[Resolved] GC33E4C causes problems

Hi all,

the cache GC33E4C causes problems.

It does not have a challenge checker. It is impossible for a user to prove that he/she meets the requirements. The owner deletes logs without being able to prove that the user does not meet the requirements.

Although the behavior of the ownver violates the rules and the rules of good conduct and this should be addresses by reviewers/groundspeark, i'd prefer to see a checker for this cache. Otherwise a need archive is probably the best solution.

Would it be possible to write such a checker? I have not found another challenge cache with similar enough requirements in order to clone it.

I can write the checker but there is no longer access to the sand box.

Thank you.

Yes, it would be possible. This kind of challenge no longer being allowed may delay the writing of the script, but I can think of a couple of genericisms that may make it more useful. I'll see when I get a bit of time...

I've found an existing script to use and submitted a few small changes to the script writer. Will provide a checker once the changes are added to the live script.

Extra checker may have no advance here because the procedure to qualify is already defined in the cache description.

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On the "Statistics" page of your profile, you will find the average difficulty / average terrain. The sum of these two numbers is the average of the stars of all your founds.

You can log this cache if at least one day (any day) after publishing this cache, the sum of these two averages is greater than 3.73 AND you have at least 373 founds in your entire career.

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How to Prove

This cache is a Challenge cache. You can log the *S*T*A*R*S* Lover Challenge cache as soon as you have met the various conditions:
- Of course you go there, find the cache at the coordinates and log the cache physically
- Have an average of 3.73 stars per cache or more, on a date after the release of this challenge and have at least 373 founds at that time
- Send an email or log a note the day you made this condition (see log example). Of course, I also check that you don't log a significant number of founds before this date: so don't cheat by "forgetting" to log easy caches. This procedure allows you to average 3.73 stars one day and physically log this cache another day with any numbers on your statistics page during the cache visit.

Any log not respecting these conditions will be deleted.

If you have read my message then you know the problem with the procedure to qualify and therefore you won't post about it.

It has to be proven that any day in the past qualifies. But this statistics is not available anywhere and therefore it is impossible to send a proof.

No checker can "Send an email or log a note the day you made this condition" if you missed the day when statistics were suitable for the challenge. This kind of challenges were one reason why we have now, after moratorium, mandatory challenge checkers without need to prove anything by the finder and rate based challenges are not accepted any more. Still there are some possible problems if statistics may change afterwards and invalidate previous results and this is the case here. If the CO is not willing to change ruling easier by allowing retrospective result from a checker for this grandfathered challenge, I fear that checker can not do any favor for you or other players. If we strictly follow the current challenge rules, the checker shoud always display the current average which is available in the official statictics page.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2018 06:31AM by arisoft. (view changes)

In theory one should be able to compute those average values in the past too, since you can request the finds to be returned in date order. So the script could spit out dates where your averages were above a certain value at the end of that day. Should be very easy to code.

Coding for the average per find is easy but without owner approval, which seems to be the original problem here, this alternative proofing method may be useless or misleading, if finds will be still deleted as warned in the description. The easy solution is to ask from the CO as usual.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/26/2018 07:32AM by arisoft. (view changes)

I cirrently have the issue debated with groundspeak as i placed a complain about the owner.
A challrnge checker is rhr only way to prove that i qualify. I say yes, the owner says no, groundspeak ask fir a proof of yes (that i can't provide) or a proof of (that he can't provide).

I'm afraid that you don't qualify Arnaudd. At no point in time (as seen at end of the day) did you have the required average after the required number of finds. Yes, I quickly wrote a script to check.

Which would be an excellent answer because at least there is a proof.

We still don't know which cache type should not be taken into account. Events of all forms must be D1 and in our region must be with low T. Therefore their D/T value is meaningless and they should not be taken into account.

Where can we run the script? There are several.suspicious found it logs to check.

Cleaned up the script and made it pretty. You may test it here:

https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC33E4C/36263

Thanks for the script.

I don't understand the initial checks on D and T individually.
I don't understand why the script stops at some date and does not check all the dates.
The events of all types do not seem to be filtered out.

Some more printed info would be nice, for example D, T and D+T averages for each date.

For me the checker works fine.

Quote

[arisoft](https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?u=arisoft) has used [Project-GC](https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC33E4C/36263 "Project-GC Challenge Checker") to see if they qualified for this challenge and they did.

Best total:
Visit date: 2012-02-15
Total finds: 724
Average difficulty: 2.25
Average terrain: 2.05
Average total: 4.3

Current:
Visit date: 2018-07-24
Total finds: 5611
Average difficulty: 2.26
Average terrain: 2.02
Average total: 4.28

> I don't understand the initial checks on D and T individually.

Challenge rules are: "You can log this cache if at least one day (any day) after publishing this cache, the sum of these two averages is greater than 3.73 AND you have at least 373 founds in your entire career."

The checker displays both averages and the sum of them as the challenge required.

>I don't understand why the script stops at some date and does not check all the dates.

It tests all days and shows the best day and the current. The cache owned requires you to send an email or log a note the day you made this condition. I qualify today so I could post a note immediatelly. I don't know will the CO accept any other day as the current because originally it has been the only way to check that the challenge has been completed.

>The events of all types do not seem to be filtered out.

This is how the statistics page in you profile works. I can not see a word about events in the challenge description.

The challenge is about D/T of caches. Challe.ges do not have a meaningful DT and are not caches. The owner has never answered on this question.

The initial check i was referring to is domething else.

The script does not return this form of result for me. It returns the status on july 26th, it does not return my best result nor today's result.

Arnaudd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> The script does not return this form of result for
> me. It returns the status on july 26th, it does
> not return my best result nor today's result.

Yes, I found this also. I think that the "best" contains only the qualified best. If you qualify never there is no "the best" one.

There may be database delays. The profile statistics is the only way to get the absolutely current information. Your result from the checker looks this

Current:
Visit date: 2018-07-26
Total finds: 3316
Average difficulty: 1.8
Average terrain: 1.85
Average total: 3.65

And from profile you can see this
Average Difficulty: 1.8
Average Terrain: 1.85

For me these results match perfectly.

The number forctotal finds does not reflect the real number, could this be related to lab caches?
It would be nice to see the best result in all cases.

Lab caches are not picked up by the checker system. And also don't have difficulty or terrain values, so they wouldn't be used in the averages on Geocaching.com either.

The two lines that i'm talking about are
if (conf.difficulty ~= nil and conf.difficulty > avgD) then
ok = false
end
if (conf.terrain ~= nil and conf.terrain > avgT) then
ok = false
end

There is no requirement on D only or T only. But as i understand it is set to nil from the config so it is ok.

The > checks should be replaced by >= since you use a rounding.

The line if (lastvisit ~= "") then seems to fail for me because i have no visit log but still the scripts does pick the write note date.

In order to make the script more generic and to prepare for other challenges, the config should include the filter on cache types. Also then when we finally have an answer on the contribution of events, it will be easy to change.

Arnaudd Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> In order to make the script more generic and to
> prepare for other challenges, the config should
> include the filter on cache types. Also then when
> we finally have an answer on the contribution of
> events, it will be easy to change.

There is already such filter in the script.

It seems I missed a lively discussion early this morning. I've updated my script to show the best non-qualified values as well with a label as to whether that best qualifies or not. Some notes on the discussion this morning:

• Yes, the script is generic so can be used for other scenarios too, not just this one scenario where only the total is relevant. And yes, it does have a filter too.
• The script does check all the dates. It will only print the dates where the best cumulative values are observed. Printing all dates will generate too much output so not doing that.
• The challenge in question doesn't mention events, so events were not filtered out in the configuration.
• Yes, lab caches won't be reflected since Project-GC doesn't make them available, nor do they have D/T ratings.
• The following conditions are the same, so there's nothing wrong in the code:
  if (conf.total > avgSum) then ok = false end
  if (avgSum >= conf.total) then ok = true end

Thanks.

Still a request for a small change. My best result is within the first 373 caches, it would be nice to display the best after 373.

Now let's see if the owner publishes it. It will help several people.

According to small modification to my dev script: your best non-qualified any time after 373 finds:

BEST TOTAL:
Inclusive date: 2017-11-19
Total finds: 2709
Average difficulty: 1.79
Average terrain: 1.87
Average total: 3.66
Qualified: no

Still debating whether to include this modification in the live script or not.

PS: the CO has already added this checker to his cache listing.

Great. Thank you for making this script. One more solved, only a few thousands missing.

Please change the status to resolved.