pinkunicorn

So this checker is easy to cheat then? You can log a cache that qualifies you for a souvenir, get that souvenir, remove the log and still have that souvenir in the eyes of the checker, yes. There are lots of ways to cheat in geocaching for those that are so inclined, just like there is in solitaire. So?

Under the previous rules, in my area anyway, challenges to fill in 366 days were not allowed, only 365. I assume that will still be the case. I'm not sure if this is documented in the "reviewers rulebook", or just a local interpretation. I think the logic behind it is - if a new cacher were to start now, they would find it frustrating to have to wait 4 years. That's a local rule. There are lots of challenges that require all 366 days. I own one of them.

You're free to believe that, of course. Since I wrote the checker it can confidently say that this is not the case, though. Project-GC gives me a list of the souvenirs you have earned (in the form av souvenir IDs) and I can then work with that to figure out if the number of type of souvenirs for the user is sufficient.

This seems to be one of the common misconceptions from the previous challenge cache thread. From what we've been told, the reason for the moratorium was largely that the challenge cache publication process caused a lot of problems. There has been no mention of problems with already published challenges. Thus, there is no reason to nuke pre-moratorium challenges as you suggest.

Since I'm the author of one of the souvenir checkers, I can say that that does not check for matching logs. Actually, that would be impossible. There are, for instance, travelling caches that have their posted coordinates updated regularly. If you get a souvenir for logging one of those and it is then moved, there is no way to check that. Same thing with the Let's Get Extreme souvenir from the 2015 summer promotion. It requires you to find a D5 or T5 cache. It could then have had its rating changed, which is also not checkable. This is apart from the fact that it would be a monumental job to figure out the exact qualifications for all the souvenirs.

I assume you are looking at http://project-gc.com/Tools/Challenges to see the list of checkers. That page has a search box at the top. Just enter (parts of) the name of the challenge and the list will be filtered as you go. Or enter the GC code of the challenge. I haven't checked all your challenge cache finds but some of them, and while none of the ones I checked had checkers listed on the cache page, many of them do have checkers that can be easily found using the about search page. (I also happened to note that one of them had a checker that imposed more restrictions than the cache page had so I created a new one with a note about this.) That none of the challenges you happened to log have links to the checkers of course doesn't mean anything since all these challenges are (obviously) published pre-moratorium when there was no requirement for such a link.

There is documentation both about the standard Lua functions that are available and the PGC-added Lua functions to get att geocaching data. This documentation is only visible if you have the checker-writer privileges, though. There is also a forum for checker writers.

From the guidelines: This is, obviously, from the pre-moratorium guidelines.

It would be just as easy for the checker writer to include such caches as well. Either simply counted as part of the result or as a side note to people who technically don't qualify using correct spelling: "Here are a couple more caches that seem meant to qualify you, perhaps you can use them as well if the CO permits?"

Yes. Anyone can run any Project-GC challenge checker for any username.

Does this mean they won't allow MyGeocachingProfile or GSAK Macros? My assumption is no and no: -- MyGeocachingProfile requires running a My Finds PQ, which is not available to Basic Members. -- GSAK requires a Windows machine, which is not available to Mac users. The statement from Groundspeak was That clearly states that GSAK is not an option since it is not web-based. That word clearly didn't end up there by accident. I'd say it's specifically put there to not allow GSAK as a valid checker provider. My interpretation is that no, MyGeocachingProfile is not allowed *at*this*time* (where "at this time" means "once challenges are allowed for publication again" rather than actually "now" since the latter would be pointless). As has been pointed out, MyGeocachingProfile requires that you upload a MyFinds PQ. That means that it's only available to premium members of geocaching.com which would be a limitation. I don't think that in itself would be an obstacle, necessarily, for it to be a viable source of challenge checkers. However, since it relies on the MyFinds PQ it also means that I can only check *my* stats. I can't, as a challenge cache owner, check someone else's stats. That, in my mind, would make them a bad choise as a challenge checker provider. I won't be surprised if alternatives to Project-GC as challenge checker providers will appear, but I wouldn't expect anything like that in the near future and definitely not before challenges are allowed again. With that being said, I don't forsee any problems with people using these methods (GSAK, MyGeocachingProfile, etc) to figure out whether they are qualified for a challenge or not, and using output from them for their verification logs. The limitation on having to use a Project-GC challenge checker is on the cache owner when creating a challenge cache, not on the loggers. And, for that matter, the cache owner doesn't have to run the checker for every single log that comes in. S/he can check the logger's statistics on geocaching.com (or wherever) if that's easier (as it may be for things like filling up the D/T grid).

Yeah - it is kind of vague - but it does say that the process starts with the geocaching reviewer who, it seems, won't publish a cache that doesn't have a checker - and it seems that a checker can only be linked to a published cache - so how's that gonna work? A checker can be linked to an unpublished cache. A checker can in fact be linked to no cache at all and still used, for testing purposes. That's a non-issue.

There's a fundamental difference here between "volunteer reviewers" and "volunteer checker writers". Reviewers are "employed" by Groundspeak to do a specific task. It's not a paying job but they do have specific tasks and process requests at least more or less in order. In comparison, there is nothing like that for checker writers. Each checker writer may look at requests for new checkers, or they may not. A checker writer may simply get checker-writing privileges for writing a checker for a personal challenge and then never creating another checker. If your challenge looks convoluted or the checker writer doesn't have time right then, no checker is likely to get done. There is no expectation of things being processed in any special order, or even of any specific request even getting a response. Consider the checker writers you see in the PGC forum the same as the guy you meet at an event. He's probably happy to help you answer questions, but it's not his job to answer any and all of your questions.

Have you ever worked any kind of customer support? People would appeal the laws of nature if they only know where to send the complaint to.

I'd say that in my experience the challenge quality of challenges that come along without a checker is worse (not always and not without exceptions, but in the majority of cases). So the quality of a challenge depends on whether or not there's a checker for it? Is that really what you meant? Not as a direct effect, but it's a good indicator. Challenges that don't have checkers tend to have vague and subjective conditions or lots of arbitrary and pointless extra conditions, and this tends to discourage checker writers. Good challenge: Complete your D/T matrix Bad challenge: Complete your D/T matrix using caches of at least five types, with only caches published before <random date>, and make all finds within a year. It's perfectly possible to write checkers for both these (fictitious) challenges, but I wouldn't expect the second one to have one.

I'd say that in my experience the challenge quality of challenges that come along without a checker is worse (not always and not without exceptions, but in the majority of cases).

I'm sorry for my confusion. But your clarification only heightens my concern. There certainly might be instances (e.g., illness or extended vacation) when the Project-GC volunteer who created the tag for the checker associated with my challenge cache might be unable to modify it within a "recommended" time period that Groundspeak might desire. I hope Groundspeak would take this into consideration and/or Project-GC would allow another tagger to make the necessary modifications when that challenge cache is subject to archival. This is already the situation any checker writer or tagger can change the tag on a cache and update it. This then generates a new tag/cache/config combo. The CO then just needs to modify the link to the checker. Let me given a very basic example. Challenge find 100 caches starting with an A. The challenge is tagged with a script that checks for starting letter, the config is set as 100, A to indicate 100 caches starting with A. This generates a URL for the checker ending something like /12345 indicating that was the 12,345th combo of tag, cache & config on the system. After a while a cacher gets a failure complains to CO and sees that the problem is that the checker was case sensitive and the CO wasn't meaning caches beginning with A but caches beinging with capital or lower case A. A change request is made and someone else retags the cache with the same checker but changes the config to 100, Aa. To allow a lower case A. This then generates a new URL ending /23,456 the CO then updates the URL for the checker on the cache page with the new tagged combo. This does not in any way rely on the original checker tagger being active. It seems there is some discrepancy between what you and pinkunicorn have expressed about how the checker writing/tagging process works. I've bolded/colored the statement from pinkunicorn that basically implies a CC CO should reach out to the original writer/tagger with edit requests. In which case, there is some reliance on the original writer/tagger. At least, there will need to be some way to know whether that original writer/tagger is still active so that a CC CO will know they need to look for help for someone else. If the process of editing checkers doesn't get worked out, then I fear the guidelines will say that checkers cannot be edited and should be infallible from the start or else the CC is subject to archival. It has already been expressed by Rock Chalk that checkers should be infallible or CC's are subject to archival. Again, the details of how this will all work is still unknown. This means that there are some challenges where we can envision it's possible to create checkers, but we still don't know if the as-of-yet announced guidelines will allow them. Instead of "You always talk to...", I should have written something "It is best if you always start by talking to...". It's perfectly possible to work like ShammyLevva describes and just create a new tag when there is a problem with the old one. If the change is done that way the old tag will still be there and show up in searches. That's not a problem for people who go to the cache page and check from there if they are qualified to log the cache. An interesting question, though, is how multiple checkers work with the automatic checkers. For paying users of Project-GC, all challenge checkers are run regularly. This is done so that all maps can display a red X or a green checkbox in the corner of the challenge icon on all maps so that you see easily which challenges you are allowed to log. I'm not sure how this works if there are multiple checkers for the same challenge (which is perfectly possible) but they report different results.

There is a misconception buried in this. All challenge checkers at Project-GC are created by volonteers, i.e. cachers (who may or may not be the challenge cache owner). That means that there won't be any "modification request to Project-GC". You always talk to the specific cacher who made the checker/tag.

Cool, that sounds exactly like what I/we were hoping was capable. As I haven't connected a PGC checker to my (2) challenge caches, is it the CO who creates that tag? What form does it take? ie, if one of the fields is a list, is it an open input value with no max length, or is there indeed a limit? A challenge can be tagged by anyone who has checker-tagging-privilege on Project-GC. This includes all current challenge checker authors. Exactly who will be awarded this and after what process is currently being worked out. The tag consists of three things: a reference to the appropriate checker script, a GC code refering to the challenge, and (optionally) some configuration parameters for the checker script necessary to handle this particular challenge. For the technically-minded: this is json, so you can put in various bits of information, as long as the checker can parse them out again. I assume there is a length limit to the json field, but I don't know it.

Project-GC tries to handle elevation but without support from geocaching.com which doesn't handle it at all, so no help from that end. There is no "official elevation" of a cache. From the FAQ: tl;dr: The elevation data from Project-GC may be off somewhat. In areas with very steep slopes, by significant amounts. This is due to how elevation databases work, and can't be changed until elevation databases get better (which is continously happening) or geocaching.com starts delivering elevation data (not likely, IMHO). Still, for the vast majority of caches you will get elevation information that is probably correct within a couple of meters.

We can safely assume that it will be possible for new people to become challenge checker authors and/or taggers. I'm not going to say that it will be possible at the same time as Groundspeak announces the actual guidelines and indeed (not being ganja1447) I won't give any specific time at all, but I'd expect it to be "reasonably soon". As has been stated before here but probably still isn't clear to everyone: A checker consists of a checker script and a tag. The script is program code, the tag consists of a couple of fields to fill in on a web page. Since much of the discussion here has been about animal name challenges (a to me incomprehensible challenge that has nothing to do with geocaching, but hey, I don't need to like all challenge types): The checker for this type of challenge is simple to trivial, and - of course - already exists. I don't expect the author of this script to need to do anything more even if more challenges of this type are added. What is needed is a new tag for each challenge that connects this checker script to the specific challenge. The tag needs to contain a list of animal names, fruits or whatever. This list can later be edited by the tagger. This person could be the cache owner, the script author, or a third person. Tagging a challenge requires a special privilege, but it's not the same privilege as writing a script. As of today, 85 people have written at least one checker script while 361 people have tagged at least one challenge.

No in both cases. Project-GC is about geocaching. Waymarking and Benchmarking are not geocaching.

I have done some work on a checker to handle this. Souvenirs are an open set, but they are an open set that grows rather slowly and doesn't have multiple languages, so it's pretty manageable. If I remember correctly, I did code to categorize souvenirs into countries, states, special days, events and others. After looking at the then-existing list of souvenirs it felt like rather simple to categorize all the existing ones and then add the few new countries and days that were announced and just assume anything else that wasn't known to be an event. What made me (at least not then) finish the checker was that I also needed to know what country each event belonged to, meaning that I needed to keep the list up to date monthly or so to be useful. Not impossible, but has to be done. We'll see if I finish it later. But still, for at least a decent percentage of souvenir-related challenges there is already a working checker that knows about countries and states.

I'd say you have this completely backwards. The onus is on the cache owner to make sure they have a working checker. They can do it themselves, or they can have someone else make it for them. In the latter case, they can either arrange that the checker writer will continue to maintain this checker, or just assume that it will be possible to find someone else that can copy the code and make needed fixes later. Either way is (from a technical standpoint) fine. Just assuming that someone who was nice to you and wrote a checker for you a year ago has time to fix a bug for you a year later unless you have already discussed that is arrogant at best.

Yes. There is a memory use limit that I don't know the size of, and there is also an execution time limit which I think is 30 seconds.