Adding Databases

[+abacab]

Howdy. I have the coordinates to over 1500 geodetic control monuments in the Ottawa Canada area. Can anyone tell me how to get this data onto the Groundspeak BM search so I can go benchmarking?

[+Black Dog Trackers]

abacab -

 

This sounds exciting! What you should do is go to the geocaching FAQ page. In that page, near the bottom, there is a paragraph called "I found a benchmark, but it isn't in your database. Why?". At the bottom of that paragraph is a mailto link. Click it and express your offer in the email to Groundspeak, the Geocaching company.

 

You might have to wait a couple days for your reply.

[+BuckBrooke]

Abacab,

With the formatting requirements, I'm not sure that Geocaching will take new benchmarks. I'm pretty sure they would have to have the NGS data and system to import them. If not, there's a lot of work involved in the process.

Has anyone approached Geocaching before? There's a couple of thousand around here, but the data isn't at all similar to an NGS datasheet, and I'm not really jumped to get them into the Geocaching system anyways. It's not a score thing with me.

Has anyone else had luck?

[ArtMan]

Not to be too pessimistic, but given the fact that the extant benchmark database is several years out of date and there is no particular interest on the part of Geocaching.com's corporate headquarters to update the existing file, it seems a pretty good bet that extending the benchmark universe to an entirely new dataset in another country seems a very remote prospect for the forseeable future.

 

I wish that this were otherwise.

 

-ArtMan-

[evenfall]

Artman,

 

Jeremy mentioned in the forum late last year that he would be interested in procuring an NGS update, but the NGS no longer makes a CD-R copy of the database available. The only way to compile Database as of right now is County by County, As online downloads. Hard to say whether Geocaching is up for that ordeal. Maybe there is a work around Who knows.

 

With NGS keeping their data accurate on a full time basis, and geocaching having placeholders for most marks, perhaps the NGS stations which are not in Geocaching would be a better focus. Perhaps purging the PID's which have been removed by NGS from the geocaching database is also a good idea... Anyone want to take that on?

 

As for the ontario stations, I'd have to concur with BDT, Contact Jeremy at Groundspeak and see if he is interested. It really is hard to say whether he would like the idea or not.

 

Nothing Ventured, Nothing gained, So... Venture