Performance lists going down the drain
Ross Dunton has started posting seasonal rankings for World Masters Athletics. But unlike the elite performance lists on the IAAF site, Dunton’s are a complete botch. Utterly useless. What’s wrong with Dunton’s lists? Gawd, where do we begin?
First off, he’s offering only four events so far — the 100, 200, 400 and shot. His pages don’t give a clue as to when the marks were set (only the names of the meets) or where the meets were held. His age groups are all mixed together, with oldest first. Nationalities aren’t listed. (And age groups aren’t even specified, since he lists folks as M39 and W64, for example).
The handful of marks are limited to a few major national and international masters meets. Lots of world-class marks in the 30-39 range are ignored. His page design is atrocious — WITH ALL UPPERCASE TYPE on a poorly executed photo-tiled background. You’d expect this performance from the middle-school pupils at New Center School (in Dunton’s home of Sevierveille, Tennessee). I could go on. What we have now makes a laughingstock of WMA.
For now, the initial WMA performance rankings are posted on Coach Dunton’s own site and not the WMA’s, which gives the world body plausible deniability, I suppose. (I wouldn’t want to be associated with this work either.) When WMA’s Brian Oxley reported on Dunton’s effort, he said: “Development work is well advanced.” Yeah, right.
WMA’s main job, of course, is putting on world masters championships. The Web site is a minor gig, and the rankings even lower on the priority pole. But Dave Clingan’s unofficial world rankings — quoted by media outlets worldwide — have spoiled world masters athletes. Clingan’s professionalism is nowhere to be seen in Dunton’s sparse and dowdy lists.
I wrote to Ross a few months back, asking for an email interview. He declined, saying he was too busy. Well, he ain’t busy enough, in my opinion. Here are some questions I would have posed to Dunton:
Is he going to produce a comprehensive list for 2002 indoor and 2002 outdoor rankings? Why are the lists on his home page instead of WMA’s? Why do athletes need a password to submit marks? If only certified meets are accepted, why is he hinting he’ll have two different lists? How will he include marks by athletes whose age group is known but exact age is not available? What criteria is he using to determine which marks are acceptable? Why are high-quality performances from prelim rounds of major meets not included? Why are superior times from some meets excluded while inferior times from other meets are included? Is there a limit as to how many marks will be listed per age or per age-group?
WMA doesn’t stand for We Mangle Athletics, but that’s the effect of Coach Dunton’s work so far.
In October 2002, Oxley reported: “The WMA has acknowledged the desirability of rankings for all our championship events. President Carlius has already announced that the work will be undertaken by Ross Dunton and I am very happy to be able to work with Ross on this challenge. Rankings are of great interest to all.”
Great interest, yes. Great standards, no. WMA needs to immediately review its
bumbling, stumbling efforts so far. The athletes deserve no less.
5 Responses
Hi Ken,
Some patience would be nice. I have seen all questions that Ross asks when you send him a result (did you forget to look at that?) and everything is in it. The posted rankings are not yet OK it seems, but I think they will become better than Dave’s even…
Weia
Ken, I agree with the points you make in terms of the poor format and incompleteness of the list as it stands today. What Coach Dunton should first address is the age groupings (M40-45 etc instead of single years) and list youngest first. That would at least make the current list easier to read.
I also agree that masters athletes should have a place to go to see comprehensive rankings. But given the amount of work required to complete that task, I think we should cut Ross some slack. I don’t know him, but I believe he’s been involved in Track and Field for some time and as such I think he at least entitled to some degree of deference. And since I don’t see anyone else stepping up to the place to take on the task, I think the best way to improve the situation would be offer comments and not crucify the man doing the work. Everyone should be entitled to voice their opinion and I expect no one would dispute the inadequate state of the page today, but your comments seemed to be a bit on the hostile side.
I do not know what arrangements exist between Coach Dunton and the WMA. ie., is he being paid to do it? Did he volunteer his time? …If this is a volunteer project, perhaps there are other volunteers out there who would be willing to take on the task of gathering results for a particular age group and or event, allowing Ross to focus on reviewing and posting the information gathered by others.
New Years greetings to Yawl; I regret the lousy formatting here, which seems to have “eaten” my painstaking, yet futile, efforts at paragraphing. Take this! Par. Ken Stone addresses a number of specific shortcomings–apart from the obvious preliminary nature of coverage, both meets and events–in the design and format of the Dunton “WMAish” Website. Allow me to reiterate those which, if not corrected at the outset, could indeed be fatal flaws. Par
Ken alluded to the most serious, seconded by Kevin: Replacement of standard 5 Yr. Age Groupings by single Age (with Sex). While always informative–who’s gonna catch up with me next year? Or better yet, who’s outta my hair?–5 Yr. brackets are the “Official” categories used worldwide in Meets and Results. To order so-called Rankings otherwise is confusing, and ultimately misleading as to correct Ranking. Par.
For the sake of order, these design flaws can be broken down as to: 1) Layout (No Columns for Date or Nationality; Order “inverted”, with oldest first); inconsistent ordering by Sex;
2) Format (No. 5 Yr. Age Groupings; Upper Case for full names, in lieu of traditional First Caps);
3) Misc. Design (distracting Background; annoying UPPER CASE–deserving of repeat mention; Clicking to Individual Events obligatory for access, as opposed to optional Scrolling on MastersTrack.com). Par.
Any preliminary DataBase/Spreadsheet design first ascertains the essential information. Here the unwieldy Name of Meet replaces the usual Date (which could always be cross-referenced, or even inferred from a List of Meets, another feature of the Clingan site). So far, with the exception of the Dunton apologist (Whence cometh that statement of faith that the Dunton site is destined to supersede its predecessor? That snide ref. to the supposedly complete Info. available to Dunton begs the question as to Ken’s challenge over failure to incorporate it, and to present what is proferred in the proper format), everyone agrees that 5 Yr. Age Categories MUST replace individual ages, which could always be provided by some “Roster”, where Nationality and Affiliation could also be provided. Par.
Major redesign called for. While Ken’s show of frustration may be seen as “over the top”, no amount of passive patience, and especially unwarranted coddling, is going to repair the ill-conceived, bumbling effort so far in evidence. Par.
Besides, even my crummy 4th Place performance in the Nat’l Weight Pentathlon–so ably staged by Jeff Baty in Gonzales, “Jambalaya Capitol (sic) of the WORLD” near Baton Rouge, LA–“should” have rated a mention under Shotput, acc. to Dunton’s lenient criteria (I’m 63, so would rate ahead of a couple of youngsters who beat my mediocre 11.68; I know I can forget about getting those 12m+ marks from Potomac Valley All-comer Meets in). Par.
On a side note, I see that Dave C. has so far taken a pass on incorporating marks from the Baton Rouge meet. Most likely he’s stymied by the abrupt, end-of-year (Fall) move to the new scoring system, based on adjusted Age-rated Distance Adjustment Factors, which tended to lower scores, while effectively rendering them incomparable.
Now THERE’S a task: retroactive adjustment of MOST 2002 Multi-event Scores to adhere to the Official Scoring System in place at year end. Of course, the facile solution is to adjust those later scores (mostly upward) to accord them fair ranking–though it does leave a strange taste in the mouth, but not as bad as the effect of leaving M60-64 Champ, Mike Valle, altogether out in the cold, while those of us who followed him (2nd thru 5th)remain, if only barely, in the putative Top 25.
In my earlier note, I might have gotten even more pedantic, and pointed out that, instead of electing to squander an entire Column–the usual dimension limiting screen space–by listing Age for each and every entry, Ross Dunton should have just gone with the 5 Yr. Age Groups from the outset, thereby nullifying the major complaint to date (again, apart from the glaring coverage shortfall). In a Spreadsheet, this is normally accomplished by simply devoting a (horizontal) Row, or Line, to each fixed category, with space below being expandable as new entries are added.
His failure to follow this basic precept calls into question his grasp of basic Data Base design and presentation. Deference to the “Coach” aside, he needs to recruit an young hands-on, tech savvy assistant, paid or volunteer. The above suggestion for volunteers to collect the data for Dunton to review and record seems questionable in the light of the clunky first offering; maybe the other way around.
I shouldn’t have to point out that Dunton’s sole promise to add the additional events “as time goes by” inspires little confidence that he has any intention of going back to do it right. I sure didn’t see any solicitation of critical comments–much less a mention of a preliminary or Pilot Design.
I see there’s been no further response to Ken’s urgent call for review of Ross Dunton’s so far haphazard attempt at recording 2002 marks. Here’s more grist for the mill. As anyone who’s checked will see, Dunton’s only listed the leading marks from a handful of meets in this hemisphere: only the USATF Champs in the USA, the Central American Games, and another regional championship in Bolivia. Since I speak fluent Spanish, having worked over 30 years in Latin America (I could lay claim to a World Altitude Record in the Pentathlon–where I did get 3rd to Bill Toomey in the 1960 AAU–since I doubt it’s ever been held higher than Puno, Peru, at over 12,000 feet. La Paz is slightly lower, below Lake Titicaca, location of Puno), I perused the Central and South American entries. As with the US Meets, Dunton takes ’em as he gets ’em, viz. in whatever order, and even spelling, they arrive (a couple of separate marks for the same person with alternative spelling, i.e. typos, are recorded as if they’re different people). Latin surnames (‘apellidos’) usually give the Father’s family name first, followed by the Mother’s (father). Dunton unnecessarily prints both, yet uses the customary initial for the second (Mother’s) ‘apellido’ when that appears to have appeared in the “raw” results. This, of course, often throws his Format, which looks suspiciously like the clunky old Word (notso) Perfect “Table” Format, into Double Line mode. Sloppy and distracting, as are the horizontal lines separating each entry (these should be used to solely to delineate Age Groups). This Latin Two-step is totally unnecessary, as it is perfectly acceptable–with the exception of bigshot politicians and authors like Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who’s NEVER called “Garcia”, and only “Marquez” by naifs, kinda like Frank Lloyd Wright only being called “Wright” on Jeopardy–to shorten Latino names by using the maternal initial. I’d also suggest the occasional initial for those long first names, as well. And please abbreviate Meet Titles, starting with “Champs.”, or “Nationals”. Would anyone misread “USATF”, esp. if the date is provided, as suggested by Ken? In any Case;~)One line per entry, please.
As for Order, which is inconsistent so far, it is USUALLY apparent, even in Spanish, which is the first name. What’s the problem? Choose a convention and stick with it. I note that the recommended First Caps for all names even sneaks in here and there, prompting me to suspect what I observed above: whatever arrives is entered, just so, typos et al. So maybe Dunton didn’t elect to use those annoying caps; his hand was “forced”. Problem is very little thought went into initial design, so little that it becomes urgent to stop this misguided effort in its tracks and set it right. If Dunton just plunges ahead with the missing events (and Meet coverage–I shudder to think of the mishmash of the European events)under the present non-design, it will become a lost cause. So speak up, and no more lukewarm apologies, puleeze.
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