Country listing Inconsistencies

[+MrARC]

Just returned from a trip into the Caribbean. When I got back and logged my finds, I noticed that I got credit for visiting 2 countries while in St. Kitts and Nevis (which is one country)

 

Some listings are considered located in "Saint Kitts and Nevis" and have a flag attached. Other listings, (within 1km) are considered located in "St Kitts". These have no flag attached.

 

I have to believe this is a bug, and that all caches should be identified as being in Saint Kitts and Nevis, and count for only 1 country.

 

See GC6XNKP and GC5HAVE for examples of "St Kitts" (many more)

See GC669AK and GC1A0KM for examples of "Saint Kitts and Nevis" (many more) <--- this is correct.

 

Also, GC6XNK9 is actually in the dutch part of Sint Maarten. It is listed as being in St. Martin, but should be listed in Netherlands Antilles.

 

Would be nice to see this corrected to be consistent.

Thanks.

[+Isonzo Karst]

It's actually a bit more confused than your post.

country id 142 is Nevis and St Kitts

country id 172 is St Kitts

country id 264 is Saint Kitts and Nevis

 

;-) it's been like this for a while...

[+irisisleuk]

 

Also, GC6XNK9 is actually in the dutch part of Sint Maarten. It is listed as being in St. Martin, but should be listed in Netherlands Antilles.

 

Would be nice to see this corrected to be consistent.

Thanks.

 

It should not be listed as Netherlands Antilles, since the Netherlands Antilles don't exist anymore (as a country). If it was a cache published while Sint Maarten was part of the Antilles I would agree, but this was an event, recently organized by someone who was on a cruise. The country name should have been Sint Maarten, but I think this country isn't in the list on this site (yet), so the next best name is St Martin.

[+MrARC]

 

Also, GC6XNK9 is actually in the dutch part of Sint Maarten. It is listed as being in St. Martin, but should be listed in Netherlands Antilles.

 

Would be nice to see this corrected to be consistent.

Thanks.

 

It should not be listed as Netherlands Antilles, since the Netherlands Antilles don't exist anymore (as a country). If it was a cache published while Sint Maarten was part of the Antilles I would agree, but this was an event, recently organized by someone who was on a cruise. The country name should have been Sint Maarten, but I think this country isn't in the list on this site (yet), so the next best name is St Martin.

 

I would think that it would be reasonable to expect a geography-oriented site to get these right. And you're correct about Netherlands Antilles not being appropriate for the event in Sint Maarten. But it certainly is better than St. Martin, which is an entirely different country.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Also, GC6XNK9 is actually in the dutch part of Sint Maarten. It is listed as being in St. Martin, but should be listed in Netherlands Antilles.

 

Would be nice to see this corrected to be consistent.

Thanks.

 

It should not be listed as Netherlands Antilles, since the Netherlands Antilles don't exist anymore (as a country). If it was a cache published while Sint Maarten was part of the Antilles I would agree, but this was an event, recently organized by someone who was on a cruise. The country name should have been Sint Maarten, but I think this country isn't in the list on this site (yet), so the next best name is St Martin.

 

I would think that it would be reasonable to expect a geography-oriented site to get these right. And you're correct about Netherlands Antilles not being appropriate for the event in Sint Maarten. But it certainly is better than St. Martin, which is an entirely different country.

 

This issue has come up numerous times in the forums. The Netherland Antilles dissolved in 2010. IMHO, any caches with hide dates before that should still use the country ID for Netherland Antilles. After the dissolution, a new county ID should have been created for Sint Maarten, and new caches on the island should use the appropriate country, and Netherland Antilles should not be offered as an option for selecting the country. Perhaps, the fact that Sint Maarten and Saint Martin are both, geographically, on the island of Saint Martin GS has decided to categorize caches on the island geographically rather than the political designations. I don't agree with that but it's a possible explanation.

 

 

[+Arne1]

I have reported this problém in May 2016 - without an effect

[+noncentric]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the Country indicated on the cache page is based on what the CO selects when placing the cache, not based on where the coords are located. Reviewers probably catch most obvious errors during their review process, but may likely miss the nuances of some country designations like those described in this thread.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the Country indicated on the cache page is based on what the CO selects when placing the cache, not based on where the coords are located. Reviewers probably catch most obvious errors during their review process, but may likely miss the nuances of some country designations like those described in this thread.

 

That's a good point. The CO, however, selects the country from a Select list. That select list *still* includes "Netherlands Antilles" and "St. Martin", but not Sint Maarten. Selecting Netherlands Antilles shouldn't even be an option. The Select list also includes "Saint Kitts and Nevis", "Nevis and St Kitts", and "St Kitts". That's just wrong.

When searching for caches it still makes sense to include Netherlands Antilles as a regional search location because there are caches that were placed prior to 2010. It wouldn't take more than a day for someone to go to every cache listing for the countries currently known as Saint Martin, Sint Martin, and Saint Kitts and Nevis and fix the country IDs. We're only talking about 50 caches total.

 

 

[+MrARC]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the Country indicated on the cache page is based on what the CO selects when placing the cache, not based on where the coords are located. Reviewers probably catch most obvious errors during their review process, but may likely miss the nuances of some country designations like those described in this thread.

 

That's a good point. The CO, however, selects the country from a Select list. That select list *still* includes "Netherlands Antilles" and "St. Martin", but not Sint Maarten. Selecting Netherlands Antilles shouldn't even be an option. The Select list also includes "Saint Kitts and Nevis", "Nevis and St Kitts", and "St Kitts". That's just wrong.

When searching for caches it still makes sense to include Netherlands Antilles as a regional search location because there are caches that were placed prior to 2010. It wouldn't take more than a day for someone to go to every cache listing for the countries currently known as Saint Martin, Sint Martin, and Saint Kitts and Nevis and fix the country IDs. We're only talking about 50 caches total.

 

I agree 100% with everything that NYPaddleCacher just wrote. It's as if (s)he was writing what I was thinking, just more directly and succinctly.

 

And I'll add: why isn't the country selection automatic by coordinates? Especially in that region, the reviewers aren't local and will likely not even care.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Sint Maarten and Saint Martin are two different political entities. Both on the same island, but they are not the same. Something needs to be corrected here. Somewhere there is a picture of this dolphin entering Saint Martin from Sint Maarten at the "welcome to France"sign. It may not be part of France now, but it was when I was there. Something needs to be done to correct the political entities. (Okay. I was there long before geocaching...)

[+NYPaddleCacher]

I think it's also worth mentioning that the Country indicated on the cache page is based on what the CO selects when placing the cache, not based on where the coords are located. Reviewers probably catch most obvious errors during their review process, but may likely miss the nuances of some country designations like those described in this thread.

 

That's a good point. The CO, however, selects the country from a Select list. That select list *still* includes "Netherlands Antilles" and "St. Martin", but not Sint Maarten. Selecting Netherlands Antilles shouldn't even be an option. The Select list also includes "Saint Kitts and Nevis", "Nevis and St Kitts", and "St Kitts". That's just wrong.

 

When searching for caches it still makes sense to include Netherlands Antilles as a regional search location because there are caches that were placed prior to 2010. It wouldn't take more than a day for someone to go to every cache listing for the countries currently known as Saint Martin, Sint Martin, and Saint Kitts and Nevis and fix the country IDs. We're only talking about 50 caches total.

 

I agree 100% with everything that NYPaddleCacher just wrote. It's as if (s)he was writing what I was thinking, just more directly and succinctly.

 

And I'll add: why isn't the country selection automatic by coordinates? Especially in that region, the reviewers aren't local and will likely not even care.

 

One possible reason is that in the case of a multi or unknown cache the published coordinates may be one country and the final location in another. There are lots of external services which can be used to return a country or other feature (State, Province) given a set of coordinates. The country name that these services use would also have to be mapped to the internal country or state ID that GS uses. They all typically have limits on how many requests can be made without paying a fee. GS has worked around that for obtaining coordinates given a feature name by periodically changing the service they use and that would mean that they'd have to maintain different mappings for each service.

[+MrARC]

I have submitted the following to Groundspeak:

 

"There seems to be a setup that has and will continue to cause caches to be incorrectly assigned to a country that either doesn't exist anymore or whose name is incomplete in the GC database.

 

Please see (ENTIRE THREAD) at

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=343076&st=0&p=5637311&fromsearch=1entry5637311

 

I started off by listing some of the offending caches and their GC codes, and on February 20, 10:15am, NYPaddleCacher summed up the issue and a potential solution quite nicely, but it's a solution that only GC can do internally or through reviewers.

 

Aside from the fact that finding 2 caches in the SAME country within 500m of one another should not give me credit for having found caches in 2 separate countries, I think that, as a geography-based game, it is incumbent upon geocaching and Groundspeak to get this right.

 

Thanks for doing what you can to rectify this situation."

[+MrARC]

Over a month. No response from GC.

Disappointing.