[Awaiting feedback] Please modify checker GC7V6D8 to add additional counties

Please add the following passing counties to this checker. Clallam County, WA & San Juan County, WA Both have ferry linkages to Canada.

Thanks

MNTA

It appears the checker for this cache is based on our “MaxB’s NAFTA County Challenge” GC 5948T, which was created prior to the moratorium on Challenges in 2015. The criteria for that challenge used many of the principles we had included in our “Contiguous County” challenges. When we inquired about a challenge checker for these contiguous county challenges in 2016, we were asked to put together a “connection matrix”, indexing each of the counties in the continental US, and then creating a matrix each county which was adjacent to each respective county. The creation of that “connection matrix” involved some 18,000 data points and took several hundred hours to prepare. We followed the challenge criteria we had established for our challenges.
Although there are different ways which the criteria could have been defined (such as allowing ferry connections), it was not what we chose when creating the challenges. Unfortunately without using those exact challenge criteria, the checker will not generate an accurate result for other criteria such as this one, with minimal definition changes. For instance, we chose to define, for our challenge the southern US end points as counties along the land border with Mexico, as well as several counties with specific Gulf ports, (not the entire southern coast). Similarly, we defined the northern boundary as the counties on the land borders with Canada, as well as some specific crossings along the Great Lakes. Counties on opposite sides of the Great Lakes were not considered adjacent, nor were counties separated by major ocean bays and inlets.
Creating a different checker, must start with an independent “connection matrix”, so the one which we created and is being used for our challenge checkers in not altered and thus effecting the output defined by our set of challenges. Having built the “connection matric”, we are aware this is not a simple task.
We wish to caution anyone working on an alternate “Adjacent County” challenge, to clearly understand the criteria used for the connection matrix. If alternate criteria are used, be prepared for what might be a difficult and time consuming effort modifying a separate matrix to match any different criteria.

First thanks for an excellent challenge idea and work that went into supporting it. I saw this publish in central Oregon this summer and thought it would be great to share here in the Portland area. Having spending a lot of time living on the west coast from Seattle down to Cali. I'd say the assumption of adjacency in the original definition is not widely shared here locally. Geographically NW Washington really does not share any similar characteristics with the Great Lakes. In fact the border between Vancouver Island and San Juan county is less than a mile. Ferry rides are 30-40 minutes and run by the department of transportation and in reality no different than roads even google routes them.

First I'd highly recommend the local view be adopted, if that is not desired then the request to the project-gc checker folks stands and can we please copy the checker and make a specific branch that will work for the cachers on the west coast and the local view of connectivity between counties and our neighbor to the north. The request is to allow for two new passing conditions not to regenerate the entire matrix.

I also believe this is in line with GS policy I thought I saw some thread on the subject I'll keep looking for it but don't have it right now.

Found the other thread discussing this same request. Looks like MaxB on the River you opposed any changes there too. Not sure why you oppose this as it seems an easy request and I have already given an exception for a local cacher. I appreciate all the work that has gone into this and the concept is great it just needs a small change.

https://project-gc.com/forum/read?8,6631

From one of the posts:

Guidance from Geocaching HQ has been quoted or summarized in this thread, accurately. HQ and a group of reviewers have participated in an active private discussion about how challenges like this ought to work. They must rely on true mapping and political geography principles -- and not one single geocacher's set of rules. (Don't worry, MaxB... your grandfathered challenge predates the current guidelines.)

A proper data file for a "contiguous counties" checker would reflect political boundaries that meet in the middle of a body of water, regardless of the presence or absence of bridges, tunnels, ferries, etc. It would also count as "contiguous" (or "touching", per most dictionary definitions) two counties that meet at a single point. Hopefully interested persons can work on a new data file, leaving MaxB's file alone for use with their pre-moratorium challenges and their grandfathered user-defined mapping rules.

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All I am asking for is that for this checker that locals in Oregon and Washington have connections for the two water boundaries be included. If the original database owner does not wish to change this then can we please have a copy made. Not sure why this request is stalled. Theoretically it should be very easy to copy and make the small edit to the data file be made. I am not asking for other connections be added because almost all the finders of this cache I expect to be local to the west coast. Also the argument that a new file be generated seems very silly.