LonelyCache

Yesterday, after Hangin' with Colby, jcanyoneer, azcampbell, and I had a lively discussion about the LonelyCache Project. One idea that we bandied about was to keep track of who is finding lonely caches. The premise is that finds are scored instead caches.

In the DGP, a cache is given a score based on its age and how many have found it. A cacher get points based on the points of all the caches he/she has found. Scoring by finds would be different because a cache's point value would not come into play at all. A find's score would be based on the time since the previous find occurred (or for FTF, when the cache was published?). So the longer it's been since a cache was found would make the find worth more.

Here's an example. Pretend a cache had 99 finders it's first year and the 99th find was on it's anniversary. The second year, only one person found the cache and that was on it's second anniversary. Point wise, the cache would be worth 200 points (2 years) / 100 finders = 2 points / finder. The 100th finder would receive 100 finder points since it's been 1 year since the previous find.

I don't know how easy or hard it might be to create a leader board scored this way, but it might be fun to track in addition to the leader boards the DGP kept.

My 2 cents is that scoring it this way might be a nice addition, but I prefer the cache based score. Long term it won't make much difference (when a cache is several years old) but short term it might discourage me from finding a lonely cache if I learn that someone just found it

I like the concept here, but also have to agree with OPjim's thoughts on how this might discourage a cacher from trying to get to a lonely cache because it's Lonely Points dropped to "nothing" due to a recent find. Although I do not cache this way for the most part, I do imagine there are quite a few that do.

If there was a way to keep a separate board for the Lonely Points, it might encourage more people to look at caches that have not been found in some time. I do enjoy that surprise when finding a cache and seeing that the last log before me was a over a year ago.

But, it also seems to me, that maybe the guy that found it last should get some credit too? Perhaps the Lonely Points should be awarded to the last finder, not the recent finder. This might also add to your other idea of Paris' Poison...
The Lonely Points board might be full of people who have not cached in sometime but they were the last people to find certain caches that have not been found since! This would put those caches (and cachers) on the top of that point system and other cachers that wanted to be on that board could target them (the caches of course-not the cachers on the board ). A new find would know the previous cacher's Lonely Points for that cache to zero and the new finder would start accumulating Lonely Points for that cache.

I see the formula for the Lonely Points being something like this:
Lonely Points = today - last find date, assuming that each cache will someday be found again. If it's archived before a find, then that's just how it goes.

Now-to see how this might be used to get OPJim out there for one of these recently found caches that have low Lonely Points.
If there was a board for each region that added up each cacher's Lonely Points for their top 10 or 20 caches, then OPJim could do his best to be the last finder on as many caches as he could. Hopefully, he picked tough-to-get-to caches in his desired region so no one else (like JCanyoneer ) would go out and trump his Lonely Points.

I see this board changing a lot based on who has been the most active at finding Lonely Caches...though it might take some time (like a year) before they top the board. The fun part would be how easy they could be knocked down by Paris' Poison!

This still sounds like my FDF Point idea though, where the cachers who find a cache on the first day it's found (FTF? kinda) accumulate points until another cacher finds it on a later date. (this idea promotes the second to find-as it would stop a FDFer's point accumulation). The difference is that my FDF idea allowed the FDFer to keep their accumulated Lonely Points instead of them disappearing.

After thinking about it, the Lonely Points system as I described above would probably encompass this FDF idea pretty well. Not sure how the boards or point total would look but it would be interesting to see these. My assumption is that there would be a lot of FDF cachers and caches on the boards initially until the idea was embraced and people started targeting these caches.

jcanyoneer wrote:But, it also seems to me, that maybe the guy that found it last should get some credit too? Perhaps the Lonely Points should be awarded to the last finder, not the recent finder. This might also add to your other idea of Paris' Poison...
The Lonely Points board might be full of people who have not cached in sometime but they were the last people to find certain caches that have not been found since! This would put those caches (and cachers) on the top of that point system and other cachers that wanted to be on that board could target them (the caches of course-not the cachers on the board ). A new find would know the previous cacher's Lonely Points for that cache to zero and the new finder would start accumulating Lonely Points for that cache.

I kinda both like and dislike this idea. It favors new cachers over veteran cachers (especially in regards to vintage caches), and it favors the procrastinator over the trailblazer (especially in regards to new caches). I guess I kinda like it because in many ways I am more the former than the latter in both cases, but I don't really want to be. Plus, I think it may encourage placement tampering or sabotage (moving the cache 100 ft so the next cacher can't find it.) How about, "Did I find this ammo can at the base of the tree or at the top? Better put it somewhere where it won't get muggled." Also, it may encourage late-season backcountry caching (e.g. to grow your points over the winter) which may be dangerous for certain areas and altitudes.

I still think that the points should be based on the total number of finders, not the chronological order of finding. I can easily see someone physically logging the cache, then changing the date on the electronic posting to be the last finder: if it is truly a lonely cache, how likely is the CO to go out and look at the physical log to make sure the electronic log is truly ingenuous?
Please base points on how many finders not the date of find.

Opjim wrote:I still think that the points should be based on the total number of finders, not the chronological order of finding... Please base points on how many finders not the date of find.

If we added this, or something like it, it would be in addition to the point system we all know and love from the DGP, not instead of it. This just seemed like something that may be fun to track too.