Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

Here are my initial thoughts.

Aside from styling changes, you need to do several things to make the site really easy to use.

1. Have national polls and regional polls... ie who do you think will be the best teams in your state?
2. Make it obvious where the user goes to vote. It should be one of the first things to see.
3. The heading for the table should read:
Team # | # of Votes | Change from previous rank
4. Maybe include an underdog section. Like many people pointed out, the top 25 teams are the "usual suspects". I'd like to see other teams get the spotlight.

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

I think this is great!
One issue that will come up is teams getting overlooked because of the region they come from. As an example, east coast teams have trouble getting the level of respect they might deserve. I believe that this is partially due to lack of exposure and Chief Delphi presence. In practice the top 25 will probably be based mostly on votes from a region. If the largest voter density is in Michigan then Michigan teams will obviously get the most votes. Why would Michigan voters vote for an east coast "oddball" (team 1676) that they have never seen. This list may be plagued by the uninformed voter. Unfortunately, I am only pointing out a possible glitch and have no solution to offer. Perhaps none is needed. In the end the list will still have a ton of value. Thanks for all of your effort.

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

Regional polls is an interesting idea. I know from my perspective, if a regional isn't in New England, and it isn't webcasted, then I won't see it. I assume this is tyhe case for most people in their given regions. The only problems with regions is you'd need a lot of participation. I could see this working in a state like Michigan, but in states with smaller FIRST team populations, it would be hard to get enough people to vote to have a valid poll.


I'm also totally in favor of the "experts" voting. I think we should make 75% of the voting subject to the votes of the experts, then leave 25% of the poll up to anyone that wants to have a say (the public).

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

One of the things Chris Picone and I were discussing is the regional biases. Looking at it from a team density stand point Southeast Michigan has one of the highest team densities of any region in the globe. This means that nearly 100 teams have the ability of going to any of the events in the area and seeing teams. Compare this to Israel where there are a lot of teams but no one outside of Israel sees them (for the most part). I think that it would be very useful to make regional polls (or at least be able to see the regional influence). Since you are collecting team numbers already this should be pretty easy.

Also, was there a final conclusion reached on the experts' anonymity? My personal opinion is that experts should not be anonymous, they would then be forced to defend their opinions openly. Perhaps have them use pen names or something so they don't face personal backlash but still forcing them to remain somewhat consistent in their reasoning.

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

As far as the experts remaining anonymous, based on the feedback I'm getting we are going to leave it up to the experts themselves if they chose to reveal their identity. Some will vote with "Looking Forward" type code names and others will vote with their identity revealed.

As far as regional rankings and regional biases no decisions have been made.

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

I'd like to see specific regional polls as well. And national pollsters should be taken equally from each region. (e.x 6 regions: Northeast, South, Midwest, Michigan and North country, West, and Northwest.) Each region would be represented by a set number (e.x. 3) of pollsters, for a total of 18 (in my example.)

I also think it should be a requirement for national pollsters to publish their ballots in a dedicated thread, whether as themselves, or with a pen name, it's up to them.

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

HAW!
I luv Top Gear!
I actaully did a poll on my DA page asking which show was cooler: Top Gear or Mythbusters.

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

The BBC verison is awesome.... But mythbusters is great show too...

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

Hey everyone,

I just want to give a quick update on how things are going and what direction we're headed.

The website is being updated to display 2 polls on the homepage. One "public" poll, where anyone can vote, and one "Expert Poll of Polls" where we will combine the votes of the experts to rank the Top 25 FRC teams.

Near the bottom of the site, there will be a link that will take you to an area where you can chose to view each experts list individually and view any accompanying articles they wrote to give some insight into their votes.

As far as ranking each individual regional, we think the regional itself will be an adequate measure of ranking the teams present.

We are however excited about the possibility of using the data from both the public and expert polls to provide a Top 10 list for each region.(Northeast, SouthEast, South, Midwest, Northwest, SouthWest.) We chose Top 10 because there may simply not be enough teams voted for to compile a Top 25 for each region. More on the Regional top tens in a later post.

So that's where we are right now. As always, If you have an idea that you think would improve the website or another fun idea to utilize with all the data, please post. Thanks everyone for helping out, Week 1 Regionals are almost here!

-Justin

Re: FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.
 

Sounds exciting. Good ideas. Can't wait to see how this all works out.