Earthcaches, vs virtuals and locationless caches

[fraggle69]

Surely if we're able to do Earthcaches where there is no log to sign, it is time to bring back virtuals and locationless caches. I believe it was thought by groundspeak at the time that all caches should have a log to sign.

If this is the case then groundspeak are being a little two faced here aren't they.

[Happy Humphrey]

Yes, I'm not sure why they were moved to waymarking (which seems a better site for them), then returned to geocaching.

If you like virtuals and locationless, (IMO) waymarking is much better than the old geocaching version. The main objections seem to be that waymarking doesn't update your geocaching profile (at the moment), and that it takes a little while to get used to the more complicated interface (due to all the extra features) but my money is on this being rectified later this year (when "Project Tucson" is complete). If you're not too hung up about numbers then you should have no problem.

It's possible that geocaching will become a waymarking category anyway, which will give us the best of both worlds. Perhaps earthcaches will move into a separate category then.

[sTeamTraen]

I'm not a big fan of Earthcaches, which don't always seem to live up to the quality standards which they claim, and because I also like my world nicely consistent where possible. If they evaporated tomorrow I wouldn't cry.

That said, it's Jeremy's site, and if he thinks that even a minimum of geological education will do people some good (along with their family-friendly walk in the woods), it's up to him whether or not he dangles the carrot of a smiley in front of them. (I think a lot of forum debates would be a lot more honest if we all had to introduce ourselves with "Hi, I'm <name>, and I will do a surprising number of weird things for a smiley". I'm prepared to be first up on that.)

Actually, as long as Earthcaches upset a certain group of people (see https://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/in...post&p=1143790 and Jeremy's reply 4 posts later), perhaps I should be a bigger fan of them.

[Alan White]

Earthcaches are just virtuals by another name, which is why they were moved to waymarking. They were moved back because GSA thought that putting them on waymarking was belittling them (my theory, though there was a post by Jeremy at the time, and I read between the lines ). If true, it says all anyone needs to know about waymarking.

There aren't too many earthcaches around here but I can't say that those I've done were as good as GSA claims they are, nor were they better or worse than the best or worst virtuals I've done. They just sit better in waymarking because then - events aside (which also aren't caches) - all caches would have a physical container. Much more tidy and straightforward that way.

And if geocaching goes to waymarking there'll be a lot of people leaving the hobby .

[Happy Humphrey]

...And if geocaching goes to waymarking there'll
be a lot of people leaving the hobby .

If they are so offended that they have to sign on to groundspeak.com and set a few options that they leave the game altogether, then they can't have been very keen!

I think that the idea is that you go to the portal the first time, and set your options for which categories you're interested in. If looking for log books is your thing, you just set all the rest to "ignore" and you never see it again.

Similarly, at the moment, I don't see any "McDonalds restaurants" within waymarking, because I set that whole category to "ignore": it's the same principle.

I might be wrong, or things might turn out different, but that's what I've gleaned from various posts from Jeremy.

[walkergeoff]

I had another look at the waymarking website as a result of this thread. I have to confess it did not attract me at all. Near me there are a large number of posted waymarks that have never been visited, and others visited over a year ago.

You need to be a premium member to have an ignore list, and it seems, unless I have missed something, that being a premium gc.com member does give you the same rights on waymarking.com.

[fraggle69]

https://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/in...post&p=1143790 and Jeremy's reply 4 posts later), perhaps I should be a bigger fan of them.

LMAO one minute it's rocks, the next it's religion lol.

Anyway, I think GS need to find a direction and stick with it, too many times do they break there own rules grrr.

I'd like to actively start a pettition to bring back the lost icons, not because I want or need ;em, but because I think they're FUN! I wonder how I go about collecting names and badgering the big J?

[markandlynn]

Earthcaches were moved to soon so no one did them as waymarks which then raised questions of why should the earthcache org pay GC any money. This lead to them coming back it was about revenue.



GC could also save themselves lots of time if they gave everyone a full set of icons with a find count of zero next to them.

[Happy Humphrey]

I'd like to actively start a pettition to bring back the lost icons, not because I want or need ;em, but because I think they're FUN! I wonder how I go about collecting names and badgering the big J?

Whatever you think about waymarks, bringing them back into geocaching won't happen (not unless you've got loads of money to sponsor it, in which case anything is possible!). This has been discussed endlessly. You only have to look around a few hundred waymarks to realise that it's not practical. There's about 120,000 now: some areas would be awash with virtual caches if they were converted back. And without categories, a lot of them would be pretty pointless.

There were so many waymarks in Toronto when I visited there recently that I had to stick to just a couple of categories: in the city centre they were everywhere . Nick will know that there's a shedload in Strasbourg, even if you totally ignore the "locationless" ones (which is more than half the game anyway - the reason that many waymarks have few or no logs). It actually becomes quite handy that these are well out of the way when you're searching for geocaches.

We've had many discussions about why locationless/virtuals are fun but waymarks not - and the only reason that can't easily be knocked down is that waymarks don't update your caching totals.