The Geocacher

When is a “Find” a “Find”?

perspicacious238870044 I was out doing some caching the last weekend and a thought crossed my mind. The account that I have on geocaching.com is technically for both my wife an I. Now normally we go caching together so it has never presented a problem before but since only 1/2 of the team was there is it really appropriate for me to log a find to that account? For the record I did log the finds. This made me also wonder about other situations that I have seen…

I have a number of caches and I consistently find the physical log book in the cache in no way resembles those that have logged the find online. What I do find is that individuals log for a specific date but the log will indicate Team SoAndSo. I am not aware of any specific rules (even though there could be)… It seems to me that this practice is pretty common and not just in our area. There is no way to know who the members are of Team SoAndSo, so I have really stopped wasting any time trying to “audit” the logs. I figure there really is no benefit and as a cache owner it really doesn’t matter to me. I am out there to discover new places and if I do it with Team SoAndSo and log the cache to my personal account I just don’t see any harm in it.

I have on one occasion logged a cache without physically signing the log. There was no log. In fact there was no cache. There were what appeared to be remains of a cache that had been muggled. I would say this is probably not a legitimate find but again, for me, I made the journey and the effort and felt it was a log that I deserved. I have had many log online for my caches indicating they could see where the cache was but didn’t bother to sign the log. Hmmm… did they really or are they just bumping up their numbers?

I am not really competitive when it comes to geocaching, but I know there are many that are. So here are some questions for you to consider…

Should the online log match the physical log of a cache?
How should “team” finds be handled? Should the Team have an account online or should individuals be allowed to log to their accounts?
Should log owner delete entries online that do not match the physical logs?
Are there any situations where a log would be allowed online when not in the physical log?

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I’d like to place [...]

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Guest Author: Rick Sylvia

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