From the beak of The Big Green Bird:
Re the adoption question. Basically geocaching.com is a listing site and they (groundspeak) do not own the caches placed, these remain the property of the person who placed them. If the cache is still fine but the owner has apparantly abandoned it we cannot transfer it nor can anyone apply to adopt it unless the owner agrees. If they won't respond there is nothing that can be done. There was a case where a cache owner had died and the cache, as his property passed to his next of kin and they would have had to give permission. If the cache has gone missing it can be archived within the guidelines. This does free up the 'space' it occupies for another cache to be placed. If the cache is still physically there but badly damaged so it is in effect no longer a cache the same rules apply and whilst it may be considered 'geolitter' it still belongs to the owner. If another cacher out of a sense of responsibility for the environment decided to remove it and request that it be archived we would consider the case based on the guidelines.
The arguement for putting another cache in the same place is that it may be a special location either for the views, the history or even significance of a very old cache placement and people would like that spot to 'live on' with another cache placed there.
As for finding a 'new' cache and logging it I think that is down to individual preferences. We all have our own way of caching.
It doesn't really cause us much more work apart from a few extra emails. Archiving takes a second to do (as does unarchiving if asked
).
I hope this provides some clarification of the issue.
Chris - Mr Blorenge