AIDA Results Register

[cebaztian]

A few thoughts of mine.

/ It is quite understandable that AIDA board wants to have this discussion for members only.

/ Problem is Aida forum is dead. Even if you ask a responsible in aida a question you sometimes get no response in the aida forum.

/ I think we can assume that Aida board reads relevant threads in the deeperblue, because it is here where freediving is discussed. If they claim to have the right to shut there ears to all these discussions here I would question their presence on the board.

/ It is not the first time the board simply has choosen not to respond to an offer from an aida member. If the idea reaches a person that does not want it to happen, the idea just dies, gets lost, I presume.

/ Remember the power in Aida lies in the assembly. Any vote there is LAW.

/ I just organized a comp with about 100 performances. Thats 200 euros to Aida. Thats no chicken shit. Results delivered in excell, not that hard to handle I imagine.

/ I as an organizer will most likely stick to my own InList, registrations e t c. I do the job, I take the responsability, I want the control. Never forget... It is PRIVATE persons that organize comps.

Sebastian

 

[trux]

As for those people who cannot recover their lost passwords to their AIDA forum accounts - please keep your patience, and do not create new accounts. I've got information from Jonas Andersson, who is the administrator of the AIDA website, that there is indeed some problem with the mail server and/or forum settings, and that the emails are not leaving the system. It is being worked on, and hopefully should be resolved soon. I'll have the information as soon as fixed, so will post here once it is done.

 

[trux]

OK, so Jonas just fixed the lost password emails, so you can now recover them if it was your problem. He is now looking at the problem with restricted access to some of the subforums.

 

[trux]

OK, Chrismar and Ericvrp are now enabled as National AIDA members. If there are others among you who cannot access the subforum and are National AIDA members, just drop me a PM, or post here.

 

[chrismar]

Cheers, will look into it tomorrow.

 

[laminar]

Umm. Okay. So what about the central issue? What happened to the ranking list?

 

[trux]

Umm. Okay. So what about the central issue? What happened to the ranking list?

On Bills request the discussion was moved over to AIDA's forum. He voiced his view there, but since it was his wish to discuss it in the closed forum, I am not sure if I am allowed to copy his posts here. You better view it there:

AIDA International

Well, at least I post my own summary:

AIDA received some applications for the Result Officer position, and will appoint it shortly (no date was specified though). The officer will then start entering the competition data into the database manually. Automated system, such as Freedive Central, won't be implemented: Bill claims that using Freedive Central is out of any question because there is conflict of interests (do not ask me why). He claims Simo (Jome) will do the necessary programming. I am afraid he is mistaken - as you can see from Jome's comments in this thread, he has no intentions, and no time for building any such system. Until now we heard no schedule for hiring the Result Officer, or for the past 2009 (and 2008) data to be completed. And of course, there is no schedule for developing the automated registration and ranking system, because there is currently no such plan. Bill did not answer whether opening the source code for allowing external help is a possibility, so I guess he is not inclined to support it, otherwise he would already use the offer, and give the green light.

So let's hope that at least the Results Officer will manage to enter all the past competitions without too many mistakes, and as soon as possible.

 

[jome]

Hi, I can and will make bug fixes to the current system, and maybe some minor enhancements.

Time and energy for a major rewrite is currently not likely in short term.

Current status with the ranking system is that it just needs someone to enter the results. The interface is a bit clumsy, but it does work.

 

[trux]

Current status with the ranking system is that it just needs someone to enter the results. The interface is a bit clumsy, but it does work.

Yes, and all this while since 3 or 4 years there is already system that does not require any manual data entry on the side of AIDA, and avoids duplicate records, misspelling, typos, and other errors, and delivers the results instantly at no cost. I find the logic of solving the problem really strange. Instead of accepting a free offer of a complete automated system, AIDA prefers spending almost 1500€ per year for a person who will have to type the data manually. Errors and delays are unavoidable. This is indeed beyond my comprehension. Unbelievable. Shame on the narrow-mindedness at AIDA. And I do not mean you, Jome - you did excellent job, and I understand your stand.

 

[trux]

PS: OK, let's forget Freedive Central for the moment (it is too frustrating to speak about it right now) - but what about opening the source code of the current ranking that we discussed earlier. I still see a good potential for improvements. We could also write import functions for Excel tables, and for Freedive Central results - that would greatly facilitate the work of the Result Officer.

 

[trux]

I wanted to check if there is something new with the official AIDA ranking, and see that the AIDA-International website is down. I am getting just the message "Service Unavailable" when trying to access http://www.aida-international.org/

Well, the Ranking is actually on a different domain, AIDA Freediving Results Register, and although that one seems to work, there are no data at all. Not even those that Jome entered long time ago.

Well, since I cannot post on the official AIDA forum, I thought I'd try asking here whether someone here knows what's going on

 

[apneaboy]

Its happened recently, i went on it a day or so ago and was impressed with the links to Jomes site.

It seems your requests did not fall on deaf ears, well done to everyone involved.

Minor blip i would imagine

 

[trux]

Its happened recently, i went on it a day or so ago and was impressed with the links to Jomes site.

It seems your requests did not fall on deaf ears, well done to everyone involved.

Well, Jome's Result Register was linked from AIDA-International since very long time. In fact before I ever started this thread. And that was also not the point of my suggestions here. However, the progress with completing the data for 2008 and 2009, and the reluctance to solve the situation properly is more of a concern.

Minor blip i would imagine

Yes, I guess too, but on the other hand, since my APNEA.cz bot checks the AIDA server regularly, I know that similar dropouts are above average. I wonder if there is anyone monitoring the webserver at all. And seeing that the AIDA forum is filled with porn and spam since several weeks, and that the Result Register went blank, I wonder whether the server is not completely abandoned now. Disputes between AIDA officials and the team who developed/maintains the website? And as I remember from AIDA's website, there was around 4 or 5 people in the team, so I can't believe nobody of them noticed the problems yet.

 

[Billextreme]

Hi All,

Our superadmin have start the work with the intagrated ranking db.

This could be the reason - but the site will be up to day again.

/B

 

[ericvrp]

Hi Bill,

If you do not know the reason I think it is next to impossible to predict when the server will be back online.

- Eric

 

[ploum]

Trux > Python would be the perfect choice

Ploum, author of Getting Things GNOME!

 

[trux]

Hi All,

Our superadmin have start the work with the intagrated ranking db.

Bill, could you please feed us with some closer information? Is a new ranking system being developed? Will it be a project where programmers from the freediving community can participate with improving and maintaining it? Or will it be a closed private project where AIDA will have to rely only on the current supplier for any possible future bug fixes, maintenance, and extensions? Can you tell us more about the project definition as given to the contractor? What exactly can we expect, and how soon? Will we ever see ranking data from 2008 and 2009?

Normally, I would rather ask all those questions on the AIDA forum, but since it is infested with porn and spam, I do not think anyone comes there anymore. And even if I posted there, nobody will notice it in the flood of porn. Is there any plan to handle it somehow?

 

[Jorg]

I just unsubscribed from the AIDA forum. Too many nasty pictures and nothing is being done about it.

So Trux, any update on the whole thing? Does anybody know how Jonas, AIDA's ranking responsible, is doing? Does he need any help? I've got some data lying around here somewhere.

 

[trux]

The last news I had is that Bill hired the same team who developed the AIDA-International website and his private project ApneaMania (which runs basically on the same groundwork as AIDA-International, if I understood well, and shares the data with it). Deducing from the brief Bill's note above, I assume they started working on the new ranking system, but have no idea about the schedule or other details. In any case, I did not see anych new entries in the ranking since weeks, so I guess the completing of data from 2008 and 2009 competitions was halted. Let's hope someone will feed the data in the new system once it is completed.

I offered my help both to Bill, as well to Jonas publicly as well privately on many occasions, did diverse suggestions, and hoped that the system will be made at least partially open so that volunteer experts from the community can help with the development, maintenance, bug fixing, and extensions, but am afraid that these demands fell on deaf ears.

We will have a system developed by a private entity, with no possibility to fix bugs, or improve it without the direct action from the original developers. And since they work for money, and have no big interest in the project once closed, as we can see already now with the AIDA website and AIDA forum, it takes quite long to get anyone motivated to fix it.

We cannot really blame them, because they either work for profit, or in case of Jonas who aside of the development contracts gets only a moderate monthly salary - he apparently has only very little free time on his hands and does not manage to handle all - the website, the forum, and the ranking (+ frequent traveling to judging trips all over the world).

I am afraid, it represents a serious problem for AIDA - instead of involving more volunteers to get the job done quicker and better, the same already overloaded person gets more and more tasks to handle. The only result we can expect, is that he will be less and less responsive and reactive.

 

[rxcnc2]

I agree that this is something that if not fixed very soon will be a shame.

Trux et al, it seems to me that -perhaps because of your background- you and some others are focussing a lot of attention on the "software project". Frankly speaking, it is nice to have a nice web interface, to make plots, correlations, statistics... but it is not the crucial point. I was quite happy with the excel files as before, and could find all the info I wanted there. Of course improvements are always welcome, if there are resources.

But the real issue is that results must first flow from the competitions to the central database. In an era in which virtually ALL competitions are advertised on the web, and therefore ALL organizers have access to email, I think that if I were the ranking officer I would work on a new excel (or whatever) template, ask the organizers to fill it properly at the competition, and email it back. From there, it cannot be more than a few clicks to insert the results in a barebone ranking system. All the frills can come later.

If an organizer doesn't return the results, the ranking officer can ring them up 10 times, and finally never allow them to ever organize another competition.

Unfortunately this is where AIDA failed in the past, as well as the freedivecentral which is indeed a nice engine. If the flow of results is not made easy, the ranking database will never work no matter how many informatic wizards are working on it.