Re: Checker for GC41JQ5 Globetrotter Challenge

I would have made a checker myself, but since Project -GC is still not accepting new script writers and I'm having problems with people not reading the requirements, I need your help.

I realize the requirements are somewhat complicated and will require more than just a few lines of code.

Requirements:

Found geocaches in at least 20 countries
or
• Found geocaches on at least 3 continents
or
• Found a geocache at least 10000 km away from home

Traditional finds only!

This might not sound too bad, but this is where it gets complicated...

I don't follow Groundspeak's definition of countries or continents. Only fully recognized UN member states count as countries for this challenge. This is the corrrect list of which continent a country belongs to: http://www.worldatlas.com/cntycont.htm

You will probably need to make a list of every country to check for finds of traditional geocaches in that country. This could be a problem with countries that are in two continents, like Turkey and Russia. It will probably be easier to count them both as Europe in the checker (since the challenge is in Europe) and I'll still let people log if they have finds on the Asian side of the country and want it to count as Asia after reading the requirements.

I don't know if you think this sounds like a coding nightmare or a fun challenge, but I hope someone is willing to help me :)

You definition of countries/continents are not that obvious at all.

For example:
should overseas departements of France be counted as parts of France even if the are countries on gc.com? Or is only metropolitan France included? The overseas departments have the same political status as metropolitan departments.
And how shall they be used on continents? They are not on your list

What about Ireland? the caches are for the Island and both Republic of Irland and Northern Ireland has Ireland as country.

Can caches on Isle of Man be used for the UK even if they are not a part of it but represented by it in the UN?

Both Egypt and Spain are also transcontinental countries.

But the is a larger problem. There is no access to you home coordinates and therefore 10000km cant be calculated. It could be done with the information from the badges if there was not a traditional cache requirement.
So the checker cant be done

There was a incorrect 3 continents only checker tagged
http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC41JQ5/16415
I have contacted the creator and asked for it to be removed

Thank you. The checker has differerent requirements than my challenge, and gives false positives. I emailed a while back and asked for it to be removed, but didn't get any response from the person who tagged the script.

Target. Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> You definition of countries/continents are not
> that obvious at all.
>
> For example:
> should overseas departements of France be counted
> as parts of France even if the are countries on
> gc.com? Or is only metropolitan France included?
>

As the requirements says, I allow them to be counted as countries if you haven't found any caches in the country the territory belongs to. Let's say you've found caches in Aruba but not in Holland, then it will count as a country. If you've found caches in both Holland and Aruba it will only count as one country.

To not make the checker way too complicated, I suggest leaving out any countries/territories that are not UN countries in the script. If people have finds in overseas departments that they need to reach 20, then they'll have to check manually. I'd rather have the script give false negatives than false positives.

>
> The overseas departments have the same political
> status as metropolitan departments.
> And how shall they be used on continents? They are
> not on your list
>

Even though they don't count as countries, they do count as continents. If your only find in Europe is in Gibraltar, it does of course count as Europe. Antarctica is not a country, but most definitely counts as a continent.


>
> What about Ireland? the caches are for the Island
> and both Republic of Irland and Northern Ireland
> has Ireland as country.
>

I've found caches in Northern Ireland, and I find it really strange that Groundspeak says they're in Ireland. The caches are in the country named United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

To not make it too complicated, I suggest just counting Northern Ireland as Ireland in the checker. If someone checks manually and want their finds in Northern Ireland to count as the UK, I will allow it of course. I realize that this might get someone to 20 countries even though their only find in Ireland is in Northern Ireland, but I know it's a political issue and I don't want to upset anyone with strong believes about which country Northern Ireland should belong to. UK or Ireland, it's fine by me either way.

>
> Can caches on Isle of Man be used for the UK even
> if they are not a part of it but represented by it
> in the UN?
>

Yes, finds on Isle of Man can be used for the UK, but they can not be counted as two separate countries.

>
> Both Egypt and Spain are also transcontinental
> countries.
>

Canary Islands counts as Europe in the challenge. Egypt can be listed as Africa in the checker, but I will allow finds on the Asian side to count as Asia for those who read the requirements and see that they qualify. I think it will be too complicated to create a checker that checks which side of the country the finds are from.


> But the is a larger problem. There is no access to
> you home coordinates and therefore 10000km cant be
> calculated. It could be done with the information
> from the badges if there was not a traditional
> cache requirement.
> So the checker cant be done

I didn't know that, but it makes sense.

Maybe the checker could get the furthest cache found and then check if it's further away than 10000 km and a traditional? If it is then they're qualified. If it's less than 10000 km then they don't fulfill that requirement. If it's further than 10000 km but not a traditional, then the checker could give them a message saying that they should manually look through their stats for a traditional find further than 10000 km away from home.

The purpose of the challenge is to require people to actually travel, and not just log a mystery or multi near home that is listed as being on the other side of the Earth.

kjerstih Wrote:
>Canary Islands counts as Europe in the challenge. Egypt can be listed as Africa in the checker, but I will allow finds >on the Asian side to count as Asia for those who read the requirements and see that they qualify. I think it will be too >complicated to create a checker that checks which side of the country the finds are from.

Why Canary Island as Europe but Aruba and suppose Martinique is treated as North America?
Aruba is a independent country in the Kingdom of the Netherlands but Martinique is a French departement in the Caribbean
The only diffrence is that one treated as a country by groundspeek and the other is not.
You also have Ceuta and Melilla that are Spanish located in North Africa?

> Maybe the checker could get the furthest cache
> found and then check if it's further away than
> 10000 km and a traditional? If it is then they're
> qualified. If it's less than 10000 km then they
> don't fulfill that requirement. If it's further
> than 10000 km but not a traditional, then the
> checker could give them a message saying that they
> should manually look through their stats for a
> traditional find further than 10000 km away from
> home.
>

This in not possible. The only information available it the distans to the find farthest away. No GC code or anything else.
It cant be done when the home coordinates are not available and cant be because of the gc.com API licence agreement
This make the whole checker impossible.

Thanks for the info. It should still be possible to make a checker for the two other requirements. They only need to fulfill one of the three.

It will result in false negative results and it can be autorun and displayed as not ok on the maps.

But it is possible to create one/two checkers not associated with the gccode that can be linked from the description of the cache that can be used. It if it not linked it is more likely that people read the text before that that they are incomplete

It isn't possible for a challenge checker to access a users home coordinates so the third criteria isn't possible to implement.

I suggest that you produce a list of valid geocaching country names -> continents to be considered under you rules.

I'd also suggest that you get it pre-approved by a reviewer before someone implements the checker - the reviewer may decide the requirements are too complicated (I'm not clear which countries are valid and what happens if I have found caches in 'Ireland' for instance (which geocaching.com defines as including northern Ireland).

It is a published grandfathered challenge

No further developments. Therefor request archived in : ARCHIVE Checker requests (impossible)