Souvenirs

[+Dizzy_Lizzy_]

So after leaving Australia and getting state/territory souvenirs, I went to Hungary and got a souvenir for the country, I went to France and got a souvenir for the country, I went to England and got a UK souvenir???!!! Why not an England one? I got state separate ones in Australia but UK can't be separated into actual countries?! I wanted to go and get a separate one for Wales.

[+Dizzy_Lizzy_]

I know this might come across as a tantrum... and well... it is!  But it's not fair!

[+on4bam]

Life is not fair

Of the 24 countries I've found caches in I got no souvenir for 7 of them. That doesn't matter as the real souvenir is having been there and sometimes I remember one of the caches too

 

[+Dizzy_Lizzy_]

So not every country has a souvenir?  It's an on-going progress then.

I hope one day England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland get separate ones then

[+on4bam]

34 minutes ago, Dizzy_Lizzy_ said:

So not every country has a souvenir?  It's an on-going progress then.

It is, a few are released every year.

[+Die Nemos]

51 minutes ago, Dizzy_Lizzy_ said:

So not every country has a souvenir?  It's an on-going progress then.

I hope one day England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland get separate ones then

You can find all souvenirs on this page:

Souvenirs

[+Dizzy_Lizzy_]

Thank you every day is a school day.

[+Dizzy_Lizzy_]

It appears the links in the souvenirs list aren't working correctly

[+Die Nemos]

48 minutes ago, Dizzy_Lizzy_ said:

It appears the links in the souvenirs list aren't working correctly

Klick on "1.2. List of souvenirs"

This should open the list

[+hzoi]

Perhaps the next "Where in the World is Signal?" souvenir is going to be based on the UK, and then Wales, Scotland, and England will get their own.

So far these have been ways to introduce country souvenirs for the countries that got individual state souvenirs for the souvenir rollout but hadn't previously had a national souvenir, like Germany and Australia.  Perhaps they'll work it in reverse for Britain (and perhaps will introduce a USA souvenir).  Time will tell.

[+The A-Team]

On ‎1‎/‎11‎/‎2018 at 9:14 AM, hzoi said:

Perhaps the next "Where in the World is Signal?" souvenir is going to be based on the UK, and then Wales, Scotland, and England will get their own.

So far these have been ways to introduce country souvenirs for the countries that got individual state souvenirs for the souvenir rollout but hadn't previously had a national souvenir, like Germany and Australia.  Perhaps they'll work it in reverse for Britain (and perhaps will introduce a USA souvenir).  Time will tell.

There hasn't been one for Australia yet, but I fully expect one will be released on January 26 as part of the WitWiS Australia Day souvenir, based on what happened with the previous Germany and Canada ones. I bet we get another WitWiS at some point this year for the USA, at which point there will be a USA souvenir.

The UK and Ireland are where things get a bit trickier for a couple of reasons:

1. Geocaching.com has always had multiple artificial "regions" for the various constituent countries. For example, England is actually split up into Northwest, Northeast, West Midlands, East Midlands, Eastern, Southwest, Southeast, Southern, London, and Yorkshire. It isn't clear if the souvenir system would be able to handle this in the same way it's handling the Germany and Canada souvenirs, so it may take some work to make it work.
2. Geocaching.com has taken the stance of treating the entire island of Ireland as a single country, so Northern Ireland isn't included as part of the UK as far as the site is concerned. Caches in that region carry the location of "Ulster, Ireland", but there's also a portion of Ulster that is outside of Northern Ireland and those caches have the same "Ulster, Ireland" location. Therefore, there's no way to determine whether a cache found in "Ulster, Ireland" is in Northern Ireland and therefore in the UK, or in the Irish portion of Ulster and therefore in Ireland. Some careful thought would be required to determine how to best handle this. It may be that they'd just stick to the physical island = "Ireland", but there may be some backlash if someone finds a cache in Belfast and gets awarded an "Ireland" souvenir instead of a UK one.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

On 1/11/2018 at 6:48 AM, Dizzy_Lizzy_ said:

So not every country has a souvenir?  It's an on-going progress then.

I hope one day England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland get separate ones then

Yes, it has been an ongoing process.  The first country/region based souvenirs were U.S. states, Canadian provinces, and German bundeslander (the Germany equivalent of a state) in 2010  A few months later GS asked forum users to vote for a souvenir for their country and the Czech republic, Portugal, and a couple of other "won".  After that, about once a year GS would release a handful of country souvenirs, usually in December. They've generally worked down the list of countries, based on the number of caches in the country, but there have been a few exceptions in an attempt to cover more of the globe geographically.  In the last batch, for example, Nambia was added, and compared to many other countries it has few caches, but it added another country on the continent of Africa.  

England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are somewhat unique, but explainable for why they do not have souvenirs.

GS maintains a list of countries, and for many of those countries, the first level administrative region (e.g U.S states, Canadian provinces, Australion territories,) with a unique identifier for each region (countryID, stateID).  The "country" list is derived mostly from the U.N. geopolitical ontology that was created by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N.  It, along with the ISO-3166 standard country list (which mostly matches the UN list) are consider the authoritative standard for  the list of countries in the world. England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland are not recognized as distinct countries on the U.N list nor on the ISO-3166 list, thus GS does not have a unique countryID for them.  Without a countryID, the process for determining whether a specific cache lies in one of those countries becomes a bit more complex and I guess GS hasn't considered worth the effort.

I really don't know what GS uses for it's list of first level administrative regions (stateIDs) but they obviously have something they used for state, provinces and regions in Australia, and Ireland which all have souvenirs.   I suspect they may be using a source such as geonames, that while commonly used, is not an "official" list.  For my own use on a couple of projects I created a dataset with all of the countries on the UN list and their first level administrative region.  I know the person rather well that is responsible for the UN countries list and we've had a discussion about extending the UN countries list to include states, provinces, etc, and she thought it was a good idea but that's about as far as it got.

When GS released the souvenirs for the regions in Ireland, I thought that they should have released a country souvenir for Ireland (which has a country ID), and first level administrative regions for the UK countries (for which they have state IDs). 

A year ago or so, GS create a "Where is Signal?" promotion which created a country souvenir for Germany, the Canada, and it appears that the next one will be for Australia, all countries which all had first level admin region souvenirs but not a souvenir for the entire country. The U.S. should be next, then we'll just have to wait and see which countries are select for the next batch of souvenirs.  

GS has written that they eventually want to have a souvenir available for every country, but with only 5-6 new ones a year it's going to take awhile before we see that happen.

[+hzoi]

17 hours ago, The A-Team said:

There hasn't been one for Australia yet, but I fully expect one will be released on January 26 as part of the WitWiS Australia Day souvenir, based on what happened with the previous Germany and Canada ones. I bet we get another WitWiS at some point this year for the USA, at which point there will be a USA souvenir.

Yeah, I jumped the gun.  But I assume like you there will be.  With perhaps the USA souvenir on July 4th?  Guess we'll see.

[+-CJ-]

"Life is not fair" should be a button somewhere right above or under this text field.

[+SeattleWayne]

What's not fair about not getting a particular souvenir?

[+barefootjeff]

On 1/13/2018 at 7:59 AM, The A-Team said:

There hasn't been one for Australia yet, but I fully expect one will be released on January 26 as part of the WitWiS Australia Day souvenir, based on what happened with the previous Germany and Canada ones. I bet we get another WitWiS at some point this year for the USA, at which point there will be a USA souvenir.

You were right. The Australia one has now appeared.

[+Harry Dolphin]

Plus one for attending an event on: Where in the World is Signal? Australia Day 2018.  Hope to get that tomorrow.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

15 hours ago, Harry Dolphin said:

Plus one for attending an event on: Where in the World is Signal? Australia Day 2018.  Hope to get that tomorrow.

The one of attending an event on Australia Day is only for attending an event anywhere in the world. To get the Australia country souvenir you have to find a cache (or attend an event) in Australia (as it should be).