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Since when did Northern Ireland leave the UK?


Staldantes

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Hi All,

 

Not trying to create a political debate, but simply when I was trying to hide a cache in Northern Ireland I first went to the 'United Kingdom' in the pull down menu. Alas & Alac it does not exist in the UK section :blink: ? Explain to me why. I enjoy geocaching, but I don't like some Ego on high to tell me when Norn Iron is thrown out of the UK. For a geography related website, can they get it more wrong (i.e. is Canada included in an North America menu?). So is someone trying to get political in the Geocaching high command, or maybe simple ignorance confused UK with GB ??

 

Am I the only one finding this strange?

 

Alastair.

Edited by Staldantes
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What a silly comment. Northern Ireland is in the United Kingdom, and the article presented by the Canadian Rockies highlights that this is a sensitive issue; all the more reason to stick to the facts where Northern Ireland is in the United Kindgom and passing it of as Ireland is an insult to the many victims of the IRA that have helped defend Northern Ireland as part of the UK. Sensitivity works both ways. Tell this to the families of English, Welsh, and Scottish servicemen that have died there defending such virtues. I didn't want this to get political, but its simple facts and prancing round it like fairies doesn't change that. <_<

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I can understand this is a sensitive issue for you, as it is for many others. It seems that Groundspeak relied heavily on the communities in Ireland and in the United Kingdom when deciding to use geographic designations:

 

This decision was made after input from the UK and Ireland Reviewers, the forum community, and prominent members of the Geocaching Association of Great Britain and Geocaching Ireland, as well as Groundspeak staff

 

My advice would be to approach the Geocaching Association of Great Britain along with Geocaching Ireland and let your feelings be known to them. You may be able to either understand why they supported the database structure as it was implemented, or perhaps you may be able to persuade them to change their minds and bring the concern back to Groundspeak.

 

But either way, I think asking those two local geocaching organizations will probably yield more fruit than what I fear this thread is about to devolve into.

 

ETA: Fix broken quote tag

Edited by addisonbr
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Groundspeak seems to makes its decisions without regard to political fact. Which I find surprising. I ran into this when GS decided to separate St. Pierre et Miquelon from France. I don't think anyone asked the French who consder it to ba an inegral part of France. But, of course, Northern Ireland is a much larger area and larger population. It has been part of the United Kingdom for quite a long time. And despite what GS thinks, it is still part of the United Kingdom. Actually, the proper name is The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That sort of says it all, doesn't it?

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Hi All,

 

Not trying to create a political debate, but simply when I was trying to hide a cache in Northern Ireland I first went to the 'United Kingdom' in the pull down menu. Alas & Alac it does not exist in the UK section :blink: ? Explain to me why. I enjoy geocaching, but I don't like some Ego on high to tell me when Norn Iron is thrown out of the UK. For a geography related website, can they get it more wrong (i.e. is Canada included in an North America menu?). So is someone trying to get political in the Geocaching high command, or maybe simple ignorance confused UK with GB ??

 

Am I the only one finding this strange?

 

Alastair.

 

 

Yes, pretty much... I suppose the question crops up once or twice a year.

 

Geocaching in the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has no need to follow political boundaries. It's a game about hiding stuff at geographical locations regardless of whoever governs that particular country. Your post seeks to bring politics into a game where politics has no relevance. The Irish volunteer cache reviewer reviews for the whole of the island of Ireland without fear or favour.

 

MrsB :)

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Mrs B thanks for your post on the matter, but by removing Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom menu GS does in itself bring politics into question. Are you telling my that a reviewer in either Northern or Southern Scotland cannot equally carry out the role of reviewing my cache. As I initially suggested if you had read the post, if Groundspeak correctly change the use of United Kingdom to Great Britain then all is solved :) , avoiding any political upheaval which unlike you suggest is what I am after. I know that Luxembourg has its own reviewers, should this by shuffled into the Belgian menu for sake of convenience? Think about it.

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The Uk/GB cache reviewing areas are totaly none political.

They ignore many county bounderies and many people feel that their particular town/city is in the wrong zone

 

Ireland (all of Ireland) isn't treated as a different country, just as a different reviewing area

Edited by castagnari
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I understand that your collective in Ireland can be grouped together more easily, but it wasn't long ago that Northern Ireland could be found as either UK or in the Ireland menus (keeping all happy) and requiring no complications. The use of UK is wrongly used if it does not include GB and Northern Ireland. The reason I started this post was because it implies that the UK no longer includes Northern Ireland as it must. So surely Groundspeak should correct this complete inaccuracy and change UK to Great Britain to avoid future confusion and stipulation (then NI can be included as an island). I do not know why Eckington & Lactodorum resigned, but maybe they also believed that the UK cannot be detached on a whim.

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It makes sense to me to be geographically (rather than politically) based, as it is now.

 

If I want to visit Belfast, and do a search for caches in Ireland I'm going to get a list of caches that are accessible during my visit. If NI was included within the rest of the UK then such a search would include many inaccessible caches such as Mull, stranraer etc, and leave out Dundalk, Dublin etc.

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Thanks Sandy for getting into the forum. I understand what you are saying, but the term United Kingdom is used incorrectly and I wanted to address this. This is the purpose of these forums. The wider public use the Groundspeak sites, and surely it is up to the public to decide if something that is incorrect should be corrected. I have no issue with Ulster being used for looking for caches in the island of Ireland, but United Kingdom should not be used without Northern Irelands inclusion. Surely you can acknowledge that Groundspeak are at fault in this. :rolleyes:

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I do understand, yes, but I am being honest when I say that we have no intention of making a change to our 'incorrect' use of the term UK. It is not a matter of assigning fault, but a conscience decision. That you disagree is noted, but we will not be changing this use of the term UK.

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I didn't expect any changes would be made. And at least you admit there is a fault regardless of pointing fingers, which then leads to the question why Groundspeak will not correct a fault if it is known? MrsB states that every year people dislike finding the UK devoid of Northern Ireland, so its not just me. Clearly its a financial issue at Groundspeak, so why remove Northern Ireland from the UK menu in 2008? As you are in the know Sandy, can you explain why this wasn't changed correctly from the start.

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I didn't expect any changes would be made. And at least you admit there is a fault regardless of pointing fingers, which then leads to the question why Groundspeak will not correct a fault if it is known? MrsB states that every year people dislike finding the UK devoid of Northern Ireland, so its not just me. Clearly its a financial issue at Groundspeak, so why remove Northern Ireland from the UK menu in 2008? As you are in the know Sandy, can you explain why this wasn't changed correctly from the start.

 

The 'change' was a decision, so does not need to be corrected. This is not a financial decision, but a decision to divide the UK and Ireland regionally. This has been explained in this thread, as well as in our public article, and is not something we are hiding from. Although there have been some complaints in the past year, and we can see that side of the argument, we are going to maintain the current usage.

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Does GS separate Hawaii into a different geographic region from mainland USA (possibly lumped in with other Pacific islands)? If so, then it is the same situation. I agree it would be a bit confusing to have GB referred to as UK, but not annoyingly so. 'Ireland' is the name of the island, after all, as opposed to 'RoI' and 'UK' which are the political parts, so no problem on the other side.

 

Not too bothered by this, to be honest -- I'd rather go off and crawl through bushes looking for tupperware boxes...

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It seems a little weird to me.... I mean, having it divided into something akin to "New England" versus "Maine" or "Maryland".

 

I can see grouping everything in Ireland as one tidy group. It's pretty handy. But, even as an American, I would expect Northern Ireland to be with England, Wales, and Scotland, and the Republic of Ireland as something separate. It's kind of like grouping Hawaii with the Pacific Islands or grouping Alaska with Canada :blink: I would be rather irritated if Alaska was grouped with Canada, but I could understand that geographically it would be easier.

 

Each side of this has an advantage and disadvantage unfortunately.

Edited by diggingest_dogg616
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It seems a little weird to me.... I mean, having it divided into something akin to "New England" versus "Maine" or "Maryland".

 

Thanks diggingest_dogg616, I was starting to think that MrsB was right, comparing Northern Ireland to an area inside one of the United States is not akin to a soverign state located out of its rightful place. And spot on with Alaska, if I create a website used heavily in the public domain I would not start falsehoods. I mean the very least Sandy could consider is placing Ulster within the United Kingdom menu to indicate that it is within the UK but found in the Ireland group. I know Frasier is from Seattle, but even he would see sense ('blinkers' and 'head in the sand' spring to mind).

 

Apparently there is no flexibility on this within Groundspeak, so thank goodness at least for freedom of speech :P .

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........... I do not know why Eckington & Lactodorum resigned, but maybe they also believed that the UK cannot be detached on a whim.

Hi, I used to be Lactodorum when I was a reviewer. I can assure you that this question was not part of my decision to resign. While I had some fundamental concerns about how Groundspeak was driving Geocaching in the UK, the UK/GB/Norn Iron/Ireland issue was not one of them.

 

You might be interested to know that I am acutely aware of the difference between Great Britain and the United Kingdom and am continually irritated at the inability of organisations to understand what they each mean. However despite that I accept there is much to be said in favour of considering the island of Ireland as a convenient geographical location for Geocaching. After all were I to be a geocacher hunting in Norther Ireland/Ulster near the political border I would probably be more inclined to hunt for a cache just over the border in the Republic of Ireland/Eire than one on the island of Great Britain, even though that would be in the same political country. It is much more convenient to walk or drive a mile or two than to catch a ferry.

 

This game is about hunting tupperware/ammo boxes/film pots and based on physical location, not politics. Please consider the current "confusion" a mere geographical convenience rather than a political statement.

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And if you read though it, and arrive at the present you will find that Groundspeak listened to the advice of an individual (dino-irl) over common sense and decided to depart from political boundaries when it suits, and as mentioned before placing Alaska in a political boundary when it suits. At least they should have the manners to stop sweeping this under the carpet, and 'address' the issue :rolleyes: (proper use of smiley face). 'frostbitex' was perfectly correct in the older thread (a good rant), and this was my earlier point too.

 

monsterbox stated:

Sorry to say so but in my eyes this is an political decision and nothing else ;-) As I said before: I can understand that but please don't tell me something about geographical reasons. In that case the european part of Turkey should be considered being Greece in Geocaching and you easily can find other examples as well. What about Southern Tyrole? Should they be named as Austria just because they speak German?

 

I just understand that some/most of the NI cachers wanted to show they world where they feel to belong to and that Groundspeak agreed with this decision. And this simply is a politician decision and nothing else. You just found some nice explanations why it's geografically easier and convinced all the needed people to get it done that way.

 

So in the end it's not that hard for me to live with this decision (just GSAK stuff), it's just funny as you are the only ones in the whole wide world not having political borders used for your caches.

Again correct, yet Groundspeak are painting over the cracks with non-political sentiments to avoid the issue. Why :surprise: ? even Amberel hits it on the head, so thanks 'The Blorenges' for recovering these points of view. But I am a new fan of monsterbox. <_<

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A suggestion:

 

"Great Britain" and "Ireland" are geographical descriptions of the two largest islands of the British Isles.

 

"United Kingdom [of Great Britain and Northern Ireland]" and "[Republic of] Ireland" are political descriptions.

 

Groundspeak currently divides the British Isles into "United Kingdom" and "Ireland", but includes Northern Ireland within Ireland.

Similarly, the current title of this forum is "United Kingdom and Ireland", and thus implicitly political.

 

Could the description "United Kingdom" be changed to "Great Britain", and thus be purely geographical?

Similarly, could the title of this forum be changed to "Great Britain and Ireland" or even to "British Isles"?

 

(I recognise that the use of the term "Great Britain" might technically exclude some thousands of other islands off the coast of Great Britain)

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The logic for physical location does win for me as an outsider. However I agree that to be truly neutral, physically practical and factual would be better and shouldn't be too hard to achieve.

 

But I also believe that a decision has been made and fits two of the three then that's better than a UK division. This may soon be irrelevant depending on Scotland.

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I too was horrified when this change was introduced. It seemed that Groundspeak was attempting to settle the Irish question without acknowledgment of the several hundred years of history which caused the present situation and without reference to the democratic principle on which the current division is based. The fact that the change came from an organisation based in a country which has long seen Northern Ireland as an occupied area made me even more concerned.

 

That said, I do recognise that the purpose of the "countries" defined by Groundspeak is for convenience of reviewing and for searching in PQs. However, if a website has a listing of countries then users will expect that list to reflect either international standards or common understanding. The reason why this issue keeps - and will keep - arising is because the current list does neither of those. A person looking for Northern Ireland will expect to find either a country of that name or for it to be included in United Kingdom, especially as there are no entries in the list for England, Scotland or Wales.

 

A simple solution, it seems to me, would be for Groundspeak to remove references to United Kingdom and replace it with the constituent countries which Groundspeak intend UK to mean: England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland should then be added. These changes would mean that a person looking to place a cache in Northern Ireland would find the country easily, as would anyone looking for e.g. Wales once they realised that United Kingdom wasn't in the list. Reviewing would continue as now because it would remain based on "state". Most importantly, these changes negate completely any political discussion and therefore surely achieve most effectively Groundspeak's desire to stay out of politics.

 

 

PS: I've just noticed the name of this forum. Another solution would be to remove from the list the countries of "United Kingdom" and "Ireland" and replace them with a single country of "United Kingdom and Ireland". This too removes any ambiguity and suggestion of politics.

 

PPS: It's quite apposite that this debate was started on the day political battle lines were drawn in the secession of Scotland :lol:

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........... I do not know why Eckington & Lactodorum resigned, but maybe they also believed that the UK cannot be detached on a whim.

Hi, I used to be Lactodorum when I was a reviewer. I can assure you that this question was not part of my decision to resign. While I had some fundamental concerns about how Groundspeak was driving Geocaching in the UK, the UK/GB/Norn Iron/Ireland issue was not one of them.

 

 

Ex Eckythunmp here!

 

I associate myself totally with Peter's remarks.

 

My decision to move on from being a reviewer was entirely unrelated to the NI/UK debate - as the G.O.G has stated it was based on a fundamental disagreement with GSP as to the way caching in the UK was being developed. I have stated my own point of view on the evolution of the game both in this forum and elsewhere and do not intend to reiterate..................unless I feel an irresistable urge to do so :o:rolleyes:;)

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A simple solution, it seems to me, would be for Groundspeak to remove references to United Kingdom and replace it with the constituent countries which Groundspeak intend UK to mean: England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland should then be added. These changes would mean that a person looking to place a cache in Northern Ireland would find the country easily, as would anyone looking for e.g. Wales once they realised that United Kingdom wasn't in the list. Reviewing would continue as now because it would remain based on "state". Most importantly, these changes negate completely any political discussion and therefore surely achieve most effectively Groundspeak's desire to stay out of politics.

 

When I was Lactodorum I had several disagreements with Alan, however maybe I have mellowed ;) but I find myself in total agreement with this idea. After all if England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and Ireland can have separate football teams why not let us have similarly geographically convenient caching countries?

 

Although interestingly the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland happily play as a single entity in Rugby :) Yes, I know that later on this year the Olympics will feature a single team representing the United Kingdom but let's face it, the Olympics is all about politics and has been so for years :ph34r:

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I feel that this was in fact summed up in the first post

 

For a geography related website

 

Geography being the key word

 

ge·og·ra·phy   

noun, plural -phies.

1. the science dealing with the areal differentiation of the earth's surface,

as shown in the character, arrangement, and interrelations over the world of such elements as climate, elevation, soil and vegetation,

2. the study of this science.

3. the topographical features of a region, usually of the earth, sometimes of the planets.

 

Nothing to do with polital bounderies

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The Geocaching Association got it right with GA of Great Britain and GA of Ireland, perfect as it does indeed remove politics from this great game (primarily for encouraging the kids to get out of the house in my case). Political boundaries should be done away with, but one rule should be applied to all; with the case of Northern Ireland dino-irl in the older forum discussion states how the mess started, with Groundspeak placing Northern Ireland into two separate menu listings, one with NI in the UK and the other with NI consumed into Ireland.

 

Dublin has withdrawn any territorial claim to NI for some time now so it should never have been listed into an Ireland menu, when it is clear to everyone (except the geography challenged) that NI is an important part of the UK. If I was in the republic and was looking for caches I would equally find caches as if there were no borders. Can anyone tell me if the Geocaching Association members are the same as the collective belonging to Groundspeak?

 

Thanks for all your posts :P

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This time of the year again - time really does go past so quickly

 

I'll try and make this quick , concise and clear .

 

Irish geocachers made a decision that we wanted to be treated as one island .

Like that or not for us it works - we don't care about the politics the ins and the outs - it works for us and we are happy - all we ask is that you respect our decision .

 

See you all again the next time somebody drags this up - bye now .

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This question comes up regularly and the decision makes no more sense to me now than it did when it was made. I don't doubt that there was no political motivation in the decision but it encourages this accusation where using the correct country designation wouldn't. The geographical argument would make sense if this was how Groundspeak classifies other caches but they use political boundaries elsewhere. Haiti and the Dominican Republic seem to coexist on the same island as far as Groundspeak are concerned without the need to merge them into Hispaniola.

 

However, it is possible to correct matters by downloading the caches into GSAK from where you can run a macro to get caches in their correct country, and it will also add UK counties rather than the uncontroversial but completely uninteresting regions used by Groundspeak.

Edited by Pieman
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Hold on, if Beefy is smug in his little bubble, without consideration of the population of Northern Ireland then who am I to raise the question. What you meant to say however is that a select group of reviewers at the time when NI was getting passed around like a hot chestnut, decided amongst themselves that they would instead place NI outside of the correct state boundary to suit themselves :o . I am technically an 'irish' geocacher, and I am not happy with it, like many others. It will continually get 'dragged up' because it is wrong. The last person to bring grasp the nettle was a german, and he didn't get it, the majority of educated Nothern Irish don't get it, no one gets it, apart from the select few that want to defend their own decisions of old (and the apparent arrogance they carry on their shoulders) :anibad: .

Edited by Staldantes
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Even Sandy from Groundspeak stated it was wrong, but was unwilling to change it. Did you get that? All I want to achieve is some semblance towards a true indication within the UK menu that Northern Ireland is instead found within the Ireland menu, simples :rolleyes: .

 

As I started with, when looking for Northern Ireland, the educated would first look to within the UK, but no, so either change this to GB or add one little line of html into the dropdown menu to note that NI is now under Ulster, job done, end of the story, feet up.

 

If we all agree with this, everyone is happy, and no-one will ever drag it up again. Surely even Beefy which yes is in Antrim (or maybe the North of Ireland) can agree with instead of ridiculing people trying to correct the faults (even you Marty, come on !!).

Edited by Staldantes
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A forum is for discussion. After some discussion it seems to me that one or two people are in favour of making a change but many more are content with the staus quo, even if not totally happy. This topic has a habit of being raised every year or so and I doubt it will stop.

 

My suggestion to Standaltes is to accept that his suggestion is not going to be implemented and to get on with enjoying geocaching. After all there are not many "norther Ireland" caches to be found in Spain so the point seems to be moot.

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Hi Niamh, how is a point moot as you put it if it is incorrect? why all the resistance to the logical solution. Most cachers have the as thoughts as me but don't raise the question, the status quo was changed to the present format without considering the wider implications, and all I am asking for is a reference note to solve the problem. How do you stop the question getting raised, fix the problem !! :rolleyes:

 

In Catalunya there is no amalgamation of Andorra into Spain, though if it was truly just geography then it would make sense, but no, it follows state boundaries. And of course I would have raised this question a long time ago if I had been caching more in Ireland. Why should it not be implemented? its a rational point to make :ph34r: , does the CEO (yes of course called Jeremy Irish) have a point to prove to his mates, you have to wonder if it isn't political.

Edited by Staldantes
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At the end of the day it doesn't really matter, of course; but I am happy to hold my hand up and say that I don't get it as I can't see any advantage in, just for Ireland, changing the way Groundspeak deals with islands. The downside is that you will get people complaining from time to time, and I can't see any upside. For instance, if Ireland was split along political boundaries it wouldn't stop you carrying out PQs or other electronic searches on geocaching.com for caches that are on either side of the boundary. I guess there must be an advantage as I don't believe people are just behaving perversely but I would be intersted to know what it is.

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I too was horrified when this change was introduced. It seemed that Groundspeak was attempting to settle the Irish question without acknowledgment of the several hundred years of history which caused the present situation and without reference to the democratic principle on which the current division is based. The fact that the change came from an organisation based in a country which has long seen Northern Ireland as an occupied area made me even more concerned.

 

That said, I do recognise that the purpose of the "countries" defined by Groundspeak is for convenience of reviewing and for searching in PQs. However, if a website has a listing of countries then users will expect that list to reflect either international standards or common understanding. The reason why this issue keeps - and will keep - arising is because the current list does neither of those. A person looking for Northern Ireland will expect to find either a country of that name or for it to be included in United Kingdom, especially as there are no entries in the list for England, Scotland or Wales.

 

A simple solution, it seems to me, would be for Groundspeak to remove references to United Kingdom and replace it with the constituent countries which Groundspeak intend UK to mean: England, Scotland and Wales. Northern Ireland should then be added. These changes would mean that a person looking to place a cache in Northern Ireland would find the country easily, as would anyone looking for e.g. Wales once they realised that United Kingdom wasn't in the list. Reviewing would continue as now because it would remain based on "state". Most importantly, these changes negate completely any political discussion and therefore surely achieve most effectively Groundspeak's desire to stay out of politics.

 

 

PS: I've just noticed the name of this forum. Another solution would be to remove from the list the countries of "United Kingdom" and "Ireland" and replace them with a single country of "United Kingdom and Ireland". This too removes any ambiguity and suggestion of politics.

 

PPS: It's quite apposite that this debate was started on the day political battle lines were drawn in the secession of Scotland :lol:

I totally agree with all of this. Please stop misusing the term 'UK'. Either list the countries separately as 'England, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales' or have one country of 'UK and Ireland.' I think the latter works best.

 

Using the term 'GB' misses out all the smaller islands, so it doesn't work.

 

[edit: I am wrong in that last statement, see correction in ongoing discussion.]

Edited by Fianccetto
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Using the term 'GB' misses out all the smaller islands, so it doesn't work.

That's the second time such a comment has been made in this thread and as the use of GB rather than UK is a possible solution then it needs clarifying. To me, Great Britain does mean all the islands except, of course, IOM & CI. So I have to ask: which islands aren't in GB?

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There are plenty of people in NI who will look at the way NI is not included in the UK and see it as political and not want to have anything to do with Groundspeak or geocaching as a result.

 

So what if people want to publish NI caches as if in an Ireland region, and they can't. When I send a cache for review, I have to select the right region or it doesn't get published. Just as you can't place a cache on the Isle of Man or Jersey or in Gibraltar and say it is in a region of England, Spain or France. Let things be what they are, without making them something they are not.

Edited by Fianccetto
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Using the term 'GB' misses out all the smaller islands, so it doesn't work.

That's the second time such a comment has been made in this thread and as the use of GB rather than UK is a possible solution then it needs clarifying. To me, Great Britain does mean all the islands except, of course, IOM & CI. So I have to ask: which islands aren't in GB?

 

It depends whether you're talking geographically or politically. "Geographically" Great Britain is the one big island of England + Wales + Scotland. "Politically" it also includes all the smaller islands scattered around it... apart from Ireland. (As I understand it.)

 

Oh look, we've gone full circle.

 

MrsB

Edited by The Blorenges
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Using the term 'GB' misses out all the smaller islands, so it doesn't work.

That's the second time such a comment has been made in this thread and as the use of GB rather than UK is a possible solution then it needs clarifying. To me, Great Britain does mean all the islands except, of course, IOM & CI. So I have to ask: which islands aren't in GB?

 

Now I've discovered that the Channel islands and Isle of man are classified as their own country/region, then in fact it does make sense to use the term GB...it would meant that this forum used a different nomenclature, for brevity's sake, but don't see a big problem with that.

 

Using the term 'GB' misses out all the smaller islands, so it doesn't work.

That's the second time such a comment has been made in this thread and as the use of GB rather than UK is a possible solution then it needs clarifying. To me, Great Britain does mean all the islands except, of course, IOM & CI. So I have to ask: which islands aren't in GB?

 

It depends whether you're talking geographically or politically. "Geographically" Great Britain is the one big island of England + Wales + Scotland. "Politically" it also includes all the smaller islands scattered around it... apart from Ireland. (As I understand it.)

 

 

Perhaps that is where my confusion about using the term 'GB' originated. As long as islands such as the Isles of Scilly and the Shetlands, Arran and Lundy and so on can be included as being in GB, I don't much mind whether the terminology came about due to (true) political reasons or not.

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why don't you all get a life and catch yerselves on - its a fecking game (hobby) and it can be fun to get out, meet new people etc.

 

wasting time complaing on the forums aint gonna change damm all except alienate people and isolate yourself.

 

No one suggested that NI was not part of the UK in the first place - its just easier to group the island as a whole for geographical and also for ease of use when it comes to generating PQ's and polygon areas etc used in other apps.

 

Your political views are your own and honestly most reasonably minded people don't give a hoot what side of the fence your on.

 

so lets get this discussion closed and just get out there and play the damm game

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Thing is Malcolm you don't feel alienated by this, but many who do. As Worthies pointed out I am now in Spain, and I shouldn't care less, but wanted to highlight this point for the sake of others. I am proud to call myself an Ulsterman, the same way the as the Scottish and Welsh state their belonging. I want to remove the politics from this game, but in order to do that someone must try and remove this 'fence', and if that sometimes means a bitter word is said to contest the fact it will make it peaceful sailing in the future.

 

Do you understand what forums are about? not everyone wants to talk about who has the most finds in a week, or collected the most geocoins. I love hill walking foremost, and geocaching for me helps to include the family. But I do know that some in Northern Ireland will not like the fact changes were made and it feels to them that NI is in a United Ireland, and will feel like avoiding the game. Everyone must feel welcome, and simply putting Ulster additionally in the UK menu will do this. I hated all the bickering when I was young and its better now, but understand not everyone thinks like you. In essence you are right, but a few small changes need to be made. So insulting others is never the way to achieve your point or squash a discussion, I may have got fired up at times but thats because Groundspeak refuse to even listen to what is being highlighted.

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I wouldn't normally comment on a post which is made in such a tone but as you, inbetween the rhetoric, make some important points then I'll make an exception.

 

wasting time complaing on the forums aint gonna change damm all except alienate people and isolate yourself.

Actually that isn't true. Many things in life are improved because a few people say "hang on, we can do better than this". On a more local level, many of the features we take for granted in geocaching have come about as a result of being discussed on these forums.

 

No one suggested that NI was not part of the UK

That is exactly what the current arrangement suggests. Rather more than merely suggests: it's quite clear that NI is not a part of UK. That is why, regardless of politics, it is confusing.

 

its just easier to group the island as a whole for geographical

I can see that...

 

and also for ease of use when it comes to generating PQ's and polygon areas etc used in other apps.

...but not that. Ireland is well within the radius of a PQ and coverage of the whole island can easily be obtained either by radius or by selecting all the "states". Conversely, it's not possible under the present arrangement to get a PQ of caches in Northern Ireland only.

 

And polygons work on coordinates not country names so aren't affected. In fact, that's the way I handle my own PQs. I set the county, state and country in GSAK using my own polygons. That way I know the data is correct, regardless of how the cache owner has described it.

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