AIDA Results Register

[trux]

Sorry, rxcnc2, but no Excel table will solve the real problem. And the real problem is that the data coming from competitions are inconsistent - names are often misspelled, names and surnames randomly swapped, sometime incomplete, the result are often incorrectly formatted, and there are plenty of other problems in the data sheets coming to AIDA. It was not such a big problem with just a handful of competitions, but with the number we have today, it is simply not manageable with Excel sheets, whatever smart they are.

You really need a software solution for this. And by a software solution I do not mean at all statistics, graphs, and other flashing gimmicks for the end-user. Of course, they will be interesting too, but that's the last priority. What's the most important is the proper data collection, avoiding of duplicate entries, misspellings, and many other errors. The solution of Freedive Central already addresses it - it is the freediver himself who creates his account, and that only once for all competitions. So duplicates are automatically avoided by that. It saves work to the organizers as well to AIDA, because the data does not need to be re-typed at any point. If we have such a system that is really connected to the ranking database, it will be perfectly simple and easy to use, while relatively foolproof, and avoiding big majority of mistakes and data inconsistency. And we need that organizer, judges, or officials of national AIDA branches have the access to the system in real-time, and that they can enter and modify data. Of course, certain safety, authorizations and certifications need to take place there to avoid abuse or improper data handling.

The best solution would be having a complete system that will be used directly at the competition in real time, so that the data does not need to be re-typed, exported, emailed, or otherwise transmitted. They will be simply in there since the very beginning. Saving much time, work, and hassle, and avoiding errors, while allowing the community to see the results live.

 

[ploum]

I agree with Trux. I see it as the following :

1) One organizer create a competition. There's a form to request to organize such a competition. When accepted by AIDA, the competition is created and automatically opened to pre-registration on the platform.

2) People can start registering to it with their AIDA number. Registration must be approven by the organisation, of course.

3) Until a limit date, people can modify their announced perf and see who will be there.

4) When registration are closed, the software automatically send you an email with your OT time, based on your announced perf.

5) On the day of the competition, organizer only have to fill the realized performance by clicking on the list of registered users.

6) The software automatically gives the point and the final results. As soon as the computer is connected to Internet (which could happen after the competition), the final result are uploaded to the AIDA website and the ranking is updated.


This requires work, a lot of it, but there's nothing fancy. It's a long job but not a hard one. (gives me two weeks full-time and I show you a prototype with Python/XMPP)

Also, I really believe that it should be open-source because there's no incentive to keep it closed : AIDA will never sell the solution to someone else and it might only improve stuffs.

 

[francisco]

Ploum ...


Freedive Central already has most of the functionnalities you mentionned.
Unfortunately the site never got the OK from Bill Stromberg to become the official AIDA result register.

AIDA could have had it for free with the eventual modifications needed.

Imagine ... a free platform for such a small and poor association.

Meanwhile, they created a bad website worst than the one existing before ... spent 4 to 5 times what the site would really cost ... no invitation to tender for the project ( site done by Bill's apneamania programmers ) ... and today, three years later AIDA still doesn't have a result register functionning properly.

Will AIDA increase AGAIN Instructor fees to cover the new expenses ?
Will AIDA increase freediver fees to cover the new expenses ?
Or maybe just tax the competition organisers a little bit more ?
What else will AIDA do ?

Everyone belonging to a national AIDA and somehow involved with AIDA international should from time to time check with attention AIDA inter accountancy (complete version). 2005 was definitly a great year !

Try ...

 

[apneaboy]

Hi Francisco, the Freedive Central is an excellent platform, it is a shame AIDA did not utilise it.

Are those accounts public anywhere atall?

Hope your camp went well this year, any good pics stories

 

[rxcnc2]

Trux we say the same thing, it is important to have the results come in. You want a software platform for that, I think it would be great but one could start also with something more basic. Frankly, I don't have a problem if a name is mispelled, but this can be easily solved also at a basic level. Yes it's true we have many more competitions today than in 2005, but they are not an incredible number.

About freedivecentral, I love it and I have used it... but in my opinion the problem was that in several cases organizers advertised a competition there and then never sent the results back to it. Don't need an AIDA approval to make something successful.

 

[trux]

I am afraid that the only way to avoid the misspellings, swapped and incomplete names (or even name changes - for example at married girls), and other data inconsistency, is the central registration system. And you won't solve it on a "basic level" with an Excel sheet. Even doing the fixing manually is usually not possible without an extensive detective work and calling/writing back the competitors and/or organizers. That's why even the paid Result Commissar did not manage to enter the past data during all the moths he is hired for it.

As for the organizers not sending results to FC - I completely agree, but that's exactly the problem that needs to be addressed by the software, and it needs to be flexible enough to fit all possible needs. Currently it is so that each organizer prefers flickering together their own system (usually an Excel sheet). They then need to export the results, and send them to AIDA, and need to re-type the results to FC. However, after the competition the organizers are usually so tired, and unlike at the official AIDA ranking, FC poses no priority to them, so they simply let it be.

Now, if we have software that can be used at every competition, even at those with non-standard disciplines or schedules, with multi-lingual interface, easy to use, and despite it offering much more features than just a simple Excel sheet, and when using of the system is enforced by AIDA for every official AIDA-Int competition, then there is no way we would not see the results coming live during every competition (or at least immediately after it, it there is no Internet connection locally on the site).

 

[rxcnc2]

Trux, all that you propose can be done by a ranking officer with some will to put together a decent template, no absolute need for a fancy software although as I said that would be good to have. I mentioned excel because that is what was used before. There are endless other possibilities but excel is usually available to every organizer. In an excel file done in a proper way you can put a LOT of functionalities, no need to flicker around. But as I said I don't care what platform is used - I just thought let's start simple.

The bottom line is the same, it doesn't matter if you have a supergreat global software, an excel file or a handwritten list... if the organizers don't send or use these things, we are stuck.

 

[trux]

Rxcnc2, can you explain how you want to solve the errors, misspelled, missing, incomplete, changed, or duplicates names with an Excel sheet without a central database?

 

[trux]

The bottom line is the same, it doesn't matter if you have a supergreat global software, an excel file or a handwritten list... if the organizers don't send or use these things, we are stuck.

Exactly. That's another reason why using any Excel sheet cannot work. If they are enforced to use the software as I suggest, it sends the results automatically as soon as there is Internet connection. Problem solved.

 

[francisco]

For us freedivers it is true that a simple excel file is far enouth to our needs.
We know almost every freediver on the circuit ... we know freediving ... we know all the stories, gossips etc etc ....


Now, for a newcomer ... for a journalist I think an excell file is rather boring.
No info about the athlete what so ever. What does he look like ? His sponsors ? Results on the past competitions ? Wich comps ? Where are these websites ? Any pics ?


Everybody is complaining about freediving not being enouth promoted. Everyone is complaining about not finding sponsors.


As a sponsor I d rather have my athlete on FC rather than on excell file !
As a journalist I d certainly have a better comprehension of a competition with FC rather than with the excell file !

 

[cebaztian]

I think what Rxcnc2 is saying is that START FROM SOMEWHERE. Get some damn excell sheets up while you computer guys work on something that will amaze us.

Sebastian

Too much ambition can paralyze you.

 

[trux]

The problem is that we already have plenty of Excel sheets, and they do not help with the situation at all, although they are often quite fine.

And in fact we would not need to start working on anything if AIDA simply accepted the offer of Francisco who is ready to donate the FC system to AIDA with no conditions whatsoever (except of giving him perhaps some moral credit). This system proved it works. And this could have been done already three or four years ago. And in the mean time the source code could have been opened to programmers in the community and improved and enhanced beyond everyone's imagination.

So, yes, we have a working system that does the job since years, but AIDA decided to re-invent the wheel and hired developers to create a new system. Now we do not even have any specification, so have no idea what the system will be capable of, how it will work, whether it will be extensible, and how much it costs. Would love to hear the arguments why this alternative was selected over the free system of Freedive Central, and who actually decided about the final choice. Was it the Executive Board, the Technical Commission, the Assembly, or just Bill alone?

 

[trux]

I just learned on Jorg's Shark Freediving blog that Jonas, the Result Commissar responsible for feeding the data into the ranking database resigned from his paid position.

I do not know whether someone else is being looked for to fulfill the gap, or whether it won't be needed anymore. Some official statement from AIDA would be helpful. Do we abandon the idea of completing the ranking data for 2008 and 2009? Or will the data be fed into the database by a new Commissar? Or will we get a new system, and start from zero? If so, will it happen soon enough to be used at least for the 2009-2010 season?

 

[rxcnc2]

To quote Sebastian, yes it would be helpful to get things started somehow, all the rest can come later. I am not against a global centrally-based software if someone wants to do it, but I think this might take time and also I have seen lots of talk about technical aspects but not much about user requirements and specifications.

To answer the excel question Trux, you can easily inlcude a database of names, places, dates and vba macros that will do all that you have in mind and also transfer numbers into the database. This requires a minimum of work of course - the fact that Jonas already resigned is not good news at all.

About journalists and sponsors and newcomers Francisco, you are right we need something more catchy... but I was not suggesting to show the excel sheets, only to use them as a means to transfer results from organizers to the (non-existing) ranking officer. Anyway, I went to the iaaf.org site, there is "stats", then "toplists". I like it... and I think it resembles a lot the Results Register. You can also click on a name and see the details of the athlete, which resembles a bit the ApneaMania site. So yes something like that is nice... but you cannot have it as a best effort by some volunteers. This was the spirit of RR, FC and AM, and all have stopped working one way or the other.

 

[Kars]

I Agree a simple solid interface is very important.

When you really want to sexy things up at the FC site, you can allow the users to post links to (youtube) video of their performance, even add pictures.

About the conflict of interest, I'm sure that AIDA can make a contract with Freedive Central outlining the demands and limitations etc.
In practice FC would be just like any software 'licence', but probably cheaper and more geared towards the Freedivers' needs. I'm confident FC will consider it an honour and they love to live up to the needs of freedivers worldwide.
FC is a legal person, just as the external programmer one hires.

On the "Stormy day's at AIDA" thread I already noticed some good news:
"http://forums.deeperblue.com/785409-post31.html"
a quote from Bill Strömberg:

Regarding Ranking - we just got a new official offer from the people behind Freedive Central that is VERY interesting. This will probably solve the problems we had earlier and get the ranking to bloom.

So people rejoice, things are moving!

Kars

 

[trux]

Well, we had an incomplete ranking for 2008, and practically none for 2009, but it looks like now we have nothing anymore at all. The domain http://www.aidaregister.org/ is redirected to an error page at the hosting provider saying that the account was suspended.

 

[Jorg]

I'm glad I'm manually collecting all this info... now a good system to place it in.

 

[trux]

I am not authorized to publish any details, but I think I can tell that the new AIDA leadership is very active in fixing this situation. And in the past months, I managed to develop alternative ranking for my own purposes, and collected and cleaned up a lot of data (over 20,000 results), so I am trying to help too.

Well, I did not announce publicly yet the new ranking that is available on my server (especially because I am moving it to a faster machine, since this one does not handle the load well). But since it leaked out through Shark Freediving, I guess some of you already saw it.

I entered all results AIDA had, plus many others that were missing and that I found from alternative sources (like Freedive Central, Apnea Mania, national AIDA branches, organizers, websites), but am still missing results of almost hundred competitions from the AIDA Calendar. AIDA apparently never received them, so I want to ask you for help. If anyone of you can contact the respective organizers or judges responsible for the missing competitions, and ask them to send me the data (preferably in a spreadsheet file), I'll be able to make the ranking better. And I am currently working with others to transfer my data to AIDA's Result Register, so that it is available there too. Or if they have problems with sending them to me, let them send the files directly to AIDA - I think they know the email address (I do not want to post it here to avoid the spam).

Please find the list of the missing competitions in the attached PDF file.

 

[osusim]

You can remove O.V.H. Dynamics 2009 from the list. Organizers didn't receive ranking status from AIDA.

 

[trux]

Well, personally I don't care and am entering all competitions, regardless of their ranking status. I have even FFESSM, FIPSAS, CMAS, F.R.E.E. and other events in the database. They are just all accordingly tagged, so that the user decides what kind of report he/she wants to see - it may be the official AIDA ranking, or it can be under another scope. So if you have those results, do not hesitate to send them anyway. I'll just take care that they are filtered out when exporting them to the official AIDA Result Register.