Re: Checker Request: GC73C3C - 100 Oklahoma Virtuals

Find 100 virtual caches from the state of Oklahoma. Finds of Archived virtual caches are allowed. Any CO who has hidden a virtual cache in Oklahoma is allowed to count that cache.

This would be very similar to the "Maryland Virtual Challenge II" checker https://coord.info/GC6D87B which requires 25 finds on active or archived virtuals.

Thank you in advance for creating and/or modifying an existing checker for this challenge cache.
kiecker.

Here you go: http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC73C3C/25784

Since there are only 102 active virtuals in the state, you will probably have a lot of trouble getting this past the reviewers due to guideline 4: https://support.groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=206#sourceOfCriteria
"Challenge cache owners must demonstrate that there are plenty of qualifying caches to meet the challenge at the time of publication."
Since three of the current virtuals being taken offline would make it impossible to achieve this challenge, you might want to lower the limit.

Thanks. This doesn't not appear to count any archived virtuals from Oklahoma.
There's actually 105 active vituals and 57 that have been archived in the state. I have a total of 108.
Could we update the checker to count all virtuals for those cachers that may have obtained a vitural prior to being archived?

I'll work with my reviewer regarding the quantity to qualify. There's nothing in the rules stating that if conditions change that a checker can't be updated to reflect updated conditions. Thanks again.

The checker does in fact count all finds you have, regardless of whether they're currently archived. Project-GC uses the actual location of the cache, rather than the location specified by the CO when creating the cache page. This means that GC936F, GCA825 and GC9374 are in Kansas, Missouri and Texas respectively. There are only 102 active virtual caches which are actually within the bounds of Oklahoma. Hence my cautioning you that specifying the limit as only two less than the current number of active caches is likely to not be considered "plenty of qualifying caches".

Point taken.
If that's the case, I do find it odd then that the 3 caches listed above specifically state they are listed in Oklahoma on cache pages. Hopefully this photo shows, but directly below the favorite points on the cache pages, all of them say they are in Oklahoma. Also, when you do a filtered search on Groundspeak only for Vitruals in the State of Oklahoma it yields 105 active including these 3.


Could you enlighten me to how if Groundspeak says they are in Oklahoma that PGC does not?

Groundspeak use what the CO chose when creating the cache. This is not always correct (and for multis and mysteries might be correct for the final coordinates but not the start). They do not do any verification of the location.

Project-gc takes the listed coordinates and calculates the region and county (which Groundspeak don't have any field for) and possibly the country but I'm not positive about that. This ensures that the caches are reported consistently for checkers.

Makes sense. Thanks for the feedback.

Out of curiosity since I'm working on my first couple of challenge caches, the totals I see on the checker currently (2 green, 1 red), do those all get reset to zero once the cache officially publishes?

No, the counts don't reset.

Brain fart.... since there will never be more virtuals placed, would it be possible to make the checker dynamic vs static? For example, instead of having to find a fixed value (such as 100 as listed above), first have the checker first verify how many are currently available and then minus a small fixed number from that value.

I guess my thought is regardless of what fixed value I choose to be found, there's no control over when, if any and how many, virtuals get archived. With a fixed checker the challenge would only get harder to impossible without having to update the checker based on current availability. However if it was written dynamically as described above then it wouldn't matter as much, especially if Required Virtuals equals Total Available minus a small number, such as 2 in this case. Thoughts?

I'm not sure such a criterion would be allowed under guideline 12: https://support.groundspeak.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=206#percentageOfCaches

Theoretically, it would be possible to write a checker for it, using the GetOldestCaches function to find out how many are left, but it would require a new script to be written so it would be best to get a reviewer to say it would be okay before effort is expended writing the new script.

Here is another approach but could be rejected because it only allows on finding active caches
Find 95% of all active caches in Oklahome

Checker http://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC73C3C/26071

There is an option to include archied finds but that makes the percentage setting more difficult

Can we receive some feedback from the requester please !!

I'm working with my review on this one. Keep you posted once we have a final solution.

Thanks for your patience.

Cache published. Request is closed. Thanks for your help.