PThomp9719@aol.com wrote:
> Can someone explain the cache karma column and why it seems heavily 
> weighted for placing caches.

Cache Karma is an attempt to keep the game moving and encourage people 
to give as well as take.  It started at as a 20:1 ratio... you had to 
hide one cache for every 20 you found to keep your karma positive.  At 
the time that was a very reasonable value considering that there were 
only around 100 caches total.
However, it soon became obvious that with the growing number of caches 
that the there needed to be less and less karma incentive or people 
would hide junk caches just to keep themselves positive, or everyone 
would be negative because you could now find 40 caches without much 
problem and then you would also have to hide 2 just to end up back where 
you started.
At about 800ish total caches, I started thinking of a new system and 
came up with something that immediately upped everyones karma and then 
tapered off over time.  In a nut shell you have to hide one cache for 
every 20% of total caches in existence found.  This puts the intended 
"feel" of the ratio back to the original 20:1 when there were only 100 
caches.
It also cranks up the current ratio to 120ish:1 (120 caches found before 
you have to hide 1 to keep your karma positive).  Even with that ratio, 
you can see there are people that have a hard time keeping positive 
karma.  They are usually the people that have their guns out for the #1 
position and that started a few months or more after Wyle E went nuts 
trying to find caches and are trying to catch up with him or more 
recently azsaluki.

Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek