that's me - all about the dark side!Originally Posted by firefighterjake
vb:literal>
that's me - all about the dark side!Originally Posted by firefighterjake
"life is short...make a mess of it!"
Hoamdezinahs : I can't understand why anyone wouldn't want to be a member. If it wasn't for groundspeak, none of us would be able to enjoy this great game.
You might only GeoCache, not Letterbox, but I can assure you that the game in general LONG predates geocaching.com. It even predates letterboxing.org, and in fact the internet itself by about a century - Although the original Dartmoor style differs quite a lot from what we have here in the US today.
Think about it, if there were no members, there would be no game!!!
Now turn that thought around - The members make the game, not the website. The website makes it quite a lot more convenient to find caches than hunting them down on individual pages, but it doesn't "make" the game.
Yeah, of course I can afford $3/mo or $30/year... I pay that much each morning for coffee! But it bothers me that you, or Haffy, or WhereRWe, or parmachenee, or even me (if I ever get around to planting a cache ) pays for the box itself, the initial contents, the toys we swap in and out, the logs, and arguably if someone sued because they got hurt, either us or the landowners (but probably not GroundSpeak) would get to enjoy the liability - Yet GC.com has the gall to offer "premium" content.
Don't get me wrong, I don't grudge any hobbyist site for trying to cover expenses, even if they need to go members-only to pay the bills. But "covering expenses" falls into a whole different sport, nevermind just the ballpark, than existing as a for-profit entity that "creates the toolset for building location-based adventures in the real world".
Originally Posted by ribnag
I'm a little confused here. Why the anti-geocaching.com slant? Did someone pressure you into joining? It really should be left up to the individual and I think that people may have suggested that you "join" but would never "rate" or stereotype you if you did not.
I won't argue with you when you say, "The members make the game...", but I will counter with; Geocaching.com has become synonymous with what geocaching is today. If not for Geocaching.com and their effort and dedication to the website, geocaching would not be where it is today. Even the term "geocaching" was coined by the founding fathers of Geocaching.com.
While no one is pressuring you to join, I think that if you truly enjoy the sport that you may want to consider what they offer and what they have done for the sport. I contribute annually not as a status symbol or for what I can get out of them (although the Pocket Queries are great!!!!LOL) but to give a little back to those that have essentially defined the sport of geocaching. And that means, by contributing to GC.com and helping them cover their cost all the members benefit.
Cache On!!!!
...not to mention that if you think the GC.com servers are slow on the weekend, just imagine what they would be like if there was no funding for more servers/bandwidth. When you get thousands of people checking in every day, you chew through bandwidth, and that = $.
Trezurs*-R-*Fun : Why the anti-geocaching.com slant?
Sorry, I really didn't mean to sound anti-geocaching. I love doing it, and I enjoy meeting fellow cachers. My mention of LBing I gave only as a sort of proof-of-concept, not to say I consider one better than the other.
I just see GroundSpeak as a little more... I dunno. I get the feeling that it will get more and more restrictive of the "free" part (as it has progressively don so far) until newbies all but need to "pay to play", which seems somehow against the spirit of the very game that I will readily admit GC.com makes far richer and more convenient.
Perhaps I should just enjoy the game today and not worry so much about concerns that might never happen - Can't blame anyone but me for my own fears, eh?
Also, I haven't until this week engaged in anything but quick in-the-field conversation with fellow cachers - So I have five years of out-of-date opinions built up.
As an aside, it helps to read just about everything I write with a winking smiley at the end - I very rarely mean anything in a truly caustic manner, and if I've come across as such, blame the medium for making it too easy to sharpen my words while not providing a good nonverbal channel with which to temper them.
Speaking as one of "field" cachers you've met I can safely say that you don't seem to be an angry cacher. You've hit the nail on the head concerning some of the problems we've seen of late with members conveying emotions here. Thanks and it was nice to meet you two.Originally Posted by ribnag
Happy Trails!