trisha@brasher.com wrote:
>My original point, however, still is valid. If NOBODY hid any caches,
>there would be NONE to seek. So the people who hide NONE or very few,
>yet go find a hundred or two or more, are "riding" on the backs of
>those who have taken the time and money to hide the caches that others
>find. I am not complaining in that sense, as I enjoy hiding caches, so
>I can read the logs of the people who seek it. Also, I personally
>would feel guilty about using everybody else's caches for my
>enjoyment, and not giving back, if I didn't hide some of my own.
>
Jason originally came up with the concept of cache karma as a way to put
a number on the amount of guilt someone could feel about not giving back
to a game they were participating in and it was originally set to a 20:1
ratio after a lot of discussion on what it should be. At the time, if I
remember right, there were just over 100 caches total in arizona, and
just having 20 finds total was a major accomplishment. So, after
leaving it that way for a while, it started to be very apparent that the
ratio we had origionally chosen would be rather ridiculous with the
current popularity of geocaching. I felt that the more caches there
were out there, the less someone should be expected to hide one and came
up with a ratio that is now a moving target, and is currently calculated
as one twentieth the total caches in arizona to one cache hidden
(totalcaches/20) : 1. When I origionally changed to this formula, it
was approx a 45:1 ratio, and in only a couple of months has changed to a
64.8:1 ratio. So you could currently find 128 caches with only one hide
and still have a positive cache karma (Just barely).
I may change the formula again if it seems to stop working, but right
now it seems to be keeping up with the growth nicely, but in the mean
time, if you don't like the cache karma, nobody says you have to look at
it. It's definitely the number on the stats that is very debatable, but
right now I have little time to debate it. (hopefully in a couple of
weeks they will hire a new person at work and I won't be so busy... we
can debate it then if you would like :)
Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek
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