FTFs on event caches should not be possible

Question

I noticed some geocachers have logged FTF's on events, probably to boost their FTF-stats. Some accounts even organised various events in different countries and claimed an FTF on all of them. Of course, an FTF on an event doesn't make any sense. There is no 'glory' in showing up early for an event, just to claim you were the first person there. Especially since the event host will most likely always be the first, so it is not much of an achievement. I therefore think it would be fair to exclude all types of event caches from the FTF-stats. I know that FTFs on virtuals and earth caches can be disputed as well sometimes, but at least there is some sort of task that you can be the first to complete.

My guess is that it won't be too difficult to have logs on events from being excluded from the FTF tags, since they have a different log type (will attend/attended), but I'll leave that to the devs :)

Thanks for consideration and keep up the good work

Answer 1

I have seen people put FTF tags in their general logging template for *all* caches. There's no way Project-GC can police this kind of thing comprehensively.

As for events, sometimes events include some kind of competition and award the FTF for the event to the winner, as an example of a reasonable use.

When it comes to the CO being first to the event, I have published well over 100 events and I'd say it's more common for me to not be first on location (which does not mean that I'm late, just that some people are more ahead of time than me).

Comments

This certainly won't solve other issues with FTF-stats, but it would make things a little better.

I have never seen/heard of events with an FTF as some sort of reward myself, but I get the concept. A better improvement would be perhaps to exclude FTFs on your own caches. I cannot think of any case where an FTF on your own cache would make sense, except for when you have adopted a cache at a later moment. Would it be possible to check who the CO is at a given date? Or does PGC only have data on the current CO of a cache?

Maybe preventing FTF logs on event caches in combination with a CO check would be easiest to prevend FTFs on your own event.

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Project-GC has no way of distinguishing a cache you adopted from a cache you created yourself.

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Thought so. In that case, my last suggestion may be a good alternative:
preventing FTF logs on event caches that you've created yourself