I have been thinking about this for a while, but now could be a good time to discuss how could work the updating for the future MK7 site, since the game should reach shelves in about 3 months from now and the site should be ready by that time; and in my opinion such important aspect deserved its own thread.

As a combined player who has submitted full timesets for ALL 6 kart games and a times updater of the MKW site (+ formerly the MKSC site), I can't help but feel the current time updating system for the main sites is obsolete.

It can be really annoying for both :
- the times updaters who have sometimes to spend a lot of times adding in, deleting, and/or modifying the times, correcting players' several mistakes, typoes...
- the players, who, as a result of the above + the lack of updaters during some periods, had in the past to wait a long timespan (sometimes a few weeks !) to see their PR's on the site.

Therefore, I propose a new system to make things easier and more efficient.

It would look like an improved system of the current yearly MK64 site :

- Players would enter in a program, in which they enter their names (+ personal info the first time for newcomers) and their times for all the tracks they have a record on, and send then.
The name of the tracks as well as this whole program would be translated in multiple languages, so that the players don't mistakenly put a time for the wrong track or the wrong category (i.e 3lap instead of a flap, glitch instead of no-glitch...).
We could also add the possibility to show which vehicle/character we used for each PR's, or even, to send picture/video links with the times as proofs (yeah this one looks a bit far-fetched, I don't know much to which extent it would be possible)

- Then, a bunch of selected people that I'll call "verifiers" will check the submissions and decide to approve them or not, according to the credibility of the player and his times (+ his suggested proofs).
They could eventually modify the times if they think the player has typo'd one or more of his times (as far as their knowledge allows them to).
After the times have been approved, they would appear instantly on the site.

Pros of this system :

- No more yahoogroups needed. No more need to have or create a specific mail address to send times.
- Amount of mistakes and typoes from the players greatly diminushed : they would only need to type the times + since the program is translated they wouldn't put the times in the wrong places.
- Way easier work for the updating staff team (verifiers). Basically they would only have to control the entries and correct the remaining mistakes. No more parser which can "fuck up" some submissions and thus no more manual editing. Only the players and not the system,would be to blame.

=> Faster, cleaner times updating !

The MK64 yearly site works very well so I see no strong reason to take a similar system, however with some modifications/improvements for a larger scale site.


If you disagree, if you think you would still like to have the current system already in place on the other sites for MK7, or, at the opposite, want an automated system like the MK64 yearly site, with only the admins in charge of taking care of the site, or, maybe even a radically different system, share your opinion in the poll and explain the reasons of your choice.

Obviously, I would also like site admins to explain to which extent my proposal, or some other similar system, is realisable in the remaining time, or at all. We shouldn't waste any time discussing that if it is not possible !



...Oh, and thanks if you managed to read everything by now

Chris wrote on 09/05/11 at 12:18:54:


Isn't that why Mick suggested that some people were appointed to recheck times and verify if times are correct.

@ Mick: I suppose that the automated system tells people if they made mistakes in their own submissions (like the parser now does for the updaters), so that they can correct those mistakes themselves.

I never worked with the system of the MK64 yearly site, but it sounds good to me. Especially cause there's nothing worse than having to correct entire messages that couldn't be read by the parser. I think updates would take the least time with Mick's suggested system.

Scott made a time-submission page for MKDD. It just sends an email to the MKDD yahoogroup, but it fixes up formatting and disambiguation, so the emails are all nice and stuff. Have you used it before?

TvK wrote on 09/05/11 at 12:39:02:

I don't know about any site which has such feature, but no doubt that it is doable and could be easily implemented. Definitely a good idea, but iom we would still need a check behind for those, for example who would purposely enter slighty faster than WR times.

JoshG wrote on 09/05/11 at 13:28:20:

That's what I had in mind, indeed.
I wanted to talk about the detail mentioned in the bold part in my first post, but kind of forgot... anyway, yes I had in my plan a trust system, that allows known and proved players to update their times right away without going by intermediaries. That might look unfair for those not part of the list, but that would mostly apply near the first months of release with the massive flow of players that will join the fresh charts. In the future most of the players should able to update their times instantly (though we would have to be careful at times when dealing about WR's / high ranked PR's)

JoshG wrote on 09/05/11 at 13:28:20:

Also a good idea that sort of rejoin the point made a few phrases above.

JoshG wrote on 09/05/11 at 13:28:20:

We should avoid that if possible, even if I don't know much how. I don't think people should be responsible of the timesets of other players, it would be better that they send the times themselves, so we don't have future complaints about members that didn't want to be on the charts in the first place. There has been precedents on MKWii I believe...

AlexPenev wrote on 09/05/11 at 14:38:25:

wow, why isn’t that done for all sites? it looks great

also wanted to say I haven’t subbed 2 times to MKW because the yahoogroups was being gay, and I didn’t feel like making a new e-mail address

The yahoogroups system is VERY off-putting at first, some people are too lazy to write down stuff and make sure it's understandable by others. And it takes a lot of time to see the updates in effect.
MKDD's tool helps for the lazy people but it doesn't make the update much faster, does it?


Anyway, about MKDD, I can't use the time submitter from the 3DS for a fast update because of the huge drop-down list of names. Thanks to yahoogroups though I can simply send a normal mail even from the 3DS.
It's not essential but it would be cool if there'd still be a way to submit from the 3DS for MK7's site (yahoogroups is just fine) because, hell, you've got the 3DS already in your hand when you get your PR  

Etch wrote on 09/05/11 at 19:41:34:

Since the accounts, for the case of an automated or semi-automated system, would be protected by a password (to avoid "sabotage" of the timesets by people with bad intentions), a valid e-mail would also still be required for each player entry (in case their password get lost or "stolen"). The situation is not different from what we have actually.

Etch wrote on 09/05/11 at 19:41:34:

For most sites the process is fast, but for MKW, especially with the all those players who still don't write a mail in the exact good format for the parser to read it right it can be quicly become time-consuming (I already spent once well over an 1 hour to update only a hundred of messages)

Etch wrote on 09/05/11 at 19:41:34:

Haven't thought of this detail, and I totally see it as being as a con of my system. That is definitely a huge lot of scores that remains stored for the years to come, thus a way to keep track of WR's history.

However, speaking of WR's, the way we check for the fastest times has changed since MKW. Before we had to go to site to submit the times and/or look for uploaded videos here to see what were considered the official WR's, as it was the only place who had them showed.
But with MKW (and very likely the soon-to-be MK7), we have mainly to check the online rankings on the Wii to see the WR's, which were (and are still ?) deemed to have more importance, rather that our MKW charts, because of the great difference of number of players competing in them (many dozen of thousands players if not more versus hundreds of players). This is the main reason the fastest times on our site are now named "Site Records".

As a consequence, the site which tracks the WR history of each of the tracks in MKW, albeit not totally 100% complete, almost, if not at all, did not use the yahoogroups, but instead other ressources like collection of images of worldwide top tens and/or videos, and inputs from players who made the times.

What I am trying to say is that we can have a working updated site without the need of yahoogroups and without losing important information about the history of the time trial competition (sure the performances about the players that aren't in the toppies would be forgotten eventually, but I think you agree it's not a big deal).

By no means I have a grudge with the current system (otherwise why would I have applied to be part of the staff of some sites ?), it has some minor flaws but has been working well for about 10 years ! (I think ?)

But I believe we can do better. Like Mihawk just pointed out, the system is not exactly attractive to new players, especially for those whose English's not their native language.
MKW saw the rise of a massive amount of new time trial players (out of the 28 million of players that bought the game that's not surprising) but the majority of them neither bothered joining our site (mainly japs, but also many players from all countries), or joined only years later (corcerns some currents toppies including the #1 !!). And this happened partly because those did not want or simply couldn't make it past the joining process. History could repeat for the next sequel.

Isn't having the largest community of players and the most accurate charts what we are looking for ?

This said, the suggestion by Penev is largely acceptable and would already make the updating easier for everyone, and we could keep the yahoogroups. I'm interesting to see how it works, and I wonder why it has not been in use for other sites... Do you still need a yahoogroups account ?




 

Quote:


I'm fairly sure that wasn't your stance in the fenner debate.






 

Like I said, when I get MK7, I won't forget doing some livestreaming on it

Fant0m wrote on 09/08/11 at 02:52:44:

don't worry about it Florian, I will try and not cheat on this one

I really like what Scott has done on the MKDD site. It's pretty simple aswell.

That's what I meant Mr.Nosey...sorry I confuse you

I like Mick's idea the best.