Re: Feasibility checks

In the long term, I'd like to create a pair of challenges for New Zealand:

1. Find a geocache in each of New Zealand's 16 regions (such as Bay of Plenty, Otago, Northland)
2. Find a geocache in each of New Zealand's districts or city council areas as of the 1989 reform ("districts" hereafter - such as Rangitikei, Clutha, Waitaki)

I would imagine writing a challenge checker for the former to be relatively easy given that Project GC already takes note of whether caches are found within regions (called "Counties" in the Maps section of Profile Stats, with one small fix required) but within districts, which are (more or less) sub-divisions of regions, things might get a little tricky as this is not shown anywhere on Project GC.

Given I'm unfamiliar with the Project GC API: is it possible to, say, use polygons on a map of New Zealand to show where the districts are? Or is there some other kind of coding similar to that which is currently in the Profile Stats section which could be used?

Answer on "Find a geocache in each of New Zealand's 16 regions (such as Bay of Plenty, Otago, Northland)"

It is possible to make a checker for 16 regions (in PGC called counties) but you have to tell which county does not count in your challenge because in PGC there are 17 counties

Answer on
"Find a geocache in each of New Zealand's districts or city council areas as of the 1989 reform ("districts" hereafter - such as Rangitikei, Clutha, Waitaki)"

While it is possible to build a polygon checker it is not allowed to have a challenge build on those conditions

Please read https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=kb.chapter&id=127&pgid=206#criteria
Not acceptable

Quote
Challenges based on geographic areas other than countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent). For example, user-defined mapping polygons, latitude/longitude, radius, etc.

Districts are New Zealand's equivalent of counties, rather than regions (which are closer to the equivalent of states/provinces), Project GC is erroneous in that respect. But, fair enough.

The problem is that geocaching.com only has North Island and South Island as regions. PCG took the next level in OSM to get the counties. A bit similar to The UK

The other problem is that district info in OSM is missing for some regions. That's why PGC also had to take admin level 4 as the lowest level. Normally admin level 8 in most countries is used as county .

Yes, I'm painfully aware of GC.com's treatment of the two islands as states. Been a source of my frustration for some tune and I imagine I'm not the only one.

Ah well. It was all worth a shot