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Cache adoption

This page is for the sysop. It shows how to hand a cache to a new owner when its owner erased their account or stopped looking after it.

A cache whose owner erased their account is archived and owned by a withdrawn marker, so nobody can edit it. A cache whose owner stopped looking after it has the same problem while the owner still exists. Instance admin → Cache adoption hands such caches to new owners.

Before you start

Offer, request, approve

  • Offer for adoption: by cache code, or with Offer… on a cache under Withdrawn owners, with a required note saying why. The note is public: the cache appears in the Up for adoption list and on its own page. Only caches hidden on this instance can be offered; imported caches cannot.
  • An active owner is told and can refuse. Offering a cache whose owner still has an account puts an alert in the owner's list (and a push, where configured) and shows the offer on the cache page, where Keep my cache ends it. Such a cache cannot change hands until the offer has stood for 14 days. A withdrawn owner has nobody to tell, so there is no wait.
  • Requests, then approval. A signed-in member whose call is control-verified asks for an offered cache from its page, saying whether they have checked that the container is in place. Requests wait for a sysop: first come would let the quickest account grab any cache, and a person can check who is asking. Approve hands the cache over and declines the other requests; Decline tells the requester.
  • Withdraw offer ends an offer and cancels its pending requests.

Assign an owner directly

Assign… hands a cache straight to a call. The call must be held by an account and control-verified; verify it by hand first if needed. A note is required. Tick The container is confirmed in place: make the cache active to make the cache active again.

What changes on a hand-over

A hand-over changes only the owner, and the status to active when the container is confirmed in place. Otherwise the cache keeps its status until the new owner edits it. Finds, logs, media and history stay with the cache. Approval re-checks that the requester's account still holds the call and that it is still verified.

Federation peers learn the new owner through the caches feed, which carries every cache change. A local-only cache stays local, and an unlisted one keeps its description back.

The record

Every step (offer, withdrawal, owner refusal, request, cancellation, approval, decline, assignment) is kept in cache_adoptions with who, when, the owner before and after, and the note. The latest are under Recent activity. A person's export includes their requests and the trail rows naming them. Erasure deletes their requests and replaces their call in the trail with the withdrawn marker, dropping the notes on those rows (Data protection).

Next

  • Licence registers: show whether a call is licensed, a useful check before you assign.