Monday, January 23, 2006

Volunteer Reviewer Geocoins

Reviewer Geocoins
I received email today from a geocacher who asked if I needed any help distributing my volunteer reviewer geocoins in Iowa. I replied that I'm planning to attend some events in Iowa this year and hoped to distribute them at those events. I'll also put a couple in the mail to him, since he asked. And to get some responses/questions/etc. going on this blog, I'll mail my IowaAdmin volunteer reviewer geocoins to each of the first three Iowa geocachers who post a comment on my blog. The comment needs to be a legitimate question about geocache reviewing in Iowa.

4 comments:

jjlash said...

Hmmmm...A coin for the first three legit questions huh?

How about this: What is the most time consuming part of reviewing caches, and how can we help streamline that process.

Is there anything we could be mentioning at the Geocaching 101 type events that would help new folks avoid problems or delays?

welch said...

I know some areas know their reviewer is busy on certain days/times, and that caches do not get reviewed during those periods.
Do you have any days/times when you are not available? Obviously this is open ended since the load varies week to week, but do you try to review caches every single day?

IowaAdmin said...

Thanks for the questions! (The first comments on my blog. Gee, now I am somebody in bloggerland.)

Windchill, the most time-consuming part of the process in terms of real hours is reviewing multi caches and mystery caches that have multiple waypoints. To streamline that process, you could make all your caches traditional. :) But I know that would make geocaching less fun for a lot of people, so I don't expect that. As I said in a previous post, I hope the new "add waypoints" feature of gc.com will help, but it looks like there are still bugs to work out.

What to tell new folks at events? That permission is required for many public properties, including all IaDNR-managed land. I hate to see new geocachers discouraged when they learn they may have to contact a park manager.

Welch, another good question. Yes the load does vary. Sunday evenings are usually the busiest to review new caches. I don't have set times that I'm not available during the week. I try to check the queue at least once each day. Most days I end up checking it twice. Exceptions may be when I'm traveling. If I'm going to be gone for an extended period of time, say several days without Internet access, I'll get other reviewers to cover for me, as I sometimes do for them. I use a laptop with WiFi, so more and more I'm usually able to log on at a hotspot somewhere.

Thanks for the questions, Windchill and Welch. Email me your home addresses and I'll send you each a coin. I still have one more coin to give away in this current promotion, so someone else post a question.

fishpounder said...

Just out of curiosity- How much time do you spend out of your day doing the reviewing process, assuming you have an application in queue?