How to classify a find

[+Dread_Pirate_Bruce]

St. Martin is a Caribbean Island half of which is a Dutch territory and half of which is a French territory. I recently found caches on both halves. Now, I need to know where these should go on my list of places where I've cached.

 

I don't think I should list St. Martin as a country in which I've cached because it is not a separate country. (I listed, caches that I found in Hawaii as caches in the U.S. because Hawaii is a state. And, I listed caches that I found in Barbados, St. Kitts and Jamaica as finds in separate countries because each is an independent country.)

 

But, it seems wrong to treat finds in French St. Martin as finds in France and finds in Dutch St. Martin as finds in Holland.

 

On the other hand, I have finds in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and list them separately rather than as "North America."

 

So, I'm seeing what others think.

 

(Imperialism sure makes things difficult.)

[+Bear and Ragged]

Me?

Not wanting to list them as France/Holland, I'd list it as St. Martin.

 

Or Caribbean Islands.

Edited May 11, 2014 by Bear and Ragged

[+tozainamboku]

(Imperialism sure makes things difficult.)

Geocaching makes things even more difficult. Cache owners set the country (and sometimes state) when they place a cache from a list. Many overseas divisions are listed in geocaching.com.Countries often change names when they become independent, or as in the case of Sint Marteen when the Netherlands Antilles was dissolved and the constituent parts reorganized under different names. It takes GC.com a while to catch up, and sometimes even longer for cache owners to make changes.

 

This is arleady being discussed here

Edited May 11, 2014 by tozainamboku

[+NYPaddleCacher]

St. Martin is a Caribbean Island half of which is a Dutch territory and half of which is a French territory. I recently found caches on both halves. Now, I need to know where these should go on my list of places where I've cached.

 

I don't think I should list St. Martin as a country in which I've cached because it is not a separate country. (I listed, caches that I found in Hawaii as caches in the U.S. because Hawaii is a state. And, I listed caches that I found in Barbados, St. Kitts and Jamaica as finds in separate countries because each is an independent country.)

 

But, it seems wrong to treat finds in French St. Martin as finds in France and finds in Dutch St. Martin as finds in Holland.

 

On the other hand, I have finds in the U.S., Canada and Mexico and list them separately rather than as "North America."

 

So, I'm seeing what others think.

 

(Imperialism sure makes things difficult.)

 

I am not sure what you mean by your list. The St. Martin/Sint Martaan issue has come up many times. If you're maintaining some sort of personal list, I'd list the caches separately as two distinct countries. However, GS maintains an "official" (to GS) of countries/territories and currently Sint Martaan is not specified as a distinct country. Even if you maintain your own list, the list of countries/territories is used to show countries in which you've found a cache (and as a list). I wouldn't list them as France/Holland as the official list includes territories as well as "countries" that mostly coincides with the list of countries/territories recognized by the United Nations. Where is gets confusing is that prior to the split of Netherlands Antilles into St. Martin/Sint Martaan there were caches placed which are listed (and still are) as in Netherlands Antilles, and depending on where you look, the Select list of countries/territories may or may not still include Netherlands Antilles as a country even though Netherlands Antilles official dissovled as a country (as far as governmental recognition goes) in 2010.

[GCEdo]

In my personal list for each cache found I note country and region (first level of country subdivision) where I found them. For both I use ISO defined lists of countries and country subdivisions...

ISO 3166-1 lists countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1

 

ISO 3166-2 standard lists country subdivisions of entities from previous list...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2

 

So using this system I would separately note Sint Maarten and separately Saint Martin, as they are listed as separate entities (countries) in ISO 3166-1 list.

 

Interestingly, GC.com lists Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba each separately as separate country, although they are actually, according to ISO 3166-1, one entity called "Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba". Each of them is listed in ISO 3166-2 list as subdivisions (special municipalities) of joint entity.

[+fizzymagic]

St. Martin is a Caribbean Island half of which is a Dutch territory and half of which is a French territory. I recently found caches on both halves. Now, I need to know where these should go on my list of places where I've cached.

 

I ran into this a long time ago.

 

So: first things first. The Dutch half of St Maarten used to be a part of the Netherlands Antilles. However (to quote Wikipedia):

 

On 10 October 2010, Sint Maarten became a constituent country (Dutch: Land Sint Maarten) within the Kingdom of the Netherlands, making it a constitutional equal partner with Aruba, Curaçao, and the Netherlands proper.

 

So now it is a country in its own right. Log any caches there as having been found in the country of Sint Maarten.

 

The French half is a "collectivity," which more or less corresponds to a state in the US. So I would probably log caches in it as being from France.

 

The Canary islands presented me a similar conundrum; they are technically a part of Spain, even though they are just west of Africa.

Edited May 11, 2014 by fizzymagic

[+NYPaddleCacher]

In my personal list for each cache found I note country and region (first level of country subdivision) where I found them. For both I use ISO defined lists of countries and country subdivisions...

ISO 3166-1 lists countries, dependent territories, and special areas of geographical interest...

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/ISO_3166-1

 

ISO 3166-2 standard lists country subdivisions of entities from previous list...

http://en.wikipedia....wiki/ISO_3166-2

 

So using this system I would separately note Sint Maarten and separately Saint Martin, as they are listed as separate entities (countries) in ISO 3166-1 list.

 

Interestingly, GC.com lists Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba each separately as separate country, although they are actually, according to ISO 3166-1, one entity called "Bonaire, Sint Eustatius and Saba". Each of them is listed in ISO 3166-2 list as subdivisions (special municipalities) of joint entity.

 

As I suggested above you could use the ISO-3166 standards if you're just creating a personal list somewhere but GS doesn't use the ISO-3166 standard so on the statistics pages any cache that you log is going to be classified according to the country/territory used when the cache was published, and a cache owner can only select from the list of countries/territories available. The UN Geopolitical ontology is another "standard" and it doesn't list St. Martin/Sint Martaan as separate countries either.

 

If you went out today and found this cache, placed in 2009, your statistics page will indicate a find in St. Martin

If you went out today and found this cache, which was placed in 2013, your statistics pages is going to reflect that it is in Netherland Antilles.

 

Both caches are located in what is currently recognized as Sint Martaan.