Chris Ronan: Hey, everybody. Welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ, the podcast from Seattle. I am Chris Ronan, my username is Rock Chalk, I am one of the folks who works here at Geocaching HQ. And on today’s episode we have Cathy Hornback, she is an HQ staffer who is also a volunteer Geocaching reviewer. So Cathy brings some very interesting insights to her job here at HQ because she is also a reviewer. And we’ve had some folks write in to us and by the way, you can write in to us, just email podcast@geocaching.com and let us know what you’d like to hear about on our podcast. We’ve had some folks write in and say they would like to hear about geocache reviewing, and since Cathy is also a reviewer in addition to working here we thought she would be a great person to ask some questions of. So here is me and Cathy, talking about reviewing geocaches.

CR: Well, Cathy let’s just start with what do you do with Geocaching HQ? What keeps you busy everyday?

Cathy Hornback: Well, I’m part of the Community Volunteer Support team and together, we support about 400… Actually 426 at the moment, volunteers from all over the world and these would be reviewers, moderators, and translators. We also curate the guidelines and the Help Center. Personally, I spend most of my time working with the voluntary viewers and cache owners and guidelines and the EarthCaching.

CR: So you’ve been involved with Geocaching much longer than you have been a reviewer or you’ve been at HQ. So let’s start with that, how did you get involved with the game in the first place?

CH: Oh, okay. So back in 2003, I needed to get a birthday gift for my husband and I didn’t know what to get him and I remembered reading about Geocaching in the newspaper months before and thought, “Oh, you know that would be a good thing to get him for his birthday then maybe we could have fun on the occasional sunny weekend?” [laughter] But I was so freaking wrong about that. I got addicted as soon as I found my first cache and then I learned how to use the unit myself and took off on my days off when he was at work and I’ve been going ever since, and I love it just as much now as I did back in the beginning.

CR: And you two still cache together quite a bit.

CH: Yeah, on Saturdays we definitely do cache together. I’m lucky to work for a company where I can sneak out at lunch and get away with caching [chuckle] as long as I’m back reasonably fast.

CR: So we have a couple of Geocaching username personalities we’re dealing with here. Your player name?

CH: My player name’s Prying Pandora.

CR: And that is from where?

CH: That’s from the Phantom of the Opera. It comes from when Christine pulls his mask off and he’s furious and he calls her a prying Pandora. [chuckle]

CR: And then your reviewer name?

CH: My reviewer name is Rock Rabbit, which is another word for pikas and when I’m hiking in the mountains I love seeing pikas and listening to them squeak, they’re so cute.

CR: Okay, so you started playing in 2003 and when did the reviewer thing first come around?

CH: That happened in 2009. I got an email from one of the Washington state reviewers and just asked me about this and I’d just about spit my drink all over the keyboard. It’s [chuckle] usually a surprise, nobody really expects to be asked to do this. So ever since I’ve been working really hard to be worthy of that honor because it is a huge honor to be able to help the community in that way.

CR: So when they first approached you about being a reviewer, did they say, “Here’s why we’d decided to ask you about this.”?

CH: It happened because Moun10Bike retired and they needed another person to fill his shoes, not that anyone ever could, and so they came to me. I apparently was the only person on all of the list from all of reviewers in the state, so they asked me.

CR: And so for people that might… I don’t think there are many but people that might not know Moun10Bike, he is the father of the geocoin and he is a Geocaching HQ staffer, so one of our co-workers here at the office. Okay so 2003, you start playing the game. 2009, you start reviewing and then how many years until you start working here at HQ?

CH: I started working at HQ in 2010, so it was about a year and a half after I started reviewing. I had the very good fortune to be the only reviewer that worked within driving distance of headquarters [chuckle] so that was great. And headquarters works very closely with the reviewers so they knew already from my work that I could explain things to people and had a thick skin and a long fuse, all of those things are really important if you’re gonna review.

CR: Yeah, so let’s talk about that when people talk to you about reviewing, maybe people in the community, what kind of things do you tell them are important for people that might think that this is something that if the opportunity came up they might be interested in in the future? What do you look at as those qualities that are important to be a volunteer reviewer?

CH: Oh, to be a reviewer? I think important thing with the reviewer is that you need to be patient. You need to have a thick skin. You need to be able to be firm but soothing as well, and ethical. You can’t never mess with your ethics. You have to be a good teacher. You need to show that you’re active in the community because if you don’t have time for that then you’re not gonna have time to review. It takes time, it takes a fair bit of time that we tell people that it takes as much time as you give it, but once you’re doing it, you feel like you have a responsibility and it ends up being a little more time consuming.

CR: So if you’re talking to the version of you from 2009, are there things that you would tell that person, things that you know now that you wish you would have known then about reviewing?

CH: Not really. I loved it from the very beginning, I really wanted to be able to give back to the game that has brought so much to me personally with adventure, and fun and friends, and more than I can even say. And I think every reviewer goes into this, “Wow, this is so cool phase,” after they get their feet under ’em and then they wanna review every minute, and they will. I’ve seen this in every reviewer that we’ve brought on since me, that once they figure out what they’re doing, they go crazy and then you can take a few weeks off because they want to review everything that comes in the kill. [laughter] And then they settle down a little bit. [laughter] It’s back to work for everybody.

CR: And so in some areas, and Washington state is one of them, there are multiple people that are reviewing, it’s more of a team situation, so how does that work? Do you all split the amount of caches? Are there certain… Does one person focus on certain kinds? How do you guys decide which caches each of you will review?

CH: Well, each team in different places comes up with their own way of sharing the work. Washington, what we do is we have a long queue that we go through and as soon as someone touches a cache in the queue, it belongs to them until they give it away. And so that way, if you see someone else is already working on something, you don’t step on their toes, you don’t mess with it. And if you, for some reason, can’t finish or you’re having trouble then you can give it to one of the other reviewers and they can take over for you.

CR: And what about working together on things? I would assume that there’s a certain amount of, maybe a few aren’t quite sure about a cache, maybe you can touch base with your fellow people on the team about that?

CH: Absolutely. We all use Gmail, which has a great chat function, and yeah, that’s actually something you oughta know. If you think you’re gonna try and pull something over on your reviewer, they talk to each other, so don’t play mom against dad.

CR: And not just within your state right? Reviewers from around the world will often look for guidance and look for help if they’re not sure of the answer on something.

CH: Absolutely. I think even though we’re from different countries, and our cultures are different, geocachers are a lot the same, and the reviewers all seem to come up with same problems, and work with each other on how to deal with those problems, and help people. It’s never so much dealing with it as, I didn’t get my message across to this person, how can I help them better? Or how can I not get sucked into this or something? There’s always stuff with… We’re working with the public even though geocachers are the coolest people in the world, there is all different kinds. [chuckle]

CR: Sure. So is there advice that you give to cache hiders for how they can make the process go as smoothly as possible when they’re submitting the new cache?

CH: Oh, yeah. I’d love to do that. [laughter] It saves everybody work. The most important thing is to read those guidelines. We have just made them more simple and easier to do but a lot of people check that box on the cache submission form and think it’s a software agreement. And they don’t read ’em. And then they submit their cache, they buy a later bunch of guidelines, and it gets immediately kicked back. So you save time by going through those guidelines, make sure you understand them, they are much easier now, we have shortened them considerably, and each guideline links to a page in the help center that can give you more detailed information, if you don’t see what you need in the guidelines. So I would suggest going through the guidelines first with your placement, and then after you’re done before you submit it, go through ’em again and look at them against your cache, if your cache meets all of those guidelines and then go ahead and submit it.

CH: I think the other thing I wish I could get to people and catch them from is, if they’re going to do something that takes a huge amount of effort, or work, or expense, it’s better to check and make sure the thing is okay with the reviewer before you go through the work. Like, if you’re gonna go through the mother of all hikes and camp three days before you can get to the place, and then find out it’s a wilderness area and they don’t allow geocaches, I’d much rather prevent you from having to go through that if you asked first, or if you’re going to make some kind of gadget or mount something in a way that you’re doing in cement and you can’t get it out. It’s really good to figure out if you can have that spot in the first place. So I’d suggest checking more carefully if you’re gonna do something that takes a lot of work.

CR: Are there common mistakes that you see over the course of time? Are there certain things that you often have to push back on with cache hiders?

CH: Well, being in the Seattle area, we have a lot of puzzle caches, and it’s pretty saturated. So most of the time, if a new cacher thinks a spot is available, it can be too good to be true. And I actually feel kind of bad ’cause somebody will not have solved a lot of puzzles ’cause they’re hard. We have a lot of engineers that live in Seattle, and they’ll put a cache out and I’ll tell ’em it’s too near a puzzle and then they’ll move it. And then it’ll be too near a different puzzle and after a few times they get really impatient and I don’t blame them, I really feel bad, but we have to go by where those containers are whether you know where they are or not, and I cannot tell you because it will spoil that person’s puzzle.

CR: Yeah, I know we’ve had people write in many times over the years and say, “Why can’t you just say where everything is on the map?” But if we do that then that makes it… Unfortunately people would “battleship” those puzzle and multi-caches and what have you, and unfortunately, I just don’t think that there’s a perfect way to make that system work better.

CH: No, not really. That can go into the lots of effort thing though. You can run some coordinates by your reviewer. The easiest way to do that is to make a cache page for them and put the coordinates in that so the reviewer can check them faster and they can tell you before you even put your container out whether that spot’s available.

CR: Okay, so in the unlikely event that you go through the cache submission process, it doesn’t work out for whatever reason. You and the reviewer says that your cache can’t be published for some reason, there is an appeals process where you can write to Geocaching HQ and appeal a decision. How does that process work for people that aren’t familiar with it?

CH: Well, the first thing you do is go to the help center and there’s a link called “Email Us” and you click on that and it actually has a really neat system, where it steers you toward the information that you need to put down for what is your problem. So, if you’re appealing a cache, there’s a path that goes to Cache Appeals, and then we tell you what we need to know from you, and you need to write that down in there, and then we get all of those appeals in the department… Oh, well all day long as the emails come in, and we get together every morning, and go through them, and decide on an answer so that we can all be on the same page, be consistent, and then we divvy ’em up.

CR: I’ve seen some people say, “Oh, you guys always side with the reviewers in those appeals,” but the reason for that is the reviewers know the guidelines pretty darn well.

CH: Yeah. Reviewers are smart and they know what they’re talking about. They know those guidelines like the back of their hand. And if… Once in a while we have to coach one of them that’s making a mistake, but most of the time your reviewer really is right. So that’s why we support them so often.

CR: Yeah, and oftentimes I’ve seen reviewers say or sometimes they might encourage a person to write to HQ because they’re not completely sure of what… Maybe it’s a novel idea or something they haven’t seen before, they wanna learn, they wanna do it right, and so they encourage that person to write in and get our thoughts on it.

CH: Oh, for sure. Anytime there’s a new idea, we try to train them not to make that decision ’cause there could be more going on with it than they see, and they will encourage you to take it to appeals so we can decide and then we can come up with a policy for that and then they know what to do. So sometimes it’s just because they’d like to do it, but they don’t have the authority to do it, so they kick you upstairs.

CR: And besides appeals, you’re very involved in EarthCaches as well.

CH: Yes.

CR: Maybe talk about how that came about for you and what all you do with working with the Geological Society of America?

CH: Well, that came upon me ’cause I’m a geek and I think geology is really cool. [laughter] So yeah, we partner with the Geological Society of America on that, and I had already created a… Actually I’m a Platinum EarthCache Master so I know a lot.

CR: That sounds very important.

CH: It sounds more important than it really is but… [chuckle] Anyway. So, we work with them, there’s probably… There’s less than a hundred EarthCache reviewers, but we do have reviewers dedicated to that because there are a more difficult and complicated cache type to review. They are educational and they take you to a geological feature and teach you what that is, how it happened or whatever about it. And the standards are high. That’s because it’s the educational department of the Geological Society that oversees this, so they want these to be a legitimate lesson and they want you to think when you’re there. So that’s why we do the, “No, don’t ask questions, so you can just look up on the Internet, you have to get stuff that’s from there, and learn something while you’re doing it.” It’s not just a tick off the answers and get my smiley.’ But EarthCaches have more favorite points than all the other cache types put together, and the reason for that is that quality, so it’s worth it.

CR: So, it’s been what? Eight years that you’ve been reviewing? Is that eight or nine years?

CH: 2009, eight years, yeah.

CR: Yeah, right about eight years. So what do you like most about being a reviewer?

CH: I really like helping people, and I get a great deal of satisfaction with that. I like taking the time to explain things so people understand. And so, when I get someone successfully to getting their cache published and they were frustrated before, but now I’ve smoothed the way, I love that. I love that. I love helping people.

CR: And what are the… Are there any pet peeves? Is there anything about it that is…

CH: Well, like I said before, I get really frustrated when people don’t read the guidelines ’cause that’s so basic. I think it’s variations on guidelines. Sometimes someone will feel really passionate about something and they want to use Geocaching to promote it, and it’s a horrible disease or something tragic and sad. And we feel terrible about that, both at headquarters and as reviewers ’cause we’re sympathetic nice people. But Geocaching is a way to get away from all of that and not have to bring all the really bad things in the world into the game, it’s an escape from it. And so having to tell people that they can’t share this important passionate thing that they want to do is really hard. So that’s… I cringe every time I see those, and I think every reviewer does, nobody likes that stuff. But we are very sympathetic, we just can’t do it.

CR: Yeah, that whole slippery slope thing, it’s very difficult. I would think that you have a very unique perspective and that obviously, you’ve been a player for a long time. But being a volunteer and also working at Geocaching HQ, what do you see as the benefits of having both of those roles and kind of being able to see both of those sides of things?

CH: It helps a lot. Since I support reviewers, I wouldn’t do as good a job if I didn’t know what they go through, and the frustrations they feel, and the tools they use, and the mixed messages that they might think they get. I know how frustrating it is. I also know how happy it makes you, I know all of those things. So I really can listen to them and understand what they’re saying right away and help them with that.

CR: So if somebody is interested in volunteering for Geocache and they think that reviewing is something that they would wanna do, we do have folks that write in and ask us about that sometimes, what do you tell people?

CH: I tell them that generally the reviewer’s identified by other reviewers ’cause they know the people in their community, they know what they act like when they’re frustrated, they know how they communicate, they know if they’re out supporting their local organization, helping the community, and that’s a way to get noticed in a big way. Putting your hand up really doesn’t help you. You need to be acting the way that is reviewer like when people are not watching, when you don’t think people are watching you. So you have to know the guidelines real well and active in the community. You have to be a good cacher and a good cache owner. You have to take care of your caches and be ethical, and kind, and patient in the way you write your logs and all of that. You have to have a good general reputation with the community and you have to be able to communicate really well.

CH: So if you’re good at explaining things, and not going on and on and on ’cause people don’t have patience for that. You also need to speak English really well because HQ is in Seattle, and we do have some really awesome German speakers working for the company now but most of us speak English so we need to be able to talk to you. And when I’m looking for someone I look for somebody who’s patient, has a thick skin, is a good teacher, active in the community. The ability… You have to able to say no, some people can’t do that and that does not make a good reviewer. You have to think… All reviewers have to think of more than just you and your cache, they’re actually curating the game and helping to keep it good. And even at headquarters we do that on a global scale. So something may seem okay to you where you live but we have to think of the whole world and it doesn’t always work for the whole world, and we want the game to be successful everywhere.

CR: Well, I think we covered it.

CH: Wooh!

CR: You feel good about it?

CH: Yeah.

CR: Alright. Thank you.

CH: Cool.

CR: So, there was Cathy Hornback a.k.a. Prying Pandora, a.k.a. Rock Rabbit. We hope you enjoyed that conversation. If there’s something that you would like to hear us cover on Inside Geocaching HQ, all you have to do is email us, the address is podcast@geocaching.com, that is podcast@geocaching.com. We would love to hear your ideas for the podcast and we will see if we can cover some of your questions on a future episode. Until then from all of us at Geocaching HQ, Happy Caching!