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Ireland country souvenir


purple_team

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On 1/27/2023 at 1:30 PM, Keystone said:

It dosnt explain why there isnt a souvenir. You can have a souvenir for UK but not for Ireland. Both are members of UN and was members of EU, Uk not anymore, so does anyone know an explanation? Ireland IS in the list of countries we have cached in, so someway its recognized ??

Edited by pli
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What exactly was unclear about the Help Center article? What exactly makes the explanation "laughable?"    The article accurately summarizes decisions made by the named stakeholders more than twenty years ago.  That said, the Help Center is updated regularly to make clarifying wording changes.

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14 minutes ago, Keystone said:

Your question is answered in this Help Center article.  The convention on place names in Ireland, based on geography rather than politics, carries over into souvenirs (which are awarded based on the five geographic regions listed here.

image.png.7524d8c86c57ffa1aacfb86d563b3acf.png

 

So Ireland is recognized when counting Countries, but not souvenirs, doesnt make sense.. (Im danish, and as such not influenced by any conflict whatsoever)

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1 hour ago, Keystone said:

What exactly was unclear about the Help Center article? What exactly makes the explanation "laughable?"    The article accurately summarizes decisions made by the named stakeholders more than twenty years ago.  That said, the Help Center is updated regularly to make clarifying wording changes.

The help article just explains a decision that I don't agree upon, and which is in discrepancy with the way countries are counted for as shown above. I can't explain why MNTA thinks its laughable, unapropriate in this context.

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31 minutes ago, pli said:

The help article just explains a decision that I don't agree upon, and which is in discrepancy with the way countries are counted for as shown above. I can't explain why MNTA thinks its laughable, unapropriate in this context.

Doesn't make sense to me either. Either the country Ireland needs to have a souvenir, or the Island as a whole. Either would be okay.

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3 hours ago, pli said:

The help article just explains a decision that I don't agree upon

 

The stakeholders in Ireland and the United Kingdom arrived at the decision.  I doubt that Geocaching HQ would overturn that decision based on souvenir desires of foreign visitors.  Thanks, though, for confirming that it's just the decision with which you disagree, and not the wording of the explanation.

 

Quote

and which is in discrepancy with the way countries are counted for as shown above.

 

You screenshotted the profile page map module, which is provided by Google.  As has been discussed in several other threads, there are discrepancies between Google's module and the method used by Geocaching HQ to define countries.  Ireland is one example of this.

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11 hours ago, Keystone said:

What exactly was unclear about the Help Center article?

IMHO the Help Center article explaines only why 20 years ago (long before any souvenirs where on the table) the locals decided to classify all caches on the irish island as beeing "Ireland" even those located in the region of Ulster which politicaly is part of the UK.

Maybe the article could be expanded that (I guess) because of that decision Ireland only got regional souvenirs (including Ulster) wherase UK only got a single country souvenir and no regional souvenirs.

Edited by Hynz
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1 hour ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Am I understanding correctly that since Ireland and the UK do not have an equivalent to states/provinces (like the USA, Canada, or Australia) that Groundspeak defined "regions" for Souvenir purposes?

What makes you think that the current situation with using geographical names (rather than political names) has anything to do with the UK and Ireland not having "an equivalent to states/provinces"?

 

I get the impression that they could have gone with the political names (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Republic of Ireland), but chose not to based on input from "Volunteer Reviewers from the UK and Ireland, the forum community, prominent members of Geocaching Ireland and the Geocaching Association of Great Britain".

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10 hours ago, niraD said:

What makes you think that the current situation with using geographical names (rather than political names) has anything to do with the UK and Ireland not having "an equivalent to states/provinces"?

 

From the linked FAQ:

"On Geocaching.com, assigned regions in the United Kingdom and Ireland follow non-political, geographical divisions: Regions in Great Britain are assigned geographical names like Southern Scotland or West Midlands. Similarly, regions in Ireland are assigned geographical names like Munster & Ulster."

 

The FAQ doesn't specify what the regions are. From the examples given its more than just five with different names.

 

In countries like the USA, the regional subdivisions Groundspeak uses are the states, which are a level of political subdivision, but to my knowledge no comparable level of political subdivision exists in the UK or Ireland. Hence it seems the geographical regions had to be invented by Groundspeak, or at least that's how I'm understanding the FAQ.

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26 minutes ago, JL_HSTRE said:

The FAQ doesn't specify what the regions are. From the examples given its more than just five with different names.

 

That's because it's an FAQ, the goal of which is to explain something with examples that are easily understandable.  There are plenty of other reference sources to provide a complete list of the Regions for the UK and Ireland.

 

27 minutes ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Hence it seems the geographical regions had to be invented by Groundspeak, or at least that's how I'm understanding the FAQ.

 

No, that's not how it happened.  The Regions were developed by the local community, represented by their geocaching association and their Community Volunteer Reviewers at the time.  You can go to the United Kingdom and Ireland section of these Forums, search just that Forum for the term "regions," and learn all sorts of history by reading the old threads from before 2010.

 

Lots of questions in this thread about a good geocaching community's solution, coming from people outside of that community.

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7 hours ago, Keystone said:

There are plenty of other reference sources to provide a complete list of the Regions for the UK and Ireland.

 

It would have been helpful to link one in the FAQ because I have no idea where I should look to find out.

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2 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

It would have been helpful to link one in the FAQ because I have no idea where I should look to find out.

Even a 4H-club member should find this by using a simple Google search with keyword "Regions for the UK and Ireland":

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Countries_of_the_United_Kingdom
https://www.ciht.org.uk/about-us/uk-nations-regions/
https://public.opendatasoft.com/explore/dataset/georef-united-kingdom-region/
https://www.ons.gov.uk/methodology/geography/ukgeographies/eurostat

 

Happy Learning

Hans

Edited by HHL
typo
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2 hours ago, JL_HSTRE said:

 

It would have been helpful to link one in the FAQ because I have no idea where I should look to find out.

Fwiw, part of the problem is that it's complicated, dependent on purpose, and lots of the divisions keep on changing, splitting, combining and other things.

 

Honestly, it's not really worth worrying too much about. If it helps, I suspect that the Irish ones are based on the four traditional provinces of Ireland with Dublin split off out of Leinster, presumably because of the population dynamic going on there.

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2 hours ago, HHL said:

Even a 4H-club member should find this by using a simple Google search with keyword "Regions for the UK and Ireland":

 

The FAQ suggested to me the regions were selected specific to this purpose, not existing definitions. Regional definitions can also vary. Not everyone in America agrees what constitutes "The South" for example.

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20 minutes ago, JL_HSTRE said:

Regional definitions can also vary. Not everyone in America agrees what constitutes "The South" for example.

As a relatively new resident of East Tennessee, I had to laugh, because this is very true.

 

It's a good thing there isn't a Souvenir for finding a cache in "The South"!

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