FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.

[Justin Montois]

I thought it would be fun to try something that has been done here in the past, but do it in a way that causes a little less controversy.

The goal is to rank the "Top 25" FRC teams for the 2011 Season much like college sports. Some of the issues mentioned about the last time this was done have been addressed.

There are some rules that need to be followed to try and keep "popularity" out of it as much as possible.

1. You cannot cast a vote for any team you are involved with.
2. You cannot cast a vote for a team that has not played a match.(IE if your team doesn't play until week 6, it will not be eligible until then)
3. All voting must be done through the frctop25.com submission page
*Anyone involved in FRC can vote regardless of years involved*

There are 2 separate polls, a mentors poll, and a student poll. Please indicate on the submission form which category applies to you.

Votes for Week 1 must be in by Tuesday, March 8th. The new poll will come out every Wednesday evening before that weeks events. (The Week 1 Poll Will come out Wednesday the 9th)

I will be checking each voter to ensure they meet the above criteria. Mike Starke (Mike Starke on CD) and myself will be the only ones to see the actual voters and their respective votes. We will leave it up to the voters themselves if they chose to reveal their lists. No "anonymous" votes will be accepted.

Votes will be tallied by assigning 25 points to your #1 Selection, 24 points for #2 and so on. With the #1 ranking going to the team that receives the most points. #2 the second most and so on.

Votes for week 1 can be sent in Saturday at 9PM up until the deadline. If you fail to comply with the above conditions your list will be void for that week. Please do as much as you can to watch that weeks events, don't just go by the winners, try to do some research.

Check out the site at FRCTop25.com
(Note the teams listed are for testing purposes only!)

If you have any ideas to amend the voting process or improve the website please post. And again, have fun with this, don't take any of it personally and have a great 2011 season!

There could be a different way of going about this, you know how the FIRST Competition is about 'coopertition' and gracious professionalism?

There should a Top 25 for that, instead of pure performance, because there are plenty of rookie teams and 'young' teams that want recognition, but if their robot underperforms, then they don't get recognition.

I think it would be nice to recognize the less funded/smaller teams by making a Top 25 Graciously Professional teams, or something similar.

[mwtidd]

Do you plan on supporting an API or an iframe. This is the sort of thing I would like to embed within the scouting pit.

Also after having the social network on loop, I had an idea that may be more appropriate for you to implement than me. Do a facemash sort of thing but for the robots. my thought was to edit team numbers from photos and to put two robots up against each other.

This would help to eliminate preconceptions and natural biases people have to power teams from past years.

Then again you use the college sports example, which actually encourages these biases.

A similar thing could be done with match videos, where you have to select one team from the 6.

One thing I have noticed flipping through the photos that many young teams have very well designed robots this year. There is no reason they shouldn't be able to rise to the top 25 simply because they don't have "FIRST fame"

Also, I believe the 3rd year rule may increase the likelihood of +3 year teams being voted for.

[Koko Ed]

How is 177 listed at 20th and also receiving votes?
I know they're that good but they can't be that good.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by lineskier

Also, I believe the 3rd year rule may increase the likelihood of +3 year teams being voted for.

That's a good point. I'll remove that condition.

Thanks to those who sent in some test submissions, everything seems to be working well.

Is the site easy to read? Is it too cluttered? What do you think about having a top 25 poll for minibots?

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by 340x4xLife

That's a good point. I'll remove that condition.

Thanks to those who sent in some test submissions, everything seems to be working well.

Is the site easy to read? Is it too cluttered? What do you think about having a top 25 poll for minibots?

I think it works well as is.

I don't know what kind of DB you are using, but I would recommend storing the timestamp of each vote. I like the up and down sections, and this would allow you to eventually provide stock graphs for the teams.

Also the titles of the charts are a little confusing, actually more so if you just didn't include it.
If I was in control of this, I would just remove them. For me the the table is naturally intuitive. Also note that the arrows are offset from the actual row, potentially you could use a smaller arrow [the same size as your font] and it would have the same effect. (make the arrows the same size)

again these are small things, but they look good.

regarding minibots, personally I don't think voting is the best way to rank minibots. The twitter feed contains match bonuses and I plan on using a team's estimated bonus contribution to figure out who the best minibots actually are.

[Tom Bottiglieri]

This is a cool idea.

Do you plan to weight some user's contributions more than others? I don't see how one person could possibly rank all of the the team without basically guessing.

[Chris is me]

I would prefer rather than a "student / mentor" poll there be a "public" and "private" poll - "private" being random qualified individuals added to the polls.

[XaulZan11]

This is a cool idea. I fear there will be a strong correlation between if a team was at a webcasted regional and ranking.

I also like Chris's idea of a poll of expert or qualified individuals. Maybe those people could be voted nominated and then voted on.

[Tetraman]

Yea, if you were going to have maybe 15 or so people for a "professional" or "more realistic" poll, that would be good. Maybe contact some CD users via pm, have them sign in, vote and even keep who they are secret. Sorta Looking Forward.

[mwtidd]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

Yea, if you were going to have maybe 15 or so people for a "professional" or "more realistic" poll, that would be good. Maybe contact some CD users via pm, have them sign in, vote and even keep who they are secret. Sorta Looking Forward.

What may be more interesting is to have those 15 people actually write articles explaining their personal top 25s.

[Chris is me]

Originally Posted by lineskier

What may be more interesting is to have those 15 people actually write articles explaining their personal top 25s.

Shh, you're stealing my ideas

While I don't want to assert that my opinion means anything more than jack squat, I was thinking of making blog posts on my personal bog every week or so with a top 10 / 25 list along these lines

[dodar]

We should have a public poll posted and then do a FIRSTcast of these 15 or so "experts" counting down from 25-1 and them giving reasons why the teams are where they are.

[The Lucas]

Originally Posted by Tetraman

Yea, if you were going to have maybe 15 or so people for a "professional" or "more realistic" poll, that would be good. Maybe contact some CD users via pm, have them sign in, vote and even keep who they are secret. Sorta Looking Forward.

I like the idea of an expert poll like Looking Forward used to conduct. The experts would have to regionally distributed to even out the natural regional biases. Experts should be kept secret.

I also love the idea of a public poll. I think I might have a few of our scouts vote in it as an exercise in compiling picking lists and to encourage them to watch webcasts & CD. Is there a need to "vouch" for someone who is not an active poster on CD?

[XaulZan11]

Originally Posted by The Lucas

Experts should be kept secret.

What makes you say that?


I think this should be marketed more as ESPN's Power rankings, which is just for fun and has no influence on the season, and not NCAA football/basketball which do determine what teams play who and where.