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D.C. caches for challenges


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Hello all

 

I have a question, I did check out the forums but my search provided no answers. I apologize in advance if it is a stupid question and please excuse my ignorance on the topic as I’m not from the USA. 

 

For challenge caches that ask for the ‘oldest Cache per state/province’ ... does D.C. count?  A lot of times I see it being used and lists will often include the oldest cache in D.C. but I’m wondering if it’s counted when completing challenges. 

 

Also, for example, “4 states in a day”... is DC used?? 

 

Thanks in advance 

 

NurseB33

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14 minutes ago, NurseB33 said:

Hello all

 

I have a question, I did check out the forums but my search provided no answers. I apologize in advance if it is a stupid question and please excuse my ignorance on the topic as I’m not from the USA. 

 

For challenge caches that ask for the ‘oldest Cache per state/province’ ... does D.C. count?  A lot of times I see it being used and lists will often include the oldest cache in D.C. but I’m wondering if it’s counted when completing challenges. 

 

Also, for example, “4 states in a day”... is DC used?? 

 

Thanks in advance 

 

NurseB33

So weird. My response disappeared.

You have asked a great question! I'm surprised that the challenge cache page doesn't address this likely question.

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Normally the cache page will specify whether the District of Columbia can be used for a given "state" challenge. I have seen COs allow D.C. and some that do not. If the cache page does not specifically say you can use D.C. I would contact the CO before you get denied a find. I specifically remember a "4 states in a day" challenge that excluded D.C., it is NOT a state after all.

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I would imagine that some challenge caches would treat DC like a state, others would treat DC like part of Maryland, and others would treat DC like a non-state region. As others have said, check the challenge cache that you're interested in, or check with its owner.

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12 hours ago, Michaelcycle said:

Normally the cache page will specify whether the District of Columbia can be used for a given "state" challenge. I have seen COs allow D.C. and some that do not. If the cache page does not specifically say you can use D.C. I would contact the CO before you get denied a find. I specifically remember a "4 states in a day" challenge that excluded D.C., it is NOT a state after all.

 

However,  Groundspeak treats the District of Columbia like a state.   It has a StateID, just like Virginia or Maryland or any of the other 50 states.  On the statistics pages it's counted as a State on the maps page.   Outside of geocaching in might not be called a state but in the context of geocaching, it is treated exactly the same as any other state.  

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If the description doesn't mention D.C. explicitly, I'd assume the CO really meant states and not any parts of the US outside any state. In that case, I'd try not use D.C. unless I was really wanted that find, couldn't satisfy the challenge with some other state, and had evidence that D.C. would be allowed, such previous finders using D.C. and their finds being accepted.

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18 hours ago, NurseB33 said:

For challenge caches that ask for the ‘oldest Cache per state/province’ ... does D.C. count?

 

Maybe.  It's not a state, it's a District, because the framers of the Constitution had to create a framework to bind together independent-minded states and did not want to give any particular state that much political clout.  But it's listed like a state for statistics on geocaching.com, and it has its own "state" souvenir.  So there's certainly a valid argument to be made.

 

As above, likely depends on the cache/owner.  Newer challenges will include a checker,  and then once you've found a DC cache (GCDE1, for example, the oldest active in the District) you can run the checker and see if it counted or not.

 

US territories, on the other hand, I would not expect to count as a "state."  

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7 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

 Doesn't matter.   Within the context of geocaching, Washington DC is a state.  The web site and app treat Washington DC exactly the same way as any of the 50 U.S. States.

Challenges aren't written by "geocaching". They're written by people. If the CO means "the fifty states", then it's the fifty states. It makes no difference what kind of shortcuts Groundspeak has used to handle the parts of the USA which are not in states.

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On 6/25/2019 at 3:03 PM, dprovan said:

Challenges aren't written by "geocaching". They're written by people. If the CO means "the fifty states", then it's the fifty states. It makes no difference what kind of shortcuts Groundspeak has used to handle the parts of the USA which are not in states.

 

Challenges are written by people within on the context of geocaching.   It makes more sense to use definitions of words or concepts as defined by the games definitions rather than some external definition.  Outside the context of geocaching a "cache" is a physical hiding place, or a  storage area in memory or on disc in a computing device.  A Virtual,  Event,  or Webcam cache doesn't fit into either of those definitions, nor would Groundspeak allow a cache to be published for which the contents of the cache were only accessible in computer memory.   So which definition of cache should we use for geocaching?

 

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6 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

Challenges are written by people within on the context of geocaching.   It makes more sense to use definitions of words or concepts as defined by the games definitions rather than some external definition.  Outside the context of geocaching a "cache" is a physical hiding place, or a  storage area in memory or on disc in a computing device.  A Virtual,  Event,  or Webcam cache doesn't fit into either of those definitions, nor would Groundspeak allow a cache to be published for which the contents of the cache were only accessible in computer memory.   So which definition of cache should we use for geocaching?

I would argue that geocaching's special definition of the word "cache" is integral to the game, and everyone playing the game should be familiar with it, but that Groundspeak's special definition of the word "state" is less integral to the game, and I wouldn't expect everyone playing the game (or even everyone creating challenge caches) to be familiar with it.

 

Ultimately, you need to use the definition used by the CO, which may or may not be the same as the one used by some other CO, or by Groundspeak in a non-challenge cache context.

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17 hours ago, niraD said:

I would argue that geocaching's special definition of the word "cache" is integral to the game, and everyone playing the game should be familiar with it, but that Groundspeak's special definition of the word "state" is less integral to the game, and I wouldn't expect everyone playing the game (or even everyone creating challenge caches) to be familiar with it.

 

Ultimately, you need to use the definition used by the CO, which may or may not be the same as the one used by some other CO, or by Groundspeak in a non-challenge cache context.

 

All I need to do is look at the Statistics page, and the map of the U.S., which contains a list of states (and how many caches found in each) to see District of Columbia in the list of "states". 

 

I really doesn't matter how District of Columbia is defined until a CO creates a challenge and won't include it for a qualifying find, but a finder wants to count DC as a state and escalates to appeals after the CO has deleted the found it log.   Only then will we ultimately know whether GC considers DC a state in the context of a geocaching challenge cache. 

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On 6/25/2019 at 3:03 PM, dprovan said:

Challenges aren't written by "geocaching". They're written by people. If the CO means "the fifty states", then it's the fifty states. It makes no difference what kind of shortcuts Groundspeak has used to handle the parts of the USA which are not in states.

 

Challenges are written by people that don't realize that The United State of America is compose of 50 States, 1 Federal District, 5 Organized Territories, and 11 Unorganized Territories (I think).

I have coworkers that don't even know how many states there are.

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4 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

 

All I need to do is look at the Statistics page, and the map of the U.S., which contains a list of states (and how many caches found in each) to see District of Columbia in the list of "states". 

 

I really doesn't matter how District of Columbia is defined until a CO creates a challenge and won't include it for a qualifying find, but a finder wants to count DC as a state and escalates to appeals after the CO has deleted the found it log.   Only then will we ultimately know whether GC considers DC a state in the context of a geocaching challenge cache. 

From the District of Columbia souvenir in my profile:

 

"The capital of the United States is owned by the federal government, and is not a part of any of the states. Its present area is comprised of land seceded from the state of Maryland. "

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Look at the challenge you want to log.

 

For challenges the categories are country (countries and territories as listed with geocaching.com, which leads to 'countries' like Sark), region and county.

 

Depending on country region and county may be different administrative units.

 

For challenge checker purposes project-gc has 51 regions for United States, that is 50 states and DC.

 

So, 50 US 'states' are of category 'region in US', but also DC is of category 'region in US'.

 

It up to the challenge owner which 'regions' count for a certain challenge. For example for GC2YQNJ also DC is allowed, for  GC5H93K the challenge checker excludes DC with 

ExcludedRegions": [
        "District of Columbia"
    ]
Edited by AnnaMoritz
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23 hours ago, niraD said:

would argue that geocaching's special definition of the word "cache" is integral to the game, and everyone playing the game should be familiar with it, but that Groundspeak's special definition of the word "state" is less integral to the game, and I wouldn't expect everyone playing the game (or even everyone creating challenge caches) to be familiar with it.

Even if they know the ins and outs of the geocaching.com's guts, there's no reason for them to care. "State" is a clear word with a specific meaning in American English that we all understand. It's completely irrelevant that geocaching.com redefines it to something else entirely for mechanical reasons. That's kinda like saying a puzzle cache can't use the word "coordinates" to refer to Cartesian coordinates because geocaching says "coordinates" implies GPS.

 

46 minutes ago, GeoElmo6000 said:

Don't challenges have to be checked by a project-gc challenge checker?  So is that the ultimate authority of whether DC can be used for this challenge?

I haven't worked with challenge checkers, but my guess is if you told it to check for "states", you'd end up with all the territories and DC, but you could list the 50 states are restrict the check to just those.

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On 6/28/2019 at 1:57 PM, AnnaMoritz said:

Look at the challenge you want to log.

 

For challenges the categories are country (countries and territories as listed with geocaching.com, which leads to 'countries' like Sark), region and county.

 

Depending on country region and county may be different administrative units.

 

For challenge checker purposes project-gc has 51 regions for United States, that is 50 states and DC.

 

So, 50 US 'states' are of category 'region in US', but also DC is of category 'region in US'.

 

It up to the challenge owner which 'regions' count for a certain challenge. For example for GC2YQNJ also DC is allowed, for  GC5H93K the challenge checker excludes DC with 


ExcludedRegions": [
        "District of Columbia"
    ]

 I tend to use "regions" when referring to Countries, States, Provinces,  Bundeslander, etc.   I don't understand why Sark is categorized as a country (while St. Anne/Alderney isn't) either.

 

I would also tend to go with how the challenge checker is implemented for whether DC is a State or note.  I doesn't matter whether or not you believe it is a State or not, if the challenge checker excludes it as a region, the challenge checker isn't going to give credit for the challenge for a cache found in DC

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