Project-GC Forum - Checker news

Major, or minimal, update (1 reply)

magma1447 — Tue, 24 Feb 2026 09:17:35 +0000

We'll soon (maybe Tuesday the 24th) make a release related to challenge checkers. It's only a refactor of code. There should be zero difference in the end result. But it's also a very big refactor so something might have become unintentionally broken so I wanted to give a heads up.

I will do my best to post here again when the release goes out. It should also be announced on Discord. If there are any issues it will be of highest priority to fix them. We will monitor this forum, Discord, Facebook and the customer support system.

Spain polygons (6 replies)

magma1447 — Mon, 16 Mar 2026 09:42:24 +0000

I will be updating polygon data for Spain. This is upon request from a local. The existing data is from osm20210315. We'll switch to osm20260112.

The only name change should be that the county "Province of Barcelona" will be renamed to "Barcelona".

Our compare script says that these might be affected:

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
  scriptId:6054  numTags:2  creator:sumbloke  scriptEnabled:1  scriptName:Hard Rock locations

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
  tagId:100635  creator:vogelbird  gccode:GCB715F  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:Spain
  tagId:1431  creator:Target.  gccode:GC4WX60  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:Spain

Upcoming privacy changes (17 replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 19 Mar 2026 18:33:16 +0000

There will be some privacy changes made "soon". This is to comply with laws that Geocaching HQ must respect. This time we have discussed solutions with Geocaching HQ and we are happy with the agreement we have made. At least when considering circumstance.

We don't have an exact date for when this will go live yet, but it could be anything from within a week from now to a month from now I guess. Most likely 4th-5th of February or 11th-12th of February.

The relevant part of Challenge checkers. One won't be able to execute a challenge checker with a name belonging to a player with hidden data. When we implement this there will most likely be quite a lot of players with hidden data. However, they will need to open up their data for Project-GC to be able to use the site themselves, we expect that most (a clear majority) will do that within a month or two.

The next culprit is that, as a challenge checker script developer knows, many of the API methods can be called with an arbitrary `profileId`. Meaning, even if someone put USER-X into the `profile name` box, the checker can run `GetFinds(12345678)`. This is where the next interesting part comes. All api methods are also protected, and they will return a boolean false when the data isn't accesible. I assume most scripts doesn't handle this. On the other hand, it will be a very few script that fetches data for another profileId than the one coming in as an argument.

Switzerland polygons (1 reply)

magma1447 — Sat, 31 Jan 2026 11:30:55 +0000

Fétigny + Ménières → Fétigny-Ménières (new)
Halten + Oekingen → Kriegstetten (existing)
Ulmiz → Gurmels (existing)
Villnachern → Brugg (existing)

County Moutier has moved from region Bern to region Jura.

Update in progress during the day.

Checker CSS and helper functions (21 replies)

magma1447 — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 09:10:48 +0000

Today we accidentally slipped out the upcoming CSS changes for challenge checkers. And also some helper functions that can be used.

The upside with this is that the checker output won't be affected by CSS changes on the site itself in the same way as before. It should also be easier to make a more unified look of things.

(Note to self: Issue #238, dev3 scriptId 13758)

Germany, new county (no replies)

magma1447 — Sun, 18 Jan 2026 20:42:12 +0000

Germany has a new county since 2026-01-01, it enters Project-GC today.

The new county is Hanau (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/535895). If I understand it correctly it has been broken out of "Main-Kinzig-Kreis". It's a city that's not it's own "county". They are both in "region" Hessen.

I'll quote one of the users who has reported this:

Quote

as of today the city of Hanau (Hesse, Germany) is a “kreisfreie Stadt” and therefore should no longer be assigned to the Main-Kinzig-Kreis in county-based views/statistics but listed as separate county.

And another.

Quote

Since the beginning of 2026 there's a new County in the Hessen State of Germany.
The city of Hanau has split from the Main-Kinzig-Kreis and is now a separate county.

Updating data might take up to 24 hours or so. It's a lot of geocaches in Germany.

Croatia (2 replies)

magma1447 — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 16:46:00 +0000

Updating polygons for Croatia.

It used to have 2 regions and 21 counties.

We are now correcting this data. The old regions are getting removed. The old "counties" are getting promoted into being "regions" which is more correct. And then we are adding a new layer for counties. The new layer will be 555+1=556 polygons. Where the 1 is Zagrab (identical to the region polygon).

No names are changed except for Zagreb. Changed from "Zagreb" to "Grad Zagreb". But new administrative level.

These are the scripts that we could find that potentially are affected. I assume Zagreb is the issue for most. Both the name, and that it's now a region.

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
  scriptId:1462  numTags:3  creator:king-ton  scriptEnabled:1  scriptName:Finds in european capitals
  scriptId:1468  numTags:1  creator:king-ton  scriptEnabled:0  scriptName:[DEV] Finds in european capitals
  scriptId:4056  numTags:8  creator:CachINGs  scriptEnabled:1  scriptName:Capital Checker

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
  tagId:101265  creator:Orxion  gccode:GCB7DAP  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:Czechia
  tagId:41172  creator:Rikitan  gccode:GC84MEG  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:
  tagId:61575  creator:vogelbird  gccode:GC98N7X  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:Slovakia
  tagId:72501  creator:sm07  gccode:-  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:0  country:

Updated HQ guidelines for challenges (2 replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 10:06:01 +0000

https://forums.geocaching.com/GC/index.php?/topic/426673-challenge-cache-criteria-update/

Switzerland polygons (3 replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 21 Aug 2025 12:16:02 +0000

We'll be updating Switzerland's polygon data today. The primary reason is this user feedback:

Quote

On 26. APRIL 2025 there is a new district called Lema
This is an Fusion of the following "gemeinden"
Astano, Bedi, Gliora, Curio, Miglieglia and Novaggio.

Switzerland is hard to grasp with the "endless" amount of "counties". We have done our best to verify the data as well as we can. Feel free to get back to me if you find that we lost some information here.

This is a list of counties that used to exist that won't exist anymore:

Quote

Counties on Live only:
* Astano
* Auboranges
* Bedigliora
* Bodio
* Buchs
* Chapelle (Glâne)
* Curio
* Ecublens (FR)
* Enges
* Grolley
* Hauterive (FR)
* Hauterive (NE)
* Honau
* La Tène
* Miglieglia
* Montet (Glâne)
* Novaggio
* Ponthaux
* Prato (Leventina)
* Saint-Blaise
* Tschiertschen-Praden

And these are the new ones:

Quote

* Buchs (AG)
* Grolley-Ponthaux
* Hauterive
* Laténa
* Lema

Some are renamed, some are hopefully merged. Maybe some shouldn't have been there to start with. It was hard to track what changed into what.

The known affected challenge checker tags are these. All having decent lists of counties. Except the last one. The last one links to an unpublished challenge regardless. So if that isn't still in progress I guess the tag can be deleted instead.

Quote

tagId:25018 creator:Turako gccode:GC6ZF98 scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Switzerland
tagId:56288 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC92K7F scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Switzerland
tagId:21730 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC6W35V scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Switzerland
tagId:46078 creator:al1pb gccode:GC8FMQD scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Switzerland
tagId:14947 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC4TDF3 scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Switzerland
tagId:59764 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC98HT6 scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Switzerland
tagId:24351 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC6ZEZR scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:

Please tell me if I need to assist with any of them. Particularly those that ain't owned by vogelbird (who I know watches the forum). It would be great if I am given a new config if I need to update the other two.

Common library (feedback needed) (27 replies)

magma1447 — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 20:29:40 +0000

We are considering adding a lua-pgc library with common LUA functions that any script can use. As a proof of concept I implemented
PGC_GeocacheTypeIcon(type)
today (not available in production). It would return html to show a geocache type icon, with proper title and such.

I am looking for suggestions for other very common functions that are identical between many scripts, that we could adopt into such library. I am thinking we could make a list here.

PGC_GeocacheTypeIcon(type)
PGC_GeocacheSizeIcon(size)

We are also looking into creating css rules to help with styling. With two reasons.

Make it easier to style html output.
Make the output look more unified between the scripts.
The idea is here to be able to do things like
...
to get a "green" back background for example. The goal is that no challenge checker scripts should rely on css rules used by the site itself since they might not persist over updates of the site.

Some suggestions I thought of. Other suggestions are welcome.

Coloring text.
Coloring background.
Bordered table.
Smaller text.
Monospaced text.
Striped tables.
Check icon.
Stop icon.

The more data we have before a release, the better naming conventions we can start with.

Finland polygons (no replies)

magma1447 — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 07:38:06 +0000

I will update the polygon data for Finland today. The only difference is that Pertunmaa has been removed. It's now a part of Mäntyharju.
Reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pertunmaa

I found this tag that mentions Pertunmaa.

  tagId:36283  creator:arisoft  gccode:GC4D505  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:Finland

But if I understand the challenge correctly it won't really be affected since it's a white-list of counties. It's just one less. But the merged one is included, so it's still the same area.

Belgium - new polygon data (1 reply)

magma1447 — Mon, 17 Mar 2025 13:25:46 +0000

vogelbird contacted me ~2 weeks ago regarding Belgium. They have merged a couple of counties.

Quote

At ths map of PGC we still have a total of 581 counties.
Since 01-01-2025 Belgium has 565 counties

Antwerpen and Borsbeek merged into Antwerpen (59518)
Bastogne and Bertogne merged into Bastogne (2426390)
Beveren, Kruibeke and Zwijndrecht merged into Beveren-Kruibeke-Zwijndrecht (18493532)
Bilzen and Hoeselt merged into Bilzen-Hoeselt (1246112)
Borgloon and Tongeren merged into Tongeren-Borgloon (1244996)
De Pinte and Nazareth merged into Nazareth-De Pinte (18493642)
Galmaarden, Gooik and Herne merged into Pajottegem (18491515)
Ham and Tessenderlo merged into Tessenderlo-Ham (1229644)
Hasselt and Kortessem merged into Hasselt (1230716)
Lochristi and Wachtebeke merged into Lochristi (1335100)
Lokeren and Moerbeke merged into Lokeren (1325552)
Merelbeke and Melle merged into Merelbeke-Melle (18493670)
Meulebeke and Tielt merged into Tielt (1322971)
Ruiselede and Wingene merged into Wingene (1387970)

I will update Project-GC's data today. It seems to follow the changes vogelbird listed. There was also a couple of renamed counties in OpenStreetMap. To make legacy information easier to handle I have renamed most of them to our old names.

These checkers have been detected to potentially have issues:

Quote

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
scriptId:10994 numTags:1 creator:rahmschnitzel scriptEnabled:0 scriptName:German Counties Find Path

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
tagId:73347 creator:vogelbird gccode:GCA2QFG scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:
tagId:32729 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC7G84G scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Belgium
tagId:32726 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC7J8C6 scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Belgium
tagId:8166 creator:RetiredGuy gccode:GC5KQMB scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:United States
tagId:18100 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC426N2 scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:Germany

The script itself can be ignored. Not used.
Tag 8166 can be ignored (false alert).

Updating USA polygon data (no replies)

magma1447 — Tue, 19 Nov 2024 10:13:32 +0000

I will push an update to the USA polygon data today. There is a single update that's relevant to challenge checkers. Chesterfield County in Virginia is currently named Chesterfield County (VA) (Virginia), but should have been named Chesterfield County (VA). This update fixes that. Besides that it should only be minor border updates.

I could only find one affected challenge checker (3361). This checker will be fixed, because it's currently referring to a name with a single suffix (VA only). Which should have been correct, but hasn't been the last ~2-3 months.

USA is big and have plenty of geocaches. Two days of processing is expected to move all geocaches into their new designations.

Aland Islands vs Åsland Islands (no replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 24 Oct 2024 20:16:30 +0000

Seems like Geocaching HQ changed the name of Aland Islands to Åland Islands. Don't miss that if you are making new tags.

I just updated ~60 scripts and ~500 tags. It wasn't super fun. :)

EDIT: This post has been updated to say Åland Islands instead of the misspelled Åsland Islands.

Updated polygons in Denmark, Norway and Finland (1 reply)

magma1447 — Fri, 27 Sep 2024 06:42:23 +0000

Geocaching HQ recently announced that they had updated polygon data for three countries.
Forum thread

Project-GC today attacked this "problem". For Finland and Norway there are no changes in Project-GC due to this. But since we were looking at it we also updated our data to the latest OpenStreetMap polygon data. There should be zero name changes, but could be slight border changes.

For Denmark there is now a prefix of Region to all regions. This might be the only country in the world that has this in the Geocaching world.

Challenge checker scripts and tags that were affected should have been fixed. These were fixed:

    modified:   scripts/001000-001999/1462.lua
    modified:   scripts/008000-008999/8788.lua
    modified:   tags/00000000-00000999/975.json
    modified:   tags/00010000-00010999/10259.json
    modified:   tags/00011000-00011999/11018.json
    modified:   tags/00011000-00011999/11022.json
    modified:   tags/00012000-00012999/12849.json
    modified:   tags/00016000-00016999/16240.json
    modified:   tags/00016000-00016999/16849.json
    modified:   tags/00028000-00028999/28836.json
    modified:   tags/00039000-00039999/39353.json

The update is still in progress. Meanwhile there might be inconsistencies (both names existing in some places, old in some, new in some). This will likely take a few hours, maybe the rest of the day.

Technical support for event start/end times (12 replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 22 Aug 2024 18:52:40 +0000

This is this far undocumented, but there has just been added technical support in challenge checkers to retrieve information of which time events start and ends.

The event start/end times can be retrieved by adding either event_start_end as a field to GetFinds(). Or event_start and/or event_end. The data will then be returned in the fields event_start_date, event_start_time, event_end_date, event_end_time.

That events have a timestamp in HQ's database is "new" (several years old now) so it doesn't exist for all events. Events which doesn't have this will get the value false in the LUA sandbox.

Most important - Project-GC needs to refresh information about ~500,000 events to retrieve this data. It's in progress. I am expecting it to be finished in 24-48 hours from now. Before that there should be no attempt to actually publish a challenge checker with this information.

Also, we do not know if this data will be accepted to use for challenges.

Canada - Updated polygons (no replies)

magma1447 — Mon, 19 Aug 2024 09:22:20 +0000

We are currently in the process of updating the polygon data for Canada. Besides fresher and more correct data there shouldn't be many changes that will be noticed. Only one in fact.

Greater Vancouver has been renamed to Metro Vancouver to match reality. I have only found one affected challenge checker and I have updated its configuration.

  tagId:39668  creator:pieterix  gccode:GC82MX1  scriptEnabled:1  tagEnabled:1  country:United Kingdom

Mexico - Adding counties (1 reply)

magma1447 — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 14:57:39 +0000

Today I will be adding 2474 counties to Mexico (0 before).

With this two regions are being renamed.
From:
* Coahuila de Zaragoza
* Michoacán de Ocampo

To:
* Coahuila
* Michoacán

The only affected checker I found is:
tagId:73779 creator:vogelbird gccode:GCA35JE scriptEnabled:1 tagEnabled:1 country:United States

I will fix that config.

API Method GetFavorites() (2 replies)

magma1447 — Tue, 28 May 2024 14:12:52 +0000

I will release a change to GetFavorites() the coming days.

A while back I made changes to GetOldestCaches/GetHighestCaches/GetLowestCaches so that the script writer can choose which DB cluster to use, by setting alternativeDBCluster to true (false is default).

When setting it to true a DB cluster better at digging deep and processing lots of data will be used. But leaving it to false is better if DB indexes can be used well.

The reason to the change was triggered by https://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,85610,85610.

So currently GetFavorites() defaults to the alternative DB cluster. With the new patch it will instead default to the standard cluster. If you know you are using the function in cases where country isn't used for filter, it might be worth testing and comparing speed between the two clusters.

Method GetBadgeGenData() (3 replies)

magma1447 — Fri, 26 Apr 2024 08:23:52 +0000

A while back we released version 4 of BadgeGen. We however left the old V3 ruleset so that it can be accessed in different ways. For example when loading Profile stats one can add the get parameter &bgv3. But also regarding LUA callbacks we didn't touch the existing api method GetBadgeGenData(). Instead we added a new one called GetBadgeGenDataV4().

For clarity I will today (in a few minutes) renamed the old one to GetBadgeGenDataV3(). I will also fix all 17 scripts using the old version, so that it calls the function by its new name.

Switzerland is next (2 replies)

magma1447 — Wed, 13 Mar 2024 11:22:54 +0000

Next country to get new polygon data is Switzerland. We have two support tickets regarding changes for this country. Hopefully it will happen this week.

Norway 2024 (5 replies)

magma1447 — Tue, 05 Mar 2024 21:40:02 +0000

Norway have had some major changes on the 1st of January this year. They are not implemented in Project-GC yet, but it's in progress. See this is a warning. Challenges that will be affected should probably be held of for a week or so.

Norway is going from 11 to 15 regions.
Norway is going from 356 to 357 counties.

These regions won't exist anymore:
* Viken
* Troms og Finnmark
* Vestfold og Telemark

These will be the new ones:
* Vestfold
* Buskerud
* Akershus
* Telemark
* Troms
* Finnmark
* Østfold

These counties will be renamed:
* Krødsherad
* Deatnu
* Kvam herad
* Kvinnherad
* Voss herad
* Guovdageaidnu
* Porsáŋgu
* Unjárga
* Ulvik herad
* Kárášjohka

These are the new counties (one more than above):
* Kvam
* Ulvik
* Voss
* Kvinn
* Kautokeino
* Nesseby
* Tana
* Karasjok
* Krøds
* Haram
* Porsanger

We will go through a few challenges before actually making a release with this. I will post in this thread again when we are moving forward. Again, see this as a warning.

Elevations (1 reply)

magma1447 — Mon, 30 Oct 2023 20:35:39 +0000

Elevations of all geocaches will be updated the coming two weeks. The service provider we use has made major improvements and we therefore chose to update all our data.

Primarily they have new sources which much better accuracy, but there is also some improvements in math for interpolations. The countries that will be improved the most are:
* Denmark
* Finland
* France
* Germany
* Hong Kong
* Mexico
* Norway
* United Kingdom
* New Zealand
* United States
* Spain
* Iceland

Due to API limits in the subscription plan we have (which we had to upgrade temporarily) the whole update process will take ~2 weeks. ~8M geocaches, ~0.5M updates per day.

British Virgin Islands (no replies)

magma1447 — Wed, 19 Jul 2023 07:48:12 +0000

Adding 5 regions to this country. Formerly there was none according to Project-GC. Nothing should be affected by that I assume.

South Korea (no replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 13 Jul 2023 09:14:15 +0000

Updated polygons for South Korea. I let the names change to the latest in OSM since I don't think it affects anything. Otherwise I sometimes rename them to the old names to make it easier for the challenge checkers and such.

There are three half relevant changes:
* Ansan-si renamed to Ansan
* Gwangmyeong-si renamed to Gwangmyeong
* County [Gunwi-gun] moved from region [Gyeongsang buk do] (id=73311,osmId:-7816959) to region [Daegu] (id=413664,osmId:-7816959)

This is the output of our compare script:

Quote

LIVE Country areas: count=1 geom4326=184,600 km² geom4326_landonly=1,008,600 km²
TEST Country areas: count=1 geom4326=184,721 km² geom4326_landonly=1,011,487 km²

LIVE Region areas: count=17 geom4326=184,600 km² geom4326_landonly=1,008,600 km²
TEST Region areas: count=17 geom4326=184,721 km² geom4326_landonly=1,011,488 km²

LIVE Counties areas: count=229 geom4326=173,694 km² geom4326_landonly=1,008,513 km²
TEST Counties areas: count=229 geom4326=173,815 km² geom4326_landonly=1,011,403 km²

Regions on Live only:
-

Regions on Test only:
-

Counties on Live only:
* Ansan-si
* Gwangmyeong-si

Counties on Test only:
* Ansan
* Gwangmyeong

County [Gunwi-gun] moved from region [Gyeongsang buk do] (id=73311,osmId:-7816959) to region [Daegu] (id=413664,os
mId:-7816959)
Region size differences:
Daegu 882 km² 882 km²
(water vs landonly) 1496 km² 1496 km²
Difference +613 (69.5%) +613 (69.5%)
Incheon 9727 km² 1112 km²
(water vs landonly) 9859 km² 1111 km²
Difference +132 (1.4%) -1 (11.9%)

County size differences:
Boryeong-si w/ water landonly
live 2265 km² 595 km²
test 2451 km² 601 km²
Difference +187 (8.2%) +6 (1.1%)
Buan-gun w/ water landonly
live 1755 km² 516 km²
test 1864 km² 582 km²
Difference +109 (6.2%) +65 (12.7%)
Dong-gu (Incheon) w/ water landonly
live 10 km² 7 km²
test 10 km² 7 km²
Difference +0 (0.0%) +0 (3.4%)
Gangdong-gu w/ water landonly
live 24 km² 24 km²
test 25 km² 25 km²
Difference +0 (1.5%) +0 (1.5%)
Gimje-si w/ water landonly
live 684 km² 574 km²
test 676 km² 659 km²
Difference -8 (-1.1%) +85 (14.8%)
Gunsan-si w/ water landonly
live 4108 km² 413 km²
test 4181 km² 512 km²
Difference +74 (1.8%) +99 (24.0%)
Hongseong-gun w/ water landonly
live 491 km² 438 km²
test 491 km² 446 km²
Difference +0 (0.0%) +8 (1.8%)
Hwaseong-si w/ water landonly
live 1064 km² 831 km²
test 1073 km² 843 km²
Difference +9 (0.8%) +12 (1.4%)
Jung-gu (Busan) w/ water landonly
live 4 km² 3 km²
test 4 km² 3 km²
Difference +0 (1.3%) +0 (0.9%)
Miryang-si w/ water landonly
live 794 km² 794 km²
test 803 km² 803 km²
Difference +9 (1.2%) +9 (1.2%)
Mokpo-si w/ water landonly
live 105 km² 53 km²
test 105 km² 54 km²
Difference +0 (-0.1%) +1 (1.3%)
Ongjin-gun w/ water landonly
live 7477 km² 186 km²
test 7754 km² 186 km²
Difference +277 (3.7%) +0 (-0.2%)
Seo-gu (Incheon) w/ water landonly
live 156 km² 133 km²
test 161 km² 133 km²
Difference +5 (3.3%) +0 (0.0%)
Seosan-si w/ water landonly
live 880 km² 726 km²
test 880 km² 743 km²
Difference +0 (0.0%) +17 (2.4%)
Yeongdeungpo-gu w/ water landonly
live 24 km² 24 km²
test 24 km² 24 km²
Difference +0 (1.4%) +0 (1.4%)

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
-

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)

USA polygons (3 replies)

magma1447 — Mon, 03 Jul 2023 19:52:36 +0000

Will update USA polygon data today. I will start soon (within the hour) and it will progress for most of the day.

The only relevant changes I have seen are these:
* Black Hawk County (IA) (Iowa) renamed to Black Hawk County (IA) (double suffix fixed)
* Green County (KY) (Kentucky) renamed to Green County (KY) (double suffix fixed)
* Kenai Peninsula (AK) (Alaska) renamed to Kenai Peninsula (AK) (double suffix fixed)
* Lake and Peninsula (AK) (Alaska) renamed to Lake and Peninsula (AK) (double suffix fixed)
* Monroe County (NY) (New York) renamed to Monroe County (NY) (double suffix fixed)
* Navajo County (AZ) (Arizona) renamed to Navajo County (AZ) (double suffix fixed)

I don't know when those double suffixes were added, but it definitely wasn't on purpose. When the new polygons are ready I will try to update those names as fast as possible to avoid having double county names.

Output from compare script:

Quote

LIVE Country areas: count=1 geom4326=10,320,351 km² geom4326_landonly=94,779,806 km²
TEST Country areas: count=1 geom4326=10,320,365 km² geom4326_landonly=94,780,257 km²

LIVE Region areas: count=51 geom4326=10,092,599 km² geom4326_landonly=94,779,731 km²
TEST Region areas: count=51 geom4326=10,092,613 km² geom4326_landonly=94,780,254 km²

LIVE Counties areas: count=3144 geom4326=9,715,191 km² geom4326_landonly=93,539,795 km²
TEST Counties areas: count=3144 geom4326=9,710,840 km² geom4326_landonly=93,540,283 km²

Regions on Live only:
-

Regions on Test only:
-

Counties on Live only:
* Black Hawk County (IA) (Iowa)
* Green County (KY) (Kentucky)
* Kenai Peninsula (AK) (Alaska)
* Lake and Peninsula (AK) (Alaska)
* Monroe County (NY) (New York)
* Navajo County (AZ) (Arizona)

Counties on Test only:
* Black Hawk County (IA)
* Green County (KY)
* Kenai Peninsula (AK)
* Lake and Peninsula (AK)
* Monroe County (NY)
* Navajo County (AZ)

Region size differences:
-

County size differences:
Clinton County (MO) w/ water landonly
live 1080 km² 1080 km²
test 1096 km² 1096 km²
Difference +16 (1.5%) +16 (1.5%)
Cumberland County (NJ) w/ water landonly
live 1733 km² 1262 km²
test 1733 km² 1276 km²
Difference +0 (0.0%) +15 (1.2%)

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
scriptId:964 creator:sumbloke scriptName:Timezone counter

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
tagId:3153 creator:Rikitan gccode:GC2VP9J
tagId:44026 creator:pieterix gccode:GC8B6DZ
tagId:3164 creator:Rikitan gccode:GCYPMN
tagId:36776 creator:pieterix gccode:GC7W8QJ
tagId:31028 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC7GKFV

Switzerland (1 reply)

magma1447 — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:29:04 +0000

Upon user feedback we are now updating Switzerland as well.

Known changes:

Quote

Aargau
* Burg merged with Menziken, into Menziken.
* Herznach and Ueken merged into Herznach-Ueken

Bern
* Diemerswil merged with Münchenbuchsee, into Münchenbuchsee

Jura
* Damphreux and Lugnez merged into Damphreux-Lugnez
* La Chaux-des-Breuleux and Les Breuleux merged into Les Breuleux

St. Gallen
* Hemberg and Oberhelfenschwil merged into Neckertal

Zürich
* Adlikon and Humlikon merged into Andelfingen

Herznach-Ueken and Damphreux-Lugnez are new counties, other counties previously existed under the same name but have had an increase in area due to the merges.

Output from our compare script:
Potentially affected challenge checkers can be found at the end of this quote.

Quote

LIVE Country areas: count=1 geom4326=41,281 km² geom4326_landonly=412,812 km²
TEST Country areas: count=1 geom4326=41,281 km² geom4326_landonly=412,812 km²

LIVE Region areas: count=26 geom4326=41,281 km² geom4326_landonly=412,812 km²
TEST Region areas: count=26 geom4326=41,281 km² geom4326_landonly=412,812 km²

LIVE Counties areas: count=2160 geom4326=40,846 km² geom4326_landonly=408,462 km²
TEST Counties areas: count=2151 geom4326=40,846 km² geom4326_landonly=408,462 km²

Regions on Live only:
-

Regions on Test only:
-

Counties on Live only:
* Adlikon
* Burg
* Damphreux
* Diemerswil
* Hemberg
* Herznach
* Humlikon
* La Chaux-des-Breuleux
* Lugnez
* Oberhelfenschwil
* Ueken

Counties on Test only:
* Damphreux-Lugnez
* Herznach-Ueken

Region size differences:
-

County size differences:
Andelfingen w/ water landonly
live 7 km² 7 km²
test 17 km² 17 km²
Difference +10 (152.2%) +10 (152.2%)
Erlach w/ water landonly
live 4 km² 4 km²
test 4 km² 4 km²
Difference +0 (2.0%) +0 (2.0%)
Les Breuleux w/ water landonly
live 11 km² 11 km²
test 15 km² 15 km²
Difference +4 (37.4%) +4 (37.4%)
Menziken w/ water landonly
live 6 km² 6 km²
test 7 km² 7 km²
Difference +1 (14.8%) +1 (14.8%)
Münchenbuchsee w/ water landonly
live 9 km² 9 km²
test 12 km² 12 km²
Difference +3 (32.5%) +3 (32.5%)
Neckertal w/ water landonly
live 49 km² 49 km²
test 82 km² 82 km²
Difference +33 (67.0%) +33 (67.0%)

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
-

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
tagId:20803 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC6JN9Z
tagId:21730 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC6W35V
tagId:45953 creator:dpluton gccode:GC8F8HV
tagId:23318 creator:whiterussian_ch gccode:GC6WG3E
tagId:78663 creator:Hügh gccode:GCAA6EH

Canada (5 replies)

magma1447 — Sat, 01 Jul 2023 09:42:06 +0000

Canada's current definitions are from 2021-03-15 (YMD). Today I will start updating it to newer data. Canada was also the only country that didn't use OSM only. It was a mix of OSM and some census data. With the new version this will be fixed. OSM didn't have the polygons needed two years ago.

The update includes some changes though.

Quote

Northwest Territories
* Removed Behchokǫ̀ Region (now part of North Slave Region).
* Added Gwich'in Settlement Area (splitted from Inuvik Region)

Ontario
* Sudbury and Greater Sudbury merged (new name Sudbury).
* Haldimand-Norfolk splitted into two, Haldimand and Norfolk.

British Columbia
* Powell River renamed to qathet Regional District.

At least the following challenge checkers are likely to be affected:

Quote

Potentially affected challenge checker scripts:
(source code matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
-

Potentially affected challenge checker tags:
(config matches a region/county that has been removed/added/moved)
tagId:30476 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC7E6XQ
tagId:22627 creator:vogelbird gccode:GC6QG60
tagId:79004 creator:Hügh gccode:GC3MQZQ
tagId:49319 creator:pieterix gccode:GC8M1V1

Project-GC continents (2 replies)

magma1447 — Thu, 27 Apr 2023 12:47:20 +0000

First off the callback method GetContinentDefinitions() should be fixed in the next release, which should happen today.

Then Project-GC is also updating its Continent definitions. This should not affect any existing challenge checkers since no scripts uses GetContinentDefinitions(). I don't believe there is a need to update and challenges either. In my opinion a challenge description should always show how they defined a continent, since it isn't clear what a continent includes. You who have been involved in them probably know that there are many corner cases. For example:
* Islands belonging to Spain that's far far far away.
* Countries spanning the continent platters.
* General disputes.

Anyway, to make the maps of Profile stats clearer, and maybe also make the continent filters more usable we'll be adding a new continent today, Central America.

North America will be reduced to only contain Canada, United States, Mexico, Bermuda and Saint Pierre and Miguelon.
Central America will include everything that was removed from North America.

"Puerto Rico", "Costa Rica", "Bahamas", "Panama", "Dominican Republic", "Cuba", "El Salvador", "Belize",
"Cayman Islands", "US Virgin Islands", "Trinidad and Tobago", "Guatemala",
"Curacao", "Aruba", "Barbados", "British Virgin Islands", "Honduras",
"Saint Kitts and Nevis", "Nicaragua", "Jamaica",
"Saint Martin", "Sint Maarten", "Antigua and Barbuda", "Turks and Caicos Islands",
"Martinique", "Guadeloupe", "Haiti", "Saint Vincent and the Grenadines", "Grenada", "Saint Lucia", "Anguilla",
"Montserrat", "Dominica", "Saint Barthélemy", "Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba",

In general I think it's wise to ask a CO what he means when he mentions a continent. After this change even more important so.

The patch we are releasing that includes Central America can be considered a test. If we get a lot of negative feedback we might revert it.

Vietnam (no replies)

magma1447 — Wed, 08 Mar 2023 12:13:27 +0000

We had a support ticket that two counties in Vietnam belonged to the wrong region. Our data was from early 2021 and OSM has been updated since then. I will run an update today.

The scripts I have didn't find any affected challenges, and I would assume there aren't any either. But all counties will be renamed. I assume it's more proper spellings.

Old:
* Bac Lieu province
* Ba Ria-Vung Tau Province
* Cao Bang province
* Dong Nai province
* Ha Tinh Province
* Khánh Hoà Province
* Nghe An province
* Quảng Ngãi
* Thanh Hoa
* Tien Giang province

New:
* Bạc Liêu Province
* Bà Rịa - Vũng Tàu Province
* Cao Bằng Province
* Đồng Nai Province
* Hà Tĩnh Province
* Khánh Hòa Province
* Nghệ An Province
* Quảng Ngãi Province
* Thanh Hoa province
* Tỉnh Tiền Giang