I also just realized/remembered that the Seek App uses monthly ‘Challenges’ to earn personal badges - there is no other competitor immediately visible.
That being said, however, as a translator I preferred another term for these task, so for the German version I converted it to a ‘Mission’.
And having been a CNC organizer myself in previous years, I tried to emphasize this personal aspect of the CNC, plus the mission to find species in urban environments (taking the rather puristic approach of focusing on the city-aspect) when advertising or explaining the meaning of the CNC
(yes, my colleagues from Graz took a different, but nevertheless reasonable approach…)
Yes. Not being a native Spanish speaker, I can’t judge whether that term implies competition or just difficulty. I agree with @carnifex that “challenge” in English means something different than “competition.” @tiwane said (maybe it was on another thread? We now have so many threads about this same topic, I am mixing them up) that he spoke to a participant who referred to other participants as “contestants;” “contest” also seems different than “challenge.” All this aside, it is not going to matter what words you use as long as the umbrella project and the CNC website continue to display teams in the order of biggest numbers to smallest. As I am sure @sbrobeson would agree, as long as there is a top rank to reach, people are going to want to reach it.
I agree – there is technically a difference between the two terms, and some people will be more used to the distinction. Perhaps I should say that functionally, a “challenge” where cities are pitted against each other for top place on a leaderboard is more like the definition of “competition” that you are familiar with. I’m certain that the CNC is intended more like the “challenge” in the sense that you recognise, but the added aspect of being like an international tournament with top billing awarded to the city with the most observations (even if faked) tends to lead to problems that we might associate more with a “competition” regardless…