Draconian action

[dodgydaved]

The Hornet
GAGB Supporter
Join Date: Jun 2008
Posts: 190
Thanks: 6
Thanked 21 Times in 13 Posts





In case anyone wonders about my flippant comment, I was feeling a little irritated at the summary archiving of all my caches by Groundspeak for providing links to the new versions of them on Terracaching. No warning, no chance to change them - just "bam!"

Disappointed? Yes
Surprised? No
Bovvered? Not really

No big deal really, c'est la vie.

I really do understand Peter's attitiude on this one.

I also can accept that GSP might be a little narked by the links to TC on their cache pages - though I am assured that there is nothing per se in the guidelines or the T&C to prevent this (unless anyone can prove otherwise - apart from blanket 'and any other trangression we may not like!' terms).

However, am I the only person feeling totally appaled by GSP's draconian action in archiving without giving Peter the option to correct his "mistake"?

[GAZ]

Yeah, me! I don't fully understand what exactly he did wrong, but noticed in the other thread (on here) that something had "happened". It's not as if Peter is a novice at this, far from it! From what I understand, and I may be wrong (!), he didn't get the chance to correct his "mistake", which to me is a bit petty. GC's loss, TC's gain!

[forestferret]

me too i think that at the least they could have gave him a chance to correct his mistake

also how can gsp own the rights to geocaching ????? when i put my cache up then as far as im concered its my cache i mean ive paid for the stickers the log book the ftf gift the cliplock box and the trinkets inside right so how come they tell us what to do with it ???

the only time i go on the other site is to find caches close to me as i dont know of any alternative ??

[The Hornet]

Thanks Dave for pointing this out. After everything that has happened between me and Groundpeak over the last year or more I am past being more than irritated at this latest act.

People will know from my recent posts here and in some of the regional forums (I don't use the GC forum these days) I have become less than overjoyed at what I perceive is the general quality of caches listed on geocaching.com. I therefore decided that I would try and encourage the use of Terracaching.com by listing my caches there instead. Now TC has a policy of not cross listing caches with other sites so I tried to work out a means of publishing them on TC but also of having at least a "skeleton" listing on GC where at least initially more people would see them. The GC "version" would be loggable in their own right but would encourage people to check out the TC version if they wanted to. At no stage did I decry GC or praise TC, I just presented an alternative.

Whereas I was confident that my traditional cache listing were compliant with GC's guidelines I wondered if my multi cache listings might fall foul of something as to find the intermediate waypoints you had to look at the TC version. However I knew from my years as a GC reviewer (Lactodorum) that as long as you didn't need to create an account at the outside website and as long as it didn't display adverts and didn't charge you should be OK. I have published numerous caches that have such links. I had no doubt that if there was something specific that GC objected to they would ask me to change it.

On Thursday morning I received notifications that all of my caches had been summarily archived with a "boilerplate" log saying they had changed significantly, they were full of an agenda and they were commercial.

I would add that I checked the guidelines quite closely both before I made the changes and after my caches were archived and I still believe that my caches were compliant. Indeed there is nothing to say that other listing sites cannot be mentioned. Perhaps I was wrong in my interpretation and after all, it is Groundspeak's site, but it would have been nice to be given the opportunity to alter them.

So there we are. I haven't appealed as I know from experience how that works. I have submitted a new version of one of them in the hope that that is acceptable and I'll just have to wait and see.

I would stress that I have been assured that our UK review team were NOT involved in this and they were notified only after the event.

If anyone is interested in seeing what I did here are a couple of the archived caches:
HHH1
HHH8 - Dilwyn Dalliance

I would say that I am fairly sanguine about this happening although obviously disappointed and I'm not going to make a big thing about it.

[markandlynn]

Did they also make them members only and lock you from editing them ?

Ive seen other caches with terracaching links that dont get this treatment.

Id also guess that whoever was watching your caches has hidden behind the groundspeak log in to remain anonymous, in actions like this its common to see Micheal do the archiving.

After volunteering for so many years and recieving such widespread appreciation from the UK community this action is reprehensible.

If i was a current volunteer id be very wary of retiring if this is how you get rewarded.

[forestferret]

are you allowed to post a link to this terracaching site on here ?? i would like to have a look if it means i dont have to use the other site at all im well up for it ???

[The Hornet]

Did they also make them members only and lock you from editing them ?

No, I made them members only a little while back so I could see the audit logs.