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00:16 Chris Ronan: Hello everyone, welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ. Hope you’re all doing well out there in geocaching land. I am Chris Ronan. My username is Rock Chalk. I and around 80 other lackeys work for Geocaching HQ in Seattle. And on our podcast, we are continuing to share conversations that I have had with community volunteer reviewers. This talk you are about to hear is with four reviewers based in the United States. ThunderEggs and GeoCrater, also known as Marla and Chuck, are based in Oregon, while NCReviewer and Dogwood Reviewer, Matt and Rob, are on the other coast in North Carolina. Of course, all reviewers bring their real life experience into geocaching, for instance, Marla worked in a hospital for many years, while Rob is a scientist at a university, which informed their approaches to reviewing during the pandemic. And that is one of many topics that we touched on during this episode. So here we go, me and four community volunteer reviewers talking geocaching.

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01:35 CR: Well, as it turns out, we have each coast of the United States covered here. We’ve got two reviewers from Oregon and two from North Carolina. And I was counting it up between the four of you, 115,000 geocaches that you’ve published since you’ve all been… The four of you, since you’ve been reviewers. And I think that means you must like doing it, but we can get into that. Let’s start with how you got into reviewing. And I wanna ask first, since you’re the elder statesman, NCReviewer, you’ve been doing this since 2005, so this year’s your 15th anniversary. And I assume that means you like this or there’s just something wrong with you. Which one is it?

02:19 Matt: A little of both most likely. I certainly enjoy it. I enjoy participating in the community. I enjoy being part of the reviewing team. I think at this point, some of my best geo pals are people I’ve met through the review team and some of the lackeys at HQ. I’ll point out Chuck’s got the elder statesmen in terms of age but I’ve got the seniority reviewer advantage just to clarify that part. How did I get into it? I got into geocaching, I saw an article in the newspaper back when we used to hold those things in our hands and get ink on our fingers on Sunday mornings. About three or four years later, a Virginia cacher named HuggieD1, who had by default taken on the mantle for reviewing Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, tapped me on the shoulder one day at an event and said, “Hey, I need some help. How about you do North Carolina and I’m gonna find somebody else for South Carolina?” And I couldn’t come up with a good reason to say no, so I said Yes.

03:20 CR: Yeah. Little did you know 15 years would go by. [laughter]

03:25 Matt: Other than my marriage, I believe it is the longest I’ve done any continuous one thing.

03:30 CR: Oh. Well, Marla, 2006 for you, and so you were right behind Matt there. How did you find your way into reviewing?

03:40 Marla: Well, I started caching because a friend told us about the hobby. And it took a little while, and we started caching and creating puzzle caches and whatnot. And then I got an email, ’cause as they say, anybody who volunteers for this job is really crazy. So I got an email from the then current Oregon reviewer that they needed help, and I pondered and consternated and contacted the Washington reviewer, who I knew through geocaching ’cause they used to come to an Oregon event, and reluctantly said, “Okay, we’ll give this a try.” And 14 plus years later, we’re still trying, so that’s a good thing. I would echo Matt’s statement that some of my favorite geo pals and best geocaching experiences have been with reviewers all over the world. It’s fun to be part of helping others enjoy the hobby in a way that very few people get the privilege of doing.

04:36 CR: GeoCrater, you’ve been at it for 12 years now. So what about yourself? How did this all start for you?

04:44 Chuck: Well, I started caching back in 2003. I had read an article on a Sunday morning and then Sunday evening, a couple of guys showed up and they had this geocaching.com sticker on their car. So I asked ’em, “Hey, what’s this? Tell me about it.” And a week later I was out… I had a GPS and was out caching. And then I was, as Marla said, one of those crazy people who volunteered to be a reviewer. I had let folks know, Marla included, that I would be interested. And months later, I got tapped on the shoulder. And in terms of the reviewer family tree, she is the branch that I tied to, so I’m very thankful for that. And I volunteer and do a number of different things, this is just one of about three or four, one of the longest ones that I’ve done and one of the most rewarding. I enjoy giving back to the game quite a bit.

05:48 CR: Well, Dogwood Reviewer is the “youngster” of the group in reviewer age. You’ve only been doing this, I’ll just put that in quotes “only” since 2012, but eight years of volunteering, what is your background in reviewing? How did it start for you?

06:07 Rob: You know Chris, I’ll take any time I’m junior I’m the youngest now because it’s very rare to get that. I started caching in… I actually have to have… I actually have to go and check really quick, in 2002. I actually saw it on a local cable program in outdoor activities North Carolina, it was actually a local cacher who was doing a little article about geocaching. I actually have not tracked down who that cacher was. I went out that afternoon and bought a GPS from Walmart, and much like you guys, it’s probably been one of the longest hobbies I’ve kept going. I tend to be quite, I tend to have quite the wanderlust with various things, and the caching’s definitely been a continuous hobby over the last kind of… Almost what feels like almost, it’s 20 years now. I came into reviewing because of Matt. I know I wasn’t his first choice in North Carolina, but I was good friends with him and we obviously cached a lot as part of a little group of cachers which was… Went on crazy trips. And that’s been… That was basically the origin of my reviewing experience.

07:10 CR: So between eight to 15 years between the four of you folks, and I already talked about how many, over 115,000 caches published. And so you obviously get something out of it, you must enjoy it, and I wonder if we can talk about just what compels you all to want to keep giving this amount of time, because it must be hours every week that… Some caches are easy to publish, but others take a lot longer and take a lot more back and forth with the cache owner, so maybe Marla start with you. What is it that makes you wanna keep getting up and doing this every day?

07:51 Marla: Again, contributing to the game, it’s always interesting. You meet an individual because you know a name that they’ve selected, you know nothing about them, although you can kind of infer approximately where they might live based on how far the cache is from their home. And then later, many of those folks, it’s like “Oh, you’re so-and-so.” And you see them in an event and you’re like, “Oh, this isn’t just this nameless entity behind the computer, this is a real live person who has their own joy of the game,” and it might be a very different joy than my own joy, which is fine, it’s part of the diversity that’s great about this. So again, it’s that, it’s the community and action and feeling like I have a way to contribute to it in a way that is flexible with my own schedule. For many years, I was working 40 plus weeks, and so the reviewing was a nice way to use my brain in a very different way than work was, and on my own schedule, which is a big challenge for someone who’s working full-time.

08:55 CR: Matt, you started this, again 15 years ago, you couldn’t possibly have had any idea that… Well, I would assume you couldn’t have possibly had any idea that this is something that would be going on for this long. What is it that has made it so enjoyable for you to wanna keep at it for so many years?

09:15 Matt: There’s two aspects to it. One is that I keep on caching because I keep seeing new things that I haven’t seen before, I keep meeting new people, and the caches take me to unusual, educational, entertaining places that I wouldn’t find or see if there wasn’t a geocache hidden there for me to go after. I visited the family farm where Jesse and Frank James grew up in Missouri when I was out there for GeoWoodstock a few years back. I’ve gone hiking on trails outside of Seattle because I flew up there to meet some people and go caching. I’ve been out in one of the darkest places in the whole country in terms of light pollution to do some of the ET trail with Rob and a few other people. And if there weren’t geocaches to find in those places, I likely wouldn’t have traveled to some of those places, so that’s what keeps me playing the game. And as I tell people who claim I’m picking on them or making it personal, I really wanna publish your cache because the more caches I can publish, the more caches that are out there for me and everybody else to go find.

10:22 CR: Again, sometimes caches are pretty easy. Everything, all the boxes are checked, and the process is pretty quick. Other times it can be a little more challenging. What do you want cache owners to know about placing a cache before they go and submit it? What are the things that they can be doing to make that process go smoother for everybody? And start with Rob on that.

10:48 Rob: I can give you the obvious answer which is to read the guidelines. I think that the main actually is a point that Matt touched upon, actually, and I do a lot of that kind of reviewing for work as well, I’m a scientist, so I spent a lot of time reviewing other people’s work and giving feedback. And what people don’t realize in that career as well, is we’re not trying to ding, we’re not trying to reject stuff, we’re trying to make it better and trying to make it as good as it can possibly be. So in our world, in the caching world, that’s obviously to get published, and I think that’s a big facet that people don’t realize sometimes, is that we’re not there to try and block. We’re there to try and make the caches comply, keep the hobby going, not put the hobby into some kind of penalty box in certain areas. And that’s kind of really… And that also kinda goes back to why I enjoy it. I enjoy being some kind of steward of the game as well and making sure that it still exists. I don’t want my main hobby and obsession being screwed up by some very strange hides.

11:50 CR: Are there things that… Again, all of you have been doing this for many years. Are there things that you think about more now, or has your process changed over time compared to when you first started reviewing? Are there things that maybe you didn’t… That weren’t top of your mind back then, that are now or… I don’t know, I’m just curious about how, as you do this over the course of many years, how your approach to reviewing changes or how you’re able to for yourself make it more efficient or more enjoyable or whatever. Chuck, do you have any thoughts on that?

12:25 Chuck: Well, certainly the obvious change recently is the whole COVID issues. With the country and the world locking down, reviewing has changed significantly during this period of time. You wanna make sure that people are… Remain healthy. So there are caches today that Marla and I are not publishing in Oregon due to social distancing requirements and things like that, so a cache in the front yard of the cache owner would have been fine this time a year ago, but we’re not listing it for those social distancing reasons today. In terms of the overall game, I would say that the tool set that we have today is significantly better than what it once was, certainly a decade ago. It is easier to see things, to learn things, but still, one relies on the input from the cache owner as to where they hid it, how they hid it, why they hid it. And if those folks could provide that information upfront, in terms of, do they have permission? Have they buried it? How is it attached to the tree? Etcetera, etcetera. That would help us speed the process along and get their listing listed faster.

13:50 CR: Well, and you mentioned COVID. We might as well talk about that a little bit because that certainly is something that the impact has been different in different places all over the world. And by extension, the impact on Geocaching has varied as well, and so we’ve got two reviewers from Oregon two from North Carolina. How have you all tried to navigate this whole thing, just strictly from a geocaching standpoint? We get into life stuff too, but how have you guys tried to navigate it? How have you gotten feedback from other reviewers around the world and from HQ and trying to make sense of all this from a reviewing standpoint?

14:34 Marla: One of the things in my former day job was working in a hospital. And part of that responsibility included being part of the hospital command center, and as you can imagine, the hospitals were early in their understanding of COVID and the implications. And shortly after the command center opened back in March, I called Chuck and said, “Oh, what are we we gonna do about this?” And we had several lengthy phone calls, we live about 100 miles apart, and we said, “Well, what about this? What about this? Let’s try this.” And then I think he did the first draft, but we both edited it enough that it’s got some of both of us in, and we said, “Well, this is how we’re gonna do it while we’re in full quarantine.”

15:18 Marla: And then Oregon announced, Well, this is the reopening process. So then we got back on the phone and we said, “Well, what changes for the areas that are reopening sooner versus the ones that are not reopening?” And of course back then, we hadn’t really dealt with the fact that some might re-close, but we’ve continued to evolve it, much like the overall guidelines evolve. Somebody writes down some things and says, “This is what’s okay, this is what’s not okay,” and then you encounter something new and you adjust. We’ve probably had more communication in the last three months about, “Do you think this one is publishable in so and so county?” Whereas pre-COVID, I would know I can publish this or I can’t publish it.

16:06 Rob: So, I was gonna echo what I think Marla said about what’s been really good for me is the flexibility of this “job”. But my life experience got very much changed when COVID happened, much like Marla’s did, and we ended up having to mobilize a lot of stuff at work and really kind of changed tack into what we… I normally research things like burn injuries, but I’m very much involved with a lot of groups here who do coronavirus research, and we’ve actually be researching coronavirus in this institution for 30 odd years. We are probably one of the best places for that work to happen. And I ended up running the central processing lab, but actually collected and distributed COVID-positive samples to other groups working here. So, I got really, really busy, Matt… And that’s just a reflection of how we’ve worked together over the years, we were able to just… Matt basically said, “Let me do this, let me just handle reviewing for a couple of months, three months, however long it takes.”

17:02 Rob: So Matt let me have a breather and really focus on work. It was good to see other places and how they’ve responded to it. I’m still very much torn. I love to go to events. I think events are completely inappropriate at the moment. This is still very much on the increase in this first wave. We’re gonna have issues next year as well. So I personally think that it’s, local laws aside, I think the all regional events should be, basically have a moratorium on them for at least six months plus, if not longer. But again, that’s the scientist in me talking, but the geocacher in me obviously wants to go to Georgia, wants to go to Seattle, but I just feel a bit that that’s completely inappropriate at the moment.

17:46 CR: Now, each of you can bounce ideas off each other, Marla and Chuck for Oregon, and then Matt and Rod from North Carolina, but then to have this larger community of reviewers, hundreds of people all over the world to be able to get feedback from, must be a really helpful thing.

18:03 Chuck: Oh, it is. Especially for… Even though most of us are a decade or close to a decade of reviewing, there are always new situations. And this is at least for me, my primary means of getting feedback on whatever is new. You can take it and say, “Hey, what about this cache, is it publishable?” Because again, that’s the idea, or how can it be salvaged? And other reviewers globally have perhaps seen the situation, perhaps not, but they can add their two cents as to how we can coach the cache owner to make sure that it meets the guidelines and to get it listed. That was the aim.

18:49 Marla: One of the people that’s become a dear friend of mine, and I know Matt’s and many other reviewers, is an Ontario-based reviewer, and he regularly says things like, “Geocaching is a global game played locally.” And recognizing different jurisdictions and different cultures and the like, while the guidelines are universal, certain elements of the implementation vary by jurisdiction, and so… But yet it’s important that collectively the reviewers worldwide are as reasonably consistent as possible, notice I don’t say 100% consistent. And so it’s really helpful sometimes we learn that, “Oh, in Oregon, we’ve been really lax on X, Y, Z, and everybody else is strict, and maybe we need to rethink that.” Or, “We’ve been really strict and everybody else is lax, maybe we need to rethink that.” So it’s really helpful to get those other perspectives.

19:46 CR: So I think what I’m hearing from all of you is, whether it’s COVID or non-COVID times, read the guidelines and get familiar with the game a little bit before… As exciting as it is to think about going out and hiding a cache as soon as you can, have your feet in the water for a little bit longer before you start with that part of the game.

20:08 Rob: Yeah, but as we’ve all seen, there’s always chat about should there be a minimum number of caches you find before you hide some. I think I’m definitely in the camp of “no”. I’ve found caches hidden by people which are absolutely remarkable hides, and I’ve only found two or three caches. Again, it’s hard to have one brush that paints all, but, yeah, certainly familiarity of the game, read the guidelines, at least very much the basics about hiding the cache not too close to another, there’s plenty of stuff they can read up about. And I like the videos which Groundspeak have done… Geocaching have done, which kind of really ease people into the hiding aspect now.

20:48 Marla: And I also really like the notion that, and it’s right there in the guidelines which I just pulled up, that Briansnat, a charter member has said, “When you go to hide the geocache, think of the reason you’re bringing people to that spot. If the only reason is for the geocache, find a better spot.” Many new and experienced cachers look to hide things in parks, in natural areas, and whatnot, and most cachers prefer those hides to the ones in parking lots or in guard rails in places that don’t have a spectacular view. They’re all within the guidelines, so we publish them, but if somebody brings me to another parking lot of another grocery store…

21:33 Rob: Super quickly. So whenever we see a zero-zero hider, so the first cache they’ve hidden, where Matt and I always send them a welcome note, which is like a block of text, we personalize it a little bit with their name, et cetera, but we always include Brian’s quote in that email as the parting words that basically kind of follow this advice. But yeah, I enjoy finding caches, I mean any kind of cache. I’m somewhat of an omnivore when it comes to cache finds. But yeah, I’m with Marla. I still would prefer to go somewhere more natural, nice view, somewhere interesting, and not the kind of Walmart parking lot.

22:10 CR: Well, before we wrap up, I’d just like to ask each of you if there’s something or some things that we haven’t touched on that you would just like people to know about reviewing and about what you do. It may be something that people don’t know, it maybe something people don’t realize. Marla, is there anything that comes to mind for you on that?

22:30 Marla: I think something that a lot of new cachers don’t realize when they see that the reviewer has very few hides and/or very few finds, like, “How come this inexperienced person is reviewing?” And so my profile even says, “Don’t believe everything you read, my player count shows that I’m an experienced person,” and so that’s one important thing. Your reviewer may look like they’re zero-zero in terms of hides and finds, but they’re not. And then the other thing, at events when we can go back to doing those, I love what Matt sometimes says about the different hats. So sometimes I wear a shirt like this, that’s community reviewer, sometimes I specifically don’t, but if we’re at an event, chances are we wanna enjoy it also, and we’re happy to do reviewer questions at times, but we’re also a regular cacher and a regular member of the community, and wish folks would respect that as well.

23:27 Chuck: One of the things that we haven’t talked about at all is the other half of the job, is sweeping. We reviewers have the responsibility to remind cache owners of their obligation when they place a cache. You can’t just, or shouldn’t just put it out there, and then ignore it. If it goes missing, if it gets damp, if it gets damaged, the cache owner has the responsibility to go out and fix it, and address notes as they come in on the cache log. And we’re the reminders, if you will. So as I cache, if it gets identified to us as having issues, we will put a little nag note out there. It is not because we’re being mean, it’s not because we wanna hammer someone, we want to assure that the next cacher’s experience with your cache is a good thing, but if you go out and you find the first five caches that you find are soggy, moldy, broken, that’s going to discourage that next cacher. So we want you as a cache owner to be responsible, take pride in your cache, take care of your cache.

24:47 CR: Well, this has been very enjoyable for me, and I think the community will have enjoyed the opportunity to get to know each of you a little bit more, and thank you for your time, not just with this, but again, for this collective amount of time that you’ve given to the community and the over 100,000 caches that the four of you have published. It’s just amazing, and you all deserve a lot of thanks for all of that, but then also just for the time that you’ve given here to share a little bit about yourselves here on this podcast. So thank you.

25:20 Rob: Thank you Chris.

25:22 Marla: Thanks.

25:23 Chuck: Thanks Chris.

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25:25 CR: Another interesting conversation with some interesting people… ThunderEggs and GeoCrater based in Oregon; NCReviewer and Dogwood Reviewer in North Carolina. I hope you enjoyed that. More reviewer interviews are on the horizon, so keep an ear out for those. If you would like to share any feedback about our podcast, send an email to podcast@geocaching.com. Thanks for listening, we really do appreciate it. From me and all the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.

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00:14 Chris Ronan: Hello everyone, welcome to Inside Geocaching HQ. I am Chris Ronan. My username is Rock Chalk. I am one of the 80 or so lackeys who works for Geocaching HQ in Seattle. Of course, we’re all still working from home right now, but the podcast rolls on remotely. And today, I have for you another conversation with community volunteer reviewers. One of the best parts of my job is that I get to interact with volunteers almost every day from all over the world and I hope you find it as interesting as I do to hear about what they do for the game and why they do it. This recording includes reviewers from four countries, Italy, Norway, Canada and the United States. Let’s get to it.

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01:06 CR: So we have reviewers here from several different countries, which is really exciting to get all these viewpoints from different parts of the world. And as we start, I’d like to just ask each of you to give your reviewer name, where you review, how long you’ve been doing it for and if you can remember back to how you started reviewing, maybe how you were asked or why you decided to say yes. [chuckle] Let’s start in Southern California with Marko Ramius, Tom.

01:39 Tom: Hey. Hi, my name is Tom and I’m Marko Ramius, my reviewer name for regular geocaches and also GeoawareEU1 for EarthCaches. Let’s see, my reviewing territory is Southern California, which starts at 36th Parallel if you will and everything south in California. Along with three other people, we have a team of four people for Southern California and I’m the longest standing, I guess, reviewer for that area. I was… I got my account opened in January 31st of 2006, I think it was. I’m coming up on 15 years, I guess in 2021 if we can ever get out of 2020. It seems like if I go back in time, this guy named West Coast Admin was the reviewer for all of the West Coast of the United States I think and he was getting burned out. He was just looking for some help and I think he asked somebody else in Southern California and they said, “No, but maybe FlagMan will do it.” That’s my player name. And so he called me up and asked me if I’d be interested. And I thought, “Well, sure. Why not? See what it’s like.” I’ve seen a lot of changes over the years and reviewing has really changed dramatically over the years and the tools that we have now are light-years ahead of what we had back then.

03:06 Tom: And some of the things we look at are a lot different than we did before. I guess the reason I wanted to do it, well, partly because I thought it was sort of an honor to be asked, but in addition to that, I just thought this was a great, great sport that I am involved in and I’d like to have an opportunity to give back to the sport and the game that’s really been a lot of fun for me.

03:31 CR: Let’s check in with Hans Christian in Norway.

03:35 Hans Christian: Yes, hello. My reviewer name is Hexa Nomos and I’ve been reviewing for a little bit more than seven years. I am one of six reviewers from Norway and I think on the statistics, Norway is Country number eight or nine or ten or something. Geocaching is really popular in Norway and also in other Nordic countries. We have a team of six members on the reviewer team and we also publish geocaches for the Spitsbergen islands blowing Norway in the North, but we have a split, the maintenance sweeping work, between us and fixed counties. I think I asked one of the older reviewers once on an event or something. And the year after, I was asked to join the team and I was very honored, of course. I think the driving force is to give something back to the community, the geocaching community so that was my goal then and it’s still is, trying to educate and trying to solve the big and small issues along the road.

04:53 CR: Staying over in that general part of the world, we have Andrea from Italy.

05:00 Andrea: Yes. As Chris said, I’m a reviewer for Italy and I’m a part of a team of three people. We also review the microstates inside Italy, San Marino and Vatican. I’ve been a reviewer since February 2008. It’s about just a little bit more than two years. And recently, during lockdown, we just decided to share an account for EarthCache reviewer for Geoaware and Italian Geoaware because before it was covered by Tom. Italy was covered by Tom. I’ve been asked by the first Italian reviewer, Kazuma to become a new reviewer about two years ago as I said. I had the chance to meet him because we were both part of a scientific nonprofit association. We had the chance to get to know each other. And when he decided to retire from his reviewer role, he asked me and I was the one to take his place mostly. I was very well, very much happy to be asked. I’ve always wanted to see how the game is from the other side and I like this part of the game, mostly in the way of helping people to publish a cache, to educate them about how to follow the guidelines, how to improve their listings and their caches to make them fit the guidelines more. And also I like very much to see what the caches that are sent to review because I always live geocaching as discovering of places, of stories. And so reviewing caches from all around the country, I had the chance to know a lot more than just finding caches.

06:49 CR: And we also have from Ontario, Canada, we have Cache-Shadow, Roy.

06:55 Roy: Well then, yeah. So my player name is RCA777, and reviewing, as Chris said, as Cache-Shadow since 2011, I think nine years, we’re at almost, almost 10. So I first got into the game itself, a family member had bought a GPS, and had actually called me to look up some coordinates on geocaching.com for them, and I found it interesting. I went with them, loved it, and then a few years later, two of the Ontario reviewers, there are currently three, there used to be four, they had seen how I had worked with the community and organized some events and thought, “Well, perhaps I could help out in a capacity for tidying up caches that had been abandoned.” So we call it sweeping. I was quite good with automating tools and working through computer programs, was very good at dealing with people in the community, and I said “It sounds like a good mix.” And I tackled that fairly quickly, and then found that I could probably offer more if I started actually reviewing caches, not just tidy them up.

08:00 Roy: And I was tapped on the shoulder and the qualifications essentially being that I’d like to work with everybody in the game, and I just wanted to give something back, and same as everybody else, it’s… The game made such a difference to me, it gave me this extra community that I could be a part of, it let me make great friendships. And to this day, I’ve traveled the world, seeing people I’ve met through the game, and just having that tap on the shoulder is a great privilege and a great honor, but I actually do something and not just sit at home and talk about it. And particularly within our reviewer team, we’re all different opinions. And so we all talk about different way things could be done, and it was a great opportunity for me to take that and use that voice and HQ listens to voices. And that was one of the other things I thought I could probably do about making the game more of what I thought it could be and other people thought it could be. And here we are, almost a decade later.

08:57 CR: Each of you has mentioned that you review as part of a team. And I’d like to ask a little more about how that works, as far as bouncing ideas off each other, things… Just how does the team dynamic work for reviewing, Hans Christian, in your area? How does that work, being part of the Norway team?

09:18 HC: In the Nordic countries, we used to have an annual meeting, most of them, both the Swedish, and the Finnish, and Danish, and Norwegian reviewers meet once a year, at least on a four-year rotation. We move through the countries, and that has been very good, both socializing with your own team and also the other local teams. And we have, of course, advantage with the languages, the meetings are in English because of the Finnish reviewers, but I think that’s a good thing. In addition, the Norwegian team also has an annual meeting, where we meet, and we have also a third meeting and a more technical meeting dealing with the software, the new sweeping system and so on.

10:06 CR: We have a great range of reviewing experience here from, Andrea, who just started within the last couple of years. Tom, I think you said you’re coming up on 15 years. I’m curious to ask a few of you how reviewing has changed over time. Roy, you’re right in the middle, I think, of the experience levels here. How would you say that reviewing has changed in your eyes, in the time that you’ve been doing it?

10:32 Roy: I think the way that players approach the game is a little different today than it was, say, 10 years ago as a player or even nine years ago as a reviewer. And I think that it’s easier for people to be involved in the game, and therefore they may not spend as much time making themselves aware of the nuances or of the guidelines, because they’re excited, they’ve got something that is easily available to them, and they just wanna go out and do it. And it’s a great thing. Whereas in years gone by, playing the game involved an investment. You’d buy a GPS unit, and that was your only option, and that wasn’t necessarily a cheap investment. And then you would painstakingly go through all the different requirements of playing the game. So on the reviewer side, the change in approach of geocaching being more accessible, sometimes can mean that the way that you take care of the reviews, you gotta ask more questions, because people have a tendency to want things now, which makes perfect sense.

11:34 Roy: But as far as being in the reviewer seat, the improvements in technology, and by technology, it really is the software environment, as HQ have released updates for players to improve the game, maps, features, etcetera, etcetera, they’ve not left reviewers behind, because they also improve tool-sets that we use on our side, which aren’t vastly different from what players use, just a few more extra buttons perhaps. Those have increased along at a similar pace. And so we’re now able to get more information upfront, to be able to help a geocacher get the cache published. Whereas back in the day, you might be taking information you’ve been provided and copying and pasting it into your own software or another third party tool. So that’s definitely changed, is there’s more of a… I guess from reception to publish can be more of an automated process, but you still need those eyes to read the cache pages and that certainly hasn’t changed.

12:34 CR: Andrea, you had mentioned earlier that before becoming a reviewer, you were curious about what it might be like. Is it what you expected? Is it significantly different than what you thought it might be?

12:48 Andrea: When you think about what a reviewer could… What being a reviewer could be, you always think about the good parts, like knowing the back side of the game. Then later you realize that it’s not only that, but I’m also trained in martial arts, I’m a martial arts instructor. I think it’s more or less the same theme. In martial arts there are levels like the belts in karate or something like that. The more you have a higher belt, it’s not about having better perks, better things for you but the higher the level, the higher the responsibility you have toward your community, toward the game itself.

13:33 CR: I know all of you attend events in the community, you’re very active in your local areas, I’m curious, when you meet people in the community, what are the most common questions that you hear from players? Hans Christian.

13:49 HC: People ask us about different things like how long we used to go through a cache page, what we look for, and some are very curious about the tools, but I reply that the tools are the same as you use, but we have a few more bells and whistles as someone said earlier. I think people are very polite and some ask questions and but I think generally, the community think we’ve done a fairly good job. It’s very good when you get some positive feedback. To be honest, I expected more negative feedback, but we try, well, at least myself, I try to treat people in a good way, and I’ve been working as a teacher for many years and perhaps that helps.

14:41 CR: Roy, I am reminded of a time, a few years ago when I had a chance to attend an event with you in Canada, and I was struck by how you seemed almost eager to engage people in various topics, some of them very, very challenging. It was something that you seemed to really enjoy and the folks that were there seemed to get a lot from it too.

15:05 Roy: Yeah, I’ve always taken the approach that if you can put yourself in the shoes of someone else, you have a better idea of how you can make those shoes more comfortable for them, and I do this in my own work as well as with my reviewing. I try and create an environment where the geocaches know that I respect that they are what makes the game happen, and I just hope that they respect that my reviewer hat when it’s on my head is doing its best to fulfill a role and enforce the guidelines. But there’ll always be situations where it might be not a one or a zero, it might be some middle ground or some gray area, and without our reviewer team, we take approach, the three of us that we like to try and nail down as many gray things as possible and make them one color or another. And so I find the best way to do that is to go and put myself out there and say, whether it be on social media ’cause I’m quite active in groups in Ontario here, “Do you have any questions?”

16:07 Roy: “Well, what can I help answer now, ahead of time to get ahead of your stresses that you might perceive are going to happen that may not.” And the reception has always been great. I’ve had people who, they’ve got their heart and their emotion, their soul into their design of a geocache, and it may not be guidelines-compliant for something that… It could be something they’ve overlooked or it could be a nuance they weren’t aware of and they may obviously be frustrated for a few moments, but invariably the end of the conversation is a thank you or they’ll see me in person at an event and go, “Listen, I’m really sorry if I gave you a hard time.” Like, I get it, I totally understand. And so I’ve just found that being out there and being, I guess, attainable in my own time really helps keep the community up-to-date and informed and at the same time lets you bring back things to the reviewer team so we can say, “You know what, that person’s got a point, what’s a good way to address that within our region” or even go to HQ and say, “You know what, what’s a good way for us to look at this maybe outside of our bubble of Ontario, Canada?” And yeah, I love events for that.

17:16 CR: Since I have a couple of EarthCache reviewers here, I’d like to ask about the EarthCache process because I will admit I’m completely intimidated by it. I don’t feel like I could personally hide an EarthCache ’cause it just seems so overwhelming to me. Tom, I’ll start with you. What are tips that you give to people when it comes to trying to successfully navigate the EarthCache review process?

17:39 Tom: Oh, well, that’s a… Very few earthcaches get approved on the first round. [chuckle] I must say that unless it’s an experienced hider of earthcaches. Instead there are some technical requirements, the reason that a cache get thrown back or pushback is that they haven’t provided an adequate science lesson on the cache page. It’s not good enough to just point out a location and say “Oh, is this cool” and answer some questions about the geology. There has to be like a robust science lesson about this specific site that could be reviewed or the cacher when they go to the cache they will be able to look at this particular location, find something very interesting in a geological manner and be able to answer questions about it that can only be answered if you’re at that specific location and the questions relate to the science.

18:37 Tom: That’s a… It’s a long-winded way of saying EarthCache guidelines pretty clearly state that you need to have the specific science investment and logging task that relate to the science lesson that also prove that you visited the site. And that’s… Those are the primary issues. Once you get past that then the other sort of technical things that we ask for is if it’s in a foreign country, then you have to have a listing in the local language, and you can have any other language you want and for me, I need English ’cause I don’t speak any other languages. So I ask for an English translation. And then also that you provide the answers to the logging questions in a reviewer note that will get deleted when the earthcache is published. So those are the issues that I see mostly.

19:26 CR: Andrea, is there anything you would add to that?

19:28 Andrea: Well, I mostly agree with Tom. The main issue is that people hardly find a connection between the place and the geological science lesson. And sometimes they are just trying to publish a cache that, they could not place as a traditional, they are trying to make it an EarthCache, so they can… Publish it anyway, but further more a general way, I would say that the same tips that I would say to a normal for normal viewing, like learn about the guidelines and about what you’re doing, and mostly communicate with your reviewer.

20:11 CR: While we wrap things up here, I could talk to you guys for hours, but, I want you to get on with the rest of your day, but, I’d like to just ask each of you if there’s anything that you wish people knew about the reviewer role, about what reviewers do, or about… Anything people can do to make reviewing smoother just any thoughts that you might have about what you do and why you do it, and maybe something that people don’t know about what reviewers do Tom, we’ll start with you.

20:43 Tom: The biggest thing that I would like people to know about reviewers, is that we’re on your side. We’re on the side of the person trying to hide the cache. We want caches to be published because we’re cachers ourselves we love to go caching. And the last thing we want is to be able to do is to… We’re not looking for ways to prevent a cache for being published, we’re, looking for ways to get caches published that fit within the guidelines.

21:09 CR: Hans Christian, what are your thoughts on that?

21:12 HC: I already told to them to in… This team, we’re all on the same team. There are not two teams there is only one team currently working on the same team. So I think being friendly with especially new comers, try to guide them regarding the guidelines and the idea of the game, if we need to tell them that, to act family to them. If you get a strange questions, try to always answer polite if I have a bad day, perhaps I should not review that day. And I think act positive and try to be a good guide for them, to guide them. And I think, for new comers it could be positive to join in some local events and to try to talk to a local experienced new cachers to get advice from them.

22:15 CR: Andrea, what are your thoughts on that?

22:17 Andrea: Well, Tom and Hans Christian just said pretty much what they think, learn and communicate the two main things that the geocacher should do when he wants to hide a cache, and with those, you will see the improvements in the caches in the whole game.

22:38 CR: Roy.

22:39 Roy: Reviewers support geocaches as much as they can, geocachers are the ambassadors of the game, every geocacher has it within them to make the game the best it can be. But reviewers themselves, they’re not infallible, and the reviewer a hat, when you’re wearing your reviewer a hat, you have a set of guidelines you’re working with to try and stop there from being absolute chaos, so there are different things in different places that work in different ways. So when I think of reviewers, first of all, it’s a volunteer role, the hours are very flexible to vacation times unlimited, but a lot people don’t realize that the pay is not that great at all because it’s a volunteer role. I put myself in a position when someone says what it’s like to be a reviewer, or could I ever be reviewer, say, absolutely. If you love the game and you’ve got a great knowledge of the community and the guidelines, that’s fantastic, but it’s really almost a customer service role and that you are trying to make the experience better everybody. And for some folks that itself can be intimidating, and for others, it just seems to be right up their street, and I’m here right now with a group of folks who definitely understand what it’s about. It’s a pleasure.

23:56 CR: That was Tom, aka Marko Ramius, aka GeoawareEU1 from California. Hans Christian, aka Hexa Nomos from Norway, Andrea aka Giulia_Tofana from Italy, and Roy also known as Cache-Shadow from Ontario, Canada. More reviewer talks are on the way. Stay tuned for those. If you have an idea for the podcast or any feedback on the podcast, we would love to hear from you, send a message to podcast at geocaching.com. In the mean time from myself and all the lackeys at Geocaching HQ, happy caching.