There are two types of annual leader boards:
- Year's Top Cachers Leader Board
- Year's Top Backcountry Cachers Leader Board
The Year's Top Leader Boards track how well geocachers performed in
previous years or how well they are doing in the current year. These
boards keep track of the overall top point gainers and top
backcountry cachers on an annual basis. Each year everyone starts from
scratch. Leader boards are kept for states and LonelyCache wide.
Annual leader boards are not tracked by County nor on a DGP Region
basis. Only overall leader boards are kept. Annual leader boards for
the various cache types are not kept.
When a new year begins, the previous year's annual leader boards will
be tallied early morning up to January 15 where they will become final.
Whatever is in LonelyCache then is what it will be. Any cache finds
that have not been logged on Geocaching.com and incorporated into the
LonelyCache database by then will not be included.
For the current year, the annual leader boards will track all qualified geocachers' current
standing. Once a year has been finalized, only the top 500 for each leader board
will be retained for perpetuity.
To qualify for a, Year's Top Cachers Leader Board, a geocacher needs a
score of 10 or more points. To qualify for a, Year's Top Backcountry Cachers
Leader Board, a geocacher neads a backcountry score of 5 or more points.
Only geocache finds are considered for the annual leader boards.
LonelyCache does not track caches that have been archived on Geocaching.com.
This means that finds that are archived will not show on the current year's
standings. Once a year has been finalized, however, all scores are frozen.
This means that when a cache is archived it will not affect the scores
from any previous years annual leader boards. Likewise, even though a
geocache's cache points will change over time and from finds, that change
will not affect the scoring of any previous year's annual leader boards.