caughtatwork wrote: ↑04 April 22 12:06 pm
It is broken. Locationless do not follow the concept set up ibn the wiki. So something will be changing
I agree. It is broken. It's been annoying me for a long time. I refuse to look at locationless caches anymore because of this issue. I agree that a different cache type for armchair caching is the go. Keep them for the ones who "need" them, but separate them for the ones who like to go outside and play.
Do the armchair cachers not go outside? Not go shopping? Not go on holidays? Most of us live in areas that are GCA poor, even in big population areas like Sydney and Canberra. How many new GCA caches are published each year (not including the armchair varieties)? Its mostly only in game periods they are published. And once you've found them all in your area, there's no more to find, just like people living in remote areas where they are the only one playing GCA. That has been the nature of Geocaching Australia since the beginning i believe. Therefore, I don't think the arguments for being remote, no caches to find nearby, or being unfit are valid. And I can speak from experience in the first 2. I'm going to be bold enough to say I think the armchair stuff is not real geocaching. It's just another means for social interaction using GCA as a platform for a number of reasons, like friends already here, and the cache publishing set up being a great way to present it, and maybe even cache numbers and pathtag rewards.
With all this in mind, sure, keep them coming if you must, but not as locationless caches. Not adding them to your find count. Not getting the pathtag rewards for them. Maybe one of the armchair caching community would like to make, donate, and monitor for pathtag rewards for these like rogerW3 does with trig rewards.
Having been an advocate for GCA in the face of die-hard anti-GCAers I can say that what has happened with the armchair caching has been a real killer for the site. I'm taking about people who have played the GC game for years. They see these armchair caches as not geocaching, and therefore think GCA is not real geocaching.
As for the saying "if it's not broken, don't mess with it"... how many people living by this rule upgrade things like cars or TV's or like new improved gadgets that make life easier, replacing items that weren't broken? We could all still be using an old washing board for clothes washing if we have 2 working arms. Maybe it's time to upgrade that saying to a question like, "Even if it's not broken, can it be improved upon?" And when it comes to the armchair caching, I say yes.