ended up responding to an old thread. I must have been surfing around, found the subject interesting and forgot to check the date of the last response.

My bad.

 

In any case, it's still a subject that is relevant from time to time and there's a lot of good responses. Newer cachers can still learn from it, but they probably won't see it if it's tucked away on page 40.

My good.

 

At least I didn't point out that this thread is two years old on the WRONG thread. How embarrassing would that be? :rolleyes:

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