RE: [Az-Geocaching] Problems with location based identifier

Yup, I agree. (Believe it or not, by contradicting my own thoughts) I
guess my point was that I believe that perhaps one character of the new code
could be reserved for SOME type of identifier to help you quickly learn
something about it. The state/country example was weak, I just wanted to
get everyone thinking along these lines to see if anything else came to
mind.

To help understand my thought, consider this: I don't know how many times I
was driving, saw a waypoint pop up on my screen, stopped for fun to see
what it was... After searching around for a bit I got disappointed, then
returned to the Internet only to find out that it was a locationless or
"puzzle" based cache that did not exist there. A simple character in the
wapyoint number would have alerted me to this before I considered stopping.
Just a thought.

TheWebbman
Webb Pickersgill
-----Original Message-----
From: az-geocaching-admin@listserv.azgeocaching.com
[mailto:az-geocaching-admin@listserv.azgeocaching.com]On Behalf Of
ken@highpointer.com
Sent: Monday, March 17, 2003 12:49 PM
To: listserv@azgeocaching.com
Subject: [Az-Geocaching] Problems with location based identifier


Another possibility (location based identifier): Reserve the first 2
characters as location indicators: AZ, PA, TX (states) and CH, IL, DU, RU
(countries, etc.) This does however unfairly limit the number of caches
within a state or country. As we all know, AZ would probably need more
numbers than RI. ;)

I don't think that will work very well. You have correctly pointed out
that large states may use up their allotment of numbers relatively soon,
while small states may never use up their allotment of numbers. For
example, Colorado used to assign license plate numbers based on the county
that the vehicle was registered in, but abandoned that policy because urban
counties have populations over 100,000 and thus were using up their allotted
numbers, whereas some rural counties have under 1,000 people and thus used
only a small percentage of their alloted characters.

Also, some countries codes you listed are the same as states - IL is also
the abbreviation for Illinois, for example.

Ken (a.k.a. Highpointer)