Act 1 - The CITO

It all started when "Seeker/Finder", "Skrolan3" and "I" had the idea that the cleaning of "stumbling stones" could be a good topic for a CITO. So mine started listing, while the others tried to find locations of stones around Dillingen.

Not easy, the whole thing, good documentation goes differently. But anyway, we wrote to different communities, the "Institut Aktuelle Kunst", the Jewish community, the Adolf Bender Center and last but not least, Gunter Demnig, the initiator of the "Stolpersteine", to get appropriate information.

The listing was ready so far, just 27 Stolpersteine were listed and listed, and then the Drama took its course. We also had bad luck and got in contact with a well known reviewer for the Saarland. Oh dear, I had already had to discuss with her several times!

No sooner had I submitted it than I got the answer. What is this? What does this have to do with the approval process? Anyway, four questions came back about our listing, three of which I felt were not relevant to the approval of the event.

What does the number of rocks to be cleaned, the speculated number of attendees, or the provision of cleaning materials have to do with the Publish? Only the question of permission to clean a bronze "artwork" embedded in the sidewalk seemed relevant.

So I formulated - somewhat hastily and without thinking - my answers to the questions. Ironic, sarcastic, in exuberant length, as can be clearly seen in the PDF-Document linked above. Some people say I should think first, then write, but sometimes I get carried away.

Well, apparently the reviewer did not want to deal with my comments on the guidelines or was not in a position to tell me the relevant passages, how else could I explain that she referred me directly to the headquarters? Which I did immediately, accompanied by a complaint about the person in question.

Oh, what a surprise then in the electronic mail! In the refusal of our requested CITO was then on the part of the HQ in persona "Martin" no longer the speech of "too few stones", "where does the cleaning material come from" or other, no, here the lady had argued to the effect that the cleaning of Stoplersteinen - so my interpretation of the written - is not CITO-worthy. Off, nothing to the listing, nothing to errors in the listing - not CITO-worthy.

Act 2 - The Event

After a not too long consultation of the participants it was clear: "Now it will be a normal event". So the listing was adjusted, CITO came out, event was extended, the original 27 stones in the listing had meanwhile grown to 185 stones in Dillingen and the surrounding communities, And I think at this point it escalated, because in my annoyance I changed the title, our listing was no longer called "The somewhat different CITO", but "Das Event, das kein CITO sein durfte". With that I had made myself vulnerable, but what happened, happened.

From this point on, everything was actually already too late.

Now she started to throw the word "Stolpersteine" around our ears, but without writing concretely why this does not correspond to the guidelines, had somehow overlooked that in the meantime it had become a 3-hour event, that the cleaning of the stones in the listing text occurred too often, oh, what do I know, just look for yourself.

It came as it had to come, even the change of the name to "Über Steine stolpern" (here our original listing at Opencaching.de) could not save the situation. More and more new deletions were demanded, of our eventlisting was then in the final version nothing left but 5 words, a picture and a disclaimer because of the external link.

At this point I didn't care anymore, it was clear to me that this wouldn't work, so I posted the listing at Opencaching.de, so that we could at least advertise our event there and tried to explain the five words in the listing to the reviewer again, after she let some time pass.

But I think at this point it was either already

• something deeply personal
• or, what would be much more serious, a massive problem with the intention of our action and our listing.

I don't know, she actually took the explanation badly, the next day I got the mail from Seattle threatening me with consequences for my account if I didn't behave respectfully towards the lady. Good joke, but written like that. There was probably some communication between reviewer and HQ in the last four weeks, without me / we would have been included.

Act 3 - Consequences

At first, the shock was great, but actually it did not last too long. That was it with caches, caches maintain, events organize at Groundspeak, at least as long as they can make any decisions there. All caches deactivated, almost all events canceled, started to port to OC and a successor for me at GC searched and also found. From now on here is only searched, nothing more hidden.