The Ugly Side of Letterboxing

It's sad, but true. People stop letterboxing. I can't explain why, and I'm sure they'll have all sorts of reasons, but some people up and quit. Or at least stop using Atlas Quest. And that's a problem if they've left a bunch of letterboxing listings on the site. What to do with them? Leaving abandoned listings on a website is as much litter on the website as abandoned boxes in the woods.

So I worked up a solution where boxes that appear to be abandoned can be adopted. It's not a perfect solution, but it was better than nothing and seemed reasonably fair. Asking someone to log in once per year to keep their box listings up-to-date didn't seem like a particularly unreasonable request, and AQ would attempt to contact the person through their registered e-mail address to let them know what was about to happen and how to stop it, and gave them a system to take back control of their boxes at any time if they so chose.

The rest of you might not know it, but occasionally, I would get the irate e-mail from someone complaining about my putting up their boxes for adoption without permission, even chewing me out when they actually got my notifications in time to stop the whole adoption process. I tell you, I was half tempted not to even try notifying people about the adoption process if they're going to chew me out for notifying them what was about to happen and how to stop it if they so choose. *rolling eyes*

But all-in-all, the notifications weren't particularly effective anyhow, since most of the e-mails ended up bouncing leaving me with no other way to contact the owners and I suspect many of those that don't bounce end up in spam folders and never get read. There's probably a bunch of people who's boxes are up for adoption now that would be irate if they actually logged in and found out. Hey, I tried to tell them. *shrug*

Anyhow.... I got to thinking about the problem and hit on a completely different solution that in the long run, I think would be much more effective. As of this evening, the Letterboxing Orphanage is officially closed.

This is how abandoned listings are handled now:

First, if the registered owner has not logged in within the past year, Atlas Quest will attempt to change the ownership to the planter, author, carver, and lister--in that order--until it finds someone associated with the box who can own it and has logged in without the past year.

Then, if nobody associated with the box has logged in within the past year, Atlas Quest will change the status of the box to "abandoned" if the status was active or unknown. Boxes that are already marked as unavailable or retired will stay that way. Only the AQ system can change the status of a box to "abandoned," and it's done automatically each night.

The abandoned status is a lot like the "unknown" status--the box might be there, it might not. It's hard to tell since everyone associated with the box hasn't logged into their account for over one year and therefore aren't keeping their listings current. If you like a challenge, an abandoned box might be just the thing you want to hunt for. =) And, if fact, if you check the Advanced Search page, you'll see that you can now include (or exclude) boxes that are marked as abandoned.

And that's it in a nutshell. If the owner of the box does later log into Atlas Quest, they can update the status to the appropriate value.

Besides the fact that (I hope) I get fewer pieces of hate mail for daring to consider allowing someone else to adopt their box, I'm also hoping to discourage people from keeping old boxes alive past their prime. It seems that a lot of letterboxers have a strong tendency to never let a box die. I know the feeling, I felt that way in my early years of letterboxing too. It's a wonderful box, you want it to last forever, you feel like the person who planted it would want to thank you for your help. There still are a couple of boxes that I think are historical enough to keep alive--the first box in each state, for instance--but letterboxes are not meant to last forever.

The whole adoption process actually encouraged people to make letterboxes last forever, but in hindsight, I think that's a mistake. As boxes go missing, let them die. Retire them. Open up space for new boxes, new people, and new ideas. You can only find a box once, and if everyone in an area has already found it, it's not doing anyone any good. When it goes missing or is destroyed, replace it with something completely new and give those same people a new reason to visit the area. Give yourself the opportunity to create something even bigger and better. Use your time to create something new for everyone instead of maintaining something old for no one.

So there you have it. The Letterboxing Adoption Agency has closed its doors. And hopefully, this new system will still help insure that the search results aren't cluttered up with abandoned (but often missing) boxes. Not unless you want it to, that is. =)