GCA Rewards Restructure

[caughtatwork]

In January 2010, GCA instituted a program to reward geocachers for finding and logging Geocaching Australia caches.
For each 100 GCA finds you achieved, you were entitled to a new icon against your profile and in the forums as well as receiving via snail mail, a 100 finds pathtag.
Over the last 18 months we have distributed some 257 or so 100 finds rewards pathtags.

Based on some suggestions, both public and private, the senate were engaged to determine whether the rewards program should be restructured.

Some of the suggestions were to do away with the physical rewards, they become less valued as you get more, reduce them to a once-off when you hit 100, change the nature of the rewards to different milestones, discount locationless caches and virtual caches, only one find per moving cache and a few others.

The senate has been discussing the possibilities over the last week or so and we have decided to restructure the rewards program as follows:

When you hit 100 GCA finds you get a 100 finds icon in the forum, against your profile and you get a 100 finds pathtag.
When you hit 500 GCA finds, you get a 500 finds icon in the forum (replacing your 100 icon), against your profile and you get a 500 finds pathtag.
When you hit 1000 GCA finds, you get a 1000 finds icon (replacing your 500 icon), against your profile and you get a 1000 finds pathtag.

There remains an outstanding question over the retrospectivity of the 500 and 1000 rewards. It may be that if you have achieved the requisite reward you can buy the retrospective pathtag by returning some of the 100n finds tags. This is not entirely decided yet. We would welcome opinions on this.

The intention of restructuring the rewards is to reward geocachers as they find more GCA caches with 3 different rewards, rather than 10 of the same thing.

The icons and rewards will be instituted over the next 4-6 weeks as time and pathtags permit.

[roundcircle]

Sounds sensible and fair.

[Trigg-A-Nomics]

When you hit 100 GCA finds you get a 100 finds icon in the forum, against your profile and you get a 100 finds pathtag.
When you hit 500 GCA finds, you get a 500 finds icon in the forum (replacing your 100 icon), against your profile and you get a 500 finds pathtag.
When you hit 1000 GCA finds, you get a 1000 finds icon (replacing your 500 icon), against your profile and you get a 1000 finds pathtag.

That will knock off another problem for me - whenever someone with a huge number of GCA finds posts in the forums I can hardly read the post because their 100 find icons stretch the 'author' column halway across the page.

There remains an outstanding question over the retrospectivity of the 500 and 1000 rewards. It may be that if you have achieved the requisite reward you can buy the retrospective pathtag by returning some of the 100n finds tags. This is not entirely decided yet. We would welcome opinions on this.

Let them keep the tags and send out the 500 & 1000 ones. Aren't there only a handful of people who've acheived 500 and 1000 GCA finds?

[pjmpjm]

Sounds fair to me.

I'm happy to return my 100s in return for the 500 & 1000.

[rogerw3]

Great idea, no problems with returning 100's in exchange for a 500 & 1000.

[Black Bunny]

Same here. Happy with major milestone rewards instead of for every 100 and happy to return some tags to help out.

[Damo.]

Sounds like a worthwhile change.

I'm wondering who will be the first person to "find" more GCA ccaches than have been placed?

[blossom*]

I like the new ideas

How many people have received the 100 finds pathtag more than the first time to date? (ie how many people would be in the running to return the "extras")
I'd be quite happy to return my two for 200 and 300

[caughtatwork]

Code: Select all

count 	cacher
17 	rogerw3
13 	Team Robins
12 	WanderingAus
10 	pjmpjm
6 	Tuena
5 	Everlasting
5 	Black Bunny
4 	Yurt
4 	youngoldfella
4 	Shifter Brains
4 	bristracker
4 	Hunter-Finder
4 	red tag
4 	albida33
3 	blossom*
3 	mtbikeroz
3 	McPhan
3 	sirius Tas
3 	Just a cacher
3 	Team Canary
3 	beetles2
3 	Keeper of Time
3 	TeamSwampy
3 	mr_roo
3 	richary
3 	2y'stassies
3 	OldSaint
2 	alfyboy
2 	steptoe
2 	3daygrowt

The question of returns is not locked in either way yet.

[Laighside Legends]

I know I should be able to find this myself but how many GCA caches are there?
With and without trigs?

[Zalgariath]

Like it!

I think if it is listed on site, be it Physical, Trig, Gnome or Locationless any legitimate find is a legitimate stat. If you dont want people logging your movable / locationless cache 100's of times simply say so on the cache page

This is a lovely enhancement to the existing structure.

(and yes, Rog and Pjm's many many forum icons were starting to baffle me too... and make me jealous )

[SamWalkers]

Great, I look forward to making 500.

Some teams may have distributed some of their 100 PTs to team members. I know that if I had found 500 the boys would have snaffled one each and I wouldn't have anything to return.


(beats favourite points)

[Yurt]

Agree about trading back the 100 Finds pathtags beyond 200.
PTs are normally swap items but a 100 GCA Finds can only be earned, it certainly doesn't feel right to trade it.
A 500 and 1000 GCA finds PT would be a welcome addition and incentive.

I know trigs are not everyone's cup of tea but we were thinking of doing a 100 trigs PT and offering it at cost to anyone who made that mark. Any interest? Of course no problem with GCA taking this over.

[Zalgariath]

Agree about trading back the 100 Finds pathtags beyond 200.
PTs are normally swap items but a 100 GCA Finds can only be earned, it certainly doesn't feel right to trade it.
A 500 and 1000 GCA finds PT would be a welcome addition and incentive.

I know trigs are not everyone's cup of tea but we were thinking of doing a 100 trigs PT and offering it at cost to anyone who made that mark. Any interest? Of course no problem with GCA taking this over.

Id buy one...

[pjmpjm]

I know trigs are not everyone's cup of tea but we were thinking of doing a 100 trigs PT and offering it at cost to anyone who made that mark. Any interest? Of course no problem with GCA taking this over.

Yep. Count me in.