Re: GetHighest method

Hello,

I have one type of challenge on my mind and I'm not sure if it is possible to create a checker with existing scripts and methods. Basically, I would need a method similar to

PGC.GetOldestCaches

- but instead of hidden date parameter it would be using altitude (elevation) parameter.

Example of script (Oldest): https://project-gc.com/Tools/Challenges?edit&tagId=42338
Example of checker: https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC8615X/42338

Challenge on my mind:
Find highest caches in 8 regions of Slovakia.
For each region: 1. highest cache = 10 points, ... 10. highest cache = 1 point.
Your goal is to collect at least XXX out of possible YYY points.

In general, the config would be similar to Oldest challenge - country, region, county, types, limit, score.
Requested GetHighest method would enable series of very interesting hiking challenges around the world.
In case anyone can create a checker using existing method, that's great .. GC code you can use is GC8QE3B.

Thank you for any response.

Is this meant primarily for new Challenges? Challenge based on elevation would be against the guidelines.

Source of criteria
Challenge cache criteria
- must come from information broadly available on Geocaching.com such as on the statistics page, cache placement dates, types, attributes, souvenirs, etc.
- must be verifiable through information on Geocaching.com.

Geocaching.com doesn't have elevation data. In general it's also quite unreliable data since the number of measure points over the world is fairly low, compare to what would be needed. It's especially unreliable in peaky/hilly areas.

It would be fairly easy to throw together such method with a copy/paste from GetOldest, but I am not sure it's actually needed.

Yet there are several challenges based on elevation. There are also several challenges based on continents, which are not coming from geocaching.com. Yet they reject challenges based on Badges, which are just summarised data.They're not very consistent when it comes to that guideline.

That's probably the reviewers fault, and maybe due to how the description is created.

Continents isn't a real problem, if the description actually holds a full list of countries. Or at least it shouldn't be a problem then, in my opinion.
Similar with Badges. A Challenge to get Diamond Rugged without further explanation I can understand a deny on. But if it's also described as finding 180 T5 (I don't recall the correct number) - then I don't see a reason to deny it.

But if you believe this method would be useful, I will implement it. I will also, because I am interested, ask a local reviewer of his/her opinion. Mostly because I have seen such Challenge in Sweden as well, and I know I was surprised. Generally the Swedish reviewers are quite alert on what's allowed and not regarding Challenges.

It's up to Rikitan to make that call. I was merely adding my 10c on challenge guideline inconsistencies.

Great, thank you Magnus!

I'm also reviewer for Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Georgia and I can confirm that challenges based on elevation data are currently allowed. Just like challenges on county-level of data, elevation from Project-gc is acceptable source of criteria.

Unfortunatelly for me, I was not expecting such positive and quick reply, so I went on with elevation ranges (using existing methods) for my new challenges (https://coord.info/GC8QE3B), however we will use GetHighest method for international challenge in the future.

I could also ask HQ about their opinion. If they say that it shouldn't be allowed, elevation challenges can be denied already here in the process. Also they could make it clearer to their reviewers.

What's your opinions on that?

From my point of view - I am afraid to get more complaints about inaccurate elevation levels for mountains. They will never be exact without manually entering the data. I don't believe handling it manually is smart either. Also, elevations might change if we change how we interpolate different readings, or we find better source data, and so forth. We have updated all elevation data ~5 times the last 10 years. It could potentially affect such challenges quite a lot.

I have received "indications" on that Elevation generally/in some cases/in some forms are accepted for Challenges - Even though it's in direct violation of the Guidelines. In my opinion they should add a written exception, but there isn't.

Anyway, that makes this request very reasonable. I'll see if I manage to get to the bottom of it today or tomorrow. Currently working on something else, so it depends a bit on when that's done. It could take everything from one hour to way too long. :)

Two new methods added, I'll release them in a minute.

GetHighestCaches()
GetLowestCaches()

They work more or less identical to GetOldestCaches(). I hope I didn't break anything with that one, moved quite a lot of code around. I have been running a checker using it in both Dev and Live, the result hasn't changed.

Great, thank you Magnus!

I'm also reviewer for Slovakia, Ukraine, Belarus, Armenia and Georgia and I can confirm that challenges based on elevation data are currently allowed. Just like challenges on county-level of data, elevation from Project-gc is acceptable source of criteria.

Unfortunatelly for me, I was not expecting such positive and quick reply, so I went on with elevation ranges (using existing methods) for my new challenges (https://coord.info/GC8QE3B), however we will use GetHighest method for international challenge in the future.

The "quick" response was pure luck. I was looking for something else here and noticed it. Then I also had a task for today that included some waiting time, so I could jump a bit between the tasks. I just hope it works as it should. There is always a risk of missing something when copy/pasting too much.

Do these new functions actually work?

See https://project-gc.com/forum/read?4,42956

I'll try to look into it tomorrow!

Thank you for the link to the tag, it helped.

There was a bug in minElevation and maxElevation parameters, sloppy copy/paste issue. I'll make a new release during the day.

Using the following parameters, the GetHighestCaches() returns no caches.

limit:1000
filter:
region:
1:Guatemala
excludeArchived:true
country:Guatemala

I think this is because there are actually no active caches within the region Guatemala in the country Guatemala.

Ahh. Interesting. I guess there once was as a find in a checker triggered it.

Now the question is how to score all the "-est in N Region" challenges if there is nothing there to compare to.

But this is the wrong forum for that question.

I can't see that the country Guatemala has any region support at all, or has ever had it in Project-GC.

So using the following script: https://project-gc.com/Challenges//61662 for user Retired Guy, many subdivisions of Guatemala show up in the region field. I concatenate region and country for caches and get quite the list. It also gives a list of caches that have been tagged with this in project-gc's database. Caches are pulled either with GetFinds or GetHighest for display.

And geocaching.com does not have sub divisions of Guatemala so that is a related question.

Let me know if you need a clearer debugging case.

I was wrong, it does indeed have regions. I came home yesterday after a quite long trip and obviously I wasn't awake enough when looking this up.

But as DrAcorn says, there are no active geocaches in Guatemala/Guatemala. 28 archived, 0 active. Sorry for causing confusion.