Steve,
 
I have to admit that I sometimes get frustrated by the multi-question approach.  After all, as you stated, isn't that just to offer proof of the visit?  I even sometimes avoid virtuals that are too complicated.  On the other hand, reading back on my log of "Informal Introductions" I see that I admitted it was one of my favorites.  Doh, never admit anything in writing.  OK, so here's what I would suggest:
 
- Update the page with a hint if you can, but don't risk losing the listing.
- Accept the log for difficult situations like the visitor if you can be sure they actually found it.
- Require all others to answer all questions, but offer personalized hints if requested.
- Above all else, BE CONSISTENT.
 
Just my opinion, and it appears you've been down all of those paths already, so I guess I didn't offer much but confirmation.
 
Bill
CacheLess
-----Original Message-----
From: az-geocaching-admin@listserv.azgeocaching.com [mailto:az-geocaching-admin@listserv.azgeocaching.com] On Behalf Of Team Tierra Buena
Sent: Sunday, October 26, 2003 11:35 AM
To: Arizona Geocaching
Subject: [Az-Geocaching] Virtually Confounded

Many of you have done our “Informal Introductions” virtual cache (GCAB5C). For those of you that haven’t, it’s a very kid-friendly hunt that requires the seeker to provide us with the answers to five questions. Finding the answer to the fifth question is a little bit trickier than most virtuals, so we rated the difficulty at 2.

I’ve become surprised by the number of people who have sent emails that contain either an incorrect answer to question 5, or an admission that they were unable to find that answer; these cachers then log as “finds”. The cache page states “emailing incomplete or incorrect answers may result in our deleting your log entry without notice”.

On one hand, the purpose of answering the questions to a virtual is to prove that the seeker was in the right place. So if you get four out of five correct, it’s pretty obvious the seeker was there. And we did let one guy skate because he was visiting from out-of-state, and had already left town when he emailed his answers. But many people have returned a second time after being told that they got it wrong, and they were then able to find the correct answer.

So whaddya think? Should we strictly enforce our own rule out of fairness to those who have gotten all the right answers or have gone back to finish the hunt, or should we say “it’s only a game” and let them take the credit for the find? I should point out that finding the correct answer to the fifth question brings the seeker to a particularly clever aspect of this entire area, which is why we set the question we did.

We talked about using only that question instead of five, but we followed Highpointer’s approach to his museum cache series, where finding the answers to all the questions takes the seeker around the entire area, which is what we want them to do. We don’t want them just running in, finding one answer and taking off for the next cache.

We’ve also discussed raising the difficulty level to 3 and/or modifying the cache description to state specifically that the correct answer to question 5 must be submitted, but I’m afraid that making any modifications to the cache page might result in it’s being re-evaluated under the current guidelines for virtuals, and then we might be forced to archive a cache that always gets positive log comments.

We welcome your comments and suggestions, but please avoid posting anything that might be a spoiler. TIA.

Steve

Team Tierra Buena