Seto: Post results on mastersrankings.com before brief outage
John Seto of mastersrankings.com writes: “The rankings submission form will be shut off starting Saturday, September 27, and back up by October 4, so please submit any results you want to before then. The site and all the lists will be available during the shutdown. I will be working on making some database changes, website upgrades and data correction during this shutdown period. Consequently, the multiple athlete results that some of you have sent and my meet result conversions and insertions may not be done until after the shutdown. Please pardon the delay inserting results.”
Me hopes John gives homepage a face-lift. It's gotten entirely too junky and self-promotional. He deserves support, but give visitors a navigation break!
John’s note continues:
Citizenship: One big change that will be implemented during this shutdown will be multiple citizenships.
Any athlete that has multiple citizenships should email me your name, the countries where you are a citizen, effective dates for each country (include end date if you changed citizenship – all others will be handled as multiple citizenships) and the “primary” country. The primary country will be the one which is shown on all the main rankings lists.
You will be able to see your ranking on your profile page for all of your citizenships and the appropriate WMA region.
1. Sponsorship:
a. Send me sponsor contact information;
b. Contact me with ideas and advice on how to secure;
c. Help secure financial support;
d. Donate.
2. Post a testimonial to the website and keep visiting the site as often as possible.
3. Take the improvement survey.
4. Submit Results before September 26th (before 1 week submission shutdown period).
Donations: A huge thank you to all who have donated. These have been invaluable to me and enabled me to focus on developing the site and getting results inserted. Donations are still very welcome and appreciated.Anyone who thinks this is worth supporting and can afford to do so can use the PayPal link on the websites or click on SUPPORT RANKINGS in the top navigation bar for information how to send donations.
Sponsorships: What ideas or advice do you have on how to approach potential benefactors and sponsors? Who do you know to whom I could make a support pitch?
I am out of my element about obtaining sustaining support. I use logic and related professional experience to establish my approach since I have no relevant money raising experience.It is prudent for me to hit a home run so to speak by getting one or a few very large benefactors or sponsors since I have so much to do with things like result conversion and inserting plus system development (spent over 2,500 hours on this since February and still so much to do).
The keys to enticing benefactors and sponsors are probably the testimonials (to help them understand the system’s value and benefits) and site traffic.
My logic is to find one to a few benefactors or sponsors who are interested in supporting the mission to promote active older people.Those people should be more able to see the potential of what I have planned and more motivated to support. The network of athletes should be able to help me find, contact and secure their support.
Conventional sponsors are interested in ROI, website traffic, etc. and should be much harder to secure. Finishing development and maintaining the system will cost significant money which is why I’m thinking the benefactors / sponsors who are interested in supporting this system which promotes active older people is the appropriate group to seek out first.
They should be able see the system’s potential to draw of hundreds of thousands of athletes (including my grand plan) and realize the benefits it will provide these athletes.
My plan is to use this money to finish developing this “Phase 1” site and get all the results from 2013 and 2014 into the system then work on improvements and expanding the system.
Testimonials: Thank you to those who have posted a testimonial to the rankings site. I would appreciate anyone else posting a testimonial (go to Click here to submit a testimonial. Near the top of the websites to post).These testimonials are for potential sponsors to see how much this site means to masters athletes. This may make a big difference to compel them to support.
Visit Site: Please visit the site as often as possible including during the shutdown. Sponsors and benefactors may want to see the site volume too so visiting the site often will help.
8 Responses
As an occasional ranker back in the “old days” where I had to retype names and marks from NMN and then search for the occasional results posted on the internet, and then resort individual submissions into age groups, John Seto’s current on-line rankings system is nothing short of a miracle.
It remains a mystery to me why USATF does not provide the funding for the masters rankings as it provides one of the best on-line promotion for masters track and field by documenting the astounding “feats” and throws taking place throughout the year.
In addition, many of us simply can not make National Masters championships meets year after year (this year it was new roof shingles), and it would be a very rare meet where the top eight in any event or age group at a National Championship actually had head-to-head competition. The rankings provide a year-end measure of satisfaction (without the medal).
So, a big thanks to John for making this possible. And let’s make sure it keeps going.
USATF provides annual funding ($4,000) to compile indoor and outdoor top 25 rankings lists. USATF Master’s annual budget is only around $85,000 so the cost of developing, managing and maintaining the rankings system goes far beyond what is affordable.
Your help has been invaluable and I really appreciate all your advice and observations. You have accurately observed that trying to include every legitimate performance is a massive undertaking that will take many people (especially if this is done worldwide). I think it is the right thing to do because it is this factor that provides the greatest and broadest reaching benefit (which so many people have made clear to me).
It doesn’t hurt to try to get enough funding so I can try to provide complete lists. I certainly cannot continue to devote 70+ hours per week and expect to put food on the table (my daughters are getting thin with my rationing their food and I may have to start rationing mine soon). Therefor, I am going to aggressively pursue finding sustainable funding so this system which benefits so many (and will benefit so many more) will survive and improve.
John, I am a relative newcomer to the Masters scene but am incredibly impressed and grateful for the work you do. Hope to mail off a check for a symbolic but wholly inadequate donation to you shortly. In the meantime, perhaps a small group of us can get together in Anaheim to brainstorm about how to fund this resource.
The “self-promotional” comment, to me, seemed out of line. John is busting his ass…for us. What is Masterstrack.com’s idea to get John in the black with this site and make it less “junky”? Let’s not get too critical because this site could use an upgrade as well.
Ken – would you be willing to lend some of your time and expertise as a webmaster and critic to help John with the aesthetics of his website? As a longtime participant and observer of Master’s T&F, your input would be invaluable and readily welcomed, I would bet. If that is not feasible, perhaps one of the many contacts you have generated over the years would be able to lend a hand in website graphic design for http://www.mastersrankings.com and http://www.worldmastersrankings.co? I also agree with Gary Dixon about the “self-promotional” comment. To see a better example of self-promotion, see the upper right hand corner of http://www.masterstrack.com beneath the “About Ken Stone” header. (By the way, I personally have no problem with you putting your bio out there, it is your right as the webmaster to establish your credentials).
John has done an amazing job with his website. Not only can we all check on how well other athletes are doing but we each can get a summary of our results at any time of year. I think that the masters organisations of all the countries should
contribute to this project.
I completely agree with Christa. This is a valuable resource not only for individual athletes but it could be used to promote the sport as a whole.
The new site takes a little getting use to. Otherwise, I greatly appreciate John’s work. Rather slip him a few bucks that waste it on the USATF.
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