UK counties on the main forum

[markandlynn]

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...p;#entry2678975

 

If jeremy follows the lead we will end up with a grand choice of

 

United Kingdom England

United Kingdom Northern Ireland

United Kingdom Scotland

United Kingdom Wales

 

the thread is here

[Edgemaster]

I should mention that contrary to what this topic's name implies (IMO) the forums will not be split, merely extra States for the UK on the main site.

Edited January 24, 2007 by Edgemaster

[+lathama]

seems pointless to me. Will this mean that all existing caches have to be reorganised????

Why not just leave something alone which works, instead of medaling and making it worse>?

[+Tiger-Eyes]

seems pointless to me. Will this mean that all existing caches have to be reorganised????

Why not just leave something alone which works, instead of medaling and making it worse>?

 

I think you'll find that those of us who run pocket queries would rather specify which counties we want rather than getting all of the UK

 

If you live close to an expance of water (Like the wash) and run a querie for the closest caches I will get some in Lincolnshire which are over 100 miles away to drive but about 20 by the crow, much easier to specify "Norfolk"

There are other places like cornwall and wales that would have the same prob.

[+dino-irl]

seems pointless to me. Will this mean that all existing caches have to be reorganised????

Why not just leave something alone which works, instead of medaling and making it worse>?

I'm assuming that it will be an automatic thing. The boundaries of the counties will be mapped and the caches assigned to counties according to their coordinates.

[+Bear and Ragged]

seems pointless to me. Will this mean that all existing caches have to be reorganised????

Why not just leave something alone which works, instead of medaling and making it worse>?

 

Having read through the thread...

 

I get the impression that

England

Scotland

Wales

N Ireland

 

this time could lead to counties in the future...

 

But as it requires rather a lot of work, any start in that direction must be good?

 

G

[Edgemaster]

Currently, I'd think they'd leave them as they are, possibly allowing owners to update as and when they want.

Of course, initially, this won't be useful for PQs, I think Jeremy was saying something about a catch-all.

[+Birdman-of-liskatraz]

seems pointless to me. Will this mean that all existing caches have to be reorganised????

Why not just leave something alone which works, instead of medaling and making it worse>?

 

I think you'll find that those of us who run pocket queries would rather specify which counties we want rather than getting all of the UK

 

If you live close to an expance of water (Like the wash) and run a querie for the closest caches I will get some in Lincolnshire which are over 100 miles away to drive but about 20 by the crow, much easier to specify "Norfolk"

There are other places like cornwall and wales that would have the same prob.

 

Unless I'm missing something - What problem does Cornwall have?

[+Firth of Forth]

seems pointless to me. Will this mean that all existing caches have to be reorganised????

Why not just leave something alone which works, instead of medaling and making it worse>?

 

I think you'll find that those of us who run pocket queries would rather specify which counties we want rather than getting all of the UK

 

If you live close to an expance of water (Like the wash) and run a querie for the closest caches I will get some in Lincolnshire which are over 100 miles away to drive but about 20 by the crow, much easier to specify "Norfolk"

There are other places like cornwall and wales that would have the same prob.

 

Unless I'm missing something - What problem does Cornwall have?

 

There's a similar problem for any of us northerners who live along any of the firths or sea lochs. My nearest unfound caches are across the Firth of Forth in Fife.

[+Stuey]

A few years ago, amongst my nearest 500 caches were a few in the Channel Islands and France. I'd love to get a PQ based on County!

[+Simply Paul]

Cornwall has the Scilly Isles? The IOM can cause search problems in the SW of Scotland, the NW of England and the east coast of Ireland.

 

Speaking of Cornwall, shouldn't it be listed alongside England, Scotland and Wales, as it's a Duchy?

[+Birdman-of-liskatraz]

Cornwall has the Scilly Isles? The IOM can cause search problems in the SW of Scotland, the NW of England and the east coast of Ireland.

 

Speaking of Cornwall, shouldn't it be listed alongside England, Scotland and Wales, as it's a Duchy?

 

Cornwall has the Isles of Scilly (The Islanders really don't like them being called the Scilly Isles!) but they are part of the County so I don't see there`s a problem.

 

And of course - devolution for Cornwall!

 

I'm guessing North Devon and Somerset may have problems with caches on Lundy and over the Bristol Channel in South Wales.

 

But I for one have no problem with my nearest 500 caches including loads in Devon. I'm just saying I don't think I'd make use of Counties when running PQs, though I accept that for others this maybe very useful.

[+Happy Humphrey]

The IOM can cause search problems in the SW of Scotland, the NW of England and the east coast of Ireland.

What sort of problem does that cause, and how would adding a county name alleviate it? Sorry, but I really struggle with this concept.

But I for one have no problem with my nearest 500 caches including loads in Devon. I'm just saying I don't think I'd make use of Counties when running PQs, though I accept that for others this maybe very useful.

After a rather heated debate on the main thread, I think I established that the purpose is NOT to allow relatively inaccessible caches to be filtered out when running pocket queries, but rather to produce a list of caches, limiting the list to those inside any given region on the next level down from a country. So if the region is "Wales" for instance, and you centre your PQ on a border town, you'll be able to exclude any caches in England even if they are only a mile away, but get up to 500 Welsh caches.

[+Birdman-of-liskatraz]

So if the region is "Wales" for instance, and you centre your PQ on a border town, you'll be able to exclude any caches in England even if they are only a mile away, but get up to 500 Welsh caches.

 

Ummmm Why? If I lived by the Severn Bridge I'd be keen to do caches in both England and Wales... I'm afraid I still don't understand the logic of this, except for the not wanting to include say South Wales caches when you live in North Devon... That said I see no problem in including a County so people have the option of using it if the wish to.

[Alan White]

On countries, if there's to be any change at all here I'd rather see e.g. England in the present Country field rather than United Kingdom England. Even better, Groundspeak should use one of the internationally agreed standard country lists like every other website does, rather than making it up itself. For me, I already update the country in GSAK to change United Kingdom to the right "country" so the only real effect for me is that I'd have to change all my PQs to select the new countries. A bit of a pain, but a one-off.

 

On counties, this is much more problematic - as we've discussed many times before. The boundaries of English, Welsh and Scottish counties are so open to interpretation, and change so frequently, that they're unlikely ever to be correct. As HH said on the other thread, it seems that the call for counties is based largely on being able to restrict caches by an area. In some cases counties will serve this purpose: in many other cases they won't. Polygonal features are already available in GSAK, GPSBabel, and no doubt other programs to do that filtering. I can't see that having the data in Groundspeak would help much. But neither can I see any problem with it, other than the data being rather suspect. And as I'd ignore the data anyway then it doesn't bother me one way or the other .

 

However, the big problem with any of the solutions is that it relies on cache owners to put the right information in and then keep it up to date. I can't see this happening and still less can I see all existing caches being changed to reflect the new structure. So I think that any country/county change will take a very long time to come to be useful, unless country/county are maintained automatically by the system rather than selected by the user. And I can't see that happening.

[+Happy Humphrey]

I agree with the previous two posts, and would also like to make it clear that I don't have any objection - I was asking for justification simply to clarify what the purpose of the exercise really is as there seems to be some confusion.

Edited January 25, 2007 by Happy Humphrey

[+The Blorenges]

..... If I lived by the Severn Bridge I'd be keen to do caches in both England and Wales... I'm afraid I still don't understand the logic of this, except for the not wanting to include say South Wales caches when you live in North Devon... That said I see no problem in including a County so people have the option of using it if the wish to.

As we live by the Second Severn Crossing bridge (in S Wales) our nearest unfound cache is 4.2miles SE across the water. It's going to cost us £5.10 to go and get it! Or rather, to come back from it ... but, of course, in reality, it won't because sometime we'll just go over there for a day and do a sweep-up of "unfounds".

I can see how having a Counties Option would be very useful for some people. Meanwhile, on our own caches, I'll just continue putting the name of the county (in brackets) after the cache name.

MrsB

[+kewfriend]

Any boundary based location classification system causes issues at the boundaries. So for instance in Kew, we are close to the boundaries of Surrey, Middx, London and not far from Bucks, Berks, Kent etc. As it so happens our greatest number of finds are in Berks.

 

The issues are the average size of the location sub-division and the number of cachers and caches within that geographical area. Remember the UK in size and population is not dissimilar to California so its worth glancing at the west coast for thoughts. I can see, for these reasons, a case for listing the UK nations separately - nothing to do with nationalism by the way. The UK regions West Country, Greater London, South and South-east, Midlands, North-west and North-east may also be worthy of consideration.

 

But in practice as any person can do a geo-search from their declared location, I cannot see any practical advantage - so my vote goes for leaving it all as it is.

[+CrazyL200]

I've just added my thoughts on the main thread.

 

Basically, if the PQs could be run with or without counties selected, and/or with multiple counties selected, many of the issues we are concerned about would be catered for.

[+Bambi&Thumper]

The UK regions West Country, Greater London, South and South-east, Midlands, North-west and North-east may also be worthy of consideration.

 

This is sort of where my thoughts are going. Why don't we depart from the political boundaries and go for less obvious, but more useful "regions" based on geographical features? This would require some discussion here, but was what I meant with my post in the "other" forum. Can we come up with areas that are particular problems and try to work round them?

 

B.

[+The Flying Boots]

So if the region is "Wales" for instance, and you centre your PQ on a border town, you'll be able to exclude any caches in England even if they are only a mile away, but get up to 500 Welsh caches.

 

Ummmm Why? If I lived by the Severn Bridge I'd be keen to do caches in both England and Wales... I'm afraid I still don't understand the logic of this, except for the not wanting to include say South Wales caches when you live in North Devon... That said I see no problem in including a County so people have the option of using it if the wish to.

 

We live just 1 mile as the crow flies just inside England near the Welsh border. We love our forays into Wales and would not want to exclude them from our PQ's. We also travel across the Severn Bridge for geocaching and for us it's a £10.40 return journey as we have a van that is considered a commercial vehicle. Usually we try to sweep up the east side of the Severn and come home via Gloucester thus avoiding the bridge toll.

[+Bambi&Thumper]

We live just 1 mile as the crow flies just inside England near the Welsh border. We love our forays into Wales and would not want to exclude them from our PQ's. We also travel across the Severn Bridge for geocaching and for us it's a £10.40 return journey as we have a van that is considered a commercial vehicle. Usually we try to sweep up the east side of the Severn and come home via Gloucester thus avoiding the bridge toll.

 

Someone else in the same position might decide to split their pocket queries by the river instead of by time though, so that they have a Welsh one and and English one. Not picking on you in particular, but just because you wouldn't want to exclude them, doesn't mean that everyone wouldn't. Personally, I'm not sure we would particularly use it either, but we don't know until we've tried it and we understand that for some people it would be very, very useful.

 

Sorry, but all the bickering (mostly on the other threads) from people who can't see how they would use it, have got my goat. It's making us look REALLY bad in the eyes of cachers from elsewhere, to say nothing of gate-crashing the other thread. Can't we discuss this like adults and come up with a sensible solution here in "private" and then go to the others as a group and say, "This is what we want"?

 

Rant over... Feeling slightly better now...

 

B.

[+Tiger-Eyes]

OK maybe I didn't explain clear enough earlier, what I was trying to say is that there may be caches very close to you as the crow flies but miles away by transport, one of my caches in norfolk GCXR34 has it's 5th nearest listed as 13.5 miles away GCM85M, by car it would be about 80 miles away. seaching by county would exclude thet other cache. simerlarly my nearest events are usually in Holland but luckily I can exclude those.

Any split we get will be better than we already have but other "countries" are being split into "regions" but they only want us to be split into countries which to some seems very unfair, we cannot be split into 2 levels i.e. countries then counties because that would be to complicated for their scripts (I think)

 

by the way Birdman Cornwall was a very naff excample sorry

[Alan White]

It's making us look REALLY bad in the eyes of cachers from elsewhere, to say nothing of gate-crashing the other thread. Can't we discuss this like adults and come up with a sensible solution here in "private" and then go to the others as a group and say, "This is what we want"?

I agree entirely.

 

As I've said, it matters little to me whether we have the status quo, countries, counties, areas, polygonal filtering, or whatever. But I do accept that some people would find some or all of these useful. The question then has to be: what can Groundspeak provide at minimum effort which would satisfy the greatest number of people?

 

To answer that we have to know what people want. There've been a number of threads of this nature over the years, and the request always is phrased as "please can we have counties?". But the nature of the request - and of this thread - always leads me to infer that what is really being requested is the ability to define PQs by an area which isn't circular. Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't everyone who wants counties really want polygonal PQ filtering? Or do people actually want counties for their own sake?

 

If my inference is correct then the right solution, which must surely satisfy everyone, is for Groundspeak to provide polygonal PQ filtering. However, this may not be quick or simple and therefore may never appear.

 

On the other hand, counties - however they're defined and whatever their boundaries - do tend to provide geographical areas which tend to exclude the sort of physical or financial barriers mentioned in this thread. Therefore it seems to me that counties would help those who need this feature whilst not inconveniencing those who don't.

 

So that just leaves the difficulty of what the counties are and where their boundaries are. Tribal associations aside, does it really matter which counties or boundaries we choose, so long as they're meaningful to us? We, on our own, can never resolve the county discussions that have been going on since 1974, nor can we prevent boundaries being changed in the future. What matters is that we define some data which is useful to us. Pick 1974, pick 1996, pick now (perhaps not - unitary authorities are a bit of mess for this purpose ). Other hobbyist organisations, faced with similar questions, have done just that. And no-one outside that organisation need know or care. (No, I can't give examples, but I remember noticing this in previous discussions.)

 

So pick a dataset, send it to Jeremy, get him to enable the State field on a cache page if country=UK, and then we can move on from there. Everything else will just work. The whole change shouldn't take more than ten minutes, and then Jeremy can move on to working on polygonal PQ filtering .

 

Just my 2p. As I say, I don't mind one way or the other .

[+Happy Humphrey]

Sorry, but all the bickering (mostly on the other threads) from people who can't see how they would use it, have got my goat. It's making us look REALLY bad in the eyes of cachers from elsewhere, to say nothing of gate-crashing the other thread. Can't we discuss this like adults and come up with a sensible solution here in "private" and then go to the others as a group and say, "This is what we want"?

 

Rant over... Feeling slightly better now...

 

B.

B,

IMO, forums like this are designed for people to discuss topics of interest. If someone posts an idea but doesn't explain the purpose, they can expect questions. If they aren't clear in their answers, they can expect further questions from the puzzled onlookers: sometimes this leads to the exploration of alternatives, which may not have been the original intention of the thread. I don't think that we should apologise for asking such questions, however.

 

There's a convention on the UK forum that we don't discuss things too deeply, as Brits tend to be more sensitive than the average and get offended easily. But read through some of the main forum discussions and you'll see much more heavyweight debating on the most trivial of points!

 

Back on topic (sorry), I think that Alan White has summarised it nicely, and it remains for someone to submit the "official" list of regions/counties for the UK.

 

HH

[Edgemaster]

I should add that all UK counties (the set at www.itsnotaboutthenumbers.com) is now in the spreadsheet of proposed international states.

 

Polygons are likely not to be used. Cache owners will probably have to set the county on existing (and forced on new) listings.

 

If anyone's interested, it's here: http://www.inlinea.biz/geocaching/countrylist.xls

[+Flyfishermanbob]

If you look at the Countries list, one of the fundamental issues has been overlooked , i.e the need to create 4 countries ....England ;Northern Ireland;Scotland and Wales.... and not a generic UK

 

 

Otherwise as has been mentioned,searches which arent "county" specific can pick up other countries...France / IOM/ Northern Ireland.

[+Bambi&Thumper]

Sorry, but all the bickering (mostly on the other threads) from people who can't see how they would use it, have got my goat. It's making us look REALLY bad in the eyes of cachers from elsewhere, to say nothing of gate-crashing the other thread. Can't we discuss this like adults and come up with a sensible solution here in "private" and then go to the others as a group and say, "This is what we want"?

 

Rant over... Feeling slightly better now...

 

B.

B,

IMO, forums like this are designed for people to discuss topics of interest. If someone posts an idea but doesn't explain the purpose, they can expect questions. If they aren't clear in their answers, they can expect further questions from the puzzled onlookers: sometimes this leads to the exploration of alternatives, which may not have been the original intention of the thread. I don't think that we should apologise for asking such questions, however.

 

There's a convention on the UK forum that we don't discuss things too deeply, as Brits tend to be more sensitive than the average and get offended easily. But read through some of the main forum discussions and you'll see much more heavyweight debating on the most trivial of points!

 

Back on topic (sorry), I think that Alan White has summarised it nicely, and it remains for someone to submit the "official" list of regions/counties for the UK.

 

HH

 

Sorry, had a very bad week.

 

I agree with you mostly, but some of the "furiners" were obviously getting a bit fed up, particularly because they wanted their counties included and felt the "UK bickering" might put off TPTB. Also, as you say, we have a reputation for being more civilised than our US buddies, but I think that's a good thing and airing our dirty linen dents our good reputation. IMHO, this is where to discuss the counties (or not) and not where it bores everyone else to tears!

 

As I said, I'm not certain that we would use this particular functionality, but it's possible that we might use it to set up our PQs, by area rather than date I suppose.

 

Meanwhile, what about this official list? Do we really want counties or can we come up with a set of sensible boundaries that would split the country up nicely and call them regions? I'm thinking of rivers, mountain ranges, and maybe motoways as possible borders (I mean, anyone who's spent much time in parts of North Yorkshire will know what a scary border the A1 is... ). Seriously, what do you think?

 

Other than that, do we really need to separate the UK out into its separate "countries"? I mean we are one land mass with the same parliament and currency and you don't need passports to cross the border - yet! I think separate countries would be more trouble than it's worth, but I'm happy to be corrected...

 

B.

[+dino-irl]

....I mean we are one land mass with the same parliament....

You're forgetting Northern Ireland and the devolved parliaments

 

[+Flyfishermanbob]

 

Other than that, do we really need to separate the UK out into its separate "countries"? I mean we are one land mass with the same parliament and currency and you don't need passports to cross the border - yet! I think separate countries would be more trouble than it's worth, but I'm happy to be corrected...

 

B.

 

Using that argument ...you could dispense with France Italy Spain etc...same land mass / currency freedom to cross borders and arguably controlling parliament....hey they've got unique regions so problem solved....they can search by regions.

 

Just a joke.... but I'm still mystified why Jersey / IOM /Gibraltar all merit the ability to have unique identities, yet we in the UK are "grouped"......

 

slainge Bob

 

edited for sp.

Edited January 25, 2007 by Flyfishermanbob