Garmin launches their own cache listing site

[SSO JOAT]

The website www.opencaching.com is now online in a beta version. This is a free cache listing site owned and operated by Garmin. A number of bugs have been uncovered on day 1 and it looks like they are very active is working issues as they are discovered. Still the site is running at a snail's pace with apparently high levels of first day activity.

Opencaching has a means of bulk listing all your existing hides via a gpx file upload, though you have to verify all the info in each one before publishing it. They are welcoming any cross-listed caches.

This could create some interesting competition with GroundSpeak. Time will tell how this plays out as there have been some "tensions" between GS and Garmin over certain marketing issues.

[NorthWes]

The Opencaching site has a few minor tweaks and features which some will find interesting. Beginning with its name, it purports to make caching an activity with few restrictions/rules/guidelines – even stateing the game was started by pirates & “now it’s your turn to get in on the treasure hunt” (a bit tongue in cheek, but a tone-setting comment nonetheless).

My concerns with the opencaching site lie in these areas:

No human reviewer validates if the placement is in an area open to caching
Yes, the site advocates asking permission from land owner/manager before listing. It urges persons to obey local laws and ‘No Trespassing’ signs.
Reality – the site is not preventing listings in known closed areas – presumably because of its lack of a reviewer system. Land manager relationships are one of the most challenging aspects of geocaching, and nurturing those relationships at the local level is one of the primary reasons GeocacheAlaska came into being. Where is the infrastructure at this new site to build land manager relationships, and to review listings against known closed/open areas?
Consequences: angering land managers, which will create a larger/stronger negative perception of geocaching in general (regardless of the ‘listing site’). In some locations, such as along the Alaska Railroad right of way, immediate law enforcement interaction may occur. This leads to more areas being closed to geocaching.

No mechanism exists to prevent or moderate cache saturation
Yes, the site advocates you keep cache placements at least .1 miles apart.
Reality – the site is allowing cache listings to be placed on top of each other, using the very same coordinates.
Consequences: Over-saturation leads to unhappy land managers. It also leads to more ‘social trails’ and a heightened visible impact on the landscape at a hide location.

Little emphasis on land use etiquette
Yes, the very last comment made on the “Rules” link says “Exercise the principles of Leave No Trace. Caches should contain the only record of your visit.”
Reality – there’s no explanation of ‘Leave No Trace’ or link to their website. There’s no advocacy for any sort of ‘cache-in/trash out’ ethic. The only language regarding engaging the public is about hiding the activity, because “They'll just ruin our fun.”
Consequences: In a land use system (such as Anchorage Parks or BLM lands) where other user groups share (or compete for) land use privileges, not having a presence with land managers and other user groups essentially removes the game from any consideration as a legitimate activity. One of the first comments land managers in the Anchorage area make now about geocaching is ‘the local group works with us about land use policies, and gives back with cleanup activities and public training events’. Ignoring land use etiquette as a foundational concept in geocaching does not promote good land manager relationships.

My conclusion: Garmin builds great GPS units, but their cache listing service does far more harm than good to the overall game of geocaching through its failure to emphasize and build up land manager relationships and its relatively low regard for land use etiquette. It also appears to do nothing in terms of connecting geocachers in any sort of way except through cache logs. My perspective is based on six years of working to develop face to face contacts with local land managers and other land user groups in an effort to build up geocaching’s legitimacy and value as a land use activity on public lands in southcentral Alaska.

[SSO JOAT]

I tend to agree with all of your concerns.

The OC site does have a means in place to report that a cache violates the guidelines. How they deal with such reports is yet to be determined. But, it would seem that our best practice is to get responsible local cachers to get on OC and pay attention to what's being published on there in Alaska. When a cache pops up that violates guidelines, we should work as a community to police it up.

[NorthWes]

Good suggestion, as it appears the OC site is structured to have the user community provide more feedback than the listing organization. I just cringe at any 'policing' at all - that phrase has been used (completely incorrectly) to describe what GeocacheAlaska! is striving to achieve - which is well-equipped cachers who have good relationships with local land managers, all to allow us to play our game of location across as wide a landscape as possible.

The OC site sets up local players to have to safeguard existing relationships by monitoring new cache placements. The burden of care gets shifted to the players, and that's a great way to make sure feelings get hurt in a tight community like Alaska. It's so much simpler for the players if the listing site exerts good control over compliance with placement parameters...

[caprahircus]

It is DEFINITELY something on which GeocacheAlaska should keep an eye.

[SSO JOAT]

Agreed. And the most appropriate step that GeAK can take is one of education, prior to any feelings getting hurt.

A couple caches that are only 300' apart doesn't concern me nearly as much as someone placing caches in banned areas such as the Wildlife Refuge. The Refuge seems to keep an eye on GC.com, but are they aware of OC.com yet? Probably not. There could be a bunch of illegal caches on their land before they notice it.

Since Garmin has created this burden on fellow cachers, I don't see where there is any other option but to step up and, in as polite and diplomatic manner as possible, contact any blatantly illegal cache hider to explain why it must be removed. When diplomacy fails, then it must be reported.

The only other possibility is to petition Garmin to put some pre-publish checks and balances on their "open" cache listing.

[FlightRiskAK]

Very good points here. After reading and digesting, I decided to upload my cache hides to the site as a "placeholder". I hope to at least use it to make folks aware that a cache is located at specific coordinates and hopefully prevent honest cachers from placing another in the same spot. I'm not terribly concerned about caches too close, within reason of course, but building the database might be a good idea for sensitive areas where too many caches is a bad thing. Many of you have worked hard to get geocaching allowed in certain areas and it is these areas that need to be represented on OpenCaching so that people are aware of proximity. I think it will also make it easier for us to keep an eye on what is going on on that site. Beyond uploading my hides, I have no intention of using the site to seek or log finds. I think geocaching.com has that covered.

[SSO JOAT]

I've been playing with the site a bit since the launch. It is a very simple process of clicking the "import" link on your OC profile and browsing to your latest "my finds" PQ (extracted from the zip) in order to upload your caching history to your OC profile. This upload is automatically propagated to the system. If any of the caches you've visited on GC are imported to OC by their owner, your logs for those caches will automatically show up on the respective cache pages. This is true even if the owner imports the cache after you've uploaded your finds. As data is imported to the OC system, it is all automatically being linked together.

I'd encourage all cache hiders to upload a PQ with all your active cache hides. Note... if you have premium-only caches that you don't want on an open system, then don't include those in the upload. There is no limitations on who can access the cache info on OC. After all, it is an "open" cache listing environment.

Attempts to upload a GSAK generated gpx file failed. For some reason, the system will only accept a raw GC generated gpx file (extracted from the zip file). So, generate a PQ with just your hides and only include traditionals, multis, and puzzles. Anything else will be ignored anyway.

Once your hides are in OC system, they will show up on the map and then people hiding caches via the OC system will be able to respect the saturation limitations. Without the cross-listings, anyone using only OC will be dropping hides right on top of existing ones without knowing it.

The system is very limited on formatting. You cannot put images on the site. You cannot embed links in the listings. It will only accept minimal text formatting (paragraphs, line breaks, bold, italics, etc) using standard html codes. For this reason, I've made the decision to remove the text of most of my puzzles on my OC imports and simply enter a text direction to visit the GC listing code rather than try to recreate the puzzle in the limited OC environment. In addition, I'm going to be entering the same text referral to the GC listing for all of my cache imports. For one thing, until an OC user who has found the GC version of the cache has uploaded their my finds PQ, the listings state that they are unfound on OC and that is falsely leading them to think a FTF is still available.

Along that same line, any new caches I publish on GC will not be listed on OC until the FTF has been claimed. That should also eliminate any issues that could develop with the "side game" in regards to which listing is the true FTF on newly published caches. Unless of course I do something really sneaky with a puzzle cache and cross-list it as part of the puzzle... but, I'm already saying too much about another devious JOAT puzzle concept that has been fermenting in the dark recesses.

Another very interesting note about the OC find logging is that cachers get to rate the cache for all aspects of the attributes (difficulty, terrain, size, and "awesomeness" factors) when they enter their logs. So, the cache finders have control over "fixing" poorly rated caches through their find logs. A very cool concept indeed.

It's also very interesting that the ratings are on a sliding scale. So instead of having 1 through 5 with 1/2 point stops between, you have all the tenth-point rating possibilities in between. Thus, a GC cache can have any of 9 possible ratings on 2 aspects and one of 4 sizes, but an OC cache can have any of 41 possible levels in each of 4 aspects. Yes, even the cache size is broken into a 41-point sliding scale from Nano to Large.

In the end, I think it is actually rather sad that Garmin and GroundSpeak weren't able to work together to merge these Garmin OC ideas into the existing GC site. There are a number of aspects about the OC system that are great improvements to the sport. But they would have done a lot better in the GC realm instead of on a completely separate site. Whether or not OC ever becomes a stand-alone site seems to be doubtful at this point, but we'll see what happens.

[davemeister]

One thing I noticed after following SSJOAT's lead was: If you import a cache that has a size of "?" to indicate a "nano", then OC will call it a "5"!!! Make sure you edit this to a "nano". That is one area I think that Groundspeak shoul incorporate into the game on their site. We'll see how OC works.

[SSO JOAT]

Another thing I'm noticing is that this competition seems to have "lit a fire" under the GroundSpeak team. The improvements being rolled out on GC since OC went live are great. The business model in action!

Beyond that, I'm not seeing any upgrading or fixing going on at OC. And there are a number of things that need to be fixed in their "beta" site release. This could be a difficult thing for Garmin as they are a business building and selling a physical product and the OC site is a free, "public service" item that isn't going to be making them any money. So, you have to wonder how much effort they are going to put into making the site work.

[SSO JOAT]

Recent update to Garmin's opencaching site...

They are now using a "reviewer" system for publishing caches. Your caches are no longer instantly available. However, the system seems weak in that it relies on using a 12-hour window for public feedback on your new cache listing. So, unless more people give the cache negative votes than positive, it's going to be published. A cache only needs a single positive vote (assuming no other votes) during the 12-hour waiting period to be published. The cache owner can vote for his/her own cache. Thus, unless there are active community members watching for new cache postings a couple times per day, it appears the CO can still submit and approve their own cache for automatic publishing regardless of any actual review.

Looks like some other changes have take place around the site, but I haven't had to chance to look over everything yet.

[FlightRiskAK]

I've got most of my hides listed on Open Caching, mainly as place holders. I've had very little activity on them though so it seems most people are still using Geocaching.com. With their recent "upgrade" making it not mobile friendly to my Blackberry I may be giving open caching a closer look in the future.

[SSO JOAT]

Finally, (after how many months?) I've had my very first OpenCacher logging my cross-listed caches in Soldotna via the Opencaching site. So there actually is an OpenCacher out there!

[ladybugkids]

129 new caches posted the week of May 24, bringing the total to 10944. Of those, 27 were unique, bringing the unique cache total to 419, after 168 days of operation of the site.

[SSO JOAT]

Well, how's this for irony... turns out the guy logging my caches on OC is a friend of ours who my wife was telling about geocaching and he downloaded the Droid app from Garmin to try it out. We're meeting up next Wednesday so I can give the family a geocaching orientation, hook them up with GC.com accounts and then we're going to go out and give them a proper introduction to caching. So, the OC has basically acted as a springboard to get to GC in this case.

[SSO JOAT]

As predicted earlier in this thread, there are people using the OpenCaching backdoor to place caches in areas that shouldn't have caches such as wildlife refuges and cache-restricted national parks.

The OC site uses a peer review process rather than a small group of specific reviewers. When a new cache is published, it has 12 hours of sitting in review for the public to vote yes or no as to whether the cache meets guidelines. A single positive rating is all it takes to get the cache published.

A lot of people have worked very hard to obtain permits for geocaching on certain public lands. Those permits come with specific requirements. Using the OC to bypass those requirements can directly threaten the status of the entire permit.

So it is up to the public to keep an eye on OC to be sure it is not being used in a negative manner. Anyone can visit the review page and vote on individual caches as they are submitted.

Opencaching Review Board

[lunchlady495]

This is legal? This just doesn't seem right and will make it bad for the caching community. These caches won't count on stats will they? Is this a whole new log in? I am a bit confused. I will stick with GC.com

[SSO JOAT]

That's the problem, some cache placements on the OC network may not be "legal" since they are not reviewed like GC caches are and might be placed in cache restricted areas, in violation of permits, or without any permission whatsoever. It is up to the general public to happen upon an OC cache during the 12 hour hold and vote it down, if they can see a reason to do so.

Caches on OC have absolutely nothing to do with anything you've been doing on Geocaching.com. They will not count for your GC stats. The log in is at a completely different website, so yes it is a "new" login.

The majority have chosen to "stick with GC.com" and for good reason.