Find to Hide Ratio

[homedg]

I'm curious in peoples opinions on "giving back" to the game by placing new caches.
Feel free to leave a post clarifying your position. By that I mean, state YOUR opinion, and do not debate OTHERS opinions.
Let's see what's revealed.

[Damo.]

That's a tricky one. I would have once felt around one hide per 10 finds was a good ratio, however I voted "don't feel obliged".

When I do see someone with 400 finds and no hides I do have the feeling that they are not giving back to the game but I wouldn't want that person to run out and place 40 lousy caches either!

Many places already have a high cache density and I don't think pushing people to place a mediocre cache in every pocket-park is giving back to the game in a good way.

[cdmark]

This is someting that I have wondered about myself as being new to geocaching. I enjoy the hiding or creating caches almost as much as finding them. At present I have hidden 3 but have only placed them in local areas that I think would be interesting to bring people to. I tend to pick a town or location that has not had a cache placed in before and one that lends itself to a bit of history. I shy away from the 'place a cache for cache sake' but then again I am new to this so tell me to get back in my box!

<p>Wow first post as well.

[GIN51E]

I don't think there is a shortage of caches in the populated area's of Australia so you shouldn't hide a cache just because you feel like you need to because you think its "giving back" to the game,

So unless the cache you are about to hide is going to give fellow cachers some real satisfaction in finding them then don't bother hiding one.

[5commer3]

as we are only reasonably new to caching (100 finds)we have not felt confident enough to place our own yet, but we have seen some great spots that we would like to place one, and we will eventually place some, but I think the longer we leave it till we do the more likely we are to get it right as I think we have learnt a lot from other peoples caches about where and how to place them, if we had placed some after say 50 finds we would probably be looking back now saying maybe we should have put the cache in a different spot or maybe we should have made that a multi, and everyone else would be saying THEY PUT IT WHERE , so as a newbie I think 100 finds but all you others with plenty under the belt get out there and give us something to find,

[Mr Emu]

I am another newcomer to geocaching who has had a good number of finds in a pretty short time, but has yet to place a cache. Like "5commer3", I think lots of experience "finding" is useful before "placing" the first cache.

Another aspect is making sure that I am going to stay in this pastime long enough to properly maintain any caches placed.

Rather than "Find to Hide ratio", you might also like to consider "Number of hides over time".

[homedg]

MY opinion is also that you should find a whole heap of caches before placing one.
My experience was that I stumbled across Geocaching and didn't know any experienced cachers, or about GCA, or about the forums etc, etc.
I thought the whole idea was to find ANY co-ord on the planet so raced up the street and hid a film canister under a rock
The real enlightenment I am looking for from this thread is, post this initial learning curve, what do people think, if anything, should be put back into the game, sport, hobby or whatever the hell we call it.

[Team Rubik]

Can you imagine the maintenance requirements if you were expected to provide 1 hide per 10 finds? Maccamob and Dak would never find time to cache! There are already too many caches out there that aren't being maintained or are disabled for great lengths of time, I would like to see people stick with a number they can manage well. For me that number is 6! (At the moment anyway!)

[unbreakables]

cdmark Posted: 11 April 07 9:34 pm Post subject:

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This is someting that I have wondered about myself as being new to geocaching. I enjoy the hiding or creating caches almost as much as finding them. At present I have hidden 3 but have only placed them in local areas that I think would be interesting to bring people to. I tend to pick a town or location that has not had a cache placed in before and one that lends itself to a bit of history. I shy away from the 'place a cache for cache sake' but then again I am new to this so tell me to get back in my box!


Wow first post as well.

This forum is for getting out of your box! So welcome aboard!!

Now for the question at hand, I feel there should be no obligation to place,
I have been caching for a while now just don't get out as much as I would like, When I hide one I put a fair amount of effort into making the cache interesting as in info on a particular place where they are hidden, and try to be creative with the naming of same.
there is my 2 bobs worth!!!

[belken]

I voted for hide as many as you can.

If that is 0 then fine by me.

Ken

[muzza]

Back in the early days of caching (say 5 years ago), there weren't many of us out there, and I think most of us felt that we needed to hide a lot to keep the new caches coming and to maintain the interest. In Melbourne I think of Maccamob and Biggles Bear in particular.

For the first 2 - 3 years I worked off the ratio of 1 hide per 10 finds. I think I kept this ratio up until about my 68th hide. Because there weren't many new caches to go and find, I had time to make most of the caches worthwhile and in some cases, something special.

As more and more people joined the craze, the hiding was spread out more and I have tended to relax on my laurels, with only two or three caches per year. Now that there are so many active cachers hiding, I don't think anyone should feel compelled to hide any.

But it is always nice to put something back into caching - just take your time and make it worthwhile.

(Just the ramblings of a caching old-timer).

[Richary]

While I can understand the point of view of giving back to the game, in reality Adelaide already has a lot of caches so unless somebody finds a special spot do we need another crappy micro in a park just so you can place one? So I don't think a fixed ratio works.<p>Quite a few of mine are a fair distance from home and putting caches in places that otherwise wouldn't have them - I do it because I can with the occasional 4WD trip. <p>As for maintenance, most are places I would like to get back to, and in any case we have a good network of people here to help with maintenance.<p>For the record I have 1031 finds and 31 hidden on GC. So about 3% for me. And I have decided I won't place any more around the city unless there is a special spot that hits me for one.

[zactyl]

I think the person you should hide caches for is yourself. If you enjoy doing it, do so! If you approach it with a "giving back to the game" attitude, you're setting yourself up for some disappointing lack of appreciation from the geocaching community, unfair swapping, unfavourable comments in logs etc (but not from anyone here! ).
That said, I reckon it adds to the geocaching experience to hide at least one good cache
As for the learning curve and your first hide, I suggest keeping it simple, and avoid starting with an overly complicated offset cache.

[Map Monkey]

I would rather see hides as a "quality rather than quantity" decision instead of being based on ratios.

mm

[Hounddog]

I have hidden a LOT of caches. If you check back in the history of the game in NSW you'll see that we ( The 2 Dogs) have always led the field in this area. It's never been about the numbers however, for us it's only ever about furthering the game.

Every time we place a 2 Dogs cache, a lot of effort goes in researching the area, and making the whole experience fun or challenging or educational or interesting or all of the above.

Classic examples are "Mundy's Joy" or "Forest of Fear" Or "Isaacs rest" and even our latest "All Aboard you Ghosts" which proves that good spots are still out there to be found.

We often get accused of making them too easy, but we also have some bloody hard ones out there. Funnily enough it's the teams that complain about easy caches that haven't done our hard ones.

The point is, more goes into our placing than most people realise. Placing should be done with a lot of thought and care, so unless you are prepared to do that then leave it to those who will take the time and effort to make it good, don't just do it by forced hand or to keep up numbers.