Garmin, who makes the best GPSr's in the world, recently launched their free opencaching cache listing site. It was all the buzz around the geocaching community for a week or so. Rumors abound about how this site was competition for Ground Speak's geocaching site and this was a way for Garmin to get back at GS for some anti-commercial decisions that prevented or delayed some new Garmin ideas from being allowed in GC listings. Whatever the case may be, I'm not here to partake in that speculation, though there is no doubt that the OC site has lit a fire under GS to implement some long awaited updates to the GC site (updates began rolling out on GC within days of the OC launch).
What the OC site has done that will cause some issues within the geocaching community is they have eliminated the cache placement review process. Anyone can list a cache on the OC site. The instant you are done filling out the new cache form online, the cache is published for public viewing. There is no one who reviews the cache listing and ensures that it complies with the well-established cache placement guidelines. This means that anyone can publish anything and anywhere. There is no saturation check. There is no property limitation check. There is no limitations on what you can write on the cache listing. I'm sure there are a few people who've had run ins with a GS reviewer that are saying, "great". But there is a huge problem with this "open caching" concept that the geocaching community has worked hard to establish over the last 10 years... there are a lot of places you can't place a cache and many more places that you shouldn't place a cache.
For a long time, key players, regional and local caching organizations, and the Ground Speak Lackey's have worked hard to show land owners and land managers how responsible the cache placement process is. There are many park and refuge lands where caches are not allowed for environmental impact reasons. There are also many parks were they now allow caches, with a permit, due to the diligent work of the aforementioned key players. We've guaranteed these land mangers for years that we would ensure that caches placed on their lands would comply with the established placement guidelines. The OC listing site does none of this. It is entirely up to the individual cache hider to "review" his own cache. The OC site is even devoid of any significant placement guidelines.
My fear, and the fear of many long time geocachers, is that people using the OC site to hide caches will have no checks in place and could start placing caches in prohibited areas and using prohibited methods. When the land managers start finding out about these OC placements, they are going to revert back to banning all caching on their lands. That means we can lose good GC placements due to poor OC placements.
Another danger is the saturation principle. GC requires a tenth-mile spacing between cache containers (with a couple specific exceptions). Someone placing caches via OC won't know the proximity to existing GC caches and they can place OC caches closer together than a tenth-mile. This creates problems on the ground when cachers are finding the wrong cache because of close proximity placement.
All that said, there are a couple good things about the OC site. One is that anyone with a GC username can quickly and easily import all their GC find logs and all their existing GC listed caches into the OC site using standard gpx files from a Pocket Query. This is a Premium Member GC feature, so basic members will not be able to do it. However, I encourage everyone with a GC account to go ahead and make a free OC account and import their finds at a minimum. There is also benefit to importing your hides, so I also recommend that with a few specific points to make.
First - The OC site is free and public with no "premium" feature. So, if you own any premium member only caches on GC, do NOT import them into OC or the whole world will be able to see them.
Second - The OC site is predominantly a text blog style interface. There are no provisions for images or links in the listings. I use a lot of graphics in my cache listings, especially in my puzzles. So there is no way to recreate a lot of these caches on the OC site. Thus, when I import my caches, I'm deleting the cache listing text and HTML and simply putting in a text direction to visit the GC # for that cache to get the cache info. This way, anyone who looks up one of my caches on OC will just see a text statement directing them to visit the cache at the GC site. For the puzzles, I'm also including text stating that it is a puzzle and the cache is not at the published coordinates shown on the page. The user MUST go to GC to solve the puzzle and find the cache.
Why? By placing all these cache listings on the OC site, or "cross listing" them, I've made a placeholder on the cache map. So, if someone comes along and starts using the OC site, they can take one look at the map and see where all my placements are. Hopefully, they will NOT place a new cache right on top of any of my existing caches when they can see them out there.
I'm also choosing to be actively involved with watching my region on the OC site. Any new caches that do show up on there, I can take a look and see if they might cause land manager issues. If they are on prohibited land (which we have a lot of in my area), I can contact the hider and explain the prohibition issues in a diplomatic way. Hopefully, the person would be reasonable and remove the cache before the land manager becomes involved. If not, there is a link on every OC cache listing to report the cache to Garmin as "inappropriate" and we can see if they will stand behind good principles and archive any bad listings. That would just leave it up to a responsible local cacher to go out and remove the geolitter. I sincerely hope that it never comes to that, but we've had problems with a cacher or two in our area before, so I can certainly see it happening.
So, check out the OC site, import your finds, consider importing your hides, and let's see if we, as a community, can keep OC from becoming a problem for the whole sport.
