How up-to-date is the data?

Normally the data is 24-36 hours behind. But there are circumstances that will take a longer time to detect. What is detected within the given time frame is new found (or equivalent depending on cache type) logs. Deleted/edited logs might take a longer time. Adopting of caches or changing of status (disabled/archived) might also take a longer time to detect. So how long time will it take then?

That depends, if the cache in question gets a found log, everything else should sync up as well. Otherwise it takes up to 30 days for a non archived cache and up to 90 days for an archived one. The more precise time depends on a lot of factors, including the age of the cache.

If your finds seems to be out of sync, you can use our self-support system to tell the system to go through your data. You find it by clicking the orange support button that are available in the top right on most pages.

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Can you describe the process of updating data?

Project-GC replicates data from Geocaching.com to be able to provide its statistics and other functionallity. Some data is fetched in real-time, some is not. Data regarding Geocaches and logs normally isn't fetched in real-time. The short answer regarding these updates is that it's unpredictable.

The longer answer is that Geocache data and their logs are updated through several methods. There is never a guarantee that the data is updated in any order that can be foreseen. Even though your latest find from today might exist in Project-GC, your second latest find from yesterday might not.

Primarily Project-GC fetches data via four different methods:

1) Project-GC fetches all new geocache publishings regularly (every minute more or less).

2) On a daily basis we fetch a list of yesterday's finds. If a Geocache was found yesterday, its data and its logs will be fetched.

3) A geocache that hasn't been refreshed in X number of days will be refreshed. X will vary depending on several factors, one being how old the cache is, another if it's archived or not.

4) A geocacher's logs will be updated every X number of days. X will vary on several factors as well, including membership status with Project-GC, last time Project-GC was used, how active the geocacher is and so forth.

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What about Lab caches?

Lab caches aren't considered as normal Geocaches by the system and therefore they aren't included in most statistics.

Today they are optionally included in the Profile Statistics for our paying members, where applicable. The user must enable them in their Profile Statistics for them to be accounted for.

They are not likely to be included in any other statistics since they are not compatible (missing several data fields like difficulty/terrain).

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Are other platforms than Geocaching.com supported?

Like: Opencaching Network/TerraCaching/NaviCache/Opencaching.com/..

The only geocaching site that is supported is the one created by Groundspeak Inc, https://www.geocaching.com/. This is not likely to change.

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I found an issue with the translations from English

All translations are done by the community, and it's an open platform where anyone can help out translating. Translations are done using an external service (Crowdin) and can be accessed at https://translate.project-gc.com/.

If you are interested in translating the site, feel free to help out using Crowdin. If you have translated at least 100 words and intend to continue, you can send a PM to magma1447 from your Crowdin account with your Geocaching alias. We will then add a connection between the accounts to our system, and start rewarding you membership time for your future efforts.

The translations are not updated live though. In fact there are several steps needed. First, we need to submit the newly added texts to Crowdin. Then it needs to be translated by the community, and finally we need to import the new translations into Project-GC. We try to do this regularly, more frequent after bigger updates of the site.

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I found an issue with the American English texts

The default texts are intended to be written in American English (en_US), however, no one at Project-GC speaks English natively. If you found a minor issue, like grammar, this can be corrected using the translation site mentioned above as well. If you believe the string is completely wrong or unreadable you can either contact our support or create an issue in the translation system.

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What support channels do you have?

Besides this FAQ we have three support channels.

The Community support forum; If your question is about how to do something, you are likely to get your answer here. The community is more responsive than our support and they are also more than us, which means more opinions. If you find something that you believe is an issue, this is also a great place to check if others are having the same issue. If you agree that it's actually a bug, feel free to contact our support with a link to this discussion.

Facebook; We post quite a few updates here. Comments on those updates are most welcome, both positive and if you think we broke something. Generally we are quite slow to answer on Facebook, mostly since Facebook is slow on notifying us. If we have posted their recently, we try to keep a track on that post more manually. If you can't access our site at all, this is a great way to communicate with us, and to see if others have the same issue.

Last, but not least, the orange support buttons: if you use the orange support buttons you will create a ticket with our support team. You should receive confirmation via email within 5-10 minutes after you have created your ticket. This is definitely the primary method to contact us if the discussion will include private information, such as payments.

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What do the small icons in the corners mean?

Our geocache icons are cluttered with additional information. Generally you will see a geocache type icon in the center. Then you will potentially see up to three indicators in the corners.

In the top right corner you will see a smiley icon if you have logged the particular geocache, or a star if you own it.

The lower right corner will have a pencil if you have a cache note stored for the geocache.

The lower left corner will have a green checkbox if you have corrected coordinates. These can be detected both from cache notes and the corrected coordinates field itself.

Additionally the icon background can be grayed out, if it is, it means that the geocache currently is disabled.

If the geocache icon is grayed out and has a red cross, it's archived.

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The above doesn't really seem to match Challenge caches, what's up with those?

For Challenge caches we have some additional indicators for the lower left corner.

There will be a checkbox in a green circle if you have qualified for the challenge.

A red stop-sign means that you do not qualify for the challenge, at least not the last time Project-GC ran a test.

A blue circle with a question mark in it means that there is a challenge checker, but it hasn't been run on your user yet. You can run the checker yourself to check.

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My Profile Stats hasn't been updated for several days

We generate Profile Stats for several thousands of users every day, this is a quite intense operation and we have therefore decided that only Paying members will get their Profile Stats updated on a daily basis. Others will get them updated once per week.

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My streak count isn't correct, why?

First check that your log actually has the correct date. Some mobile applications are known to log on the wrong date if you log a geocache fairly close to midnight, this is timezone related and a bug in those applications.

This is also a common case if your log has been edited and moved to another date. We do not get updates about changed logs as often as new ones and this may take up to 1 month for active geocaches and up to 3 months for archived geocaches. If someone logs the cache after your change, it's normally corrected within 1-2 days after that.

You can however click one of our support buttons, choose self-support and click the refresh button for refreshing data about your finds. This will trigger a faster refresh for you.

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My FTF count is wrong and I don't want to fix it. Can I hide them from my Profile Stats?

The idea is that the FTF tab isn't shown for those with 0 FTFs. This is by design, since they might actually have FTFs that Project-GC doesn't know about, we prefer to not mention the number zero. But the issue is when you have some of your FTFs detected but not all. Then the tab is shown and yes we are then giving false information, which we do not want to.

By clicking settings at Profile stats page you will be able to toggle which tabs you want to show.

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I don't want tab x to be shown in my Profile Stats

That can be fixed, visit the Profile Stats page and click on Settings. There you can find a section to hide tabs. Don't forget to click save.

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I don't want anyone to see my Profile Stats

We are sorry to hear that, but you probably have your reasons. You can turn them off by visiting you Profile Stats page and follow the instructions.

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What is FTF?

FTF is an acronym which stands for 'First to Find'. This is a sub-game created by the community, the goal is to be first to find a new hide. The rules are a bit different in various areas, but the most common is that you log an FTF if you were close to the hide when it's first found.

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Why is my FTF count 0?

Or close to it.

First to Finds isn't something that is officially supported by Geocaching HQ, therefore we can not retrieve this data from them. What Project-GC is doing is that it's looking for tags in your found logs. Some of those that are supported are:

{*FTF*} {FTF} [FTF]

There are some additional tags that are less official, but are supported as well. Some of those tags are required to be first in the log, some can exist anywhere. None of the above needs to be first.

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I have edited all my FTF logs and added tags, why doesn't it work?

As you might have read under How up-to-date is the data? it takes time for some data changes to be detected. Edited logs is one of them. In short, it might take up to about 3 months for edited logs to get detected. You can however trigger a faster refresh using the self-support system, which you can find by clicking one of our support buttons.

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I have edited my logs and added FTF tags. I ran the refresh find data in the self-support system, but they are still not visible.

Depending on the amount of finds you have and the current load of Project-GC the time to go through your logs differs. There is also a rate limit with Geocaching LIVE api. Therefore, you should not expect us to be able to refresh more than 5000 finds per day. Also check your job queue (in the menu) to see if the job has completed. It may take another hour for our data-caches to expire even after the job has completed. After that though, they should be visible here. The Profile Stats will not be updated until next time it renders. This is daily for paying members and weekly for others.

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My FTF count is wrong

See the above questions about FTF. Besides that, try to figure out which caches are missing by comparing your FTFs with the FTF List. If you can't find the issue, feel free to contact us.

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I don't want to edit my logs, is there another method to get my FTFs shown?

Actually there is. The alternative is to create a public bookmark list at Geocaching.com which lists all your FTFs. After that, go to Settings and select your bookmark list there. The list will then be parsed once per day to detect your FTFs. If you want to, this can be combined with the FTF tagging mentioned aboive. The tagging might be easier to maintain than a bookmark list.

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My found count isn't correct

This can be due to many reasons. If you have deleted logs, Project-GC might not have detected it yet. The logs you have created the last two days might not be detected yet either. But this should normally not be a consistent issue. Project-GC is trying its best to sync up every profile, and users of Project-GC gets a higher priority and normally gets a sync about daily. But there is at least one case that can not be solved via the Geocaching LIVE API. Geocaching.com is showing finds a bit inconsistently sometimes. If your profile on Geocaching.com lists 100 finds but you only see 99 when you list all your finds there, then Project-GC will just show the 99. The reason behind this is that one of your logged caches has been retracted. It has been removed after being published. Not just archived, but a reviewer has been taking the cache back for some reason. These can not be seen by Project-GC, this is by design from Geocaching HQ and not something we can do anything about as it works today. As mentioned, these aren't listed anywhere on Geocaching.com either.

Added to this, there is also the Lab caches, which aren't always supposed to show up in statistics. As a paid member of Project-GC you can allow them to be added in some of the Profile stats modules, but they won't be included elsewhere on the site.

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My number of photos differs between Geocaching.com, Top most log images, and Badgegen's 'The Shutterbug'.

That's because they are showing different data. Geocaching.com shows a summary of all photos uploaded to Geocaches, Geocache logs (all types) and Trackables.

Top most log images are based on photos uploaded to Geocache logs of any type. Photos uploaded directly to the Geocache (available to the cache owner only), and to Trackables aren't counted.

BadgeGen's The Shutterbug is limited to Geocache logs only, of any type. This should be the same as Top most log images.

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Why is a particular geocache assigned to the wrong country?

We use the same country definitions as Geocaching.com does. If the Geocache is located in country X at Geocaching.com, it will be that at Project-GC as well, regardless of its coordinates.

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Country X isn't a real country, why do you use these definitions?

We use the same country definitions as Geocaching.com does. If the Geocache is located in country X at Geocaching.com, it will be that at Project-GC as well, regardless of its coordinates.

Back in 2013 Geocaching HQ made a post saying that they in general try to follow Standard Country and Area Codes Classifications published by the United Nations Statistics Division.

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The region on a geocache doesn't match with Geocaching.com

This is fairly common and is actually intentional. The region data at Geocaching.com is chosen by the cache owner and is quite often incorrect. Either the cache owner doesn't know of the region borders or the cache owner looks at a map to figure it out. Quite often Google Maps is used for this purpose and their borders are of very low resolution and in most cases inaccurate.

Project-GC uses its own data to determine the region for most countries. For some countries we use official government data and for other we use OpenStreetMap as a source.

There are, of course, cases where the data at Geocaching.com is correct but Project-GC is wrong, however, this is very rare. Our estimations say it's less than 1% of our changes are wrong. When it happens, it's usually when a geocache is placed more or less on the border. By the way, it's not always the border road signs that are in the correct spot in all countries. They are often placed where they are visible and in other ways a suiting spot.

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Why is a particular geocache assigned to the wrong county?

This may very well be, but it's just as likely that your assumption about what county it should be in is wrong.

Project-GC uses its own data to determine the region for most countries. For some countries we use official government data or OpenStreetMap as sources.

We do not have county data for all countries available either. In general, the more Geocaching activity, the more likely that we have country data. But, it also depends on us being able to find this data in a free, usable and open format. OpenStreetMap is our primary source.

The most common source used by Geocachers is Google Maps. Their data has a very low resolution and is in most cases quite inaccurate.

Our data could of course also be inaccurate. We don't import new data for every country every day. Sometimes definitions change, sometimes our data sources are updated to be better. In an ideal world we would update more frequently, but it's quite a lot of work to do so. However, if you do know of something that is definitely wrong and that it's better in OSM for example, feel free to contact us.

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Where do you get your region/county data from?

Generally we try to stick to one source, though there are exceptions for different reasons. One source leads to one pipeline and less code to create. We find this most effective.

OpenStreetMap has the most accurate data that's freely available, therefore that is our go to source. Extracting the data directly from OpenStreetMap isn't easy though. Therefore we use another service for this, OSM-Boundaries.

OSM-Boundaries was actually created by Ground Zero Communications AB, the same company which created this site. It was launched as a replacement for the now defunct https://wambachers-osm.website/boundaries/. A site we formerly used to extract administrative boundaries from OpenStreetMap.

Most often OpenStreetMap has the most accurate data that is freely available, but for some countries we rely on official government data instead. We also have a few other sources, but OpenStreetMap is definitely the most common one.

The data isn't regularly or automatically updated. It's a manual process that we need to go through. In general we only do it when we hear that a country has made changes to their administrative boundaries.

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How are the continents defined?

In a few places at Project-GC we refer to continents, for example Europe, North America or Asia. These are defined by configured lists of countries at Project-GC.

Some countries are geographically placed in more than one continent, and others are more debatable. In these cases, we have decided to add the countries into both continents, so no one misses out. To be more correct would probably involve looking at which Geocaches are in which continent, but we deem this unnecessary. It would probably also raise other questions and issues.

Here is a list of the continents we have defined, and their current country definitions:

• Africa: Algeria, Angola, Benin, Botswana, British Indian Ocean Territory, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cabo Verde, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Lesotho, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mayotte, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Réunion, Saint Helena, Sao Tome and Principe, Senegal, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Africa, South Sudan, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Tunisia, Uganda, Western Sahara, Zambia, Zimbabwe
• Antarctic and subantarctic islands: Antarctica, Bouvet Island, French Southern and Antarctic Territories, Heard Island and McDonald Islands, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
• Asia: Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Cyprus, Egypt, Georgia, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Japan, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Laos, Lebanon, Macao, Malaysia, Maldives, Mongolia, Myanmar, Nepal, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestine, Philippines, Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Syria, Taiwan, Tajikistan, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkmenistan, Türkiye, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, Yemen
• Central America: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba, British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Costa Rica, Cuba, Curaçao, Dominica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Nicaragua, Panama, Puerto Rico, Saint Barthélemy, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Martin, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Sint Maarten, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks and Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands
• Europe: Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Faroe Islands, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Greenland, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, San Marino, Sark, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands, Sweden, Switzerland, Türkiye, Ukraine, United Kingdom, Vatican City State, Åland Islands
• North America: Bermuda, Canada, Mexico, Saint Pierre and Miquelon, United States
• Oceania: American Samoa, Australia, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, Guam, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Niue, Norfolk Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Pitcairn, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tokelau, Tonga, Tuvalu, US Minor Outlying Islands, Vanuatu, Wallis and Futuna Islands
• South America: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Falkland Islands, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela

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I found a cache with a faulty elevation

Sadly there are a lot of geocaches with these issues. The elevation data does not come from Geocaching.com since it doesn't have that data. We have therefore built our own SRTM-service for the purpose, it currently serves SRTM v3.0. As a fallback for the areas this doesn't cover, we use to OpenElevation (OpenStreetMap) and the Google Elevation API.

If you find that a value in Project-GC isn't correct. Please read below how our elevation data works, and also check other services like for example Geonames. If you find out that other services has about the same fault tolerance, then there is nothing to do.

We do not do manual changes in the data. But if you find an entry that seems to be off by a lot more than in other services, feel free to report it so that we can investigate.

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How is the elevation data calculated?

Since October 2021 we use an external service (GPXZ) for elevation data. GPXZ is an improved variant of Open Topo Data, by the same creator. The concept is to merge different data sets depending on which one is the best for the geographical point given.

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I heard about paid membership, what is that?

For more information about paid memberships, please visit the Membership page. Here you will find a list of extra features that are only available to paying members.

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Why does some features require payment?

We have aimed to make most content available for free. But Project-GC has a lot of monthly costs and there has been big investments in servers to get things running. Besides this there has been thousands of hours in development time and several hours per day on support.

Some of the monthly costs are of course electricity and bandwidth. But we also pay a subscription fee to several other services, like for the translation tools and the CDN.

In short, we need money to keep hosting and developing the site.

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Will I get a receipt for my payment?

Absolutely. After a successful payment you will get a summary of what you bought, and a link to the paid invoice in PDF format. You can also view your payment history in the Payment history tab, there you can download receipts for all your payments.

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How does corrected coordinates work?

Project-GC primarily parses your personal cache notes at Geocaching.com for corrected coordinates. This is automatically done once per hour for paying members. If your note contains more than one coordinate, the first one will be used. These corrected coordinates will then be used on our maps to show the geocache icon on its corrected position.

If a coordinate in the personal cache note is prefixed with a ^ (caret) it will be ignored by Project-GC. Useful for stages or solutions that aren't correct.

Since the end of May 2019, we also fetch corrected coordinates via the API. If a geocache has corrected coordinates in its respective field, and coordinates in the cache note, the corrected coordinates field will take precedence. For our paying members we fetch these automatically once per month. If you have thousands of solutions, you might be excluded from this process.

Paying members can also use the self-support system to force a refresh of cache notes or corrected coordinates. This is limited to once per week.

When building GPX files from the Virtual GPS system, you can also ask the system to replace the original coordinates with the corrected ones. There is also an option to refresh your corrected coordinates before building the GPX file.

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What is a challenge checker?

A challenge checker is a piece of program code that will check if a geocaching user is qualified to log a challenge cache. If the user is qualified, challenge checkers will often produce a sample log entry that documents why the user is qualified. If the user is not qualified, many challenge checkers will specify how far you have gotten and what you still need to do in order to qualify.

Beginning in 2016, a web-based challenge checker is required for all challenge caches published on Geocaching.com.

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How do I use a challenge checker?

To use a challenge checker, follow the link from the challenge cache page to get to the right challenge checker (or use the Tools -> Challenge Checkers search feature on Project-GC). Make sure the correct username is specified and click "Run checker".

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Is there a challenge checker that I can use for testing only?

There is no harm in using any of the challenge checkers. But if you want one for which you will most likely qualify, you can try this one. The only requirement is to have at least one find. This particular challenge checker is not connected to a challenge cache, it was created for the single purpose of testing.

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Do I need to be a Premium Member at Geocaching.com or a paying member at Project-GC.com to use challenge checkers?

No.

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Do I have to pay Project-GC for the challenge checker?

Project-GC does not create the challenge checkers (they are created by volunteers) and we do not charge anything for hosting them.

You don't need to pay the volunteers either, but they do appreciate a thank you. If you wish, you can choose to transfer some of your paid membership time to the one(s) that helped you out on the Membership page.

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How does a challenge checker work?

A challenge checker consists of two parts: a challenge checker script and a tag. The checker script is a piece of program code written in the programming language Lua. The same checker script can be used for multiple challenge caches (For instance, most calendar challenges are handled by the same checker script). The tag is what makes this possible. The tag links a checker script, a challenge cache, and (optionally) a set of parameters for the checker script. This means that the same checker script can be used both for a challenge that requires the user to have found 100 mystery caches and a challenge that requires the user to have found 1000 traditional caches, since the cache type and quantity of finds required is specified in the tag.

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Who can write challenge checkers?

Technically, anyone with some programming experience. The programming language used for checker scripts is Lua. But if you know some other programming language it is easy to grasp the differences. However, in order to obtain access to writing challenge checkers, you need to apply for access.

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How do I apply for access to write challenge checker scripts?

You contact our support. They will give you all the documentation you need and a minor test to make sure that you have understood both our challenge checker system and the guidelines.

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OK, there already are challenge checker script writers. Can they help me?

We have a forum available where you can request a checker to be implemented. Please start by reading the READ FIRST post.

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I can't write program code but want to create a challenge cache. How can I do that?

We have a forum available where you can request a checker to be implemented. Please start by reading the READ FIRST post.

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What about the tags, can I create those?

In the past, anyone has been allowed to tag checker scripts with configurations and match them with challenge caches. However, this has changed now that Project-GC is an official part of the challenge cache framework. This is because we want to ensure that everything is working as intended.

Everyone who has created a checker tag in the past has been added into the permission list to be allowed to continue creating tags.

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Can I apply for access to create checker tags?

Currently no. We will need to figure out a good process for this.

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If there is an existing challenge checker/tag that does exactly what I want, can I then reuse that?

You should not use that one since it's linked to another challenge cache. You can however press the clone button and apply it to another GC-Code. A new checker with the exact same configuration will then be created for you. This requires no special access.

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I just logged some geocaches online which should make me fulfill a challenge. But it doesn't. Why?

Project-GC's data isn't real-time data. Normally, your new logs will exist in Project-GC within 24-36 hours. For more details, see How up-to-date is the data?

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A challenge checker formerly approved me for a challenge. Now it doesn't. Why?

There can be several reasons for this. One example is when the challenge is to log every unique difficulty/terrain rating available, a cache owner might have changed the rating of one of the geocaches you have logged, you have then lost your qualification according to your data.

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Do all challenge caches require a challenge checker?

No they do not. This requirement applies to challenge caches published after April 20, 2016. Those which existed before that were created with older guidelines and do not have that requirement. We do, however, advocate that all challenge cache owners should try to have checkers for their challenges.

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How do I link to a challenge checker?

Project-GC provides three different ways to link to a challenge checker. You can find them all from the checker page by clicking the Link button. From there you will see both how they appear on the cache page, and the HTML you need to copy/paste into your cache description. These three variants are the only variants that are approved to use. We strongly suggest that you use the last image-link.

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How do I find a checker if the challenge hasn't linked one?

You can search for challenge checkers using Tools -> Challenge Checkers. You can search by either the GC-Code or by the name of the challenge. Don't forget to select the correct country.

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Is it possible to create challenge checker for all challenges?

No it is not. There are many cases of older challenges where it's not possible. An example would be the requirement to log 100 geocaches in the vicinity of a church. This has two issues. First off, vicinity isn't defined. Secondly, Project-GC doesn't know where all the churches in the world are.

Since a challenge checker is required starting in 2016, challenges for which it is impossible to create checkers won't be published.

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Many of the challenge checkers are incorrect. Will it be like this in the future as well?

Many of the current challenge checkers has been created by the community, normally without any contact with the cache owner. The developer/tagger might very well have missed some details in the requirements. In these cases we do advocate that the tag gets reported to the tag creator, and an explanation.

With the new challenge checker requirements, the challenge owner is very likely to be much more involved in the creation of the checker. They will then get a much better chance to explain what they meant.

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Many of the challenge checkers doesn't output what's required. Will it still be like this?

Since it's up to the ones who create challenge caches to have a challenge checker, it's up to that challenge owner to make sure the checker fulfills his needs. If someone else makes the challenge checker, he should be clear about what's required when asking for help.

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There is a checker for an identical challenge, can I use that?

Technically you can, but you should not. We require that a new tag is created for your specific challenges so that it refers to the correct GC-Code. Right now you can get help with that in the Checker request forum. Or if the tag is exactly what you want, besides the GC-Code, you can clone it to get a copy with a new GC-Code.

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Can I reset the green and red counters for a challenge checker?

That is not supported and we do not see the need for it.

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