What about specific publication times and dates?

I had a nice email conversation with a geocacher last week who was asking about getting several different cache published at specific (but different) times and dates. I'd like to share my response with you here so you can see how I like to handle these situations. Keep in mind this may not be the way other reviewers prefer to handle things.
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Here's how the review process normally works: When you create a new geocache page, please don't "enable" it until the cache is in place and ready to be published. That way I can publish new geocaches in the order they were received whenever I happen to be online and doing my volunteer reviewer duties. When I click on the "publish" button, the cache page goes live immediately and is searchable by other geocachers.

Normally I can't guarantee a specific publication date and time unless a group of new caches are being placed for simultaneous timed release in conjunction with a geocaching event cache. The reason for this is because it's not a simple matter for reviewers to program a timed release, so we like to have a "critical mass" of several caches to all be released at the same time and same day in order to make it an efficient process to set up.

The exception that I make to this process would be when a geocacher asks me to check to see if a location is acceptable under the proximity guideline. That is, check to see if his or her prospective location for a new geocache is at least 528 ft. from existing geocaches and physical waypoints of other multicaches and mystery/puzzle ("unknown") caches. The reason I would do this is when the geocacher wants to create a special cache that requires advanced preparation, such as a special multicache or puzzle cache. In that case I may ask the geocacher to go ahead and submit the cache page with the final coordinates, but include a reviewer note to let me know that he/she wants me to check whether the coordinates are OK for a cache placement.

Clowning around with the big guy

That's me with Jeremy Irish (right), president and one of the founders of geocaching.com.