+BigFurryMonster Posted June 15, 2005 Posted June 15, 2005 When referring to a geographical location, geocaching.com often displays the name of a country, but never the USA. Instead, a particular state is displayed. Why is this? Other countries have states/regions/provinces/etc. too! I find it quite confusing.
+VesaK Posted June 15, 2005 Posted June 15, 2005 When referring to a geographical location, geocaching.com often displays the name of a country, but never the USA. Instead, a particular state is displayed. Why is this? Other countries have states/regions/provinces/etc. too! I find it quite confusing. Provinces or other areas in other countries have been requested earlier. People have even written lists of provinces in the forums and Jeremy promised to keep the thread bookmarked.
+Glenn Posted June 15, 2005 Posted June 15, 2005 When referring to a geographical location, geocaching.com often displays the name of a country, but never the USA. Instead, a particular state is displayed. Why is this? Other countries have states/regions/provinces/etc. too! I find it quite confusing. Think of it this way. The EU is a collection of countries in Europe in a simular way that the USA is a collection of states in North America.
Mushtang Posted June 15, 2005 Posted June 15, 2005 (edited) When referring to a geographical location, geocaching.com often displays the name of a country, but never the USA. Instead, a particular state is displayed. Why is this? Other countries have states/regions/provinces/etc. too! I find it quite confusing. Why is it? It's because when the game and website started it was primarily (if not only) played in America. It shortly grew to a worldwide game, but the website was already designed with cache locations to be in states or other countries. See the link in VesaK's post to see the direction the web site will (might) take on this issue. USA! USA! USA! USA! Edited June 16, 2005 by Mushtang
+BigFurryMonster Posted June 15, 2005 Author Posted June 15, 2005 It is confusing because it's a worldwide game. If it's "USA, USA, USA", the site should move to www.geocaching.us
+sTeamTraen Posted June 15, 2005 Posted June 15, 2005 Think of it this way. The EU is a collection of countries in Europe in a simular way that the USA is a collection of states in North America. Er, no. Not the same thing at all. Maybe in 50 years it might be, but it's nothing like that today. About 1% of EU citizens live in another country to the one in which they were born - I guess that would be 10% or 20% or more for the US. It's natural and normal for a US-based site to divide the world into US states, possibly Canadian provinces, and then other countries. Kudos to GC.com for at least implementing some country subdivisions, eg in Belgium. But to extend it to many other countries would probably involve further hierarchisation of something or other. I cross an international border (France to Germany) for the majority of caches which I find. The absence of "states" in the German listings isn't a big issue for me - there are no frontiers between German states (and barely anything between France and Germany any more). Come to think of it, perhaps a better solution would be to abolish states and countries from the listing. If you're not near a border, it's not relevant, and even if you are, there are very few borders which one can't cross these days - even the US border people will let you back in if you're a citizen, I'm told. If there's one activity which should teach us that we all share one planet, this should be it. A simple change of about nine bits ("N" to "S", "E" to "W") and you've gone from the US to Australia!
+Kai Team Posted June 15, 2005 Posted June 15, 2005 ...even the US border people will let you back in if you're a citizen, I'm told. OT - Eventually. As US citizens carrying our US passports, we once spent an hour trying to reenter the US from Canada at one of the "honor" check points (for boaters crossing the St. Lawrence River - enforced with satellite surveillance) because the dockside video phone wasn't working. We called both customs and immigration on our cell phones and they could scan our passports (that part was working), but they said they couldn't readmit us without "seeing" us. We finally convinced them that anyone they should be keeping out would not have been as patient, and they approved reentry (give them credit for seeing the absurdity of the situation).
+caderoux Posted June 16, 2005 Posted June 16, 2005 <humor> Isn't the state AND country (and all other geopolitical boundaries) redundant? After all, you already have the coordinates! It would be more useful to respect geographical boundaries - mountain ranges, lakes, islands! </humor>
+tobsas Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 It's natural and normal for a US-based site to divide the world into US states, possibly Canadian provinces, and then other countries. Kudos to GC.com for at least implementing some country subdivisions, eg in Belgium. But to extend it to many other countries would probably involve further hierarchisation of something or other. Why? The structure for states is there, they are just not filled with names except for the US and Belgium. The names are available in the linked thread, IMO it's just a decision if somebody should spent two hours copy and pasting the names in and to adapt the forms so that if you choose a country the states of this country are loaded into the state-field. I cross an international border (France to Germany) for the majority of caches which I find. The absence of "states" in the German listings isn't a big issue for me - there are no frontiers between German states (and barely anything between France and Germany any more). Just one example why the state information can be useful: The river Rhine is the frontier between France and Germany (as you know, but maybe other readers here don't). So if you do a search from your home coordinates, you can see by once if you have to cross it or not. So, if you live in an area with few bridges, it's an useful information, if 5km distance means 25 kms to the bridge and back to the cache or not. Unfortunatly, I live in a part where the Rhine is only the frontier between to german states and not two countries, so I don't have this information. ;-) Another point why I like to have the state information is that you know by once in which part of a country a Travel Bug is dropped. Greetings, Tobias
+BigFurryMonster Posted June 17, 2005 Author Posted June 17, 2005 Yep - that's all I ask -- getting a better picture to the whereabouts of caches, travel bugs, and cachers. Just to give me the idea: how hard would it be for a programming type of person to work with the "outline coordinates" of regions and automatically assign caches to their respective regions? Or do the corresponding regions have to entered manually? How is this done in the USA right now?
+geocacher_coza Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Why is it? It's because when the game and website started it was primarily (if not only) played in America. It shortly grew to a worldwide game, but the website was already designed with cache locations to be in states or other countries. See the link in VesaK's post to see the direction the web site will (might) take on this issue. USA! USA! USA! USA! A world do exist outside the borders of the USA states This world, by the way is, divided into countries which in turn are divided into states/provinces/magisterial districts etc. This is the reason why we as non-Americans would like to see some changes in the way caches are logged! It will be nice to be more specific Why? The structure for states is there, they are just not filled with names except for the US and Belgium. The names are available in the linked thread, IMO it's just a decision if somebody should spent two hours copy and pasting the names in and to adapt the forms so that if you choose a country the states of this country are loaded into the state-field. As this quote states--- NOT that difficult to do, is it?
Mushtang Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 A world do exist outside the borders of the USA states Yes indeed. But your point doesn't answer the question in the OP. I answered his question to the best of my knowledge.
Keystone Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Yep - that's all I ask -- getting a better picture to the whereabouts of caches, travel bugs, and cachers. Just to give me the idea: how hard would it be for a programming type of person to work with the "outline coordinates" of regions and automatically assign caches to their respective regions? Or do the corresponding regions have to entered manually? How is this done in the USA right now? Right now, in places like Australia, Belgium, Canada and the United States, the choice of state or province is made by the cache owner from a dropdown list when creating the cache page. There is no programming functionality in place that automatically assigns a state or province to a given set of coordinates. Sometimes errors are made. When reviewing caches by owners who live near a state border, I frequently see them choose their home state out of habit, even though the cache location is 15 miles to the west, across the state line into the next state.
+cachew nut Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Come on, we're talking about countries that are the same size as states. It's like going to Wisconsin!
+geocacher_coza Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 Come on, we're talking about countries that are the same size as states. It's like going to Wisconsin! Always bigger and better in the USA sic!
+BigFurryMonster Posted June 17, 2005 Author Posted June 17, 2005 Come on, we're talking about countries that are the same size as states. It's like going to Wisconsin! It's not the size that matters! It's eh ... ... how you cache it.
+Cornix Posted June 17, 2005 Posted June 17, 2005 As US citizens carrying our US passports, we once spent an hour trying to reenter the US from Canada at one of the "honor" check points ... Forgot your chainsaw? Customs lets man with bloody chainsaw, wild tale into U.S. Cornix
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