Re: Possible issue with existing checker GC7FYKE - The Ontario "Yours to Discover" Challenge (Canada)

Hi - a cacher contacted me to say that the checker seems to be missing a couple of the counties where he has in fact found caches.

His name is Michel-Angelo, and he has found caches in Prescott and Russell (he lives in this county) and Leeds and Grenville counties (nearby).

Is there any way of double-checking the checker?

Thanks,

Glen = str8upcacher

It looks like Project-GC typos in county names for at least two counties: "Prescott and Russel" instead of "Prescott and Russell" and "Leeds and Greenville" instead of "Leeds and Grenville". I've raised a support ticket about it and referred to this thread in it.

@sumbloke: Thanks for making us aware. It's indeed typos. I'll just close the ticket and consider it answered here. Feel free to reply to the auto-reply of the ticket if there is something else.

Here is a full list of all counties that has been manually named (130 of them), https://pastebin.com/XGtbdsr1

If anyone should notice that there are more spelling errors, please feel free to inform us.

I will start a new import based on the spelling corrected rules, it will take a few hours. In fact, it might even take a day before the issue here is resolved.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/07/2021 10:15AM by magma1447. (view changes)

Thanks for fixing this. Is there anything I need to do to "update" the checker, or will everything work correctly now?

It should just work, in a few hours to a day when the import finishes. Might need some caches manually refreshed (Support button -> self-support).

The geocache data will be fixed as well. Everything should be automatic.

Thanks again.

@str8upcacher: Just wanted to inform you that the update has been delayed. Adding the fixed data caused some issues and I didn't notice it at the time. I have just restarted the task and will try to be better to monitor it this time.

The issue is that it's a handful of tasks that needs to run, and with some of them taking hours it's easy to lose track of it. When starting it yesterday the first task failed without me noticing. The first one is expected to take 1-2 hours.

Hi - I just wanted to report that the issue is partly fixed, but there is still a problem. For the cacher in question (Michel-Angelo), he is now getting credit for Leeds and Grenville county, but still not for Prescott and Russell. Since he actually lives in that county, this is a bit perplexing!

Glen

It's hopefully because it's in progress. The location of all geocaches in Canada, including archived, is ve recalculated.

Today another cacher (13EvilCows) contacted me to note that there are still issues with this checker. He has found caches both within Greater Sudbury, and Sudbury proper (2 separate 'counties'). Neither of those counties show up when he runs the checker.

I think there may also still be issues with some of the other counties (e.g. Prescott and Russell). I don't know how Groundspeak classifies the counties in Ontario Canada, but I know there are various "'levels" of counties - some are single tier municipalities - for example, City of Greater Sudbury, some are regional municipalities - e.g. Regional Municipality of Niagara, some are straight counties - e.g. Renfrew County, and some are "united counties" - e.g. United Counties of Leeds and Grenville, United Counties of Prescott and Russell... I am sure all this complicates getting the names correct.

In any case, if you could please check the checker again, it would be much appreciated. If there is any way I can help out, please let me know.

Glen = str8upcacher

Looks like a name update was not adjusted in the checker which I have now taken care of

Please test and let me know if these ewere the only problems

There may still be an issue with Prescott and Russell. Michel-Angelo lives in that county, and when I run him through the checker, he is still not getting credit for finds there.

Just to give you the full picture
Here are the county names use in the checker (assigned as per PGC)
"Algoma",
"Brant",
"Bruce",
"Chatham-Kent",
"Cochrane",
"Dufferin",
"Durham",
"Elgin",
"Essex",
"Frontenac",
"Greater Sudbury",
"Grey",
"Haldimand-Norfolk",
"Haliburton",
"Halton",
"Hamilton",
"Hastings",
"Huron",
"Kawartha Lakes",
"Kenora",
"Lambton",
"Lanark",
"Leeds and Grenville",
"Lennox and Addington",
"Manitoulin",
"Middlesex",
"Muskoka",
"Niagara",
"Nipissing",
"Northumberland (Ontario)",
"Ottawa",
"Oxford",
"Parry Sound",
"Peel",
"Perth",
"Peterborough",
"Prescott and Russel",
"Prince Edward",
"Rainy River",
"Renfrew",
"Simcoe",
"Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry",
"Sudbury District",
"Thunder Bay",
"Timiskaming",
"Toronto",
"Waterloo",
"Wellington",
"York (Ontario)"

So Prescott and Russel is still misspelled? It should be Prescott and Russell (two Ls).

This is the list as I get it so magma1447 still needs to solve this by the looks of it

My mistake that Prescott and Russell didn't get properly fixed. I will work that out now. It will however take another 24 hours.

However. Since the challenge checker uses the same name as the county has in Project-GC, this isn't the issue. The county could be called "Heaven", as long as it has the same name in both Project-GC and the checker.

I think we need to understand what the issue actually is. If a county is "missing", please tell us which geocache should have made that county appear as logged. With that we can actually understand the issue. Last time I didn't really read what this was all about, I was told there were spelling issues so I (tried to) fixed those. To me it sounds more likely that the geocaches the user believes are in county X actually aren't in that county, at least not according to our data.

The following sample of caches are around the Town of Russell, in the heart of what should be "The United Counties of Prescott and Russell" - GC6PHW5, GC4FPBM, GC7GK7R, GC90YVM.

I am curious to know what county they are showing as.

Glen

I noticed that cachers used to get credit from the checker for Prescott and Russell in 2020 and prior, but then it seemed to stop working. Maybe the list of county names got changed by Groundspeak at some point? Odd...

I just ran a cacher who has ALL Ontario counties and they are getting credit, so it seems to be fixed now.

To be honest I am not 100% sure what has been the issue. But the data has now been updated again. Sorry that I missed fixing one of them. There were two places to update for that one, and one for the other. I of course missed that.

Anyway. I just ran the user "Michel-Angelo" and he is getting Prescott and Russel on his list.

Regarding Groundspeak and counties. Groundspeak does not handle counties at all. That's data coming from Project-GC, something that normally isn't allowed for challenges, but this is an exception. Project-GC has region/state support for a lot more countries than HQ, and county support for most of them (where HQ has none).

The reason I don't really understand why it didn't work before is that county is just a text field. Due to the spelling error the mentioned GC-codes had the value Prescott and Russel (instead of Russell). As long as the challenge checker has the same spelling error that shouldn't be an issue, and it had the same error. It would have been nice to know why it didn't work and what issue we had, but it's hard (impossible) to see now after the fact. Regardless, the most important thing is that it gets fixed and that we are all happy with the result.

From what I can see it's now working as it should. If not, please provide me with geocaching name, missing county name, and a logged geocache (gc-code) in that missing county.