Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

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snoogans
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Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by snoogans » Mon Aug 23, 2010 11:53 am

I firmly believe in competition for geocaching listings. I'm glad this has gotten started.

However, Terracaching & Navicaching became the place for rejects to go and post hateful crap about the big green geocaching listing service and its loyal members.

Once that was pretty much allowed to go on at TC.com, folks like me bailed out and hardly looked back.

I hope that doesn't happen here and if it does, I will certainly be looking to see how it's handled.

Speaking honestly, I don't know if I'll spend much time opencaching right now, but I wish this endeavor luck. It seems to be working in Europe, or so I hear.

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glorkar
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by glorkar » Mon Aug 23, 2010 12:04 pm

I agree that hateful comments have no place here. Not that you can prevent it, though. The vibe I get is that this isn't a replacement for Geocaching.com per say. It is merely an alternative. After all, all of us started geocaching from Groundspeak's site. We have them to thank for getting us into this great hobby/sport/activity. I applaud what they have done and look forward to Opencaching.us becoming a respectable alternative. Welcome to the site and hopefully you stick around for a while :)
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DudleyGrunt
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by DudleyGrunt » Mon Aug 23, 2010 12:14 pm

I think that must have settled down at TC, as I only occasionally see anyone "bash" the frog and then a few us us generally respond that we gladly use both (or more) sites and that each have their ups and downs. Some folks will talk about why they've given up using Groundspeak, but I don't see that has h8ing. In my time at Navicache, the forums have been very quiet and none of the few of us regulars are h8ers.

I do believe in free speech, though, as long as people aren't personally attacking other members or such, I don't mind seeing people speak out to a certain extent. I don't go to the Groundspeak forums much any more because of the level of negativity I was finding there, generally toward newer users or people who approach the hobby differently.

Groundspeak seems to handle this by not allowing people to reference the other sites on their forums or cache pages, though as with many things, it's not always consistent. I learned about OCUS on the TC forums and then posted about it on the Navicache forums. I'd be surprised if there was open discussion of this site over there. Guess I should go check, though.

Glad you're checking us out. Even if you don't spend much time here for now, stop back after a while and see how we're doing.
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RVRoadTrip
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by RVRoadTrip » Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:04 pm

Flaming, bashing, degrading others will not be tolerated here. I shouldn't have to spell out common sense rules and they way I see it, if folks break common sense rules they can find another forum. There will be no "hey, I didn't know" defense. We're nice folks here and we want everyone to feel welcome as long as the subject is geocaching (and a few other things in the Off Topic section).

Inevitably, there will be discussion about the differences between this site and other sites and that's acceptable. There will be some who will be offended by that no matter how simple the comparison is but we're not going to worry about that. However, we won't allow childish bashing of anyone or any other listing site.

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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by TMCertified » Mon Aug 23, 2010 9:53 pm

I'm curious though, isn't geocaching a trademarked name? How is opencaching allowed to use that when it is trademarked?

snoogans
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by snoogans » Tue Aug 24, 2010 7:19 am

TMCertified wrote:I'm curious though, isn't geocaching a trademarked name? How is opencaching allowed to use that when it is trademarked?
Geocaching with a capitol G is a TM, (or so I've heard) but little g geocaching can't be. It's a verb. That's why I use the small g on my coins.

I've also heard the the founders at geocaching.com don't intend to go after anyone using the word outside of their domain.

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RVRoadTrip
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by RVRoadTrip » Tue Aug 24, 2010 9:31 am

The term "geocaching" was registered by GS and is unrestricted. They registered it so no one else would try to restrict its use (which some crazy book publisher tried to do). Any mark that is restricted must be accompanied by either a "TM" or "R" to indicate the fact. Sort of like you never, ever see the word "Coke" without the trademark symbol. I am no legal expert but this is what I learned from visiting the US Trademark site and looking up the "geocaching" trademarks. :)

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DudleyGrunt
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by DudleyGrunt » Tue Aug 24, 2010 10:21 am

Interesting. I did not realize that Groundspeak had any trademark on the name. I thought they simply owned the domain name. I wonder if they could chose to start restricting it if they choose to to do so.
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RVRoadTrip
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by RVRoadTrip » Tue Aug 24, 2010 12:01 pm

As I understand US Trademark law, once it is in the public domain and no enforcement of the trademark has ever been made, it cannot be subsequently made. But don't quote me on that - LOL.

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Sniperchicken
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Re: Once the H8ing starts I'm out!

Post by Sniperchicken » Mon Aug 30, 2010 10:14 pm

quote "I'm curious though, isn't geocaching a trademarked name? How is opencaching allowed to use that when it is trademarked?"

Check out
http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/lofive ... p?t11.html


By his own admission below, Jeremy has since stated that he doesn't have a trademark to the term "geocaching". He does have rights to 'groundspeak', 'geocaching.com', and their logos.

So in short, the term geocaching is for all of us.

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