Region Changes in France

[+RakeInTheCache]

In 2016, France restructured its regions going from 22 to 13.  The values that are given from France for State/Province in the Waymarking interface are now obsolete.  Shouldn't we update them?  Is there a way to make a wholesale remapping of existing waymarks?  How easy is it to make such updates?  I thought I would just bring up the subject.

[+Alfouine]

I sent a message to wayfrog last year about this change, but the problem was they also have to change regions for Geocaching ans it seems to be a big job.

 

Here the reply :

Quote

Here is the answer of Groundspeak:

"Both Geocaching and Waymarking do not use the new regions so unfortunately it will be a larger project. However, I have written it up as a story to review so we will hopefully be able to get some discussion going about it and move it forward for both sites. Patience will be required though, it is not a small change."

Regards, wayfrog

 

[+fi67]

A change like this has its pros and cons. I think it will come, sooner or (more probably) later, because it looks like not well maintained to keep an officially outdated structure and it also looks like the regions database of Waymarking and geocaching are connected.

 

But from the point of view of an experienced user this change will not be a progress. The regions are a piece of information, not very important but still. The geolocation quality of more regions is higher, official ones or not. Why should a user in one corner of a region now be more interested in waymarks and caches in the opposite corner several hundred kilometers away, just because this area is now in the same larger region? I personally would even like to see smaller subdivisions in that field, but I know that it will go into the other direction.

[+elyob]

8 minutes ago, fi67 said:

A change like this has its pros and cons. I think it will come, sooner or (more probably) later, because it looks like not well maintained to keep an officially outdated structure and it also looks like the regions database of Waymarking and geocaching are connected.

 

But from the point of view of an experienced user this change will not be a progress. The regions are a piece of information, not very important but still. The geolocation quality of more regions is higher, official ones or not. Why should a user in one corner of a region now be more interested in waymarks and caches in the opposite corner several hundred kilometers away, just because this area is now in the same larger region? I personally would even like to see smaller subdivisions in that field, but I know that it will go into the other direction.

Out-of-date or current, I too would always prefer the smaller subdivisions.

[+RakeInTheCache]

1 hour ago, fi67 said:

 I personally would even like to see smaller subdivisions in that field, but I know that it will go into the other direction.

 

The problem is that in France, the next smaller subdivision is the department (which I don't think has been reorganized since Napoleon - someone correct me if I'm wrong).  However, I think for many in France, the department is not sufficient to give a clear picture on the general location of the waymark. There are so many departments that many (like me) can't associate all departments with their general location. When looking at lists of waymarks, being able to focus on the region will allow you to know very quickly in which sector of the country it is located.

[+prussel]

it looks like GS are working on it 

[+Alfouine]

They also made the change in Waymarking, but it's not very well done.

If your waymark was in a region that did not change, you keep the region in the waymark otherwise the region disappear and you only have France.

If you go to the country/region statistics page, there is only 6 regions (unchanged regions) instead of 13 and unfortunately they did the change correctly for geocaching....

 

It's a real problem, Wayfrog are you here ?

[+elyob]

Wayfrog, help please.  I too have many waymarks in France that are now without a region.  Presently, there are no region options when I attempt to edit.

[+Alfouine]

7 hours ago, elyob said:

Wayfrog, help please.  I too have many waymarks in France that are now without a region.  Presently, there are no region options when I attempt to edit.

You change the country and comme back to France and regions appear

[+elyob]

Do I now edit the locations in my waymarks or wait for Groundspeak to fix?

[+pmaupin]

Is it going to take all my French waymarks (3500), to change them? where will this happen automatically?

[+Alfouine]

I think the best is to do nothing in case they fix the issue, but do they know the issue and would they want to fix it ??

[+pmaupin]

1 hour ago, Alfouine said:

I think the best is to do nothing in case they fix the issue, but do they know the issue and would they want to fix it ??

That is the question ? Maybe wayfrog could tell us ?

[+elyob]

Groundspeak made the fix themselves for all the geocaches that were effected.

[+Alfouine]

1 minute ago, elyob said:

Groundspeak made the fix themselves for all the geocaches that were effected.

If they remember that Waymarking exists they know how to fix it, i hope Wayfrog is around...

[+RakeInTheCache]

I guess it's my fault for bringing the subject up ;-(

[+Alfouine]

No it was necessary to make this change and i also asked for it, but programmers are not very performing...

Edited July 4, 2018 by Alfouine
error

[+RakeInTheCache]

I'm guessing the data on the old regions is now lost?  What is really a problem is that when editing the waymark,  you cannot fix it because it won't let you input a region. But to be optimistic, maybe this is actually on purpose because the data is not lost and they are just waiting for some free time to get around to the remapping.

[+Alfouine]

As i explained before we can fix it, you edit the waymark, change the country and come back to France and you have the new regions, but only a program could modify all waymarks and i hope Groundspeak made a backup before executing the change.

It could be nice from Wayfrog to just say, OK i have informed Grounspeak about this issue !!!

[+fi67]

Sometimes you have bad luck and your wishes come true. 

A couple of weeks ago I stated here in this thread that I would prefer smaller sub-divisions. Now I come back from holidays and see they did that here in Switzerland. The unofficial ten regions that only appear in some economical statistics and no local knows have gone and now I can choose from the real 26 cantons. So far that's great, but now I have to edit over 5000 waymarks and there is no algorithm to help.

[vulture1957]

boy, this sounds like a real headache!

[wayfrog]

We will see what we can do.

[+Alfouine]

1 hour ago, wayfrog said:

We will see what we can do.

They did it correctly for geocaching, they can do the same for Waymarking

[wayfrog]

France is fixed.

Switzerland will be fixed next week.

[+elyob]

3 minutes ago, wayfrog said:

France is fixed.

Switzerland will be fixed next week.

 

Merci!!!

 

[+elyob]

Some in France are still not fixed, numbering in the hundreds. Perhaps the older France waymarks can only be fixed manually.

 

http://www.Waymarking.com/waymarks/WM52WB_Office_de_Tourisme_Amiens_France

Edited July 27, 2018 by elyob

[+Alfouine]

Strange, all waymarks posted before 1/1/2012 are not fixed, after it's done

 

May be the program is still fixing....

[+elyob]

3 minutes ago, Alfouine said:

Strange, all waymarks posted before 1/1/2012 are not fixed, after it's done

 

May be the program is still fixing....

 

Many waymarks posted before 2012 are fixed but thousands are not.  I don't yet see a pattern.

 

In the early days of posting waymarks in France, was there always an option to choose a region?

 

Edited July 27, 2018 by elyob

[wayfrog]

I will talk with Groundspeak on Monday. 

[+Alfouine]

Thank you

[+fi67]

It looks like the changes in the region settings for France and Switzerland have been corrected very well. I do appreciate that and I did not expect it - at least not for Switzerland. A merger of regions is technically no problem, but to split ten old regions into 26 new ones is a different challenge and depends on additional external data. Well done!

 

But there is a forgotten spot on the web site: The Country/Regions Counts page is now a real mess for these two countries.

[+Alfouine]

Few old french waymarks have no regions specified, but few of them did not change of regions, may be french regions were optional at the beginning of the game.

 

I think (or hope) Country/Regions page is a batch, and not a live result and they forget to run it....

Edited September 4, 2018 by Alfouine
.

[+fi67]

14 hours ago, Alfouine said:

Few old french waymarks have no regions specified, but few of them did not change of regions, may be french regions were optional at the beginning of the game.

 

I think (or hope) Country/Regions page is a batch, and not a live result and they forget to run it....

The regions were not available in the beginning, they were introduced later. Old waymarks with a region were modified after introduction.

 

The numbers on that page look quite current, but I think the region lists for each country are hardcoded or manally configured. They will not change before a developer touches this page.