Spam Cache Hides? Say it ain’t so!

Trolling the forums I came across this gem of a topic:

LuckyPlan asks…
Where we live, there is a cacher who ownes about 2 1/2 thousand caches under his account. Many/most are of very poor quality and of course, unmaintained. He really is taking up so much space he dominates and frankly, isn’t allowing for others to place good quality caches in many areas. It has got very frustrating sometimes.
He’s a good guy and everything, but I don’t know what utility he is getting out of all the caches he owns.

I was wondering, are other areas having this problem? Does anybody think GC.com will limit or should limit this type of behavior to encourage better quality caches?

Differentiate this thread from the “ban all micros” threads that pop up way too often in discussion.  In this case, the issue is spam caches and gaming the system to circumvent the guidelines/rules.  I know this cache hider.  He plays the game with people of the same mindset, just like everyone else plays with people of their particular philosophical bent.  Clearly, there are others who enjoy this style.

I know the guy because he temporarily migrated to North San Diego County for a few years. I spent some time working in SLC and coming home to cache the same geo-trash was frustration writ large. I always wanted a filter to ignore all hides by that UID. 

By definition, 2500 caches are all trash since there is no physically viable method of maintaining them. If you can’t or won’t maintain them, they’re trash. There are hundreds of cachers who want to create that “something special” cache but simply cannot because of a rolling mass of crap that archives itself and is reborn periodically as more crap. Finding and correcting one out of the lot (see the discussion thread) after a whack of forum posts is not a confidence builder in the reviewer community or process but a confirmation that they only have time to address issues when they are specifically raised.  Let’s be realistic here: the reviewer community doesn’t actually care in the least.  They are nearly 100% reactive to the squeakiest voices they hear.  I can’t blame them.  How else does one prioritize volunteer work?

Shame won’t work in this specific case but I believe it’s the right tool most of the time. The caches are only meant to be found by a small number of cachers in any event, not the community at large, so appealing to the greater good is not likely to work. 

It seems like whining is actually the right tool here.  I find it hard to advocate, but if you want geo-spam and trash to go away, you have to speak up.

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