Archiving... away they go.

The past few years that I have been a reviewer there is one thing that seems to cause me a fair amount of problems when I run across them.  Once and a while someone places a cache and I a little flag goes up in my review process.  It seems that two, three or even a decade ago someone decided to place a cache, and never actually got it listed.  My problem is what to do with the two caches?

Often I go with the oldest cache at the spot. If Bob placed a cache there in 2012 to list and is still working on it, I want him to be able to complete it.  However, in many instances once a year or two pass there is little chance that he will ever get around to publishing it.

Often I will put the new cache on hold, try and contact the other cacher and give them a chance to respond. Here is one discussion I had

Me: Are you planning on listing cache GCold? There is another cache that want to be published in that park?

Cacher: Yes I have not worked on it in 4 years but I want to finish it sometime.

Me:  When do you think you will get to it? 

Cacher:  I don't know, a few months, maybe next year.  Just hold the spot for me.

Do I hold a cache locaion for a year or two or three, for an owner that never seems to get around to it?

That does not mention that many of these caches were never submitted for review, or they were submitted and denied. Sometimes the cache owner is active and other times not.

Often if they are older and they show no progress I just archive them when I find them. If someone is trying to hold a location to block other caches (and example: around geo-art), with no intent to publish them I just ignore them.  A cache page with no intent to publish will never reserve a location.

In other areas the problem has become horrible.  In Europe with their limited area and lots of cachers, they are finding old abandoned caches and the waypoints blocking a large number.

This last week Groundspeak archived 131,000 caches that were sitting around for over a year. How did they determine if there were no changes?  No reviewer notes and no cache pages edits in that one year time span. So if you just let it sit, it went away, with a nice note that your reviewer will unarchive it if you need it.

Trackables

Some got caught up that people were using trackable storage.  First you can still log trackables in and out of an archived cache.  So you can continue to do so if you wish.  I would recomend that you make them into a collection.  In that respect you can move them and show them, and people can only discover your trackables.  They do not appear in your list when you go from cache to cache, so they do not clutter up your screen like if you are carrying them around.

Summary

If you were working on something contact your reviewer.  It can be unarchived. I had one that way.  I started it a year ago, made some changes.  Then got ready to list it and it was archived.  Let your reviewer know and you can keep going.  Remember, if your cache can be archived in a while for the same issue, so keep trying to make progress on it.  I know I might get grumpy if every year I am unarchiving the same cache because someone never gets around to doing anything.

Hopefully this will help. It will speed up reviewing in some areas, and make your experience better.

Enjoy all.