Have you visited a cache within the Cotswolds this year that you thought was particularly outstanding? Maybe it was a unique container, or a great walk, a cunning hide, a beautiful location, a tricky puzzle, impressed with it's longevity (an old cache that's been dearly cared for well), or all of those, or possibly something else that made it stand out for you above any others you looked for.
Post up your suggestions for nominations here with your reasons for. At the end of November we'll draw up a short list and create a poll so everyone can vote for the top one during the month of December.
At the end of December when we have chosen our Cotswold Cache of the Year I will get a certificate / poster made up to send to the cache owner on behalf of the Cotswold Caching forum.
If you would like to send nominations to me privately, that's perfectly fine. Though through making suggestions for nomination here this will be a good opportunity to learn about other great caches in the area that we may not have known about previously.
At the end of Every year I add a cache to my bookmark list "Griff Grof's cache of the year", and so far I haven't found my 2012 winning cache.
But my 2011 one was rather special. It was the bonus of a series, which was wonderful, but this final cache was just a nice box in such a special location. My first nomination is...
That starman cache and the preceding ones needed to find first look interesting. I will need to put them on the list to try and do.
It would be very easy for me to nominate one or more of the underground caches I have done on the very south fringes of the Cotswolds, but I am going to try and keep them out of my thoughts for now. I haven't done as many caches as last year, I will need to think a bit more about which one ones I would put forward.
I didn't choose one last year, but if I had it could well of been Inversion by I!. A unique but not too taxing puzzle, a choice of start points, a great walk (at least from the point I chose), great views and a good final container.
I have been looking through caches I have found this year and ordering them by favourite rating. I was really surprised to find another one by I! that only actually had 4 favourites, but I found took me to an amazing spot, which was GC26DDX Devil's Chimney.
The cache was a standard traditional hide. A good sized container though. An interesting feature near GZ. And great views, especially if you make your way to view the feature from a higher level after visiting the cache.
So, ask those who want to vote to update their Favourites lists by 1st December, then put the top however-many among those lists (edit: that are also within the Cotswolds AONB) to the vote.
Thank you, that is a good idea. Some good thinking there. And thank you for putting in the work to look into and display some of the current noted favourites to give the example.
I will give this some thought today, and if there are no objections from others then this method could be used, or a combination of this and nominations; for is it still the case that non-premium members cannot award favourite points? I have not looked into if there are non-premium GC.com members here, but it would give them a chance to have an input too.
You might also want to insist that the cache was placed in 2012, otherwise the same old well-known caches will win every year.
It's not like hundreds of amazing caches worth-to-favourite have been published in the Cotswolds this year - if we do that, we'd all be picking the same caches
So, ask those who want to vote to update their Favourites lists by 1st December, then put the top however-many among those lists (edit: that are also within the Cotswolds AONB) to the vote.
Just a thought.
Confused. You mean nominated on this site, right? It seems by "favourite lists" you're taking about GC.com though, I haven't seen all those caches up there nominated on this site, for example
I was referring to Favourites lists on people's gc.com accounts: that should have been clear from Gackt's quite reasonable comment that we should allow non-PMs to register a Favourite somehow (e.g. by mailing Gackt on this forum).
I do think we should stick with caches placed no later than, say, summer 2011, otherwise this award is going to be a pretty stale recognition of the same old caches that everyone already knows about.
I have been more than a tad busy at work today, and I have not given this quite as much thought as I really wanted to.
It is a good point raised about setting a date published after, to be included in the running. As well as the idea of using caches favourited (not sure that is an English word) as ones to vote for. But what date would really be best?
It would be great to hear peoples opinions on both ideas, or if there are any other suggestions. It would be nice to get it right, so that it is executed as fairly as possible, and so that we have a good base to do again the following year.
Certainly, if I am to send out an announcement mail, I would want to do in the next couple of days. So any input on this would be welcomed now.
* Hopefully above is comprehensible, my mind is very tired this afternoon.
I'm really confused - I thought The Cotswold Geocache of the year award was caches nominated in THIS thread?
Another way to do it is follow cx6's idea, and create a form (Google docs?) of all nominated caches so everyone votes for one - that would be a fair way to pic a winner ;D
Last Edit: Nov 26, 2012 18:36:24 GMT by Griff Grof
I want to implement Gackt's program: get a long list of nominations, boil down to a short list, get people to vote on the short list. I think I can help with the underlined bit, and that help is needed because this thread is quite bare at present.
A really cheap way of getting a long-list is simply to ask: what have people "Favourited" on geocaching.com? You could just sort the Cotswolds caches by absolute number of favourites, which would be fine, or you could consider only those caches favourited by members of this forum (who, after all, will be doing the voting). But my point is: you can do this with minimal effort without burdening forum members.
Yes, Google Docs might work as well. Is it easier than updating your Favourites on gc.com though?
Given a list of GC codes, I can easily filter down to those in the Cotswolds, placed within a given date range. Or I can with an enjoyable hour or so of coding.
I have no comment to make on how we derive the short-list from the long-list at present. Gackt's call.