Success

There is no widely accepted definition of what it means to reach a geohash, and it is generally up to each participant to come to their own definition and decide whether or not they reached a given point.

The core essence is:

• You must get yourself close to the given coordinates.
• You must get there during the given 24 hour time window.

Definitions

Some definitions used by various community members at different points:

• Get close enough that the zone of uncertainty of your GPS device includes the point.
• Get within a few metres of the point.
• Imagine that while you are there, an infinitely tall pole, 1 metre in radius suddenly appears at the exact point. Are you at least 50% confident that you would be able to touch it? (Stevage's definition). (This means that for points in open fields, it is less important to navigate precisely to the exact point, but in places where obstacles block movement, it is more important to ascertain exactly where the point is and to get to it.)

The key test: "If I knew exactly where the point was, would that make it easier or harder to claim success?"

In the early history of geohashing, when a point was deemed inaccessible, "alternative meetup" locations were proposed, and success sometimes claimed by reaching those. This is generally not considered to meet the criteria for "success" these days.

At times, the use of the word "success" has also been contested, which is why terminology such as "coordinates reached" is often used. The argument being that an expedition that does not reach the coordinates might still be a "success" in other ways.

Points to consider

Geohashing was invented before the widespread availability of GPS devices in phones, and the original definition did not assume that people had the means to precisely locate the target point. So there is no real guidance about what counts as success there.

There are some drawbacks to the "zone of uncertainty" method:

• It relegates all responsibility for determining success to a given device. (If your party has multiple devices, do you have to be within the zone of uncertainty of all of them? Just one?)
• It means that the less reliable your device is, the easier it is to get to the point, which feels cheaty.
• Similarly, when GPS conditions are poor (due to active jamming, government policy, weather, or obstructions), success becomes easier.

But it has one big benefit, if not abused: It is simple to apply consistently.

Does it matter how success is defined?

The main point of geohashing is to motivate people to get out of the house and go on adventures to new places. For this purpose, shared definitions of success do not matter.

The only real reason it matters is for the purposes of counting successes between people and for records such as highest, most southerly, etc. But as long as no one is blatantly abusing their given definition it doesn't matter much.