[Az-Geocaching] Cache Karma

[Brian Cluff]

James and Diane Herr wrote:

> Not in reality.  I think there is a bug in the ratio thing.  First, to 
> your point of 128 finds with one hide and having positive cache karma, 
> look at RandMan, currently 43th in the list (when you click on the 
> team stats link and don't resort the list).  He has 129 found in AZ 
> with 1 hide, and his karma is -64.2.  (Not picking on RandMan, but I 
> needed an easy datapoint).  You can find others in this same range and 
> see the results are similar.  Also, and this is the bigger bug in my 
> opinion, is that your first hide gets you no improvement in karma. 
> Look at ZenBabes and Jeepster, currently 81st and 82nd in the list.  
> They both have 66 AZ finds, but one has hidden one cache, the other 
> has no hides. They both have a karma of -1.2.  (Not picking on these 
> fine folks either).  So, you see, something is wrong here.  I always 
> wondered about this, but never bothered to report the bug.  I was all 
> excited to see how my karma would jump after placing our first cache, 
> and was disappointed when nothing happened.  So, we had to go place a 
> second one right away. :^) 

Thanks for pointing that out.  I have to admit, that I made the 
modification, and only looked to see if it appeared right, and left it 
at that.

It SHOULD give you a positive cache karma when you start out, we are all 
born into geocaching without sin right <grin>



Just to tack on reply to those of you that have been saying that some 
people like to hide'em and people like to find'em.  I totally agree, the 
idea behind the cache karma was to snag the people that really like 
their numbers to be higher than everyone elses.
Looking at the cache karma I can see that not only did roadrunners find 
700 in one year, but they also managed to hide 12 caches while doing 
that, making their accomplishment that much greater....  Hiding a cache 
DOES take quite a bit more time that finding one...  Even the smaller 
caches urban caches that people seem to be poo pooing take some effort 
to put together.
The reason that the cache is there isn't always apparent to the finder 
either, but most likely means something to the hider.   Bach fest II was 
a good example.  It was placed in a rather lame parking lot, next to an 
absolutly excelent restaurant.  Now the resteraunt was reason enough to 
get people out there since most people probably knew nothing about it, 
but the REAL reason that it was there was that we had thrown a batchelor 
party for Jason at the restaurant and wanted to mark the moment with a 
cache.
In this cache is just happened to have a very nice view and excellent 
eats, but that had nothing to do with why we placed the cache where we did.

Brian Cluff
Team Snaptek