As you may have noticed, geocaching.com put a link on the front page of the web site listing several charities that you can donate to help the victims. I applaud them for that effort. For those of you who don’t follow the forums, there was a bit of controversy about a virtual cache that was placed in Australia in an effort to solicit help for the victims. That cache was archived due to geocaching.com’s policy about placing caches that solicit donations. I personally think that policy is a good one.

The one thing I did notice was that the Australian cachers took great exception to this decision. It seems that they wanted to generalize Americans as to their charitable dispositions. I think that was unfair and unwarranted. Americans have always been generous with their money when it comes to helping others. There are many other countries across the world that are just as generous, but their credibility wasn’t attacked, so there is no need to list them.

I also spent many hours looking at the U.K forums and their thoughts. It seems that two very prominent moderator/approvers resigned over differences with geocaching.com regarding charity caches. It comes to mind that the sport of caching spans many continents and involves many different cultures. How to address each of those cultures is an undertaking that is almost impossible. If you please one...you displease another, and each believes that they are right.

Geocaching.com has established certain well thought out guidelines to try and cope with every possible scenario. Note that they are "guidelines" not rules or laws. Geocaching.com has shown several times in the past that they will make exceptions. Geocaching.com has publicly admitted that there were mistakes made in their handling of this situation. What else do you want them to do?

I’m quite sure that there were thousands of cachers like myself across the world that donated to a worthy charity in order to help the tsunami victims. We didn’t need a cache to draw our attention to the disaster (it’s all over the news), nor do we need to log a smiley face because we gave. To use geocaching.com as an avenue in order to make public your generosity is what I find doubtful.

So why don’t we put aside all the name-calling and help these people. If you need to log a cache to get a smiley in order to help these people, then I question your charitable ethics.