FRCTop25.com Going Live Soon! Get Involved.

[foozie]

FYI, "participate" is spelled "particiapte" in the disclaimer at the bottom.

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by foozie

FYI, "participate" is spelled "particiapte" in the disclaimer at the bottom.

Good catch, thanks.

Also changed the "key" at the top of the polls to make them clearer.

[Justin Montois]

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

[Tetraman]

Originally Posted by 340x4xLife

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.

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

[Vikesrock]

Originally Posted by ThaineP

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.

The nature of that type of action makes it poorly suited to this type of thing. The reason this "works" is that through webcasts, a single individual can view many different robots from across the country. Acts of Coopertition or GP typically affect an individual, single team, or single event.

It is absolutely a great idea to recognize teams that display great Coopertition and Gracious Professionalism, but that recognition is probably more appropriate in person at the event or in a thread in the Thanks ans/or Congrats section after the event. Ranking teams based on their GP just doesn't seem like that great an idea to me. I don't see how you can say that the 148 is any more or less GP than 234 or 365 or 93 or anyone else for that matter.

[dodar]

I thought you said that no one should be voted for until they had matches under their belts for the 2011 season?

[Justin Montois]

Originally Posted by dodar

I thought you said that no one should be voted for until they had matches under their belts for the 2011 season?

All teams currently listed on the website were merely put in place to test the overall layout of the site. Submissions that were sent in were just testing that aspect of the website.

Votes will not be tallied unless they are submitted during the valid voting times for that week which are from the Saturday that ends the week through the following Tuesday. For example, The week 1 Voting times are from Saturday, March 5th through Tuesday, March 8th.

[Eric Yahrmatter]

What's stopping people from voting multiple times, as members of multiple teams, or as both a student and a mentor? You should think of a way to have a login to minimize this. Also, you may want to consider allowing a team to have only one login. The weighting on the votes will be fairer then.

[EricH]

Originally Posted by Eric Yahrmatter

What's stopping people from voting multiple times, as members of multiple teams, or as both a student and a mentor? You should think of a way to have a login to minimize this. Also, you may want to consider allowing a team to have only one login. The weighting on the votes will be fairer then.

They aren't allowing anonymous voting. Voters are also not allowed to vote for any team they're involved with.

Regarding the "GP" aspect: This is a "Top 25" poll. I don't see anybody saying any definitions of "Top". In other words, if that's how you wanted to fill out and submit a list, that's how you fill out and submit a list.

[Tetraman]

what if you had a "top 25" for each regional competition. So people fill out who they thought was "top 25" in each regional. And based on that information, the "overall top 25" was calculated based on answers from each regional?

[GGCO]

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.

[BGiraud]

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.

[sgreco]

Originally Posted by GGCO

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.

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).

[Andrew Schreiber]

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.

[Justin Montois]

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.