Have you noticed a lot of power trails lately? Or maybe you are finding caches everywhere including the ever so delightful guardrail cache? You are not imagining an increase in geocaches, there has indeed been tremendous growth in cache placement in the last year. According to Groundspeaks history of geocaching.com it took the site from September 2nd, 2000 to March 9th 2010 to reach 1,000,000 cache listings. In just over nine months geocaching.com has added 25% more geocaches to the database. As of December 5th, 2010 geocaching.com lists 1,252,204 active geocaches on that site. While the number of caches is smaller the site opencaching.us is also seeing rapid growth. (note: the exponential growth actually appears to be slowing)
What is accounting for the rapid growth in cache placements? In talking with my geocaching friends I don’t hear a lot of them tell me they are placing more caches. From time to time someone with thousands of finds will place a cache. That doesn’t account for this kind of growth. I think the growth is coming from people that are new to geocaching.
I was at an event in Bolton, Ontario on Friday and a recent school project came up. The class in question released about 50 caches many of which were of poor quality. Coordinates were way off, containers were not waterproof, maintenance was not performed, one was even placed on the hiders private property without his parent’s permission. This was contrasted with a series of geocaches in Brantford, Ontario that were well done. Great containers, accurate coords, etc. The difference was in the number of finds by the teacher. It is important that new entrants to geocaching learn proper techniques for cache placement and maintenance. Who is going to teach the new entrants?
With that kind of growth is it any wonder that Garmin sees geocaching as a viable market for their products? Groundspeak has a long history of supporting grass roots groups and associations. Groundspeak provides support so that “their grandchildren will be able to enjoy the game”. What will Garmin do to support the community when they enter the market? Garmin certainly sees geocaching as a way to sell more devices but will they take responsibility for advocating safe, ethical play the way Groundspeak does? Only time will tell.
teamvoyagr
I have been writing the cachemania blog since 2008. I'm interested in the development of geocaching and the many ways that people play the game.
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3 Comments until now
With regards to quality on the (supposed) decline:
The urge to hide a cache when you start is high…very high.
People often say you shouldn’t be able to hide until you’ve found x number of caches but I think that’s too arbitrary. What if by 100 caches all they have found is LPC’s??
Some of the best caches I’ve done were from new players. Some of the worst are by some of the most established players in the region
I don’t believe that percentage wise the ratio of good to bad has changed, it’s just theres *n numerically* more bad caches so it seems like it’s getting worse.
Perhaps on sites that do pre-listing reviews they should do more scrutiny on a persons first few hides and be able to offer some kind of extra feedback to get it up to scratch before hitting the go switch?
Our site is self-publishing based, but we have this come up fullscreen before they enter their hide in to the system:
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Some items you should consider to ensure your new geocache is of the best quality possible:
Is the cache in a legal location?
Is the cache in a National Park or environmentally sensitive area?
Are there other geocaches close by?
Is this cache one you would do or would be proud to show others?
Will others want to seek this cache?
Are you able to maintain the cache in a reasonable timeframe?
Is the cache container appropriate for the cache’s location?
Is this cache already listed on another site, such as geocaching.com? (if so, Click Here)
Please review the Geocaching Best Practices section of the Wiki, and the Geocachers’ Creed
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I think the “Is this cache one you would do or would be proud to show others” is a key thing that hopefully makes people pause and think about their hide.
Does it work? Sometimes.
(We have other stuff in place beyond this to try to boost the quality of the listing and weed out the grossly obvious mistakes like proximity to GC caches etc)
As more players come in , there’s going to be more bad (and good) caches and we as geocachers need to provide feedback in a constructive way (such as suggesting new co-ords instead of just posting a TNSL) and try to engage them with the community.
@CraigRat, do you find that rating caches has an impact on whether or not people will visit them?
@teamvoyagr:
I’m only a casual cacher nowadays, and I tend to use the ratings and recommendation systems for my own caching quite a bit.
Our site allows you to rate and recommend GC caches as well as GCA ones, so you get a good feel of what caches are ‘must do’ when you go in to a new area.
Of course it’s not comprehensive as a lot of people don’t use the system, but at least its something.
I am perplexed as to why GC don’t have this type of system, even a straight recommendation system as opposed to a rating system would be beneficial. Bookmarks etc are NOT the same thing.
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