[Az-Geocaching] Time reversal - the end

[Roping The Wind]

Amen to that Brian. Good to know I am not the only one that has sensed this. 
I have always wondered why geocaching.com didnt want to allow you guys 
access to the data on the main site. Your site, azgeocaching.com, has 
certainly helped support the main site.... a for profit business venture. 
Your site has certainly been a big motivator for many arizona geocachers to 
get out and find more caches. Many of those geocachers have gone on to 
purchase premium memberships on the main site. Without azgeocaching.com, I 
dont think there would be nearly as much geocaching activity in Arizona that 
there currently is or has been over the past 3 years or so. Azgeocaching.com 
has certainly brought the Arizona geocaching community closer together. This 
in turn, helps to keep the community active and interested in the hobby 
(which in turns, keeps their $30 yearly membership fee rolling into the main 
site).

For geocaching.com to refuse to allow state level sites such as 
azgeocaching.com access to the stats on the main site... is in poor taste 
and certainly will not do more harm than good (from a business perspective). 
Eventually, some will turn from the main site and create a new site or two 
dedicated to geocaching (terracaching, for instance) that could provide a 
new avenue for people fed up with geocaching.com's tactics.

I always thought that azgeocaching should become a site entirely dedicated 
to geocaching in Arizona by not only providing stats and team specific 
data.. but also a place for Arizona geocachers that post their hidden caches 
for others to find. Then, the data would obviously be easy to retrieve. I 
for one, would be more than happy to pay a $30 yearly membership to 
azgeocaching.com for providing such a service. I would love to see all the 
Arizona caches posted on the azgeocaching site.... a site that is all 
inclusive... a place for me to locate caches in arizona to find, a place for 
me to list caches I have hidden and a place to go to find all my team 
specific data (PDA downloads, GPS waypoints, etc).

I was briefly a member of geocaching.com thru a monthly membership.. I for 
one was not particularly inpressed with the 'benefits' of the membership and 
I didnt find the PDA and GPS geocache downloads to be user friendly. It was 
MUCH simplier and MUCH faster and MUCH easier to go to azgeocaching.com and 
get this information (in a very user friendly fashion).... and do so in mere 
minutes (not have to wait for an email to arrive then have to have a side 
program such as mobipocket and easyGPS/MPS or something to allow me to 
change those loc. files and such into files that were usuable for my 
specific needs. Azgeocaching.com provided several different downloads for 
different needs (such as Mapsource for instance). The main site does not 
support this and you have to change the file types using a middleman 
program. All in all, I didnt find this stuff to be very user friendly on the 
main site (although I never had any probem using it, I just didnt particular 
care for the system).

Being a business owner myself... I understand the need to support those that 
benefit my business and keep constant relations with them to keep my 
business going. If I owned geocaching.com, I could see the obvious benefits 
of having a site like azgeocaching.com online. I am sure there wouldnt be 
much added expense (in relation to the profit being generated on the main 
site) in having another server or something set up to allow state level 
sites to crawl the main site to retrieve team specific data. Azg.com only 
crawled the main site (as I understand it) once a day and it was during the 
early morning hours. Each state's local site could be allowed access for a 
given time each day so not all are trying to access at the same time. Maybe 
they could require each site to have a 'license' of sorts to acess the site, 
just so the main site can control who is accessing their site.

Anyways, just my opinion. It would be sad to see Azgeocaching.com go. I 
appreciate the time Brian and Jason (Team Snaptek) have put into creating 
azg.com and keeping the site up and running for all of us to enjoy. Thanks 
guys! I do hope yall will stay somewhat active in the game. It is always fun 
to open up a cache logbook and see some of the 'old timer' teams that have 
been active since the early days of geocaching in Arizona and it would be 
nice to see Team Snaptek's name from time to time.

Scott
Team Ropingthewind

>From: Brian Cluff <brian at Snaptek.com>
>Reply-To: listserv at azgeocaching.com
>To: listserv at azgeocaching.com
>Subject: Re: [Az-Geocaching] Time reversal - the end
>Date: Wed, 14 Sep 2005 23:35:53 -0700
>
>Nope, you'd have to go back to a time when geocaching.com appreciated the 
>business that the free service azgeocaching.com gave them, insisting that 
>people gave money to geocaching.com before they donated to 
>azgeocaching.com... and before they blocked every address we had to be able 
>to gather the data that made AzGeocaching.com what it was.
>
>As of Aug. 14 stats are no more, and at this moment in time they don't 
>appear to be coming back either.  Sure we could move to a different source 
>of bandwidth, but it would be a short lived victory before they blocked 
>that address as well.  I just wonder if they thought about the several 
>thousand people they also blocked from getting to geocaching.com when they 
>made their decision to block our whole Internet service.
>
>I don't like to toot my own horn, but I know AzGeocaching.com had at least 
>a little bit to do with the immense popularity of geocaching in Arizona and 
>they wouldn't have had near as many subscribers without the discussions on 
>the mailing list and the people that were into the numbers.  The least they 
>could do is allow us to exist for their own sake.  AzGeocaching.com was 
>never a leach on their system and never would have been, we always ran the 
>website at our own cost and never tried to make it pay for itself at the 
>cost of geocaching.com
>
>Brian Cluff
>AzGeocaching.com
>Team Snaptek