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New Premium Feature Idea


TwistedCube

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I don't know if this is possible but an idea for Premium Members is that they can hide grandfathered caches. What i mean by this, is that they can hide virtual, webcam, and other grandfathered caches.

 

I hope you agree! :) :) :)

Considering that currently no one is allowed to hide these caches, I don't think geocaching HQ will be allowing something like this.

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It seems like a crazy idea at first glance, but maybe there is something to it. Reports are that the death of new virtuals had to do with defining what constituted something decent enough to call a virtual (how does one define the 'wow' factor?). I could also see how the proliferation of this cache type could end up taking away from geocaching as a whole. But it seems that having a certain percentage of caches as virtuals is actually a good thing. What if instead of opening up placing new virtuals to 'Premium Members', it were opened only to 'Charter Members'? Or opened up to those with 15 years continuous premium membership? What an incentive to keep dishing out my $30/year! Seems like a good business idea for Groundspeak. You would also create new additions to the much-beloved 'Virtual' cache type, but these additions wouldn't get out of control because only a small percentage of dedicated cachers would qualify to place them.

 

Interesting idea...

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Why would this seem a "special" feature for premium members?

 

Most COs we know of owning a few of these "grandfathered" types, spent way too much time weeding out all the fake finds, the arguments over posting selfies instead of the webcam, not sending answers to questions, pics from google instead of GZ, etc.

- And most of those fake finders were premium members too.

 

We realize that this is a big dream of many cache-for-stats folks ("why can't we just have a weekend of locationless"...), though you apparently don't seem to be one, but I'd bet even the site realizes that it's probably more hassle than they're worth.

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Why would this seem a "special" feature for premium members?

 

Those type caches already exist on the Waymarking site that Premium Members here pay to keep the lights on. :) The OP did not do any research first.

As for bringing those cache types back to geocaching, it will never happen because that is why the Waymarking site was created was to get rid of those problematic cache types. :o

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What an incentive to keep dishing out my $30/year! Seems like a good business idea for Groundspeak. You would also create new additions to the much-beloved 'Virtual' cache type, but these additions wouldn't get out of control because only a small percentage of dedicated cachers would qualify to place them.

Curious, hopefully you're not suggesting that becoming a premium, or even a charter member means anything other than you coughed up thirty bucks.

 

- Moral integrity, dependabily, or intelligence doesn't come from one's wallet... :)

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I don't know if this is possible but an idea for Premium Members is that they can hide grandfathered caches. What i mean by this, is that they can hide virtual, webcam, and other grandfathered caches.

 

I hope you agree! :) :) :)

 

Thats an excellent idea! I always wanted to hide a virtual geocache!

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You would also create new additions to the much-beloved 'Virtual' cache type, but these additions wouldn't get out of control because only a small percentage of dedicated cachers would qualify to place them.
I don't see how premium membership would solve any of the problems that caused virtual caches to be grandfathered in the first place.
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You would also create new additions to the much-beloved 'Virtual' cache type, but these additions wouldn't get out of control because only a small percentage of dedicated cachers would qualify to place them.
I don't see how premium membership would solve any of the problems that caused virtual caches to be grandfathered in the first place.

Agreed

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I could see premium membership being one aspect of a revived virtual - but only one part of it. Since Groundspeak has shut the door on new virtuals and will not allow existing ones to be adopted, there is no need to spend too much time discussing ways that virtuals could be accommodated. It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.

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I could see premium membership being one aspect of a revived virtual - but only one part of it. Since Groundspeak has shut the door on new virtuals and will not allow existing ones to be adopted, there is no need to spend too much time discussing ways that virtuals could be accommodated. It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.

 

+1

 

I have never been disappointed in a virtual.

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It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.
+1

 

I have never been disappointed in a virtual.

Your experiences aren't really related to the problems that caused virtual caches to be grandfathered in the first place either.
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It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.
+1

 

I have never been disappointed in a virtual.

 

Your experiences aren't really related to the problems that caused virtual caches to be grandfathered in the first place either.

 

Which is also not to say that the problems are insurmountable or that adoptions of existing virtuals would lead to similar problems. I was simply noting the worth that I have found - how virtuals have expanded my experience and kept me in the game. Since virtuals are not on the table, then discussing a solution - that might include premium membership as one aspect - seems futile. So yes, it's too bad.

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I have no desire to see dead deer carcasses listed as virtuals, or random shoes in trees being listed.

As an aside: I have heard these examples brought up over the last ten years I've been caching, every time the possibility of resurrecting virtual caches is broached. But I've yet to see any examples of caches where this happened.

 

Were all of these killed off at the review stage, prior to publication? Or does anyone actually have an example of a roadkill or lost shoe virtual that was published?

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I have no desire to see dead deer carcasses listed as virtuals, or random shoes in trees being listed.

As an aside: I have heard these examples brought up over the last ten years I've been caching, every time the possibility of resurrecting virtual caches is broached. But I've yet to see any examples of caches where this happened.

 

Were all of these killed off at the review stage, prior to publication? Or does anyone actually have an example of a roadkill or lost shoe virtual that was published?

 

My understanding is these got caught in the review stage. That was before I was reviewing so I never shared in the joy.

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I have no desire to see dead deer carcasses listed as virtuals, or random shoes in trees being listed.
As an aside: I have heard these examples brought up over the last ten years I've been caching, every time the possibility of resurrecting virtual caches is broached. But I've yet to see any examples of caches where this happened.Were all of these killed off at the review stage, prior to publication? Or does anyone actually have an example of a roadkill or lost shoe virtual that was published?
My understanding is these got caught in the review stage. That was before I was reviewing so I never shared in the joy.

 

Yeah, I figured. I'd love to see if one got through the cracks, though.

 

The sneaker cache was never listed as a virtual but instead as an mystery cache: http://coord.info/GC3129.

 

A primary source! Just what I was looking for. Thanks!

Edited by hzoi
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I could see premium membership being one aspect of a revived virtual - but only one part of it. Since Groundspeak has shut the door on new virtuals and will not allow existing ones to be adopted, there is no need to spend too much time discussing ways that virtuals could be accommodated. It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.

 

I think thats one reason why Wherigo caches were invented. Although there aren't a lot of Wherigo caches around.

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I could see premium membership being one aspect of a revived virtual - but only one part of it. Since Groundspeak has shut the door on new virtuals and will not allow existing ones to be adopted, there is no need to spend too much time discussing ways that virtuals could be accommodated. It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.

 

I think thats one reason why Wherigo caches were invented. Although there aren't a lot of Wherigo caches around.

Wherigos can be play anywhere, but Wherigo geocaches still require cachers to find a physical container and sign a log in order to log them as found on geocaching.com. Also, Wherigo wasn't released until 2008, well after Groundspeak grandfathered virtual and webcam caches and killed off locationless caches.

 

The purported "replacement" for virtual caches was Waymarking. But that's a different kettle of deer carcasses and lost shoes, so I'll stop there.

Edited by hzoi
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I could see premium membership being one aspect of a revived virtual - but only one part of it. Since Groundspeak has shut the door on new virtuals and will not allow existing ones to be adopted, there is no need to spend too much time discussing ways that virtuals could be accommodated. It's too bad - every time I find a virtual in a place where containers are not allowed or would not be appropriate, I think about how much they have added to my experience.

I think thats one reason why Wherigo caches were invented. Although there aren't a lot of Wherigo caches around.

Part of the reason why there aren't a lot of Wherigo caches around is because they are not easy for a non-technical cacher to create. A cacher can't just find a suitable physical location for the container, but they also have to create a 'cartridge' using one of a few programs. I started building one cartridge and didn't find it overly complicated, but I work with computers all the time and so I have a different comfort level than some cachers that don't do tech work.

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You would also create new additions to the much-beloved 'Virtual' cache type, but these additions wouldn't get out of control because only a small percentage of dedicated cachers would qualify to place them.
I don't see how premium membership would solve any of the problems that caused virtual caches to be grandfathered in the first place.

 

The primary reason given was that virtuals and webcams do not have a container. Good for sweeping other problems under the rug. I think lack of proper maintenance was one of the major problems. So Groundspeak will not permit any new ones, even for premium members. But they have grandfathered the existing ones. And I thank them for that.

Locationless are a different story. I thought that many of them were quite fun and challenging! Find a street sign with your name on it. Mine was easy. But we had to work hard for my caching partner. You try finding a street sign with "Jesus" on it! We finally found one about forty miles away in Carmel, New York. But again, they were not well maintained. "My name is Frederico. Here's a sign that says Fred." And many of them were not interesting.

Whymarking is diametrically opposite. With Locationless, only one person could log the site. Whymarking points to a site, and anyone could log it. (Though few do. My one Whymark has been logged once.)

Example: Visqueny Doughboys. With Locationless, we had to work long and hard to find two that had not been found. With Whymarking, anyone can log then, even though they had been found before.

So, to OP: Groundspeak closed them down (or grandfathered them) for whatever reason. They will not be coming back.

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On 4/25/2017 at 10:57 AM, m0bean said:

It seems like a crazy idea at first glance, but maybe there is something to it. Reports are that the death of new virtuals had to do with defining what constituted something decent enough to call a virtual (how does one define the 'wow' factor?). I could also see how the proliferation of this cache type could end up taking away from geocaching as a whole. But it seems that having a certain percentage of caches as virtuals is actually a good thing. What if instead of opening up placing new virtuals to 'Premium Members', it were opened only to 'Charter Members'? Or opened up to those with 15 years continuous premium membership? What an incentive to keep dishing out my $30/year! Seems like a good business idea for Groundspeak. You would also create new additions to the much-beloved 'Virtual' cache type, but these additions wouldn't get out of control because only a small percentage of dedicated cachers would qualify to place them.

 

Interesting idea...

Yeah, that makes more sense. Charter Members will most likely make better quality virtual caches. I now see why my original idea is not very good. m0bean does have an excellent point though...

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m0bean was definitely on to something... if you make virtual caches a very scarce commodity, perhaps the quality of the submissions would be high enough so that we wouldn't see the problems we had in the old days when anybody could and did submit anything as a virtual cache.  There are 400 or so remaining Charter Members, so that would have been a very small group.

Instead, since the time when this thread was started, Geocaching HQ came up with the idea of applying an algorithm to select 4,000 geocachers who could each hide one virtual cache.  4,000 is way better than 400!  But, it is still a controlled group and each recipient knows they only have one shot to hide an awesome virtual cache.

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5 minutes ago, Keystone said:

Instead, since the time when this thread was started, Geocaching HQ came up with the idea of applying an algorithm to select 4,000 geocachers who could each hide one virtual cache.  4,000 is way better than 400!  But, it is still a controlled group and each recipient knows they only have one shot to hide an awesome virtual cache.

Also, one of the things Groundspeak said about the list of 4000 was that it turned out to be relatively geographically diverse. I would expect the list of 400 remaining Charter Members to be much less geographically diverse.

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