Talk:Origin geohash achievement

The Achievements page talks of visiting "the geohash in the graticule you were born in for the day on which you were born". Does "day on which you were born" mean the specific decades-ago day on which my birth occurred - effectively giving me a single, static point in space that I can amble over to at my leisure at some future point? Or am I supposed to interpret it as the date on which I was born - one day per year, giving me a randomly-selected location to aim for on the other side of the country? --Youhas 19:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

"This can be achieved by visiting the geohash in the graticule you were born in for the day on which you were born. Which would be pretty crazy." I interpret this to mean that you visit the point at your leisure, and the point is the one in the graticule you were born in on the day you were born. As if you went geohashing the same day you were born, but are doing it later. If you were to give birth at a hash, your offspring would automatically achieve this achievement.

I originally thought it meant that you go back to the point you were born on a specific day, but then you'd probably have to visit a delivery room, which may be occupied, and it doesn't really have much to do with geohashing anyway. -- Moose Hole 20:01, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I am sure this is the one date on which you were born, as opposed to the date on which you celebrated some the anniversary of that date. -Robyn 23:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Naming conventions

We were having a discussion about this in #geohashing, moving it here to make it more accessible.

The problem was, if you do a retro meetup, should you name the page with the date you went, or the date of the original coords? Similarly, how should you categorise the page and photos.

My personal opinion is the date should be the date you went. You can display the actual coords using the map tool. Also, there should be no Category:Meetup in XXXX-XX-XX tag for the page or photos. Everything should be tagged Category:Retro meetup. Note that you can remove the automatically added "Meetup in XXXX-XX-XX" tag from the expedition page by adding "retro = 1" to the template.

My opinion is based on me being too lazy to create category pages for every retro date :) --joannac 00:23, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer the name of the page being the date of the coordinates. One reason is that a clash with another expedition on the same date would matter less. If you take the date you went, it can happen that there are several expeditions on the same date in the same graticule with different coordinates which would mess up the map and everything. If the page is named after the coordinates day, the only thing that could be messed up is the "retro" flag if there was a non-retro and a retro expedition to the same place - which is very unlikely.

About the pictures, I'd suggest to put them all into the Retro Meetup category like the expedition page and in no date bound category. --Ekorren 00:30, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Ah, good point, I hadn't thought of that. I don't mind as long as it's consistent, and doesn't require me having to create heaps of Category pages. Anyone else want to add a opinion? --joannac 00:37, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for alerting me to this one, Joanne. I feel strongly about it. I do not want the retro geohashes being logged as, e.g. "Meetup on 1965-12-30" and for three reasons.

• One) It is inaccurate. It was not a meetup on that date.
• Two) Retro hashes will eventually clash with real geohashes. E.g. someone who got married last year decides to do a retro wedding hash next year. They can mess up Last Man Standing, and have a name-clash with an expedition that really took place on that date. Saying "which is very unlikely" is an extremely poor way to set up a naming scheme. The number of very unlikely things geohashers have done in just seven months is quite astonishing, and I have no doubt many more lie ahead.
• Three) It is a maintenance issue to manage categories and other aspects of the wiki infrastructure required to properly support one expedition that claims to have happened in 1965 but didn't really.

Nor is it appropriate to name the retro expedition page after the date it was conducted. The string 2008-12-30 49 -123 is a coordinate referring to a very specific place and date. Nothing else should be tagged with those coordinates. And the same argument for point Two above applies.

Retro hashes should be named according to the date they apply to, that is the date you would enter into the peeron app in order to get the correct coordinates. The categories should be Meetup in LAT LONG, Retro meetup, and a category relating to the achievement, e.g. Origin reached. The last needs some cleaning up. -Robyn 23:02, 30 December 2008 (UTC)

Perhaps 'Retro Coordinates Reached' ? That would apply to Origin and other retro types... --Thomcat 14:42, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Well, of course it may (and will) happen that there are retro and right-day-expeditions to the same coordinates, and what we are talking about here is also how to handle them. As for now, they would go into the same file, as do several independent expeditions on the same day. I think this would be acceptable, but the categories need to be fixed manually if that happens - so that the mixed page is in both the date and retro categories (just like a page can be in both Coordinates reached and Coordinates not reached if several people tried but not all succeeded). I expect that to work fine (for usual values of fine) if it's explained in a manual page. What we were talking about in the IRC was to create just that manual page which explains how to deal with retro expedition reports. Several people volunteered to create a page, but we decided to put the thing up for discussion first to ensure that the rules set there are the right ones.

About the category naming for coordinates reached: We already have Category:Failed - Incorrect date. I believe that was intended to be used for retro expeditions. A Retro Coordinates Reached category would IMHO be nice though. Different categories for each and every way to pick a date like Origin coordinates reached wouldn't really be practicable. There are lots of different reasons for retro expeditions, most are not achievement bound and still cool. E.g. some people picked the nearest retro coordinates to their home to visit, some plan to try a retro globalhash some time or visit the 2005 coordinates from the original comic. --Ekorren 18:11, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

By "the same file" you mean on the same page? So that a retro hash that reaches the same coordinates as an earlier correct date expedition should update the existing page with the details of the later hash? I can accept that, especially with the Failed - Incorrect Date tag, but I still object to the Meetup on 1965-12-09 tag. -Robyn 18:39, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Yes, I mean on the same page. There isn't any possibility to avoid that except if we would introduce an own naming scheme for retro expeditions, and as they go to the same coordinates I don't think it's a problem at all. It's just something we need to keep in mind to be prepared. I also think we all agree that the Meetup on 1965-12-09 tag shouldn't go into a retro page but the Retro meetup tag instead.

Another connected thought: There has been at least one inverse retro meetup - i.e.: The coordinates were visited on an earlier date than the right one. Do we need another name for that? Or just call them retro with a negative offset? (I'd prefer the latter - for practical reasons) ;-)

I tried to summarize the thoughts from this two months old discussion and build a ruleset out of it. A draft is up for discussion here: Retro Expedition. Please visit and leave comments. --Ekorren 18:07, 4 March 2009 (UTC)

Achievements for retro expeditions?

I did a retro expedition while the "how do we name it" discussion was going on and now I wonder what I can do with it. Is it possible to take ribbons (except the dedicated retro ribbons) for retro expeditions? Most achievements (Saturday 4pm meetup, midnight) will/should probably only be available on the correct day (else nobody will go there on time), but the "basic locations", "single challenges" and "getting there" categories from the achievements page should be okay(?). I especially wonder about

• minesweeper / graticule hopper progress?
• regional geohash?
• frozen geohash?
• virgin geohash? Has already been taken for 2 origin expeditions and would be nice to know for future travels.

The graticule hopper page states "on the assigned day" so that would be a no, but the others are open for discussion. - Danatar 13:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Actually I think they aren't at all only "open for discussion", just the creators didn't expect anyone to apply them to retro locations. There isn't really a need to explicitely forbid retro hashes in most achievements anyway, as retro hashes always count as Coordinates not reached. So an origin hash definitely can't earn you a virgin graticule achievement as the rules are now.

It would also be way too easy to get most achievements from retro locations. With almost 30.000 locations to choose from, all of these achievements would be reduced to finding the most convenient date, as opposed to taking chances when they come. Even if you restrict it to "since publication of the algorithm", it will be virtually impossible to do a decent journey without hitting a retro point after two or three years.

My personal opinion is that retro expeditions may be some fun if you can't do the real thing, but choosing the location to your needs is just the opposite of what geohashing is about. This shouldn't be encouraged, and never count into achievements. Except, of course, those achievements specifically designed for retro hashing, with single very special locations.

To say it in wikipedia style:

I oppose regular achievements or consolation prizes for retro hashes. There's no achievement in it if you do it right. And it totally spoils it for everyone else. -- relet 16:44, 5 January 2009 (UTC)

Special cases

Should there be a special achievement for those rare theoretical cases where someone does this and it isn't a retrohash? I.e. when they're zero? Maybe a special achievement for arriving before birth on their birthday? I admit this is a little silly, but it's substantially more achievable than the Bill Gates achievement. McKay (talk) 18:22, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't think there should be an extra achievement, since this one already covers it. As a bonus, you also get the Youngest Geohash! :-) --Fippe (talk) 22:37, 4 November 2021 (UTC)