When a Reviewer goes missing?

[+Tylrwnzl]

Not exactly sure where to post this. Here in Costa Rica the number of cache's is abysmal (officially 180ish but I'd guess 1/4th of them are MIA placed by tourists and never maintained). Now that I got a chance to pick up some supplies in the US I'm trying to plant a bunch of cache's.

 

I know that they say up to a week to review and it's only been 4 days (last one I planted here took 6 days to get approved) so I'm not really that concerned yet, but I noticed that the reviewer who has approved most the cache's in Costa Rica hasn't been seen in three weeks (since Feb. 23rd). Is there some type of system in place for if the reviewer responsible for an area disappears (ie cache's take more than a week to get approved) to let someone know?

[+Cache-witch]

Ah, for a minute there I was worried a reviewer had gotten lost in the jungle (in that case, I'd advise calling the local search and rescue people, of course).

 

But I see no reason to worry yet. You submitted your caches on March 10th and 11th, that is only 3 and 2 days ago by my count.

 

You say there are few caches in Costa Rica. Maybe the reason why the reviewer for Costa Rica has published no cache since February 23rd is simply that none were submitted in the country?

 

Also, sometimes a reviewer can be busy with other things, or even go on vacation. Then other reviewers from the same territory or from elsewhere in the world would review your caches. There are at least 5 reviewers who regularly publish caches in South America, so even if one is on vacation, I'm sure the others will get to your cache within the usual delays.

[Keystone]

I believe you are looking at the account for a reviewer who retired recently.

 

I checked the profiles for the other reviewers covering Central and South America. With one exception, all of them had logged into the website today. Nobody's missing.

[+JL_HSTRE]

I believe you are looking at the account for a reviewer who retired recently.

 

When a Reviewer retires is it clearly marked on their profile as such? Wouldn't want someone sending messages to a Reviewer profile no longer in use.

[Keystone]

Look at the "Status" line on any Reviewer's profile. It will say "Premium Member, Reviewer" or "Charter Member, Reviewer." If the "Status" line on any profile does not say "Reviewer," then they are no longer a Reviewer. Many retired reviewers will edit their profile to clarify this expressly, but that is not always the case.

[+SwineFlew]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

[+Tylrwnzl]

I believe you are looking at the account for a reviewer who retired recently.

 

I checked the profiles for the other reviewers covering Central and South America. With one exception, all of them had logged into the website today. Nobody's missing.

 

Thanks Keystone. Ironically I'm originally from PA and I hid a cache there on a recent trip. You were the one who approved it barely an hour or two after I submitted it. I guess I got spoiled with your fast response time (In fact I went to my parents house to print some logs and submitted it there expecting to take a couple days like my experience here in Costa Rica. When you approved it so quickly I had to jump in the car and place the cache now with log and someone found it a couple hours later.)

 

Like I said I wasn't complaining, I was just concerned. I've only looked at the cache's in northern CR and it seems most had been approved by the same reviewer. When I saw he hadn't been online since the 23rd I just got concerned since I'm really trying to push getting more cache's posted here in CR and wasn't sure what to do with (in my experience the only reviewer) not having been online in a few weeks. I've been a cacher "officially" for ten years, but after brief experience with in in 2007 only got back into it in 2016 so especially in terms of hiding caches and the review process I'm a bit of a novice.

 

Now that I've gotten the supplies (buffalo tubes, hide a key rocks and magnetic containers, camo tape, pill bottles, etc.) I've got plans to hide 20+ cache's which would represent over 10% of the caches in the whole country. It's hard to keep caches here due to rapid and thick growth and an abundance of muggle activity by the locals, but I'm trying to push it here. I've even coordinated with the local tourism organization and some local business owners to hide on their properties. I appreciate the work the reviewers do. My 'day job' is running a fairly large forum/online community so I know how much time is voluntarily dedicated to jobs like that.

 

Out of curiosity is there a way to keep track of who the reviewers are for your area? A lot of cache's here are placed by tourists on vacation and as much as I'd love to have cache's to find, so many of them around me are not maintained and missing that it would be good to be able to communicate about them with a reviewer. (I previously worked with my apparently now retired reviewer to sort some of those out, but have more since the last time we chatted).

Edited March 14, 2017 by Tylrwnzl

[+Tylrwnzl]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

[+Tylrwnzl]

Ah, for a minute there I was worried a reviewer had gotten lost in the jungle (in that case, I'd advise calling the local search and rescue people, of course).

 

But I see no reason to worry yet. You submitted your caches on March 10th and 11th, that is only 3 and 2 days ago by my count.

 

You say there are few caches in Costa Rica. Maybe the reason why the reviewer for Costa Rica has published no cache since February 23rd is simply that none were submitted in the country?

 

Also, sometimes a reviewer can be busy with other things, or even go on vacation. Then other reviewers from the same territory or from elsewhere in the world would review your caches. There are at least 5 reviewers who regularly publish caches in South America, so even if one is on vacation, I'm sure the others will get to your cache within the usual delays.

 

Yeah like I said I'm not super concerned with my cache's specifically, it was more of a general question. I assume in more cache dense areas of the world (Costa Rica has less than 200 caches for the whole country) there are more reviewers. I've only seen one reviewer active for the country so it was more a general concern than a 'why haven't my caches been published concern'. As I mentioned in my response to Keystone above I'd be interested in finding out who are the reviewers for my area as I've only really seen listings published by two reviewers (and on all the recent ones just the one who apparently is now retired).

[Keystone]

I believe you are looking at the account for a reviewer who retired recently.

 

I checked the profiles for the other reviewers covering Central and South America. With one exception, all of them had logged into the website today. Nobody's missing.

 

Thanks Keystone. Ironically I'm originally from PA and I hid a cache there on a recent trip. You were the one who approved it barely an hour or two after I submitted it. I guess I got spoiled with your fast response time (In fact I went to my parents house to print some logs and submitted it there expecting to take a couple days like my experience here in Costa Rica. When you approved it so quickly I had to jump in the car and place the cache now with log and someone found it a couple hours later.)

 

Like I said I wasn't complaining, I was just concerned. I've only looked at the cache's in northern CR and it seems most had been approved by the same reviewer. When I saw he hadn't been online since the 23rd I just got concerned since I'm really trying to push getting more cache's posted here in CR and wasn't sure what to do with (in my experience the only reviewer) not having been online in a few weeks. I've been a cacher "officially" for ten years, but after brief experience with in in 2007 only got back into it in 2016 so especially in terms of hiding caches and the review process I'm a bit of a novice.

 

Now that I've gotten the supplies (buffalo tubes, hide a key rocks and magnetic containers, camo tape, pill bottles, etc.) I've got plans to hide 20+ cache's which would represent over 10% of the caches in the whole country. It's hard to keep caches here due to rapid and thick growth and an abundance of muggle activity by the locals, but I'm trying to push it here. I've even coordinated with the local tourism organization and some local business owners to hide on their properties. I appreciate the work the reviewers do. My 'day job' is running a fairly large forum/online community so I know how much time is voluntarily dedicated to jobs like that.

 

Out of curiosity is there a way to keep track of who the reviewers are for your area? A lot of cache's here are placed by tourists on vacation and as much as I'd love to have cache's to find, so many of them around me are not maintained and missing that it would be good to be able to communicate about them with a reviewer. (I previously worked with my apparently now retired reviewer to sort some of those out, but have more since the last time we chatted).

1. Thank you for the kind words about your experience hiding a cache in my review territory.

2. Thank you for doing what you can to encourage the growth of geocaching in Costa Rica.

3. The Regional Geocaching Policies Wiki is the best place to go if you're curious about documented land manager policies in an area, or who the Community Volunteer Reviewers are for an area. Here is a link to the wiki page for your part of the world. (Sorry, Central America isn't broken out separately.)

[+SwineFlew]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

 

https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783

 

I know him personal as well.

[+DragonsWest]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

 

https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783

 

I know him personal as well.

 

He seems to have quite a large coverage.

[Keystone]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

 

https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783

 

I know him personal as well.

He seems to have quite a large coverage.

I believe you're mis-reading GeoCrater's profile page. He handles maintenance issues for a large number of areas -- things like reminder notes on listings that have been disabled for a long time, monitoring for possibly troubled caches highlighted by the Cache Health system, and responding to "Needs Archived" logs. That is different than the task of reviewing new listings. Follow the link in my prior post to see a list of the reviewers covering Central and South America.

Edited March 14, 2017 by Keystone

[RuideAlmeida]

In addition to Keystone link list, we have to add more 6 reviewers to Brazil.

[Keystone]

Post #10 links to the correct resource for Costa Rica. To my knowledge, the reviewers listed on Brazil's page in the Wiki do not review new cache submissions in Costa Rica.

[+DragonsWest]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

 

https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783

 

I know him personal as well.

He seems to have quite a large coverage.

I believe you're mis-reading GeoCrater's profile page. He handles maintenance issues for a large number of areas -- things like reminder notes on listings that have been disabled for a long time, monitoring for possibly troubled caches highlighted by the Cache Health system, and responding to "Needs Archived" logs. That is different than the task of reviewing new listings. Follow the link in my prior post to see a list of the reviewers covering Central and South America.

 

I see. He took on Reviewer status for Nevada recently. Odd, though, the link for Nevada Reviewer - GeoCrater is still pointing to Roadrunner.

Edited March 15, 2017 by DragonsWest

[+SwineFlew]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

 

https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783

 

I know him personal as well.

He seems to have quite a large coverage.

I believe you're mis-reading GeoCrater's profile page. He handles maintenance issues for a large number of areas -- things like reminder notes on listings that have been disabled for a long time, monitoring for possibly troubled caches highlighted by the Cache Health system, and responding to "Needs Archived" logs. That is different than the task of reviewing new listings. Follow the link in my prior post to see a list of the reviewers covering Central and South America.

 

Hes a master at finding caches with issues. I know what he did in Oregon. :-P

[RuideAlmeida]

... the reviewers listed on Brazil's page in the Wiki[/url] do not review new cache submissions in Costa Rica.

 

Correct.

But your words were "Follow the link in my prior post to see a list of the reviewers covering Central and South America", which Brazil is part of.

[+GeoCrater]

I believe the new reviewer for your area used to be ours. Tell him hi for me. Hes a great guy to work with.

 

What's the user name?

 

https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?guid=e3847db8-2ed2-4fed-b653-3540ddb68783

 

I know him personal as well.

He seems to have quite a large coverage.

I believe you're mis-reading GeoCrater's profile page. He handles maintenance issues for a large number of areas -- things like reminder notes on listings that have been disabled for a long time, monitoring for possibly troubled caches highlighted by the Cache Health system, and responding to "Needs Archived" logs. That is different than the task of reviewing new listings. Follow the link in my prior post to see a list of the reviewers covering Central and South America.

 

Hes a master at finding caches with issues. I know what he did in Oregon. :-P

 

GeoCrater here. I am the primary reviewer for the state of Nevada. In addition to that - as has been mentioned here - I work to ensure caches are maintained to assure those seeking caches have an enjoyable experience. I do this for a number of the US states AND the 19 Spanish speaking countries other than Spain. This includes Costa Rica. I ONLY list new caches in Nevada.

[+L0ne.R]

 

GeoCrater here. I work to ensure caches are maintained to assure those seeking caches have an enjoyable experience.

 

Fantastic!

I don't live in the areas you cover, but if I ever visit those areas it's good to know you're making travellers' experiences better.