Discussion: Official results?

So sad I couldn’t be there. Naturally wanted to see what happened. So went looking for results and didn’t find much. I realize the event is barely over and so perhaps the official results simply aren’t posted yet, but shouldn’t there be a least a placeholder saying “results here soon”?

It’s a cinch from the event page on Attackpoint (i.e. right here) to click othrough to course-by-course results and full splits for each day and that’s great. But I’m looking for the official results by category, especially the Masters/Classic total time results for each category.

So first I clicked on the Event Website link from AP and got a looonnngg page full of event info—except I cannot find the word Results anywhere on that page.

Then I tried the OCin club website. I was a bit mystified at first, nice attractive homepage but I was scratching my head for a few minutes, not seeing any hint of a menu or links. I randomly clicked all over the page but nothing until I finally stumbled on a tiny square in the corner that when clicked on reveals a menu.

In the long list on that menu, I saw three items that looked promising:

“Results”: Nope, lots of OCin results but nothing for the Flying Pig / Masters Nationals.

“Flying Pig”: Nope, this took me to a page for the 2018 Flying Pig.

“Flying Pig 2019”: Nope, this took me to that same detailed event website that I had originally clicked to via AP.

Why all this detailed saga when I could have just posted “Are Masters National results available, and if so, where?” Well I guess I’m hoping this story might be useful to clubs and event directors laying out their websites.

(Or alternatively maybe it’s right under my nose somewhere and I just overlooked it somehow, and I’ll feel foolish. I do have a history of that sort of thing.)

I’m sure they’ll be up soon. I just got home. Mike just got home. We were at the park pulling controls until almost 5pm. It’s a three-hour drive home. I stopped to eat. There’s a huge amount of unpacking. I’ve got to go to work in eight hours.

As far as I’m concerned, the Attackpoint splits, which I personally post as fast as I can, are unofficial.

The event director, who has been completely engaged for the last week, is going to post them when he’s convinced they are correct.

I am suggesting that this complaint is *completely* inappropriate.

{edited:} Actually, I'm going to register for Quantico before I do another thing.

/rant continues

On Saturday, I was talking with another event organizer about whether I should first pull my assigned Saturday controls, or post splits to Attackpoint. I had decided to post splits against my judgment that pulling controls was more important. The person suggested that splits were important to competitors and therefore more important. But I see it as more important to use the daylight and prevent extra work the next day than to post splits, which I can do anytime.

I posted the splits, then pulled my controls. It was the only time I got in the woods all weekend. 4.75km, about 1:40:00. It was glorious. But I arrived to the dinner one hour late and didn't get enough food.

To everyone else---sorry. I love helping OCIN do this.

/rant

@cedarcreek: Thanks for everything you do. It takes incredible volunteer efforts from many, many people (including, many times, @o-maps) to create a successful orienteering event, and my thanks go out to each and every one of you.

Cedarcreek,

I guess my longwindedness obscured my point. Which most certainly was not to complain about the official results not being posted yet. But what matters is not what I meant to say, but rather what I actually said, and if you read it that way, then certainly what I said is "*completely* inappropriate" as you put it, and I sincerely and deeply apologize and retract it.

I fully understand what you and Mike and the rest of the organizing have just gone through. I've certainly been there myself enough times. The most extreme effort in which I've been involved was an event with a thousand competitors, requiring (ballpark) a thousand hours of advance effort by each of us in the central organizing team, and two solid weeks of before-6am-to-after-midnight work during the immediate runup and the event proper--while personally at that time I had 3 small kids, a more-than-fulltime job, and a death in my immediate family less than a month before the event. So I really do get that in the wake of such an effort, one is not particularly receptive to complaints, especially unreasonable ones.

Let me make another try at what I meant to say (more succinctly and I hope more more clearly and more humbly than my first try):

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The AttackPoint results/splits over the weekend were great (impressed by the speedy posting, all three days--thanks!). Which made me curious about the official total-time results and in particular the Masters National category results, so I went looking late Sunday evening to see if they had been posted yet. But after 15 minutes of clicking around via various pathways, I couldn't find even a hint as to where the official results will be found when they are posted, or perhaps they *have* already been posted and I just didn't find the right path to them. (I do have a rather long history of overlooking things that are right under my nose.) So a small suggestion for OCin and other event organizers for *future* Pigs and Nationals and other major events: When you set up your event website, long before the actual event, put a prominent Results link right then on the event homepage (and perhaps on the club homepage or club results page too) that goes to a dummy page "Official results will appear here within a few days after the meet" or something like that.
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Sheesh, expecting results on the day an event happens? What madness. In Aus WA we're lucky if we get *official* (or any) rogaining results posted within two days of the event happening.

This is contrary to orienteering where there will be lynchings if results aren't posted within a couple of hours of the event concluding.

It's important to not miss the point. He's not asking for fast results. He's asking for a link labeled "results" that goes to a page that says "they're not ready yet, come back later".

J-J: I completely disagree. You can’t ask this question on the day of the event. The links aren’t there yet. I went to where I expect to see results and there is text for Flying Pig, but it’s not a link yet. The historical Flying Pig results page shows last year’s results. If that doesn’t say, “They’re not ready yet, come back later,” then I don’t know what to say.

And I’ll answer personally that the complaint was posted 84 minutes before I got home from the park.

o-maps: Thanks. Our website has been and still is a mix of several styles. From the main page, if you click the “three horizontal bars” or “box” for menu (it renders differently), you can select results. There are 2019 results (with three non-links for upcoming events, including FP2019), and Flying Pig results links, either of which will work once the results are posted. It’s probably a valid criticism that this year’s event page doesn’t have a link, but it’s usually added when results are posted. It’s my belief OCIN does results links better than most clubs. There are easy-to-find historical Flying Pig results as far back as 2001, and the predecessor event as far back as 1996. Some years are missing pre-SportIdent, but that’s probably just because no one felt like retyping them.

It’s just a suggestion. And certainly a minor one. And my timing was terrible; it’s an idea for a future meet, certainly not something I expected you to drop everything for the night the meet ended. It’s minor enough that the best timing may have been never. That I spent 15 minutes clicking fruitlessly in circles (and hour posting about it) perhaps says more about me than about the website.

I'll try one last time.

o-maps is incorrect when he says it's not there.

Look here for example:

https://www.ocin.org/results/2019/results2019.php

The third item down is "Flying Pig XXIII, March 22-24, 2019"

It's not yet a link. It's just text.

This is superior to a click-through to a "It's not ready yet" page because this indicates "It's not ready yet" without requiring the click-through.

Just to clarify, user o-maps was not the only one confused and failing to see the links.

It appears something was changed very recently and now the tab is there. A few days before the event I went to ocin.org web site and it looked very different then from what I see this morning. You need to be honest and straightforward about these kind of things. Just say "we recently made some changes"

To the best of my knowledge, that text is more than one-week old. There are multiple pages for results. It’s confusing. But they will work when results are posted.

Results are up: https://www.ocin.org/results/flying_pig/pigXXIII/r...

Results are posted. cedarcreek jumped the gun a bit - I was still fixing links, so you might have to refresh if you started clicking too soon.

O-maps: On a regular computer screen, links should not be a tiny square in the corner - that's the drop-down button for a mobile device. I had a similar problem last week on a school computer, but thought it was a one-off glitch - I'll talk to our website technician. Please email me with the type of operating system and details if you or anyone else is having a similar problem on a full-size computer.

I don't often use a computer, but when I do I make sure it is a Main Frame.

I use IBM PC AT 286, the latest one