[Az-Geocaching] Geocaching "Teams"

[Brian Cluff]

> The concept of 'team' with regard to geocaching is a bit fuzzy and open to
> individual opinion.

Just as a note, I think team snaptek might have been the first "team"
ever.  Most certainly the first one in arizona.... So if this starts a
fight, it's our fault :)  (I hope not though)

> There have been several times we have revisited caches because someone in
> the family missed it the first time and wanted to see the area or just try
> to find the cache. I have chosen not to log those as finds for the team, but
> that is just my preference.  I often don't log them at all, unless there is
> something the owner or other cachers should know about.

Logging every time does tell cachers something important.... it was there
when on the date that you went.  Even if you don't have any new
information get a "ping" from the cache can get others to also attempt the
same cache that might be a little reluctant.

> If a couple or friends normally cache together but sometimes cache
> individually, I don't think it matters if they log under one name.  If they
> started logging a lot of caches individually, I would prefer they log
> individually, but it is not a big deal.

My thoughts exactly.............

> The only time the question of "what is a geocaching team?" really matters is
> when we start looking at stats.  This is a big reason why we can't take the
> stats too seriously. There are a lot of ways to manipulate them.  Four
> people in Tucson, Phoenix, Prescott, and Flagstaff could easy consider
> themselves a "team" and blow away all the Arizona stats.  I've had an idea
> for a chained set of several individual caches based on a specific theme
> that could mess up Steven's new daily stats because they would be
> concentrated enough to all be done in a day.  Does this mean I shouldn't try
> it?  I hope not.

There are been a lot of argument on this list about the existance (Mostly
from one person against).  The reason that there are so many stats and
they go into quite a bit of detail is to manipulate the data in as many
ways as we could thing up.  Effectivly we have cut down on the
competitivenes of geocache while raising it at the same time.  To maybe
clear up what I mean.  Imagine watching football, baseball, basketball,
whatever.  Now instead of a score that give you tons of information at the
end that is very detailed al mixed in with the traditional score.  Now
it's up to the person reading the information as to who "won" the game,
especially when the idea of the "score" can be blurred to some extent.

Anyway, thats the way I see the stats.  I mainly see them as informational
only.  With lots of ways to manipulate the data.  They are mainly there to
give you some motivation to cache more, but the real motivation has to
come from yourself.  You just find a particular stat that someone has
above you and go out and try to beat it... thats all.  No winners, no
loosers, just one team beating 1 stat out of a hundred of some team that
just happened to be over them in that particular area.  With always
keeping in mind that because of cachers that hardly ever or even never log
their finds, we will never know who is really the "winner".  There are
quite a few teams that seem to have only hidden multiple caches, and quite
a few of them at that.  That might be very very active caches and just
not active loggers.  Who knows, the stats are probably only 60% or 70%
accurate at the very best.

oops I've also soapboxed a little here... d'oh!


> This is one of the reasons why I'm becoming more concerned about trying
> organized competitions.  It is going to be hard to keep the competition
> fair.

Thats why I haven't just thrown something up.  I've been thinking that for
some sort of organized competition that there could be no item exchange
just visit the cache and make a list of its contents.  That way someone
would have to go there to find that out.  That when everyone has logged
their finds and the particular game is over you show what everyone found
in the cache and it should become fairly obvious if someone wasn't
actually there.
Anyway... I'm still thinking about what I'll put together, if anything.  I
want to make sure that there aren't any arguments about any outcome.  I
will definatly have to wait a bit as I'm working on a secret project that
I hope to have done fairly soon and readto reveil to the geocaching
community.  You can relax Team TJ, it's not more stats.. well not really,
and it will be available in other stats and probably the world.... but I
have said too much.  You'll just have to wait and see what we got cooking
up. :)

Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek
(not brothers :)