Divide and rule
There is some agitation in the geocaching communities in the Low Countries for some while now.
One is questioning the use of the ‘official’ sites these days. It looks like that one is a bit stuck in the like knows like of ‘the good old days’ where the number of the geocachers annex caches were limited. Like it or not, but that period is gone forever since the sport is getting more and more popular. One say geocaching is consequently going to rack and ruin, with poor caches and misconduct (from both the cache owners as the cachers towards the owners) as a result. I can agree with this to a certain extend. As said before, it’s a personal matter on what one wants to achieve within this sport for both cachers as cache owners. Some can consider certain caches the nec plus ultra whilst others find it crap which could end in a kind of snobbery or elitism.
But there is more. There is a demand for a reform of the ‘official’ sites . One experiences that these site doesn’t offer much in multiple perspectives.
First of all, they don’t wield a great deal of influence on Groundspeak – since GS doesn’t see them as official partners anyway - and one feels that one isn’t represented, neglected and left in the cold. With the risk of getting eggs on my face again due to the fact that I’m – unlike others (afraid of getting banned?) – not willing to get things shoved down in my throat, but I wonder if it’s possible at all. Let’s face it, there are conflicts of interests. Groundspeak is a commercial company trying to make money of the work of volunteers. The more members and caches there are, the more income one has. That’s the (simple) business model. It’s about quantities, not quality. So why would one listen to people who want the opposite? If one wants to create a stupid cache as kind of publicity stunt, one will even adapt the guidelines for it. That results in the fact that the zest in the ‘official’ sites is gone, both by the owners/volunteers maintaining them as the users.
But that’s not the only problem. There is also demand of tools. As with the official gc.com site, one lacks to provide them. The effect is a kind of ‘schism’. Several initiatives are now online:
- Terracaching (with local ‘subsidiaries’) focuses on the ‘serious’ cachers and high quality caches. It’s a semi open community where one gets member by intercession and an own rating system for caches. They use their own database of caches which doesn’t contain any gc.com data nor linked to it. That reflects in a meagre 11 caches in Belgium.
- Géocache Belgique wants to address the unserved audience and gather passionate cachers in a separate community. A very noble initiative, but looking at the site, it seems like that – for the moment – the initiator didn’t manage achieve this very well. Maybe is the lack of real content the problem here.
- Globalcaches says that their no such thing like quality of a cache. Instead, it provides tools and better interfaces to both gc.com as tc.com. This NL oriented only site gets their data straight from Grondspeak itself.
The latter is rather a strange thing since gc.com prohibits the grabbing of ‘their’ data for personal use and cripples the use of external tools on their site and abhor things like decentralised servers or mirrored data on ‘official’ regional sites. At the other hand one support the above initiative. Is one practicing methods of the dictators in the old ages: divide and rule?
