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Changes to Geocaching.com / Trademarks


Guest jeremy

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Guest jeremy

The Geocaching web site and forums have taken its toll on me, severely impacting my job and personal life. I've been thinking about taking a less active role in the day to day administration of the forums and mailing list, as well as the many changes to the web site to address the great suggestions of the participants. I'll touch on a couple of points to summarize some decisions and changes I have made.

 

1. Geocaching Trademark - Yes, I did file a trademark for Geocaching. My intent was to protect the name from being trademarked by some other entity, and enforced to remove the use of geocaching as the name of the game. If you check out netsaint.org (great program, by the way), you'll see the result of not claiming a trademark. Fortunately, the game has gotten enough press and the name is now widespread enough where it is unnecessary to protect the name. Therefore I am no longer pursuing the trademark, except as it related to sales of goods with the Geocaching logo designed by Grounded, Inc. You are free to use the word geocaching in any form you like. However, any creative of mine (logo, "you are the search engine" quote) is owned by Grounded, Inc. and me. Feel free to make your own logo and quote for the sport if you like. If you create a fan site and want to use my logo, as long as you have it link back to me I'm fine with it - just let me know out of common courtesy.

 

2. Mailing List / Forums - As of this moment I am no longer hosting the email discussion list, except as a place to provide announcements. If you want to host a discussion list, please let me know and I'll put your link on the "discuss geocaching" link on the web site. So folks who have wanted to do regional discussion boards, or whatever, feel free to let me know and I'll add your link to the site. The original discussion list, "gpsstash", is on Yahoo eGroups. There are still a lot of participants there to chat. However, I will not be a member of the list.

 

As for the forums, it was brought to my attention that some folks are abusing the anonymous posting capability, and posting as multiple people to support their registered posts. As a result you need to be registered in order to post to the forums now.

 

Unfortunately, whatever I maintain can be considered biased (or censored, etc), so it makes a lot of sense to allow other discussion boards to chat about the sport. Although I think I've kept the discussion forums pretty open for discourse, the thought that I am suppressing any kind of discussion makes it obvious that I shouldn't take on that role.

 

3. Email / Accessibility - I will no longer be taking an active role in discussions during the day. Recently the game has severely impacted my day job, and I have been too distracted to be as productive as I would have liked. So between the hours of 8-6 (PST) and I will have limited access to geocaching related email. If you notice a lag in my responses, this is why.

 

In addition, I will be parceling out my free time responding to emails. You may also notice a lag even in the evenings.

 

4. Pay for Play - Recently there have been fears that the site will become Pay for Play. I want to make it clear right now that I, Jeremy Irish, CEO of Grounded Inc., will never make the geocaching sport a pay for play service, as least as far as I can control it on Geocaching.com. Hopefully that will quash any misinformation in the future. I believe the sport remaining free is in the best interests of the game.

 

Last but not least -

 

As long as people are interested in going out and playing geocaching, I will continue to create new features to the geocaching.com site to surprise and amuse folks to play the game. Hopefully other web sites who offer services to the geocaching community will continue to make it a fun game to play. I for one still enjoy working on the game and still have fun.

 

Jeremy

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