This is a post I made in the senate with regards to technical capability. The senate hasn't yet finished the debate, but I thought you might find this interesting.
This is the ACTUAL policy from Parks NSW.
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/resou ... eocach.pdf
The summary is on this webpage.
http://www.environment.nsw.gov.au/polic ... policy.htm
The summary does NOT accurately reflect the policy in one key point.
Paragraph 9.
Geocaching is not permitted in protected areas managed by the NPWS.
I have put in bold the key word in that sentence.
The data we have covers what we believe to be areas managed by NSW P&WS (QLD further below). This is ALL areas managed by PW&S NOT just
protected areas. We cannot differentiate between a zone that is managed by P&WS and one that is deemed
protected.
This discussion about Parks Victoria may shed some further light on the question of managed vs. protected.
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... 13#p141513
Interesting quote:
Parks Victoria's interim policy requires all that all geocaches have written authorisation from Parks Victoria.
Geocaches may be permitted in parks and reserves, which are not managed under the National Parks Act (such as You Yangs RP), and where the placement does not conflict with management objectives.
National Parks Act parks are treated differently to the rest of Parks Victoria parks. I would suggest quite strongly that
protected areas under NSW P&WS operated under the same concept. i.e. Caches in parks are probably OK, but protected areas are banned.
Another post to read.
http://forum.geocaching.com.au/viewtopi ... 82#p141682
Interesting quote:
Specifically the issue PV has is with areas under the National Parks Act. The NPA (which only covers National Parks in Victoria) excludes any activity in these areas which may have a detrimental impact on the flora, fauna and geology of the area. So this is not specific to geocaching, but is covered under the National Parks Act.
I would assume that protected vs. managed for NSW P&WS is the same.
Geocaching is not permitted in
protected areas managed by the NPWS.
The quality of data that we have is insufficient for an outright "not permitted" listing of a cache. I believe that it is sufficient for a "strongly worded warning" and the hider or finder can check and make their own determination as to whether the cache is in an area managed or protected.
Now we come to Queensland. We have a shape file for Queensland that is being massaged to create zones. Again, the data is not certain to be only National and State Parks in Queensland. There is a lot of data (54MB of kml file) and a lot of zones. 11,573 actually. It is very unclear as to whether the data covers ONLY NP and SP, but an initial check seems to indicate it contains other boundary data as well. Whether we can extract only SP and NP data is yet to be seen, but again, I would not put 100% faith in either the massage / cull process or the source data as being the "be all and end all" for Queensland.
So for Queensland, we have the same issue over quality and accuracy of data to enact an automated "not permitted" decision.
The more I look into this, the more I feel that outright "not permitting" the listing of caches in banned zones based on the data we have is not technically feasible. We have enough confidence for a "warning" as they can be checked by the hider / finder, but as an automated process, this is not a suitable approach.
This essentially leaves us in a technical position where our intent would be to strongly discourage people from hiding and finding caches in zones that may be deemed to be "borderline", but we should not use the data to "ban" the listings.
I am certain that should policy come into play in other states, the same problems will occur.
Papa Bear_Left knows how much the NZ government gives out "public data" vs. Australia. If we were in NZ we would have good comfort in the data being available and updated. In Australia we are forced to find data by searching the vastness of the internet and picking up bits and pieces as we come across them. This is a piss poor method of identifying data under which to "ban" listings.
I understand that people will be voting with their moral compass. Technically neither CraigRat nor I can place a hand on our hearts and say that we have confidence in the ability of the site to enact the result.
It may be a result, that regardless of the senate vote, we may not be able to technically achieve the result if the vote was to "not list".
Remember, this is not a decision, but is information to help transparency and the technical limitations we face.