Need help with writing a challenge checker

[+Brasgordel]

Hello

 

Can somebody help me whit a checker:

North East South West

 

As where you must have found,

your most eastern cache east of the prime meridian,

your most western cache west of the  prime meridian,

your most Northern cache north of the equator,

and your most southern cache  south of the equator.

 

Thx

 

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Brasgordel

[+Rikitan]

Hello, Project-gc.com has it's own dedicated forum for challenge cache checker requests. You'll get better and faster response there. 

Secondly, your idea doesn't fit with current guidelines for challenge caches. Conditions can be limited to geographic areas like countries, regions and counties only. If you'll have the checker created, it likely won't be published anyway.. 

[+funkymunkyzone]

What exactly is your challenge idea?

 

Seems to me anyone with 4+ cache finds has found their most northern, southern, eastern and western cache finds...

 

[+arisoft]

50 minutes ago, funkymunkyzone said:

What exactly is your challenge idea?

 

cache east of the prime meridian,

cache west of the  prime meridian,

cache north of the equator,

cache  south of the equator.

 

These are geographical polygons (hemispheres) and not allowed as Rikitan explained.

[+palmetto]

If you want a checker for an existing published Challenge, something that predates April 2015 ( the rules in effect now would not allow hemispheres)  go to the project gc checker forums, and ask there. In your request, offer the GC Code of the published cache, so writers understand that the challenge already exists. 

Help Center article on this,

Challenge checkers

 

For a current new challenge, a way to do this is to ask the seeker to have 1 find in each of 4 country lists, divided into   NW NE SW SE (equivalent to the the hemispheres).   Your cache page provides a complete list of countries, or geographic units as recognized by Geocaching.com, with each assigned to 1 of the 4 lists. You can see that complete list on a PQ form, or the Search page.  This allows your challenge to be defined by units that are now allowed by the Challenge rules.

 

The cache page would be long and not work quite the way you want;  for any region that crosses the Prime Meridian or the Equator, you'd simply have to put it in one list or the other.  I might have a find in Brazil north of the Equator, but likely, you'd assign it to your SW list, so that find would satisfy the SW section.  

 

This is how continent challenges are handled now. A complete list of all Geocaching.com  geographic areas, assigned by the cache owner  to a continent.  And likewise, it's messy in some ways . Is a find in Turkey a find in Europe or Asia?  Cache owner makes that decision, checker is supposed to match.

 

 

 

Edited December 18, 2018 by palmetto

[+NYPaddleCacher]

1 hour ago, arisoft said:

 

cache east of the prime meridian,

cache west of the  prime meridian,

cache north of the equator,

cache  south of the equator.

 

These are geographical polygons (hemispheres) and not allowed as Rikitan explained.

 

While the four caches would be in four hemispheres I would assume that the challenge would be that  the total number of miles/kms would exceed some specified distance.  The GS Statistics page calculates these distances.  I don't know if this would pass but the challenge could be that the furthest N/S/E/W caches were in four different countries.  I would easily qualify for that one as my furthest N/S/E/W are on four different continents (well, the furthest north is in Iceland).

[+Gaslarm]

Something like this cache? https://coord.info/GC4RGNA

Checker: https://project-gc.com/Challenges/GC4RGNA/16872

[+Brasgordel]

Gaslarm 

 

That is the one possibility

 

but more like 1 cache 

Whith coördinaat  starts whit N....

a cahce start whit S....

a cache starting .... .... ... E ............

and a cache starting ... ... ... W ...............

 

THX

Edited December 19, 2018 by Brasgordel

[+arisoft]

This is what you write into your cache description. See the example https://coord.info/GC4RGNA  again.

 

But remember, that reviewers will not publish this kind of challenges any more. If you have an existing challenge you can clone the checker for your cache.

Edited December 19, 2018 by arisoft

[+Bear and Ragged]

On 12/18/2018 at 9:59 AM, funkymunkyzone said:

What exactly is your challenge idea?

 

Seems to me anyone with 4+ cache finds has found their most northern, southern, eastern and western cache finds...

 

 

Depending on any other requirements, I only need two cache finds...

First cache is my furthest North, and furthest East.

My second find is my furthest South, and furthest West.

 

GSAK has a NSEW extreme as part of the Find Stats macro, and there is an extract to just show the extreme NSEW for a set of filtered caches.

I do my Furthest NSEW cache in the UK for each year, and some years one cache will get two points.

[+Gaslarm]

5 hours ago, arisoft said:

This is what you write into your cache description. See the example https://coord.info/GC4RGNA  again.

 

But remember, that reviewers will not publish this kind of challenges any more. If you have an existing challenge you can clone the checker for your cache.

 

Why cant reviewers approve a challenge like this anymore?

[Keystone]

Because of the listing guideline changes for challenge caches in 2016.  The hemispheres are "user defined" based on coordinates, which is no longer permitted.  See Palmetto's response, above, for a design that complies with the current listing guidelines - a challenge based on permitted geographic regions (countries falling in each "quadrant" of the hemispheres).

[+NYPaddleCacher]

1 hour ago, Keystone said:

Because of the listing guideline changes for challenge caches in 2016.  The hemispheres are "user defined" based on coordinates, which is no longer permitted.  See Palmetto's response, above, for a design that complies with the current listing guidelines - a challenge based on permitted geographic regions (countries falling in each "quadrant" of the hemispheres).

 

I hadn't read Palmetto's response at the time but I suggested the same thing regarding using "countries" within each quadrant.   I kind of like that idea, and if I owned a challenge cache like that myself I'd probably gather some statistics in the logs and add something to the listing which displayed the more "popular" countries in each quadrant.   It would be fun to create a challenge cache like that with a final location at a degree confluence (e.g.  N 42.00 W 075.00)

[+TheLimeCat]

4 hours ago, Keystone said:

Because of the listing guideline changes for challenge caches in 2016.  The hemispheres are "user defined" based on coordinates, which is no longer permitted.  See Palmetto's response, above, for a design that complies with the current listing guidelines - a challenge based on permitted geographic regions (countries falling in each "quadrant" of the hemispheres).

Why is this no longer permitted? Maybe I haven't read deep enough into the whole challenge cache update, but this seems to be a very arbitrary rule. I know I am straying from the point, but these user-defined area challenges are some of my favorite to work for. In this case, this user is being forced to compile a list of countries in order to separate them into categories which will only very loosely fit the original intention, all to avoid defining four quadrants on a map which are already represented in the coordinate system of every geocache on earth. What problem is being avoided by creating these extra hurdles?

[+niraD]

7 minutes ago, TheLimeCat said:

Why is this no longer permitted?

Apparently, Groundspeak decided that restricting location-based challenges to "countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent)" was a good idea.

 

7 minutes ago, TheLimeCat said:

Maybe I haven't read deep enough into the whole challenge cache update, but this seems to be a very arbitrary rule. I know I am straying from the point, but these user-defined area challenges are some of my favorite to work for. In this case, this user is being forced to compile a list of countries in order to separate them into categories which will only very loosely fit the original intention, all to avoid defining four quadrants on a map which are already represented in the coordinate system of every geocache on earth. What problem is being avoided by creating these extra hurdles?

You aren't the only one who thinks restricting location-based challenges in this way is silly. One of the few challenges I'm paying attention to is based on USGS quadrangles, which is banned by this same rule.

[Keystone]

15 minutes ago, TheLimeCat said:

What problem is being avoided by creating these extra hurdles?

 

Problems are avoided for challenge checker writers, for volunteer reviewers and for the appeals team at Geocaching HQ.  The pre-moratorium challenge cache guidelines were strained to the breaking point.  Rather than eliminating the category entirely, the post-moratorium guidelines restrict acceptable challenges in many ways, thereby lessening workload and dispute frequency (for both challenge cache owners and challenge cache finders).

 

As a player who loves challenge caches (having found more than 200 of them), I don't like some of the restrictions, either, but I'd rather have "some" new challenge caches than "no" new challenge caches.  As a reviewer, the restrictions help greatly in reducing stress with disputes, and reducing the time it takes to review challenge caches.

[+Lynx Humble]

6 hours ago, niraD said:

Apparently, Groundspeak decided that restricting location-based challenges to "countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent)" was a good idea.

 

You aren't the only one who thinks restricting location-based challenges in this way is silly. One of the few challenges I'm paying attention to is based on USGS quadrangles, which is banned by this same rule.

 

Me too I found it silly that a GPS-based game can't have challenge about long/lat coordinates.

 

My favorite challenge this year was the Nova Scotian version of the Delorme challenge that wouldn't be allowed with the current guidelines...

[+Gaslarm]

11 hours ago, Keystone said:

Because of the listing guideline changes for challenge caches in 2016.  The hemispheres are "user defined" based on coordinates, which is no longer permitted.  See Palmetto's response, above, for a design that complies with the current listing guidelines - a challenge based on permitted geographic regions (countries falling in each "quadrant" of the hemispheres).

 

Too bad. I like this type of challenge.

Thanks for the info Keystone.

 

[+NYPaddleCacher]

12 hours ago, niraD said:

Apparently, Groundspeak decided that restricting location-based challenges to "countries, states/provinces, counties (or their local equivalent)" was a good idea.

 

You aren't the only one who thinks restricting location-based challenges in this way is silly. One of the few challenges I'm paying attention to is based on USGS quadrangles, which is banned by this same rule.

 

In the case of USGS quadrangles,   global quadrants, or a polygon defined by coordinate confluences they are all available using published data from some authoritative source.  Even polygons for zip codes or area codes come from some authoritative data source.  User defined polygons are a different story as they could be completely arbitrary with an infinite number of possibilities.  If it were me, I'd all some regions beyond countries, states/provinces and countries (or their equivalents) but only if the data was available from some list of authoritative sources, but would draw the line before user created polygons.