Prompted by this question (and this similar question by the same user), I'd like to ask for the community's opinion on how to deal with puzzles taken from mystery geocaches.
For those not familiar with geocaching, a typical geocache is a container hidden somewhere (usually) outdoors, with a logbook inside. The challenge is to find the cache and sign the logbook. The online description of a traditional geocache includes the GPS coordinates of where the container is hidden and possibly some other information that may help in finding the cache and/or tells visitors something interesting about the location.
However, there's also a specific subtype of geocaches known as "mystery caches" where the listed coordinates only point to somewhere within a few miles of the cache and the actual coordinates of the cache must be determined by some other means, often by solving some kind of a puzzle given in the cache description. While it's technically possible to find the cache without actually solving the puzzle yourself, e.g. by having someone else simply tell you the correct coordinates, this is generally frowned upon in the geocaching community as it deprives the cache of its intended challenge. There are some exceptions (like groups of people searching for a cache together — nobody expects everyone in the group to have solved the puzzle independently) but publicly spoiling the solution online is definitely considered unsporting.
Also, while some geocaches are publicly listed on sites like geocaching.com (and others) where their coordinates can be seen by anyone, others (known as "premium caches") are only visible to people who have registered on the site and paid a (relatively small) annual membership fee. The decision to mark a cache as premium is made by the cache owner (i.e. usually the person who hid it) and could be made for any number of reasons, but a relatively common reason for hiding caches from the public like that is to reduce the risk of vandalism. (Of course, hiding the coordinates of the cache behind a sufficiently challenging puzzle can serve the much same purpose.)
Anyway, even though we do have a geocaching tag on this site, it's not clear to me whether questions asking for help with puzzles taken from mystery caches really are appropriate here, and if so, what counts as a proper answer for such questions.
Certainly, just outright revealing the solution (or giving such an explicit hint that finding the solution becomes trivial) without the cache owner's permission would seem unsporting to me as a geocacher.
On the other hand, it's not clear to me if an answer consisting of just oblique hints should even count as an answer at all, or how the correctness of such answers should be judged. Of course, the OP could decide to accept whichever answer they felt was most helpful to them, once they've managed to solve the puzzle based on the given hints, but we can't really expect all voters to go to that level of effort. Or can we?
Or, to quote the author of the questions linked above:
Now I'm wondering if indeed this is the right place for these puzzles as now although I want to share the solution it would indeed be bad form but it's also the point of this site..
Ps. Our policy on questions from on-going contests might be somewhat relevant, if only as a comparison point. However, it does not directly apply here since, even if geocaching was considered a contest (which is debatable), it's generally not a time-limited one.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not asking about questions like this one, which seems to be an original puzzle that just happens to produce a set of coordinates as a result. (I have no idea if there's an actual cache hidden there, but if there is, it doesn't seem to be on geocaching.com — there are no mystery caches listed anywhere near that point.)
