Randy,

Your points are quite valid, of course, and have caused me to re-consider my
earlier statement.

In the future, I will not be so quick to recommend that all letterbox visits
be followed up with an acknowledgement from the visitor. Such
acknowledgements could, indeed, provide undesirable hints to the location of
the box... especially when posted to the entire list.

Thanks for your comments.

Sincerely,
Mitch (Der Mad Stamper)

-----------------------------
Randy wrote:

> > Any time a box is found, the finder will be doing a great service to
> > the entire letterboxing community by either contacting the author of
> > the box or posting a note about their find on this list.
>
> Now this is a matter of personal choice. Not to mention the list
> volume this would generate, I think keeping silent is more fun.
> Keep some secrecy going. I think its cool to go out in the _field_
> and discover who has visited your box rather than a e-mail to the
> whole world. I certainly never send notes when I find boxes for
> this reason (except once in a while a personal note to the author,
> or a very cryptic note that only those with ears to hear will pick
> up on :-)). Its just more fun this way.
>
> Another problem with this is it can give away mystery boxes. If
> I say "wow, I found mystery box X", that gives away to the astute
> more information about the box then they otherwise would have had.
> Its a spoiler. These things matter to the people hunting and hiding
> these boxes. All someone would have to do is look at the USOF A
> meet schedule to see where the mystery boxes be in my case :-)
>
> Its interesting that the armchair treasure hunting folks will
> actually try to backdoor finds by researching travel itineraries,
> etc, of the hiders. The hiders have to make bogus travel plans and
> trips to avoid this. Its interesting how much can be given away
> by these comments when playing at the cryptic box level.
> Unfortunately, I've backdoored a couple of boxes myself due to
> careless comments on this list. I wonder how many I've given away ...
>
> Loose lips sink ships :-)
>
> Cheers,
> --
> randy "the mapsurfer" (P27F102)
> Hogeita hirugarren kutxak kolonia zaharean da.