# Check your "ranking" while practicing



## xtom (Apr 23, 2015)

*[RankingTimer] check your "ranking" while practicing*

RankingTimer is an online cubing timer based on the latest competition data from WCA:
http://www.rankingtimer.com/
Screenshot: ​
Special points:
1. supports almost all kinds of scrambles in wca competition;
2. each scramble is selected from a real competition randomly;
3. you can see your ranking immediately while practicing, supports World ranking/Continental ranking/National ranking, you can also add the gender filter.

If you are tired of ordinary online timer, try this.


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## Ross The Boss (Apr 23, 2015)

1) i imagine we'll be running out of scrambles pretty quickly 
2) this ranking thing is pretty interesting. have you found a way to get your timer to update automatically as the wca updates? a suggestion i have is to eventually be able to check out your national ranking.


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## AlphaSheep (Apr 23, 2015)

Some suggestions:

 Round off to 2 decimal places...
 "You are here" instead of "Your are here"
 Use the word "Mean" instead of "Average", because average in cubing usually means the best and worst times are excluded.
 Show which WCA database export was used... e.g. WCA_export718_20150422, and the disclaimer bits from the "Allowed use" section in the readme file in the export..


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## BboyArchon (Apr 23, 2015)

-Timer compares your Average with the Single classification. IMO you should do 2 comparatives: Avg. vs Avg. and Single vs Single instead
-Decimal rounding is definetely mandatory
-It seems like average is calculated from all the times and not for the last 5-12 times


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## pdilla (Apr 23, 2015)

I've always wanted something like this.


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## xtom (Apr 23, 2015)

AlphaSheep said:


> http://i.imgur.com/mp4G1zL.png
> 
> Some suggestions:
> 
> ...



Thanks for the suggestions, I'll fix them tomorrow


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## Ross The Boss (Apr 23, 2015)

Actually, rounding is not what we want. Truncation would be better, that's how the wca deals with 3 digit results


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## xtom (Apr 23, 2015)

Ross The Boss said:


> Actually, rounding is not what we want. Truncation would be better, that's how the wca deals with 3 digit results



Thanks, I'll fix that


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## G2013 (Apr 23, 2015)

Good! But it's only for 3x3 right?


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## AlphaSheep (Apr 23, 2015)

Ross The Boss said:


> Actually, rounding is not what we want. Truncation would be better, that's how the wca deals with 3 digit results



For single times, yes, but not for averages. Averages are rounded.


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## Ross The Boss (Apr 23, 2015)

Yes, that is correct


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## Stefan (Apr 23, 2015)

This is a pretty cool idea.


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## sk8erman41 (Apr 23, 2015)

It would be great if you could incorporate mobile support


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## xtom (Apr 24, 2015)

Ross The Boss said:


> 1) i imagine we'll be running out of scrambles pretty quickly
> 2) this ranking thing is pretty interesting. have you found a way to get your timer to update automatically as the wca updates? a suggestion i have is to eventually be able to check out your national ranking.



#1, there are 115694 scrambles for 3x3x3 events in current latest databases, and this number will continue to grow when a new competition happen, the timer page selects scramble randomly, I guess that should be enough;
#2, I haven't found a way to access wca database directly, current solution is download the data package from wca, and import to my own database. So when wca releases a new database package, I can refresh the timer database manually.
For the national ranking info, the page doesn't ask people for their personal info, so it's a little hard to determine which country you are from. Of course, it's possible to get country info via your visit IP, but it's not 100% correct. So, yes, I will consider this, but it is not supported now



AlphaSheep said:


> http://i.imgur.com/mp4G1zL.png
> 
> Some suggestions:
> 
> ...



I've fixed them, please try again



G2013 said:


> Good! But it's only for 3x3 right?



Yes, it's only for 3x3 now, but yes, I can and for other types when I have enough time


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## Tim Major (Apr 24, 2015)

xtom said:


> #2, I haven't found a way to access wca database directly, current solution is download the data package from wca, and import to my own database. So when wca releases a new database package, I can refresh the timer database manually.



What's your reasoning behind this vs just using the wca scrambler? Have you also made sure there aren't repeat scrambles? I mean if you haven't made it exclude every scramble you've done, I can't be bothered doing the stats but 115694 scrambles, with hundreds of people doing many averages of 5, it's only a matter of time before people get the same scramble in the same average.

When you refresh your database does it still stop repeats?


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## illius (Apr 24, 2015)

I do this already, by going to the WCA rankings, and finding where my time just was.


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## xtom (Apr 24, 2015)

Tim Major said:


> What's your reasoning behind this vs just using the wca scrambler? Have you also made sure there aren't repeat scrambles? I mean if you haven't made it exclude every scramble you've done, I can't be bothered doing the stats but 115694 scrambles, with hundreds of people doing many averages of 5, it's only a matter of time before people get the same scramble in the same average.
> 
> When you refresh your database does it still stop repeats?



I think we have different views on this tool, I'm doing this for fun


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## szalejot (Apr 24, 2015)

xtom said:


> Yes, it's only for 3x3 now, but yes, I can and for other types when I have enough time



More events will be great. Especially 3BLD


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## xtom (Apr 29, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Good! But it's only for 3x3 right?



I just updated it today, now it supports below types:
2x2 Cube
Rubik's Cube
4x4 Cube
5x5 Cube
6x6 Cube
7x7 Cube
Rubik's Cube: One-handed
Rubik's Cube: Blindfolded
Rubik's Cube: With feet
4x4 Cube: Blindfolded
5x5 Cube: Blindfolded
Rubik's Clock
Megaminx
Pyraminx
Skewb
Square-1



szalejot said:


> More events will be great. Especially 3BLD



Hi szalejot, now 3BLD is supported for you


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## Keroma12 (Apr 29, 2015)

When I select 7x7, the scramble is so long that it pushes the text telling you the competition down under the Type drop-down box. So you can't read the competition name.


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## xtom (Apr 29, 2015)

Keroma12 said:


> When I select 7x7, the scramble is so long that it pushes the text telling you the competition down under the Type drop-down box. So you can't read the competition name.



I just adjusted the layout param to fix this issue, please try again


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## xtom (May 1, 2015)

Current data is synchronized with the latest version(20150501) to include the 5.25 record


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## G2013 (May 1, 2015)

xtom said:


> I just updated it today, now it supports below types:
> 2x2 Cube
> Rubik's Cube
> 4x4 Cube
> ...



Great 

Another suggestion (but harder to do) is to select a country ranking, or continental one, instead of only world ranking. 
EJ: If you were Russian, what would be your ranking? If you were from Oceania, what would be your ranking?

English is not my main language


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## jms (May 8, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Great
> 
> Another suggestion (but harder to do) is to select a country ranking, or continental one, instead of only world ranking.



I was going to suggest this. 

It would be nice to see I am ranked like 300th in UK or something, rather than 25,000th in the world.


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## xtom (May 12, 2015)

jms said:


> I was going to suggest this.
> 
> It would be nice to see I am ranked like 300th in UK or something, rather than 25,000th in the world.



Hi jms, I have added the feature you suggested, now you can check the ranking info of World, Continent or Country, and you can also see the ranking info in Male or Female group.
When you enter the page, there is a dropdown icon on the right of "World ranking" text, click it, you will be able to do that.

Please try, and let me know if any issues.



G2013 said:


> Great
> 
> Another suggestion (but harder to do) is to select a country ranking, or continental one, instead of only world ranking.
> EJ: If you were Russian, what would be your ranking? If you were from Oceania, what would be your ranking?
> ...



It is supported now
You can find a dropdown icon on the right of "World ranking" text, click it!


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## szalejot (May 12, 2015)

xtom said:


> Hi szalejot, now 3BLD is supported for you



Yay! 
Great, I will test it today.

Another idea (hope you wont get mad because of requests): Manual input
In that way you can practice on timer and just enter time. Convenient for fast events like 2x2 when difference between space and timer can be significant.

EDIT:
Wait a minute. I remember, that there was an option to show which place would you have, if you would make time in competition from which scramble was taken. Is this option gone?


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## xtom (May 12, 2015)

szalejot said:


> Yay!
> Great, I will test it today.
> 
> Another idea (hope you wont get mad because of requests): Manual input
> ...



szalejot, I didn't remove any feature from day one. I tried here, but cannot reproduce the issue you said. Please retry and let me know more details if still meet problem.


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## szalejot (May 12, 2015)

xtom said:


> szalejot, I didn't remove any feature from day one. I tried here, but cannot reproduce the issue you said. Please retry and let me know more details if still meet problem.



Oh, at first I thought that ranking is from competition of scramble origin, but that had to be world ranking. My bad.


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## xtom (May 15, 2015)

Data has been synchronized to WCA_export038_20150514.

RankingTimer can be accessed via new URL: http://www.rankingtimer.com now


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## G2013 (Jun 5, 2015)

It would be great if it had also an option to check your average, not only your single best

I mean, out of 100 solves you only see your best single placed in the world ranking, but the average doesn't appear

And it would be better if it compared the current ao5 and the best ao5.... But that's maybe too much


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## xtom (Jun 15, 2015)

G2013 said:


> It would be great if it had also an option to check your average, not only your single best
> 
> I mean, out of 100 solves you only see your best single placed in the world ranking, but the average doesn't appear
> 
> And it would be better if it compared the current ao5 and the best ao5.... But that's maybe too much



Hi G2013, I have added the average-ranking-info support to rankingtimer, you can have a try

PS: data has been synced to WCA_export019_20150615.


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## hkpnkp (Jun 15, 2015)

the ranking system is a pretty cool feature


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## ketchuphater999 (Jul 9, 2015)

I want to implement something like this in Turbo Timer, do you think I could take a look at how you're doing it? I can credit you in the app description if you prefer.


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## G2013 (Jul 9, 2015)

Great! 

PS: The other day I got a scramble from a competition I attended! Very strange 
and I got one from the Zonhoven Open xD

-------------------------------------

bug report:

I selected "country ranking", and the list of single times appears doubled:

Ranking	Single PB (s)	Player
33	11.96	Lucas Busto
37	12.13	Francisco Dumont
37	12.13	Francisco Dumont
39	12.27	Bautista Bonazzola
39	12.27	Bautista Bonazzola
41	12.52	You are Here
42	12.84	Kevin Lifschitz
42	12.84	Kevin Lifschitz
44	13.05	Zenón Juan Manuel Salvarezza Cortez
44	13.05	Zenón Juan Manuel Salvarezza Cortez
46	13.4	Gabriel Eduardo Núñez Serna

Everyone appears twice


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## xtom (Jul 10, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Great!
> 
> PS: The other day I got a scramble from a competition I attended! Very strange
> and I got one from the Zonhoven Open xD
> ...



Thanks G2013, this seems a sync issue, I have refreshed the base data to fix it, could you please try again


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## xtom (Jul 10, 2015)

Gallifrey said:


> I want to implement something like this in Turbo Timer, do you think I could take a look at how you're doing it? I can credit you in the app description if you prefer.



Hi Gallifrey,
RankingTimer is working based on the WCA data, we can create WCA database using the exported script from: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/misc/export.html

Its mechanism is pretty simple:
1. Synchronize the WCA competition data weekly;
2. Generate pb and mean ranking tables for each event; (for better performance, otherwise user will wait too long before seeing the result)
3. Make an online timer page, which will pick a scramble from "Scrambles" table randomly for the specified event type;
4. Once user finished his solving, the timer page will send necessary data (event_type, best, mean, continent, country, gender) to our server to request ranking info and display on the page.

I think that's all, no secret.


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## josh42732 (Jul 10, 2015)

This is a great tool! Thanks for making it! I will use it a lot more often now! Why have I just heard of this???


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## xtom (Jul 10, 2015)

josh42732 said:


> This is a great tool! Thanks for making it! I will use it a lot more often now! Why have I just heard of this???



Glad to hear you like it


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## ketchuphater999 (Jul 10, 2015)

xtom said:


> Hi Gallifrey,
> RankingTimer is working based on the WCA data, we can create WCA database using the exported script from: https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/misc/export.html
> 
> Its mechanism is pretty simple:
> ...



didn't realize it was that simple! Thanks.


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## G2013 (Jul 10, 2015)

It works perfectly now ;D

But... I got the same scramble three times yesterday, and a second scramble twice. What's that?

The rest is amazing. Your timer is amazing as well!


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## xtom (Jul 10, 2015)

G2013 said:


> It works perfectly now ;D
> 
> But... I got the same scramble three times yesterday, and a second scramble twice. What's that?
> 
> The rest is amazing. Your timer is amazing as well!



Thanks for reporting this, I will try to improve the random-select code and let you know once I got a better solution


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## xtom (Jul 11, 2015)

Gallifrey said:


> didn't realize it was that simple! Thanks.



u r welcome●▽●


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## xtom (Jul 14, 2015)

G2013 said:


> It works perfectly now ;D
> 
> But... I got the same scramble three times yesterday, and a second scramble twice. What's that?
> 
> The rest is amazing. Your timer is amazing as well!



Hi G2013, I just made some change to the rand-select code of scrambles, you can try again and see if the bug is still there. Thank you!


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## xtom (Jul 22, 2015)

Minor improvement:
Add country flag after player name. Hover on the flag to see country name.


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## Eva (Jul 22, 2015)

I have just been using this and have a few points that I don't like.

- After a solve you need to press space to submit, for me that's very unintuitive. 
This can be solved in multiple ways : A textbox explaining, an extra button or just auto submitting.

- No inspection time, I tend to use more inspection time than aloud. I would like to have a countdown, not sure how hard it is to make that, tough.

- When pressing space (to start/stop the timer oid), I go down on the page. So, I only see the ranking instead of the time. 

I'm using google chrome, btw.

OPTIONAL: It might be nice to have all the scrambles from a round of a competition and see how you would have placed there.
That was the thing I expected, when I saw this thread.


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## xtom (Jul 22, 2015)

Eva said:


> I have just been using this and have a few points that I don't like.
> 
> - After a solve you need to press space to submit, for me that's very unintuitive.
> This can be solved in multiple ways : A textbox explaining, an extra button or just auto submitting.
> ...



Hi Eva, thank you for your feedback!
Here are the comments to above points:
1. Auto submit. (This is a good point worth considering in future updating.)
2. Inspection time. (I agree it's better to have inspection support, I'll try to find a proper way for this, adding to the wish list●▽●)
3. Scroll down when press space. (This is an known issue when the vertical scroll bar is shown, by default, browser will scroll down when press space( •ิ_• ิ)... I plan to re-design the page to improve these layout issue. Now, there are only two ways to avoid this: a. resize or maximum the browser window to hide scroll bar; b. zoom out the page content to hide scroll bar.)
4. See scrambles and place from a round of a competition. (This is a very interesting idea, I need do some researches to check if it is easy.)

Thank you again


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## G2013 (Jul 22, 2015)

Thanks for considering my suggestions!

I also agree with Eva


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## xtom (Jul 23, 2015)

@Eva, the auto-submit is supported. The page layout issue will be addressed in future. You can try again.

Thanks!


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## Eva (Jul 24, 2015)

xtom said:


> @Eva, the auto-submit is supported. The page layout issue will be addressed in future. You can try again.
> 
> Thanks!



Thanks .
It's nice you make adjustments so quick.


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## szalejot (Jul 30, 2015)

Eva said:


> OPTIONAL: It might be nice to have all the scrambles from a round of a competition and see how you would have placed there.
> That was the thing I expected, when I saw this thread.



That was what I was also expecting. THAT will be mega feature.


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## Popo4123 (Jul 30, 2015)

lol I know Ne....


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## xtom (Jul 30, 2015)

szalejot said:


> That was what I was also expecting. THAT will be mega feature.



Hi szalejot,
This is already in the [TODO] list, just a matter of time.


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## G2013 (Jul 30, 2015)

Bug report:

For Argentina ranking, there is nothing displayed in Mean PB neither for 3x3 BLD or 5x5. (I don't know if that bug repeats in other categories)

The table looks like this:

Ranking	Mean PB (s)	Player	Country
1 0 You are Here

(sorry for formatting)

There is, for sure, at least 1 person who has done 3x3BLD avg and 5x5 avg in my country.


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## xtom (Jul 30, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Bug report:
> 
> For Argentina ranking, there is nothing displayed in Mean PB neither for 3x3 BLD or 5x5. (I don't know if that bug repeats in other categories)
> 
> ...



Hi G2013, thanks for reporting this, it is a bug when sync to the latest WCA data, I will fix it today.

Thank you(●—●)


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## xtom (Jul 31, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Bug report:
> 
> For Argentina ranking, there is nothing displayed in Mean PB neither for 3x3 BLD or 5x5. (I don't know if that bug repeats in other categories)
> 
> ...



I tried Argentina ranking with 3x3 BLD and 5x5, I cannot reproduce the issue you mentioned, maybe there was a network issue. (see below attached screenshots)




Please let me know if you keep seeing this problem.

Thank you!


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## Lucas Garron (Aug 17, 2015)

xtom said:


> Data synced to WCA_export072_20150817.



Although I appreciate that you're doing regular updates, it's probably not noteworthy enough to warrant bumping this forum thread so frequently.
If you don't already have a mechanism for it, perhaps consider implementing a way to notify just your users?


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## xtom (Aug 18, 2015)

Lucas Garron said:


> Although I appreciate that you're doing regular updates, it's probably not noteworthy enough to warrant bumping this forum thread so frequently.
> If you don't already have a mechanism for it, perhaps consider implementing a way to notify just your users?



RankingTimer doesn't require any register/login operation, so users are using it anonymously, I cannot just notify its users.
To solve this problem, I'll stop posting the data-sync info here, sorry for the inconvenience.


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## Lucas Garron (Aug 18, 2015)

xtom said:


> RankingTimer doesn't require any register/login operation, so users are using it anonymously, I cannot just notify its users.
> To solve this problem, I'll stop posting the data-sync info here, sorry for the inconvenience.



If you don't need to proactively notify users, there is a way to do this without tracking your users or asking them to log in:
On your server, keep a JSON file that contains all the times updates were made.
On the website, use something like localStorage to keep track of the latest update the computer has seen.
When someone visits the website, load the JSON file and see if there was an update. If there was, you can show a small notification.

(If you want to get even fancier, web notifications are now a standardized mechanism for notifying users even when they aren't on your site.)


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## G2013 (Oct 16, 2015)

Hi xtom, I would like to report a bug:

5x5 average times are not shown for Argentina. Why is it like that?
Thanks


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## xtom (Oct 19, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Hi xtom, I would like to report a bug:
> 
> 5x5 average times are not shown for Argentina. Why is it like that?
> Thanks



Hi G2013,
Currently, there are 30 players from Argentina have 5x5 average records in WCA database, I tried on the timer page, below is a screenshot.



I cannot reproduce the issue you met, maybe there are some random reason of the server connection.
Could you please try again to see if still meet the issue?

(And, if you mean 5x5 *blind folded*, there is no *average record* for this item in whole WCA database, also there is no 4x4 blind folded average record in WCA database.)

Thanks,
Tom


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## G2013 (Oct 19, 2015)

It doesn't happen anymore :S

It has happened to me before but the issue was solved the other day, so I thought you have noticed it.

But as I see it might be another type of error.

Thanks for the reply


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## G2013 (Oct 27, 2015)

Also, after experimenting with the timer for some time, I found that the average it calculates is not calculated as the official WCA ao5. (The WCA average is actually a mean of 3, you take the worse and the best away, sum up the other 3, and divide the result by 3.)

I wonder, do you have in mind implementing the "official mean" instead of the 'sum all 5 and divide by 5' average?

Thanks in advance


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## xtom (Dec 1, 2015)

G2013 said:


> Also, after experimenting with the timer for some time, I found that the average it calculates is not calculated as the official WCA ao5. (The WCA average is actually a mean of 3, you take the worse and the best away, sum up the other 3, and divide the result by 3.)
> 
> I wonder, do you have in mind implementing the "official mean" instead of the 'sum all 5 and divide by 5' average?
> 
> Thanks in advance



Hi G2013,

Thank you for the suggestion and sorry for the delay. (I was busy with something else during past days)

I just made a special "ao5" page as you mentioned: http://rankingtimer.com/timing/ao5.php
Note:
1. If there are only 2 or less records, just display the ranking info of single.
2. If there are 3 or more records, will display the ranking info for both single and mean (remove best and worst).

Please have a try and let me know if it is what you want.
Then I can consider to replace the original timing page with this one.

Thanks,
Tom


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## maika (Dec 30, 2015)

You topic is very great and useful for us…Thank you for that information you article.


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## xtom (Apr 6, 2016)

Rankingtimer server encountered some space issue yesterday, which caused some database connection lost issues, it has been fixed today, and also synced to the latest data from wca official site.


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## Isaac VM (Apr 6, 2016)

sk8erman41 said:


> It would be great if you could incorporate mobile support



That would be awesome!


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## xtom (May 12, 2016)

Two updates:
1. WCA data is synchronized automatically.
2. utf8 support for displaying player name.


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## Doudou (May 18, 2016)

Nice!


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## xtom (Nov 23, 2016)

Anyone want to integrate this into your app as service, please contact me, I will share the simple REST API with you.


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## vm70 (Nov 28, 2016)

This is really nice! I'm bookmarking this.


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