Numbers vs. Quality

[+Dan2099]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

[+BBWolf+3Pigs]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

Caching with friends.

[+The A-Team]

Isn't this the same topic being discussed over here?

[+ngrrfan]

The wolf and pigs has it right.

[Mr.Yuck]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

The "numbers crowd" are really very small in number in the grand scheme of thing. A minor percentage of the Premium Member category. About a year ago, the CEO of Groundspeak posted that the mean number of finds for all accounts was well under 100. I think it was even under 50.

 

But you will rarely see a group so small in number have such a great influence on something. We have Power Trails, don't we? They were not allowed for the vast majority of Geocaching's existance.

[+ByronForestPreserve]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

Eventually, if you find enough quality finds, your numbers will also get up there.

 

I know what you mean, though. I like both; if I'm going out for a day, I either have a very cool destination in mind where I might only find 4 or 5 caches, or I might throw my bike in the back of the jeep and do a bike path power trail. Depends on what I'm in the mood for. I'm not sure anyone completely excludes one or the other (or at least those people are in the minority).

[knowschad]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

[+AneMae]

QualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQuality

 

Darn Coke!

[vagabond]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

About a year ago, the CEO of Groundspeak posted that the mean number of finds for all accounts was well under 100. I think it was even under 50.

 

And how many of those are still playing??

[+Mudfrog]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

The "numbers crowd" are really very small in number in the grand scheme of thing. A minor percentage of the Premium Member category. About a year ago, the CEO of Groundspeak posted that the mean number of finds for all accounts was well under 100. I think it was even under 50.

 

But you will rarely see a group so small in number have such a great influence on something. We have Power Trails, don't we? They were not allowed for the vast majority of Geocaching's existance.

 

From my perspective, the numbers crowd is the main crowd these days. Park and grab micro hides have risen to astronomical highs (well, almost) and are found much more often than other caches. I know too many people who go caching only to get as many as they can in every trip. LPC's, guardrails, fake wall plates, and even dumpster hides are what they look for. They love doing series (power trails) where all the caches are the same, placed as close to each other as gc.com will allow, and with low difficulty ratings. I honestly don't think the caches themselves are entertaining to them,,, they just want the quick smiley to add to their count.

[+Mudfrog]

QualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQuality

 

Darn Coke!

 

So, what are you trying to say?

 

Btw, you went off the side of my monitor with that reply. Never seen that before!

[+ATXTracker]

Both are fun for me at different times. Sometimes I like to see if I can snag 20 in a single outing. Other times I get tiered of simple little hides and I seek out better quality caches. There's a local caching organization that does yearly cache awards to try and promote good caches, which is awesome. There are definitely more poor hides than 5 years ago, but also with volume comes popularity, and with the popularity the number of quality hides increases as well (in quantity if not percentage). There are many more awesome hides in my area then there were 5 years ago. Hide quality is relative. Even if all caches were better across the board, there would still be the top 10% and bottom 10% when it come to trying to measure quality. If micros were banned, people would complain that there are too many smalls.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

[GOF and Bacall]

QualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQualityQuality

 

Darn Coke!

 

I prefer Pepsi, or RC if I can find it.

[+tozainamboku]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

Or the late Thomas Kinkade the best painter.

 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are plenty of people, called critics by some and elitist by others, who are all to happy to tell the rest of us what quality is.

 

That said, the OP's question raises a point. To a certain degree people who are happy finding lots of caches whether they be lamppost park 'n grabs or desert highway power trails, will admit that these caches are not as high of "quality" as a well cammo'd hide in a special location, or a cache that is unique or unusual in some way. There is no expectation, however, that every cache is of equal quality. We do not cache in Lake Wobegon; not every cache is above average. Depending on your personal tastes, which may change from day to day, you may prefer fewer caches with a higher percentage of what you think is "quality" or you may prefer to find a lot of caches and expect most to average or below. If you find something special that day, it is likely to be memorable and maybe even earn a favorite vote.

Edited June 5, 2012 by tozainamboku

[+NYPaddleCacher]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

Or the late Thomas Kinkade the best painter.

 

A few years ago my mother sent me a signed print by Thomas Kinkade. He lived not far from where I grew up and the print was of an area in downtown Los Gatos, Cal and included an old movie theatre that I used to go to frequently as a ute. It wasn't done in his typical "painter of light" style. Although it's just a print I have to wonder it's value went up since he passed away.

 

 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are plenty of people, called critics by some and elitist by others, who are all to happy to tell the rest of us what quality is.

 

And some of us are independent enough to decide for ourselves whether a certain song, musical artist, or musical genre is something we enjoy hearing rather than listen to commercial radio stations and listen to "popular" music promoted by the music industry. As a parent to an 8 year old that thankfully has gone past the Disney Channel phase (he's rather watch episodes of Mythbusters on Netflix) I've seen how Disney artists are promoted, sometimes calling them the hottest new musical stars through commercial promotions before they've actually recorded anything.

[fendmar]

Why does it always have to be versus, why not quantities of quality?!

[knowschad]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

Or the late Thomas Kinkade the best painter.

Exactly!!!

 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are plenty of people, called critics by some and elitist by others, who are all to happy to tell the rest of us what quality is.

Whether or not quality and beauty are subjective or objective are issues that have long been debated by philosophers. Don't be too quick to claim that the "eye of the beholder" argument is undeniable. Certainly, quality has a definition and a concept, at the very least. If we can define the word, then we can surely subject an object to the test of that definition.

 

[+DocDiTTo]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

The signature I've been using for years in here pretty much says it all.

[knowschad]

My point of view is that it is not ALL about the numbers, but it certainly is not NOT about the numbers, either. Numbers for number's sake has no interest to me, but I'm not going to go so far as to say that I don't feel some sense of pride in the number of geocaches I've found. In fact, that sense of pride has a lot do with with my attitude about that number and how I achieve it.

[+fizzymagic]

I certainly have sympathy for the "live and let live" argument. However, for those who espouse it to claim that the "numbers" caches do not impact everyone else is wrong.

 

I recently took a trip to Southern California and found some moderately difficult but very high-quality caches. Clever hides or ammo cans requiring a little bushwhacking; nothing required over a quarter-mile hike each way. They mostly were relatively accessible puzzle caches.

 

None of them had been found in the last 6 months. A couple had not been found in the last year. I was second-to-find on a couple that had been unfound for many months since the FTF spot was taken.

 

The fact of the matter is that with the proliferation of drive-up numbers caches, the "quality" caches that I enjoy are not getting visited! In fact, it has gotten to the point where I now actively seek out caches that have not been found for a substantial time. I treat it kind of as an FTF-like thing; the joy of being the first to sign a log in over a year is, IMO, even better than finding a clean log.

 

Now, I am probably unusual as I take a certain amount of pride in my caches being rarely visited. But I am concerned that for the majority of people, who put out caches in the hopes that they will be visited, there is a strong incentive to put out easy-to-reach, easy-to-find caches that will receive a lot of visits.

 

Do I think it is the End Of Caching? Nope. I continue to develop new methods for finding good caches and I am not likely to run out any time soon. Favorite points are very useful if applied in the right way. But the fact remains that the proliferation of "quantity" caches has indeed had an effect on the number of "quality" caches.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

 

The fact of the matter is that with the proliferation of drive-up numbers caches, the "quality" caches that I enjoy are not getting visited! In fact, it has gotten to the point where I now actively seek out caches that have not been found for a substantial time. I treat it kind of as an FTF-like thing; the joy of being the first to sign a log in over a year is, IMO, even better than finding a clean log.

 

+1

 

One of my favorite finds was on a cache that was placed in 2007 and has only been found 13 times. I found it in February 2009 about 8 months after it had been been previously found (I think I was the 5th to find it). It was found several more times after I found it, once in 2010, once in 2011, and was recently DNFd. It' about 2.1 miles form the nearest spot to park and I did quite a bit of route planning before I went for it to try to determine the best approach. About the first .9 of a mile was on a mostly flat seasonal road (a closed gate prohibited getting any closer) and the rest was on a faint trail or bushwack through the woods. There was also about 6" of snow on the ground for most of it. When I got to GZ it was one of the quietest spots I've encountered in the area. From the time I left my front door to when I got back home it took about 4 hours for a cache 14.3 miles from my home coordinates.

[knowschad]

I have a rather fun situation. I have two caches with identical containers. The idea is 100% unique, at least in my area. They are at opposite sides of our cities, so there aren't a whole lot of cachers that have found both of them. They have pretty much the same number of finds, and both are hidden in similar areas. The main differences is that one is at the end of a 50 cache powertrail. That one has well over twice the favorite points of the one hidden in a city park, even though they are practically the same hide. Speculation is that, after finding 50 bison tubes in signposts, that people are grateful for something a bit different at last!

[AZcachemeister]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

The proliferation of 'powertrails' should answer that question easily.

What (if anything) can be done about that is up for discussion.

If you are going to 'cache for the numbers', perhaps maximizing your D/T average could give you a thrill.

[knowschad]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

What's more popular... Walmart or that Mom & Pop store that used to be on the same corner? What's more popular... McDonald's, or that malt shop that used to be on the same corner? I'm not sure what value that question has, though.

[+BlueDeuce]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

Or the late Thomas Kinkade the best painter.

 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are plenty of people, called critics by some and elitist by others, who are all to happy to tell the rest of us what quality is.

 

That said, the OP's question raises a point. To a certain degree people who are happy finding lots of caches whether they be lamppost park 'n grabs or desert highway power trails, will admit that these caches are not as high of "quality" as a well cammo'd hide in a special location, or a cache that is unique or unusual in some way. There is no expectation, however, that every cache is of equal quality. We do not cache in Lake Wobegon; not every cache is above average. Depending on your personal tastes, which may change from day to day, you may prefer fewer caches with a higher percentage of what you think is "quality" or you may prefer to find a lot of caches and expect most to average or below. If you find something special that day, it is likely to be memorable and maybe even earn a favorite vote.

 

Well, today wasn't a special day and I didn't want it to be. Explain how that happened.

[knowschad]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

Or the late Thomas Kinkade the best painter.

 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are plenty of people, called critics by some and elitist by others, who are all to happy to tell the rest of us what quality is.

 

That said, the OP's question raises a point. To a certain degree people who are happy finding lots of caches whether they be lamppost park 'n grabs or desert highway power trails, will admit that these caches are not as high of "quality" as a well cammo'd hide in a special location, or a cache that is unique or unusual in some way. There is no expectation, however, that every cache is of equal quality. We do not cache in Lake Wobegon; not every cache is above average. Depending on your personal tastes, which may change from day to day, you may prefer fewer caches with a higher percentage of what you think is "quality" or you may prefer to find a lot of caches and expect most to average or below. If you find something special that day, it is likely to be memorable and maybe even earn a favorite vote.

 

Well, today wasn't a special day and I didn't want it to be. Explain how that happened.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[+BlueDeuce]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I don't equate popularity to quality. If that were true, McDonald's would be the best restaurant and Walmart, the best store.

 

And Justin Beiber the best musical artist...

Or the late Thomas Kinkade the best painter.

 

Quality is in the eye of the beholder. Yet there are plenty of people, called critics by some and elitist by others, who are all to happy to tell the rest of us what quality is.

 

That said, the OP's question raises a point. To a certain degree people who are happy finding lots of caches whether they be lamppost park 'n grabs or desert highway power trails, will admit that these caches are not as high of "quality" as a well cammo'd hide in a special location, or a cache that is unique or unusual in some way. There is no expectation, however, that every cache is of equal quality. We do not cache in Lake Wobegon; not every cache is above average. Depending on your personal tastes, which may change from day to day, you may prefer fewer caches with a higher percentage of what you think is "quality" or you may prefer to find a lot of caches and expect most to average or below. If you find something special that day, it is likely to be memorable and maybe even earn a favorite vote.

 

Well, today wasn't a special day and I didn't want it to be. Explain how that happened.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I believe I detect a note of sarcasm in that response. If only I could consider it special. If only.

[+BAMBOOZLE]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I've talked to quite a few cachers and I'd say unique-quality = 75%, numbers = 25%......I'd say this also approximates my own efforts.

[+jellis]

The great thing about caching to me is people can play it any way they want, so I was curious which way is more popular the numbers game or unique quality finds?

 

I've talked to quite a few cachers and I'd say unique-quality = 75%, numbers = 25%......I'd say this also approximates my own efforts.

I think there would be a big difference between cachers telling you which they prefer and which one they actually go for.

[+ras_oscar]

To the OP; the numbers are indeed important to me, but not in the way you expect. The only person I'm in competition with is myslef. I usually set myself a goal or 2 each caching season. This season I'm aiming to tick off all days on the caching calendar in my profile and score 1,000 finds in 2012. Next year I'll probably set some other goal. I am at the point where i need to drive several hours to find an area with caches I haven't searched for yet. Naturally I'm not going to burn that much petrol to find one cache. I aim at an average of 3 per day of the year, or 21 per weekend if I don't get any during the week.