Earth matters
The submission process for earth caches has changed from today on and will be done directly in the gc.com site. Additional rules will consequently apply and I wonder if that’s a good thing or not.
It bears mainly upon the proximity and vacation cache rules. The main argument for the latter – where one isn’t allowed to put caches in an area too far from home for maintenance/negligence reasons – is safety. Apparently trails/road gets closed or entire sites gets vanished and people could get hurt when one tries to visit such an EC. That brings me to the big responsibility question. How far can the ‘owner’ of cache be held accountable for the contingency of accidents? Can a cache ‘owner’ be sued when somebody hurts oneself whilst caching? Groundspeak – claiming the license rights of the caches – declines any liability anyway. Common sense tells me that it’s a matter of searching caches at your own risk. It doesn’t make any sense to do a 5 star terrain cache if you’re aren’t physical (or even mentally) capable to. Even 2 * caches can be difficult for e.g. wheelchairs. One also indicates that you – as EC owner have some responsibility for being the mentor/custodian of the site. That’s only possible if you are the owner of the site. One can’t do much when it’s not the case. Another argument might be the maintenance of a cache. Problem is that – apart from the geological site itself – there isn’t anything physical present at the site. Due to it’s nature, it’s a virtual with a question to answer. When the site isn’t accessible anymore, there isn’t much one can do than to archive the cache. One doesn’t need to live close by in order to do this.
The other main extra rule will be the proximity rule. The argument here is not that psychical caches could damage anything on the geological valuable site though. After all, permission of the owner of the place for all caches is required at anytime (sic) so no need to worry about that. No, one seems to worry about the fact that experiences with different types of cache at the same location is not compatible with each other and therefore can’t be mixed. I wonder if the proximity rule will ‘solve’ that problem anyway. The proximity rule is a two-edged sword anyway. Sure, one wants to prevent cache saturation, but it has also its downsides. I’ve seen many situations where there is a beautiful spot which deserves a cache on its own. That location is just between two WPs or near a WP of a multi that doesn’t focus on that spot, so you aren’t allowed to put anything. That also counts for an EC which is a such a virtual with a question to answer, how geological valuable that spot might even be. This is a bit contradictive since QTAs (and other non physical stages) seem to be an exception on the proximity rule anyway. I never understood the latter anyway, since I don’t see the difference with a tag indicating that you to turn left or right. At the other hand, the rule doesn’t prevent oddities like roads where the rule is undermined by putting a cache nearly each 161m. The proximity rule only takes the bird’s-eye view into account. There are many circumstance where the effective distance, due to the landscape or buildings, is much bigger. One can argue that the reviewer can’t tell the difference, but a quick look on Google Maps can reveal a lot I guess.
