FRED <-> F.net integration

[brtech]

We all know there is a project underway at USFA for online registration, and I suspect, like all underway projects, it can't be stopped or majorly changed. The USFA requirements for registration are different enough that using FRED probably just ain't gonna happen.

However, what you might be able to do is to hook up with the project manager and get some things done that will help us all. IDs is one area. It MAY be that you can get them to work with you on a common ID in one way or another. You might have to allow them to be the master, and you get a feed off of that, but maybe (just MAYBE) you could do that. What we really want is called "single sign on", and there are some very interesting projects that do that without making everyone agree on a master at all ("Federated Identity"). That may be too ambitious for a project we would all like to have sooner --we're all probably in the state of wanting USFA onlne registration sooner, with fewer features than later with more.

You might be able to get them to give you access to data that FRED or fencing.net could use. It may not be limited to FRED and/or fencing.net, but maybe if Craig/PEET asks nicely, the data they need could be made available to whomever wants it.

It clearly would be worth asking, nicely, for a little discussion. Ask Michael Massik to hook you up with the project manager.

[oso97]

Just from my contacts that I've talked to, there are several issues beyond the points that have been mentioned before both FencingTime and askFRED are ready for the big leagues (NACs).

One of the first that comes to mind is the ability to enter multiple clubs for a fencer and use that for seeding and conflict resolution.

There are also seeding issues that one has to be a high level BC person to understand - I certainly don't.

And then there is the simple fact that the national BC people tend to be extremely conservative in their perspective. They have a system that works and don't want to change it. They are also going to fight tooth and nail any attempt to impose protocols on them from the outside. However, they do seem to be willing to make deliberate, incremental progress with new technologies, so long as its a matter of it being adopted. Dan, you're absolutely taking the right approach in working as an observer at a national tournament. Peet, you need probably to do the same.

[Zilverzmurfen]

Originally Posted by oso97

One of the first that comes to mind is the ability to enter multiple clubs for a fencer and use that for seeding and conflict resolution.

American fencers are allowed to represent more than one club in USFA competitions..? How very odd.

[oso97]

And to further complicate matters, there are also school conflicts, which may or may not be the same as the competition club...

[FencingKitten]

Originally Posted by dberke

I've spoken with the folks that run the NACs and I am planning on volunteering to work the bout committe at a future NAC or perhaps Summer Nationals. (Thanks to oso97 for the recommendation to do this!) This will allow me to get a good feel for how they run things. Once I've had that "insider look", I'll be able to tailor FT to how they like to work, as well as identify any areas that can be improved upon.

This is how I have most of my information, since my secondary interest in fencing is Bout Committee, and my tertiary is refereeing (primary is, of course, fencing). Fencing at the national level isn't currently one of my goals, so I'm free to focus on BC at that level.

Hopefully it helps you out in your endeavors. I don't think they take trainees for Summer Nats - way, way too crazy as I've been told, no chance that anyone could take the heat and train someone and keep both of them sane (that last may or may not be a requirement!).

[oiuyt]

Originally Posted by KD5MDK

With regard to the clubs issue and finding conflicts, I know everybody I'd have a conflict with, from my current club or even my past one.

My point was semi-tongue-in-cheek. In fact I do NOT know many of my nationally-active clubmates (and many of the ones I do know I met at national competitions). I know all of the members of my previous club that were members at the same time as I was, but less than half of their current members (despite it being less than a year and a half since I left). I assume that this is a fairly unusual position for most nationally-active fencer/referees (although not terribly uncommon for former fencer/current referees that are still affiliated with a club).

Knowing WHO is the conflict is still useful for shared pools (oh, okay, THAT person I need to make sure has all of his/her bouts refereed by the other ref, but I can still do the rest of my assigned pool), given that this is one method of handling club conflicts that is frequently used at NACs.

-B

[KD5MDK]

Originally Posted by dberke

I've spoken with the folks that run the NACs and I am planning on volunteering to work the bout committe at a future NAC or perhaps Summer Nationals. (Thanks to oso97 for the recommendation to do this!) This will allow me to get a good feel for how they run things. Once I've had that "insider look", I'll be able to tailor FT to how they like to work, as well as identify any areas that can be improved upon.

Good idea.

Eventually, I'd like to add a referee database to FT so that referees can automatically be assigned to pools/DEs. FT would track the club/division/section affiliation of the referees and try to avoid conflicts with fencers in the pool/DEs. That's a more long-term feature but I'll get it done eventually!

Dan

I'd be pretty hesitant to use this feature, because of a number of potential pitfalls. More or less, everything that a computer puts out needs to be verified by hand, and there are lots of other ways for conflicts to sneak in. For example, at a tournament I was at recently using XSeed, two brothers were initially placed in the same pool. (Club conflicts were not totally resolvable). Now, obviously this is a more serious conflict than a club one, let alone Division, but unless we start adding family trees as fencer data it won't be automatically resolvable.

With referees, even more to keep track of. If you have one French fencer and one French referee, probably a good policy for appearances sake to keep them on different strips. The best referees may need to be on the toughest bouts, which might be the 16 seed versus the 17 seed. Or maybe somewhere else.

I suppose the final answer is that automated referee assignments is probably better than what a poor assigner would do, about equal to an average one, but still need to be checked, and no particular use to a skilled assigner. I suppose the proportion of users may affect the need for the feature.

(Now, automated referee tracking for pay, skill level and other stuff would be really useful. I'm just talking specifically about assignments)

["Fence like a Cat"]

There are a couple main points I would like to present for opinions about Askfred and I've asked Peet about these.

1. For the USFA to adopt AskFred as thier Fred, I think a business case has to be made. I've suggested stats on volumes; meaning how much is AskFred being used. How many clubs and fencers are represented, how many tournaments have been held by what rating. What is the total dollar value of entries fees collected...etc. (Incidentally, if the USFA received a small 'cut' from tournaments for funding would they may be more inclined? This will certainly raise someone's dander.).

2. It would be good to have more fencer demographic information collected in the registration process about the nature of the fencers, even small things like hgt, wgt, handedness, etc.. I am interested in the potential of AskFred as an ad hoc reportable database for backend reporting and statistical analysis.

[mrbiggs]

Slightly unrelated, but is there any way fencing.net could host some of the essential files on usfencing.org while the site is (ahem) under construction?

Like the rulebook, points lists, etc.

[KD5MDK]

If you need the rulebook, I've never found the FOC website down.

[MyrddinsPrecint]

Originally Posted by mrbiggs

Slightly unrelated, but is there any way fencing.net could host some of the essential files on usfencing.org while the site is (ahem) under construction?

Like the rulebook, points lists, etc.

there's some usefull stuff mirrored at http://www.tacomafencing.com/documents.html

[hpfencing]

I really like it... Now if we could get EVERYONE to use fencing time and Fred.....

[peet]

I looked away for a day or so, and this thread really was jumping while I was gone! I'll attempt to comment on a few things:

Originally Posted by Frank Pratt

Right now, clicking on a "discuss this tournament" link opens F.Net in the same window. IMO, It would be better to have it open F.Net in a new window

I usually shy away from new windows, but in this case it makes lots of sense. Unless I get a lot of "No, wait, Don't!" from other users before the weekend's up, I'll do it.

Originally Posted by FencingKitten

Also, I understand FT makes DEs more difficult, especially as the tables get larger and larger, because you have to find the bout you want visually, and click on it

In the current version of Fencing Time, there is a list of active bouts at the top, which you can click to get to a given bout in the table. Helps a lot in finding bouts. Very much like the dropdown in FRED that highlights and jumps to a given competitor in long pool & DE results pages.

Originally Posted by FencingKitten

I realized earlier while perusing the tournaments section that there are a couple of threads for the same tournament. Will these/can these be combined, or can there be a control put on number of threads for the same tournament, or did I just happen to notice the freak accident?

There are a couple threads for one SAS tournament because I was still testing the feature (and fixing the part i messed up ). AFAIK, it works correctly now, which is to say that FRED knows when a thread has already been initiated from his link, and takes you to that thread instead of starting a new one.

If anyone finds that this part is not working correctly, please let me know (that's what "beta" is all about, after all...). Now, if someone starts a thread without using FRED's link, he'll never know about that, so there could end up duplicates that way....

Other thing I thought might be nice (but can't think how to implement) would be to include the section that the tournament is from in the thread title - I usually recognize the titles of my local tournaments, but might otherwise miss a few. I can still cross-check it to Fred, though.

This would be easy enough to do, but might make the thread title quite long for some tournaments, and potentially redundant for sectional championships. Still, I can do it. Anyone who thinks I should do that; email or PM me to vote for it.

Originally Posted by veeco

What I would love to see in terms of integration would be a way to link FRED ids to F.net logins. This would allow F.net to have links to a person's results in the FRED database, so we could see how well all the forum members do.

Could be way cool. The privacy concerns you mention are one thing to navigate, and there are technical challenges as well, of course.

Originally Posted by brtech

We all know there is a project underway at USFA for online registration, and I suspect, like all underway projects, it can't be stopped or majorly changed. The USFA requirements for registration are different enough that using FRED probably just ain't gonna happen.

Actually, If you're referring to the "online registration" project described in the BoD agenda that oiuyt posted recently, I believe if you read it carefully, it refers to online membership registration, not tournament registration. I have had some conversations with some USFA people about tournament registration, and it is less "underway" than you might think/hope.

Unless, of course, the information I have been given is less than current/accurate/true. Which is a significant possibility.

You're right that USFA tournament registrations would require some things that are different from the way FRED works. That is why I've never suggested that the USFA use FRED as-is, out of the box, but allow me to develop a system just for them that is based on FRED's code. Two arguments for: 1) Much of the code is already done, just have to add/change a few things. 2) Then FRED and the USFA's system (USFRED?) could talk to each other and both benefit from the shared info.

Originally Posted by brtech

You might be able to get them to give you access to data that FRED or fencing.net could use. It may not be limited to FRED and/or fencing.net, but maybe if Craig/PEET asks nicely, the data they need could be made available to whomever wants it.

Yeah, access to data would help FRED and his users tremendously. One of the big hassles organizers go through is verifying fencer ratings, club and division affiliation, etc. If FRED had access to this data, there would be no question.

Originally Posted by brtech

It clearly would be worth asking, nicely, for a little discussion. Ask Michael Massik to hook you up with the project manager.

I have asked nicely many times for such discussions, and have never gotten a response. I probably should be more pushy.

Originally Posted by oso97

One of the first that comes to mind is the ability to enter multiple clubs for a fencer and use that for seeding and conflict resolution.

The next rev of FRED will have secondary clubs.

Originally Posted by oso97

Dan, you're absolutely taking the right approach in working as an observer at a national tournament. Peet, you need probably to do the same.

I'm usually ref'ing or fencing, unfortunately. I often make tentative plans to have discussions with the NAC BC people about some of this stuff, and the way the days go at NACs, we rarely get the chance. Hopefully Dan can represent both of us. Or maybe one of these days I'll see if I can leave one day in which I neither ref nor fence.

Originally Posted by Fence like a Cat

I've suggested stats on volumes; meaning how much is AskFred being used. How many clubs and fencers are represented, how many tournaments have been held by what rating.

Stats collection and reporting is definitely in FRED's future. For now, I can say:
13844 fencers
216 upcoming tournaments
1201 past tournaments
6498 events
53584 results
78218 bouts!

That bout data is particularly ripe for the stats hungry.



So yeah, thanks all for the comments and the kind words about FRED, F.net, and Fencing Time!
And just as a way of saying thanks, I have another beta feature for you here.


Cheers!

-p

[Craig]

Originally Posted by peet

And just as a way of saying thanks, I have another beta feature for you here.


Cheers!

-p

Sweet! Now, got to search the google maps api documentation for a way to do a "within X miles" search. (Looking for that for the clubs listings.)

(Ya know peet, there's always more to do! That's why we get the "big bucks" isn't it. )

Craig

[peet]

Originally Posted by Craig

Sweet! Now, got to search the google maps api documentation for a way to do a "within X miles" search. (Looking for that for the clubs listings.)

(Ya know peet, there's always more to do! That's why we get the "big bucks" isn't it. )

Craig

But doesn't the map view give you that visually? ("hey, look at all those tournaments clustered around my city!") Even the section and division search filters seem a little redundant to me. They are only on FRED's map page for uniformity with the other search pages. I was thinking of removing them.

But if you want to do the "within X miles" thing for your club map, you need access to geocoding (translation of address to latitude/longitude), since the googlemaps API doesn't (at this time) provide geocoding service. Then, once you can get lat/long for the user's address, you could probably use the googlemaps API version 2 and use the GlatLng.distanceFrom() method to get distances to the clubs and exclude those outside a certain radius.

My company does such a search on a different project not involving googlemaps, (a pharmacy lookup) and it's more of a pain than you might imagine.

-p

[Craig]

True. I guess I'm thinking more of an "Input your zip" field and then then map recenters and zooms to 6 instead of out at 13 for the full country view. I'll see if I can figure it out.

Look at this for the fencing clubs version that I've put up on another thread. I'm more interested in the functionality for that. http://www.fencing.net?option=com_google_maps


Craig

Originally Posted by peet

But doesn't the map view give you that visually? ("hey, look at all those tournaments clustered around my city!") Even the section and division search filters are only on FRED's map page for uniformity with the other search pages. I was thinking of removing them.

But if you want to do the "within X miles" thing for your club map, you need access to geocoding (translation of address to latitude/longitude), since the googlemaps API doesn't (at this time) provide geocoding service. Then, once you can get lat/long for the user's address, you could probably use the googlemaps API version 2 and use the GlatLng.distanceFrom() method to get distances to the clubs and exclude those outside a certain radius.

My company does such a search on a different project not involving googlemaps, (a pharmacy lookup) and it's more of a pain than you might imagine.

-p

["Fence like a Cat"]

Playing games with rough numbers:

Stats on FRED:
13844 fencers
216 upcoming tournaments
1201 past tournaments
6498 events
53584 results
78218 bouts!

USFA Member stats for 2005:

Senior 4028
Junior 9966
Associate 372
Coach 431
Veteran 1607
Life 429
Club 630
Family 3423
Total 20962

Scenario 1 for fun and profit:
Lets assume coaches don’t compete 20962-431=20531 total fencers
Remove clubs
20531-630=19901 total fencers

Lets assume the average tournament fee is $10.00
Lets assume the one fencer has fenced in only one event in one tournament, total funds generated = $199,010.00
Lets assume the one fencer has fenced in two events in one tournament, total funds generated = $199,010.00x2=$398,020.00

Scenario 2 for fun and profit:
1201 past tournaments.
Lets assume the average tournament fee is $10.00

Lets assume a tournament average, Small to Medium size 3 weapon:
Foil 25 participants
Epee 50 participants
Sabre 15 participants

Foil 1201 events x 25 foilists = $300,250.00
Epee 1201 events x 50 epeeists = $600,500.00
Sabrists 1201 events x 15 = $180,150.00

Total entry fees generated=$1,080,900.00