Challenge moratorium
What is it?
Between April 21, 2015 and May 25, 2016 there was a moratorium on challenge caches, some challenge caches that were submitted for review at the time of the announcement were published but the intent of the moratorium was a year without challenge caches to focus on reworking the system and/or the guidelines. When the moratorium ended a new set of guidelines[1] was introduced for challenge caches. Since there were big changes in the guidelines sometimes it makes sense to divide challenges in pre-moratorium and post-moratorium for example in the Challenge difficulty per rating interval article.
Timeline
On April 21, 2015, Geocaching HQ announced that there would be a one-year moratorium on challenge caches.[2] The main argument for the moratorium was that even though challenge caches only made up about ~1% of cache submission they were one of the most common subjects for appeals to Geocaching HQ. The goal of the moratorium was to allow for full focus on fixing the challenge cache system.
On April 21, 2016, Geocaching HQ announced that one of the changes would be that a challenge checker would be required on all challenge caches going forward.[3] Project-GC was and have continued to be the only approved host for challenge checkers. The actual moratorium was extended for a few weeks.
On May 25, 2016 the return of challenge caches was announced.[4] There was also a blog post[5] explaining the reasons for various changes and the new guidelines[6] were introduced.
Project-GC's contributions
One of the biggest changes after the moratorium is that per the guidelines all challenge caches published after April 21, 2015 must include a link to a Project-GC challenge checker[7] for the life of the cache page. This change was suggested by the community and Geocaching HQ and Project-GC worked together to make challenge checkers an official part of challenge caches.
Project-GC also provides added functionality to Geocaching HQs Community volunteer reviewers, for example reviewers can run an unlimited amount of challenge checkers without a paid membership since this is needed to be able to review the challenge cache before publication.
Notes
- ↑ Challenge cache guidelines at Geocaching.com.
- ↑ See Pause on New Challenge Caches in the official forums.
- ↑ See Challenge Cache Moratorium update in the official forums.
- ↑ See Return of challenge caches in the official forums.
- ↑ Return of Challenge Caches in the official blog.
- ↑ Challenge cache guidelines at Geocaching.com.
- ↑ Challenge checkers-information at Geocaching.com
