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+2 votes
575 views
I learned, that Project GC relies on how Groundspeak defines countries for consistency reasons, which is great.

And on the face of this I also learned, that Groundspeak defines Northern Ireland as an independent country (and not part of the UK), when I spotted this little white on my Map of Europe today.  ;-)

I just found a JPEG in my archive of this Map of Europe from 2015-08 which I downloaded ... and by that time the whole of the UK was coloured in green, including Norther Ireland ... and today it's white.

Did the guys from GC.com change anything lately or did I miss any info that Belfast & Co. recently became independent!?  ;-)

All best,
Dirk.

PS: Well, it would be quite a tough job to get to Belfast...
in Bug reports by Leirum (290 points)
A quick look at groundpeek forum results in this thread.
For some reason groundspeak tags all caches on the island of Irland as the "country" Irland. It has been this way atleast since 2012 and i have no idea when is started.
http://forums.groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=288571&st=0
It is the first time I have noticed that a groundspeek "country" is a combination of to different countries.
The other way by splitting a country in different parts is quite common.
Both for areas with some special status near the like Aland Island and non special parts far away like French overseas departments.
Other split islands is different countries. Even the small
Groundspeek is relay inconsistent with the geographical divide.
If Ireland is on "Country"  Why is Saint Martin split in the St. Martin and the Netherlands Antilles? The other parts of Netherlands Antilles is quite far away

If a country has smaller division and the size/political level of the is also strange.
Sweden is divided in 21 län but Finland is one big area even when län exist. They are created at the same time when Finland was a part of Sweden.

If I am not mistaken the county is taken directly from gc.com but the State(region) and county is calculated on pgc

But the map rendering on PGC is a bug. UK is rendered correctly as the groundspeek shape but Irland is renderd as the Republic of Irand and note the groundpeek Island of Irland

I guess there has been a polygone update on some area
Is there a border between Northern Ireland and Ireland on your map. Depending if it exist or not you can see which is updated incorrectly.
Yes, there is/was a clear border visible on the map.

This is the screenshot I took on August 22 on PGC:
http://www.leirum.org/Europe_2015-08-22.jpg
It shows the whole of the UK and Ireland coloured in green.

And this is the actual picture on PGC from today:
http://www.leirum.org/Europe_2015-10-12.jpg
Now only Northern Ireland is shown in white, while the UK and Ireland are still shown in green. So it seems, that Northern Ireland is today neither assigned to the UK nor to Ireland.

All best,
Dirk.
That does look like a bug to me, to match up with other parts of project-gc/geocaching.com Northern Ireland should be colour coded along with the rest of Ireland to match up the fact geocaching uses the island of Eire. My guess is the map poloygons were updated recently and they forgot to do the manual merging that is required.
It is still a bug but a different one,
The UK polygons are correct but the Ireland is incorrect.
It is the borders of the island and not the Republic of Ireland that should be used

1 Answer

+1 vote

Northern Ireland is an oddball place..

Some writers describe the United Kingdom as being made up of three countries and one province.

Regardless Northern Ireland is still in the Irish Province of Ulster, despite being in another Country from the Republic of Ireland.

 

Groundspeak made a call - that's what we live with :)  

When I was there, the caches were either in UK (with no territory defined) or Ulster - so the local cachers are just as confused as everyone else

by Juicepig (540 points)
Name wise the split is relay strange when you considers the full name UK is "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland" and the never have a official name with "United Kingdom" except when Ireland/North Ireland is included.
The part considers UK by groundespek is a single kingdom.
A spit in Ireland and Great Britain if both refers to islands, It would be logical but that has newer been their strong suite.
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