Challenge Cache Geographic Restrictions

[+Goodgulf]

Is a county the smallest geographic region that can be used for a Challenge Cache? I am planning a Cache based on the tour of a famous band. To log it you would need to find a cache in each of the cities that the band performed in. However, the guidelines seem to suggest that a county is the smallest geographic designation that can be used. Though not ideal,  not a problem per se,  though there is one location in Virginia that is not in a county - a so called  "Independent City". Curious how that would be handled if counties are indeed the smallest geographic region allowed.  

 

Thanks,

GG

[+Goldenwattle]

I can't answer you, but I did one challenge, that involved finding a cache in every state and territory in Australia in one year. But that was published in 2014, likely before the new rules. A 'county' is a VERY small area, and not everywhere has counties, or at least uses that word. In Australia we have shires, which are small, but most people wouldn't know where they started and ended.

[Keystone]

Counties are the smallest region.  Virginia independent cities are equivalent because they are not part of a county.  Another example is Baltimore City and Baltimore County in Maryland.

[+Goldenwattle]

40 minutes ago, Keystone said:

Counties are the smallest region.  Virginia independent cities are equivalent because they are not part of a county.  Another example is Baltimore City and Baltimore County in Maryland.

So, as Australia doesn't have counties, is shire used? Then not all places have shires either. The territory I live in doesn't. The whole territory is the smallest local region.

[+Goodgulf]

Guidelines say counties or the local equivalent. I assume that your local reviewer knows the regional geographic equivalent (aka Shire, Parish, Borough,) etc.

 

BTW - got  a good friend in Melbourne. Spent a month enjoying down under in the early 90's. Plan on heading back next April. Looking forward to it.

 

Cheers

GG

[+barefootjeff]

52 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

So, as Australia doesn't have counties, is shire used? Then not all places have shires either. The territory I live in doesn't. The whole territory is the smallest local region.

 

It's local government areas in Australia. If you go into the regional filters in most of the project-gc statistics pages, you can see the list of them in the third column:

 

[+Goldenwattle]

3 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

 

It's local government areas in Australia. If you go into the regional filters in most of the project-gc statistics pages, you can see the list of them in the third column:

 

I live in the ACT. I don't believe there are any smaller areas, unless electoral areas are used, or suburbs, which would be VERY limiting.

[+barefootjeff]

2 minutes ago, Goldenwattle said:

I live in the ACT. I don't believe there are any smaller areas, unless electoral areas are used, or suburbs, which would be VERY limiting.

 

Looking at porject-gc, it appears the ACT only has one "county":

 

 

Since they're the ones that make the challenge checkers, I guess they have the final say on what "counties" are in each area.

[+Team Christiansen]

59 minutes ago, barefootjeff said:

Looking at porject-gc, it appears the ACT only has one "county":

That's funny, Project-GC shows the same thing.

[+arisoft]

5 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

So, as Australia doesn't have counties, is shire used? Then not all places have shires either. The territory I live in doesn't. The whole territory is the smallest local region.

 

Australia has two level of "regions" you can use for challenges.

 

For example you have finds form " Australia New South Wales " which is a larger region and from these smaller regions inside the larger one:

 

Australia New South Wales Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Yass Valley (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Upper Lachlan Shire (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Goulburn Mulwaree (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Wingecarribee (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Penrith (C)(1)
Australia New South Wales Hilltops (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Cowra (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Narrandera (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Murrumbidgee (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Berrigan (A)(1)

 

 

[+Team Canary]

3 hours ago, arisoft said:

 

Australia has two level of "regions" you can use for challenges.

 

For example you have finds form " Australia New South Wales " which is a larger region and from these smaller regions inside the larger one:

 

Australia New South Wales Queanbeyan-Palerang Regional (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Yass Valley (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Upper Lachlan Shire (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Goulburn Mulwaree (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Wingecarribee (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Penrith (C)(1)
Australia New South Wales Hilltops (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Cowra (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Narrandera (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Murrumbidgee (A)(1)
Australia New South Wales Berrigan (A)(1)

 

 

A shame our local reviewer won’t allow cache based on council boundaries as they changed in 2016, therefore in his opinion all previous finds are time limited. I fail to understand this logic. 

Edited August 16, 2018 by Team Canary

[+MNTA]

10. Source of Criteria Challenge cache criteria may be based upon these geographic areas: countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent).

 

Sounds like the reviewer may be incorrect here.

[+Team Christiansen]

1 minute ago, MNTA said:

Sounds like the reviewer may be incorrect here.

Time to appeal?

[+MNTA]

More ammunition for you. Counties/equivalent are more interesting in my opinion when your states are large.

 

Projerct-GC has under your profile 171/544 counties in austrailia.

 

I also ran your profile on my challenge to find a Top10 Favorite cache in 50 different counties. You qualify!

 

[Team Canary](https://www.geocaching.com/profile/?u=Team%20Canary) has used [Project-GC](https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC7R26B/35398 "Project-GC Challenge Checker") to see if they qualified for this challenge and they did.

Adelaide (C)(4) (#1♥271): [GC2H363](https://coord.info/GC2H363) Vision of Light (2014-04-19)
Albany (C)(5) (#4♥51): [GC576](https://coord.info/GC576) Albany Quarantine (2018-06-21)
Alice Springs (T)(7) (#1♥95): [GC46N4E](https://coord.info/GC46N4E) Overwatch #1 (Cache # 2,000,000) (2017-04-14)
Augusta-Margaret River (S)(5) (#4♥24): [GC6ACQV](https://coord.info/GC6ACQV) Next Cache Antarctica  (2018-06-21)
Ballarat (C)(2) (Archived #5♥70): [GC3720](https://coord.info/GC3720) On The Run (2014-08-03)
Balranald (A)(1) (#2♥5): [GC4NGMN](https://coord.info/GC4NGMN) GiGi (2017-04-22)

[+hzoi]

2 hours ago, Team Canary said:

A shame our local reviewer won’t allow cache based on council boundaries as they changed in 2016, therefore in his opinion all previous finds are time limited. I fail to understand this logic. 

 

That seems odd.  I would think that if councils are in, they're in, regardless of redrawing.  I can see perhaps requiring a cache owner to build in leeway for a cache that was found when it was in one council but is now in another, but denying it outright doesn't seem in accordance with the guidelines.  But, I don't know all the facts, so I'm just spitballing here.

 

It does remind me a little of the first challenge cache I did, which required finds in each current German Landkreis (county) that now exists where the old German region Kurpfalz used to be - but since that's based on current counties, I'd think it would still pass muster even under the current rules.

 

[+colleda]

19 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

I can't answer you, but I did one challenge, that involved finding a cache in every state and territory in Australia in one year. But that was published in 2014, likely before the new rules. A 'county' is a VERY small area, and not everywhere has counties, or at least uses that word. In Australia we have shires, which are small, but most people wouldn't know where they started and ended.

NSW has counties. I live in the suburb of Belmont, city of Lake Macquarie, County of Northumberland. Its not generally known unless you've been involved in conveyancing or have read older land title documents.

[+Team Canary]

6 hours ago, Team Christiansen said:

Time to appeal?

The couple making the cache I believe are in the process. They we’re upset by the response and asked for advice. I told them exactly what you told me and sent them bits of the guidelines. The sticking point is the change of boundaries. 

Edited August 16, 2018 by Team Canary
Typos

[+MNTA]

2 hours ago, Team Canary said:

The couple making the cache I believe are in the process. They we’re upset by the response and asked for advice. I told them exactly what you told me and sent them bits of the guidelines. The sticking point is the change of boundaries. 

Governments can change things at anytime. Project-GC has and continues to update the boundaries as they change with some obvious lag. Heck California almost got to vote on splitting into 3 states this year does this mean state boundaries should not be used either?  The theory I read is that challenges would have to adapt to the latest boundaries, and any previous finds are grandfathered in. 

[+Goldenwattle]

3 hours ago, colleda said:

NSW has counties. I live in the suburb of Belmont, city of Lake Macquarie, County of Northumberland. Its not generally known unless you've been involved in conveyancing or have read older land title documents.

Interesting. From Wikipedia these quotes, " Counties in Australia have no administrative or political function, unlike those in England, the United States or Canada. Australia instead uses local government areas, including shires, districts, councils and municipalities according to the state, as the second-level subdivision. "

" Counties have since gone out of use in Australia, and are rarely used or even known by most of the population today. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_administrative_divisions_of_Australia

I had never heard of Australia having counties, and not all of it does. I live in the ACT and here I am familiar with sections and blocks for blocks of land. But yes, according to the article and map, NSW has counties.

 

[+colleda]

5 hours ago, Goldenwattle said:

Interesting. From Wikipedia these quotes, " Counties in Australia have no administrative or political function, unlike those in England, the United States or Canada. Australia instead uses local government areas, including shires, districts, councils and municipalities according to the state, as the second-level subdivision. "

" Counties have since gone out of use in Australia, and are rarely used or even known by most of the population today. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_administrative_divisions_of_Australia

I had never heard of Australia having counties, and not all of it does. I live in the ACT and here I am familiar with sections and blocks for blocks of land. But yes, according to the article and map, NSW has counties.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lands_administrative_divisions_of_New_South_Wales#/media/File:New_South_Wales_cadastral_divisions.png

[+NYPaddleCacher]

Currently every new challenge cache submitted for review must include an automated challenge checker.  For geographic based challenges the checker must be able to look at a users found it (or attended) list of caches to determine if it contains the necessary criteria for meeting the challenge.  For a challenge based on countries or states or their equivalent (provinces, territories, German bundeslander) the cache listing contains that information (using a countryID or stateID).  However,  geocache data does not include an identifier for the county (or an equivalent), so the challenge checker has to use the lat/long coordinates and use a 3rd party reverse geocoding service.  Given a set of lat/long coordinates, return a list of place names.  That depends on an authoritative dataset containing boundary information (typically represented as a "shape file").  If county, shires, councils, etc. are redrawn a new dataset with updated boundaries needs to be published before a reverse geocoding services can return accurate information.  That can take some time.  Even country/state locations data can take time to get updated.  In 2010 Netherland Antilles broke up into several distinct countries, but only very recently did GS update their data to recognize that the island of Saint Martin is now two different countries.  

[+STNolan]

On 8/15/2018 at 5:34 PM, Keystone said:

Counties are the smallest region.  Virginia independent cities are equivalent because they are not part of a county.  Another example is Baltimore City and Baltimore County in Maryland.

 

An interesting point of fact; the new Challenge Cache Guidelines also place a restriction the other way -> you can't have too large of an area. See the interesting case of GC6N632 - The Bi-Polar Challenge, which only lasted 24 hours prior to being archived. Reviewer interpretation there: "Upon further reflection and consultation, I've been notified that the premise for this Challenge is basically a User Defined Polygon (i.e. inclusive of the following guidance: mapping polygons, radius, latitude/longitude, etc.). Since I don't see a way forward to salvage this idea with the above clarification, I am forced to Archive the Listing in accordance with the Guidelines."

Just an interesting observation.

[+arisoft]

20 minutes ago, STNolan said:

An interesting point of fact; the new Challenge Cache Guidelines also place a restriction the other way -> you can't have too large of an area. See the interesting case of GC6N632 - The Bi-Polar Challenge, which only lasted 24 hours prior to being archived.

 

In this case there are definitely user defined fixed polygons. The size is not the problem here. What we know is that latitude and longitude part of coordinates are not allowed to be the direct criteria for challenge but elevation coordinate is allowed even though it defines the contour line which is a polygon as the arctic circle was in the archived challenge. It is just decided by the HQ this way.