The Tadpole and I went caching this weekend. We found this cache for our last cache of the day. We spent a great deal of time looking in the bushes near ground zero on this cache because the cache page said the cache wasn't in the sign. We were looking for a 3 quart Tupperware container, something that should have been quite obvious, even if 
slightly cammoed as the cache page indicates.
We found the small yellow tube (it's either small, or my GPSr is gigantic), in the sign. The hint even said it was in the sign. Now we were confused since we were getting contradictory information. The cache page said it wasn't in the sign, but the hint said it was. After looking through the logs of other cachers, it's now apparent that this is a replacement cache for the original. In my opinion, this is just lazy caching. The hint has been changed, yet the description hasn't. I believe it's up to the hider to take care of his or her hides, not rely on other people and then clean up the cache page after the fact.
This is one of the reasons I don't have a boatload of caches hidden. It takes time and effort to set up caches and then maintain those caches. This isn't maintaining. This is just lazy caching. And I know I'll probably hear from someone about life getting in the way of the hider fixing up their caches. If they had the time to change the hint, then they had the time to either post a note about it, fix the cache page or temporarily archive it for the time being. Then again, I've been known to overreact from time to time and this could be one of those occasions, but even the Tadpole noted, "How could that be a regular sized cache?" Out of the mouths of babes.
Sunday, April 5, 2009
Truth in Advertising
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2 comments:
Nope, you're not over-reacting. This has become a chronic problem such that even Sharon, who is pretty mellow about most caches, will complain if I tell her that the cache is a regular (she still loves to trade), but it turns out to be a small, or worse yet, some cruddy micro :-p I don't have a problem with a cacher letting someone else do maintenance - we've helped other caches; it's a good thing - but they better update the cache page to reflect a change in size, if a TotT is now needed, if the hiding place has moved more than a foot or so, etc.
In fact, while I also enjoy letterboxing, the blasé attitude that many (particularly long-time) boxers have about LB maintenance is one reason why I don't do it as much as I geocache. I remember about a year ago when a minor disagreement over this point almost became a flame war on one of the Yahoo! letterboxing groups.
So no, Webfoot, you aren't going overboard on this. You are dead right about it; thanks for bringing it up. Now if only we could get cachers who seem to have stopped learning, at about the 3rd Grade, anything about grammar, spelling or punctuation to see just how ignorant they look. I can almost understand some of the grammar errors, but spell-checkers are common, and they work 85% of the time. Use 'em, people!! Buy a dictionary! Go to the local community college and take a class! Good English usage really does matter!!!
Whoever invented the cell phone should be hung, drawn, quartered, rubbed in salt and then rubbing alcohol, keelhauled and finally buried in several pieces. OK, *my* rant is now over ;-)
Sounds reasonable to me. It doesn't take much time to update a cache page.
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