A matter of geography

[+tyke]

Russia is the biggest country in Europe. According to the latest missive from Geocaching it has been transposed into Asia. Do Americans think Seattle is in Asia, too?

Edited August 21, 2020 by tyke
Mental typo

[+Wadcutter]

About 1/4 of Russia landmass is in Europe.  About 80% of their population live in European Russia.  The Urals are the dividing line between Europe and Asia. 

Yes the largest country in Europe is Russia by a considerable amount.  European Russia is about 16 times the size of the UK.  If I remember correctly Ukraine is the 2nd largest country in Europe.  European Russia is about 6 or 7 times the size of Ukraine.

Why would anyone think Seattle is in Asia?  The Asia-North American dividing line is about 2000 miles from Seattle in the Bering Strait between Alaska and Russia.

Here's a bit more for your geographical education.  Near Island which is the farthest western island of the Aleutians off the coast of Alaska is barely in Asia.  Since you're worried about Seattle, Near Island is about 2800 miles from Seattle.

Yes it is a matter of geography.  One should study geography so they would know quite a bit of Russian land mass is European and most of their population are European.

Edited August 19, 2020 by Wadcutter

[RuideAlmeida]

1 hour ago, tyke said:

According to the latest missive from Geocaching it has been transposed into Europe.

 

I guess you wanted to write Asia?!...

[+TmdAndGG]

St. Petersburg is technically on the European side of Russia. Why they list is as Asia, I don't know. I would definitely disagree with the recent blog post about that.

Although I don't understand where your going with that whole Seattle in Asia thing. There is a Chinatown there though...

[+SamLowrey]

I still remember reading a Clancy novel and he said something in passing about the challenge of governing a country (USSR at the time) that crossed 11 time zones.  "No," I thought.  Surely he was using hyperbole.  I got out my globe and, it sure looked right.  The land mass stretches east-west quite a ways. 

[+TmdAndGG]

12 hours ago, SamLowrey said:

I still remember reading a Clancy novel and he said something in passing about the challenge of governing a country (USSR at the time) that crossed 11 time zones.  "No," I thought.  Surely he was using hyperbole.  I got out my globe and, it sure looked right.  The land mass stretches east-west quite a ways. 

Yup. Russia is the largest country on earth by size, so it's bound to cross quite a few time zones.

 

 

[+NYPaddleCacher]

2 hours ago, TmdAndGG said:

Yup. Russia is the largest country on earth by size, so it's bound to cross quite a few time zones.

 

 

The FAO/UN geopolitical ontology (countries list) characterizes the  Russian Foundation as part of Europe.   Typically the Groundspeak countries list aligns with the the UN geopolitical countries list and ISO 3166 standard, diverges here.  That may define a geopolitical designation, but there is also the continental boundary.  Russia (and Turkey) are consider trans-continental countries with portions in Europe and Asia.   As Geocaching is a game based on physical location, and not political boundaries it makes more sense to split Russia using the continental boundary.   The only place where continents are recognized are on the maps tab in the statistics page and Groundspeak likely just went with how the map providers defined their maps.   

[+TmdAndGG]

3 hours ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

The FAO/UN geopolitical ontology (countries list) characterizes the  Russian Foundation as part of Europe.   Typically the Groundspeak countries list aligns with the the UN geopolitical countries list and ISO 3166 standard, diverges here.  That may define a geopolitical designation, but there is also the continental boundary.  Russia (and Turkey) are consider trans-continental countries with portions in Europe and Asia.   As Geocaching is a game based on physical location, and not political boundaries it makes more sense to split Russia using the continental boundary.   The only place where continents are recognized are on the maps tab in the statistics page and Groundspeak likely just went with how the map providers defined their maps.   

So... How does this have anything to do with the size of Russia? Thanks

[+colleda]

23 hours ago, SamLowrey said:

I still remember reading a Clancy novel and he said something in passing about the challenge of governing a country (USSR at the time) that crossed 11 time zones.  "No," I thought.  Surely he was using hyperbole.  I got out my globe and, it sure looked right.  The land mass stretches east-west quite a ways. 

I can testify to that. On a Trans Siberian rail tour we had to remember to reset our clocks/watches/phones etc almost every night. Once we got to China it was one change only across all of China.

[+SamLowrey]

4 minutes ago, colleda said:

I can testify to that. On a Trans Siberian rail tour we had to remember to reset our clocks/watches/phones etc almost every night. Once we got to China it was one change only across all of China.

Yeah, well, China doesn't abide by time zones - all in one.  That's quite an experience you had!  When was that?

Edited August 20, 2020 by SamLowrey

[+colleda]

1 minute ago, SamLowrey said:

Yeah, well, China doesn't abide by time zones - all in one.  That's quite an experience you had!

Yes, a great experience. Would do it again. I was chatting with a German lady on the train and she had done the trip 12 times! (It was a German train and tour company). The worst part was finding geocaching about a year after we did it.

[+SamLowrey]

2 hours ago, colleda said:

The worst part was finding geocaching about a year after we did it.

Ha ha!  I felt that one!

[+NYPaddleCacher]

17 hours ago, TmdAndGG said:

So... How does this have anything to do with the size of Russia? Thanks

Nothing.  That's not what the thread is about.  

[+TmdAndGG]

1 hour ago, NYPaddleCacher said:

Nothing.  That's not what the thread is about.  

You quoted me,  so I figured your post had something to do with what I said, but apparently not.

[+ecanderson]

On 8/19/2020 at 8:55 AM, NYPaddleCacher said:

The only place where continents are recognized are on the maps tab in the statistics page and Groundspeak likely just went with how the map providers defined their maps.   

Then there are the 'multi-continent' challenge caches, where it can also matter.

[+MNTA]

5 hours ago, ecanderson said:

Then there are the 'multi-continent' challenge caches, where it can also matter.

 

Checkers can be flawed. I have had to provide my list of qualifiers by hand several times.

 

As for geography. What about finding a cache in Northern Ireland? Hmmm United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but is listed as Ulster, Ireland. Crown dependencies get it correct like Isle of Man, Hong Kong and Taiwan are listed by themselves. Just saying.

 

At least with Russia there is no continent souvinir,  the article does bother me maybe they will correct it.

[+NYPaddleCacher]

10 hours ago, MNTA said:

 

Checkers can be flawed. I have had to provide my list of qualifiers by hand several times.

 

As for geography. What about finding a cache in Northern Ireland? Hmmm United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland but is listed as Ulster, Ireland. Crown dependencies get it correct like Isle of Man, Hong Kong and Taiwan are listed by themselves. Just saying.

 

At least with Russia there is no continent souvinir,  the article does bother me maybe they will correct it.

 

Checkers depend on an authoritative source of data.   GS has allowed region based challenges for countries, states, and counties (even though they don't maintain county information for each cache).   Checking for the country or state for a cache is easy because the authoritative source of data is the geocache data (available in the GPX file or through the API).   Counties affiliation can be derived using reverse geocoding (send the lat/long coords to a service and it will return county data).   The FAO/UN geopolitical ontology has Europe as the parent continent for Russia while other data sources might have Russia as in Europe and Asia.  

 

The Northern Ireland/United Kingdom issue has been explained many times and there's even a webpage which explains why it's included as part of Ireland.  Essentially, GS decided to follow non-political geographical regions rather than a political division.  Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England are also not officially recognized as distinct countries be either the FAO/UN geopolitical ontology or the ISO-3166 standard.