# Should WCA provide rankings and records separately?



## Akash Rupela (Nov 15, 2014)

Most sports clearly distinguish rankings from records. For example. tennis, badminton ,etc. 
As the sport grows older, the records become tougher to break and it does make sense to have a separate ranking system which represents who are the best in the sport currently rather than who has been the best in the entire history of the sport. Currently if competition winning averages are usually WR 200-300 level. 10 years down the lane it is possible that the usual winning averages are ranked much lower in the world rankings as the sport spreads more widely.
What do other people think, should there be two separate statistics available for competitors? 
How the rankings will be evaluated can be discussed later and I request members to not get there. But does the community feel having this would be a good measure or bad measure? Please provide arguments(if any) as it would help in a good discussion.

Akash


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## Mollerz (Nov 15, 2014)

I think an up-to-date ranking idea is an excellent idea. However, I think that currently it is not so necessary, records are still being broken all the time. I'm not entirely sure if comparing it to tennis and badminton is such a good idea, since tournaments are knockout, certain sets of tournaments are given certain values, and having a ranking system is relatively easy as a result. I think comparing it to something like athletics or swimming would make sense, since tournaments and events are run in quite a similar way, with heats, semis and finals (As we have combined rounds, and such).

The problem arises with coming up with a good system. But for those who want to theorycraft a system that works, remember, no system is ever perfect, so don't worry about "arbitrary" numbers or anything for now, it's still early doors. The most important thing for now is the idea behind it, and not the numbers.


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## qqwref (Nov 15, 2014)

Who cares about individual competitions? The winning averages just depend on who shows up, since there's so much variance that you can certainly not expect e.g. a sub10 average. So if a competition gets won by an average that is way down the "best ever" list, it's no problem. It just means there are many people who could have theoretically shown up and won. If you are worried about the fact that eventually many of the best people will be retired, you can just look at the times from the past year or so instead of the all-time record list.

Rankings in tennis, badminton, chess, etc. are there because those games are based on matching up players - your skill can't be measured absolutely, since your play style and whether you win depend on who you are up against. That kind of ranking is required to determine how good people are - who you play against is very relevant, so the kind of absolute ranking we have is basically impossible. But cubing is a sport where your performance is given by a number: your time (or movecount, or number of multibld points, or whatever). Everyone performs individually and the winner is just who got the objectively best performance. So the kind of ranking that we have works really well, whereas a ranking like tennis or chess would make very little sense.


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## GuRoux (Nov 15, 2014)

qqwref said:


> Who cares about individual competitions? The winning averages just depend on who shows up, since there's so much variance that you can certainly not expect e.g. a sub10 average. So if a competition gets won by an average that is way down the "best ever" list, it's no problem. It just means there are many people who could have theoretically shown up and won. If you are worried about the fact that eventually many of the best people will be retired, you can just look at the times from the past year or so instead of the all-time record list.
> 
> Rankings in tennis, badminton, chess, etc. are there because those games are based on matching up players - your skill can't be measured absolutely, since your play style and whether you win depend on who you are up against. That kind of ranking is required to determine how good people are - who you play against is very relevant, so the kind of absolute ranking we have is basically impossible. But cubing is a sport where your performance is given by a number: your time (or movecount, or number of multibld points, or whatever). Everyone performs individually and the winner is just who got the objectively best performance. So the kind of ranking that we have works really well, whereas a ranking like tennis or chess would make very little sense.



what about golf? same type of individual sport as cubing but there are rankings.


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## Akash Rupela (Nov 15, 2014)

GuRoux said:


> what about golf? same type of individual sport as cubing but there are rankings.


Exactly, I agree tennis and badminton were bad choices, i just wrote off the top of my head. Of course I do not propose to remove records. But with time, over a time span , rankings get more important than records. There are some individual sports which are not dependent on the opponent which are ranked and i think it makes sense to rank our sport too.


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## Stefan (Nov 15, 2014)

They're already separate:


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## GuRoux (Nov 15, 2014)

Akash Rupela said:


> Exactly, I agree tennis and badminton were bad choices, i just wrote off the top of my head. Of course I do not propose to remove records. But with time, over a time span , rankings get more important than records. There are some individual sports which are not dependent on the opponent which are ranked and i think it makes sense to rank our sport too.



well then again, golf is the only individual sport i can think of that has non-record type ranking. swimming, running, jumping, etc. are all record base as far as i know.


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## Dene (Nov 15, 2014)

Stefan said:


> They're already separate:



Can't tell if you're trolling... he clearly means something different to what we already have (I was at first confused, but then realised it's an unfortunate choice of ambiguous terminology).

Personally I think it's a good idea. Rankings could be based on times achieved by a competitor in recent competitions (in recent years), and compared to every other competitor in some way.

It could definitely work, and it would definitely be a much better indication of who is currently leading the world in achieving consistently top-level times.


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## obelisk477 (Nov 15, 2014)

I agree with this wholeheartedly. I'm not exactly sure what the number should be, but there should be one page with all time ranking (the ranking page as we have it now), and another with current rankings, where only people who have competed in X competitions in the last Y months are included. This of course could be 1 competition in 60 months, or as restrictive as 3 in 12 months, but I think it would give a better picture of who are *currently* the best people at speedsolving.


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## tseitsei (Nov 15, 2014)

In the wca rankings page you can choose to watch all time rankings OR to watch rankings from the last year (or last two years etc.) only. So we already have a ranking that tells us who is the best currently...
Why would we need another (arbitary ) ranking if we already have absolute ranking in wca website?


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## Tim Major (Nov 15, 2014)

Instead of refreshing it every year, maybe have a rolling year (or period of time, however long is deemed appropriate) for the current "ranking WR".

So the page would have the fastest times from 15/11/2013-15/11/2014, but tomorrow they'd have 16/11/2013-16/11/2014

I don't think there should be an extra section on an individual profile, but their could definitely be an extra column here http://i.imgur.com/hlq9HgI.png


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## Stefan (Nov 15, 2014)

Dene said:


> Can't tell if you're trolling... he clearly means something different to what we already have (I was at first confused, but then realised it's an unfortunate choice of ambiguous terminology).



Yeah, just pointing out that these terms are already well-established in cubing and that he's misusing them and that it's confusing.

Btw, [thread=44574]previous thread[/thread].


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## aashritspidey (Nov 15, 2014)

GuRoux said:


> well then again, golf is the only individual sport i can think of that has non-record type ranking.


Bowling , croquet, darts are some more ranking dependent sports


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## UnsolvedCypher (Nov 15, 2014)

I think it would be nice to have the best single and average for every given year, as this might be more feasable to attain for many as world records get faster and faster and more based on luck. For example, the 2x2 WR probably won't be broken for some time, so a yearly record provides a better goal.


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## Stefan (Nov 15, 2014)

UnsolvedCypher said:


> I think it would be nice to have the best single and average for every given year, as this might be more feasable to attain for many as world records get faster and faster and more based on luck. For example, the 2x2 WR probably won't be broken for some time, so a yearly record provides a better goal.



https://www.worldcubeassociation.or...ears=only+2014&show=100+Persons&single=Single


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## UnsolvedCypher (Nov 15, 2014)

Yes, it exists, but making it more prominent (ie. showing it on the records page) would be nice.


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## Stefan (Nov 15, 2014)

How would it be more prominent on the records page? Also, your argument was that the given year's best is more feasible to attain for many. So shouldn't you *prefer* it as a ranking showing more than just the very best, as beating the very best is not feasible for many, and getting into the top 100 is more feasible to attain for many?


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## Logiqx (Nov 15, 2014)

The link below might provide some food for thought. It's another sport all about improving PBs and national / global rankings.

http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/default.aspx?mnu=rankings - all time 
http://www.gps-speedsurfing.com/default.aspx?mnu=rankings&Year=2014 - 2014

Without having a login you have limited ability to view the various types of ranking on the website but I'm sure you get the idea.

It's nice that everyone (not just top 100 / 1000) can see their rankings, whether it be all time or the current year.

Come the start of the year it's also nice to get your name up on the front page (temporarily) as one of the year's top 10.


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## Dene (Nov 16, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Yeah, just pointing out that these terms are already well-established in cubing and that he's misusing them and that it's confusing.
> 
> Btw, [thread=44574]previous thread[/thread].



Personally I always find the current terms confusing, even after all these years. I often choose the wrong one when I want to look at something. The way the WCA database uses the term "rankings" is more like "best result (for each individual)" But that's besides the point... more importantly, what other term might the OP use to describe what he is trying to achieve? After all, I reckon most sports would use "rankings" to describe a points-based system to determine who is currently the best. 

Also that previous thread is somewhat different from what is proposed here (at least the way I interpret the threads).


Anyway, I think having an up-to-date ranking system would be awesome. It would be super helpful to show which cubers are coming into the elite, which are falling behind or leaving the sport, etc.


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## NewCuber000 (Nov 16, 2014)

If you're suggesting that we keep all of the rankings as an "all time ranks" sort of thing but also have a yearly ranking of the events, then I completely agree with you. Otherwise, when records and high ranks start getting almost unbeatable, people will start wanting to throw away the event. Maybe they shouldn't change it yet though, maybe when records aren't getting beaten as much as they are at the moment.


EDIT: Wait... they already did that?!?! When did this happen? Let me guess, it's been there forever and I just haven't noticed...


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## qqwref (Nov 16, 2014)

I agree with Dene that the WCA menu wording could use improvement. Perhaps something like "Best Results" (for Records) and "All Results" (for Rankings). Also, from the home page, the Rankings menu should be called Rankings, because Competitions makes it seem like you will not find PBs or WRs there, just information about competitions.

I also agree with Tim Major that it would be cool to have a "times achieved in the last year" rank, both on a competitor's personal page, . Personally I never got much value out of the "Since <year>"/"Until <year>" rankings except to see how results evolved through time. It would be much more useful to have "Last <time period>" for a few values of time period. Perhaps 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 3 years, 5 years.

However, I still don't like the idea of an ELO-type overall ranking of the best active cubers. It's just not needed and will mainly just provide an arbitrary ranking that will push some people higher than they deserve and others lower based on the design of the ranking. Things like sum of ranks already do this (for instance, you can't get a good sum of single ranks if ignore footsolving and hard BLD events) and a new statistic would be the same, just with different people arbitrarily penalized or rewarded.


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## Faz (Nov 16, 2014)

I definitely think that as the world records become less frequently broken, and approach some sort of limit, something like this should be implemented. However, I don't think it should reflect the number of competitions won, I think it should be purely based on times.

My idea would be the following: (Of course, this is arbitrarily determined)

For most events, take the mean of the best 5 averages of a competitor in the last 12 months.
For things like 6x6, 7x7, megaminx, etc. as they are held less frequently, perhaps take the mean of the best 3 averages.

Rank competitors according to this value.

So for each of the 18 events, there is a list which gives a really good indication of who is currently the best in each event, based on competition performance in the previous year. Of course, this method isn't perfect, feel free to suggest other things. Those who compete more often and are more active will have more chances to get good averages. On the other hand, someone who is really good at an event, but doesn't compete much, isn't really disadvantaged.


Eg, for something like OH, whilst Pzremyslaw Kaleta has the world record, it seems to me that Antoine Cantin gets faster averages more often, which is reflected in the ranking below (mean of best 5 averages in the last 12 months)

Cantin: 12.56
Kaleta: 12.73
Pleskowicz: 12.82
Me: 12.91


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

Dene said:


> Personally I always find the current terms confusing, even after all these years. I often choose the wrong one when I want to look at something. The way the WCA database uses the term "rankings" is more like "best result (for each individual)"



I think in general, not just in WCA, a record is the one best result of all results fitting given criteria. And a ranking ranks all results fitting given criteria. In the example of WCA rankings, being someone's personal record is simply such a criterion. Unless you choose "100/1000 Results", which drops that criterion (!). But yeah, the current rankings use personal records. They're still clearly rankings, as they show more than one entry. It's also clear from the rank numbers.



Dene said:


> what other term might the OP use to describe what he is trying to achieve? After all, I reckon most sports would use "rankings" to describe a points-based system to determine who is currently the best.



I think the "currently" is the point, which he also mentioned somewhere in his post. So the thread title should be something like _"Should WCA rankings reflect current ability?"_. Unless he really doesn't want records involved in the rankings (and keep in mind that for example your current year records are still records).

And then he asks _"should there be two separate statistics available for competitors?"_ even though there already are (all-time and current year). Makes me think "lurk more". Or does he disregard the current year ranking because it's still based on records?

Btw, he started with _"Most sports clearly distinguish rankings from records. For example. tennis, badminton ,etc"_. What is the tennis world record? I have never heard of it.



Dene said:


> Also that previous thread is somewhat different from what is proposed here (at least the way I interpret the threads).



As I see it, they're both about changing the rankings to reflect current ability, and here's a quote from that thread's creator early in that thread:



LostGent said:


> *Records and rankings should be separate* in my opinion. I'm not sure what you mean by taking away from people who won the Olympics, I'm not sure that's a useful comparison. Consider Maurice Greene who ran a 9.79 100m sprint in 1999, that would give him a ranking of 5th. But that's *all time rather than current*, you wouldn't consider him as a contender in the next Olympics. Would it not be more useful to *separate the ranking from records* so as to give a *more accurate picture of current people's positions*?



Pretty much like this thread, in my interpretation.



Dene said:


> Anyway, I think having an up-to-date ranking system would be awesome.



How is the current year ranking that we do have not an up-to-date ranking? (And the current main ranking btw is up-to-date as well, except for recent results not yet entered into the database.)


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## tseitsei (Nov 16, 2014)

Dene said:


> Anyway, I think having an up-to-date ranking system would be awesome. It would be super helpful to show which cubers are coming into the elite, which are falling behind or leaving the sport, etc.



I think we already have an up-to-date ranking system in use and available for everyone to view:
https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/events.php?eventId=333&regionId=&years=only%2B2014&show=100%2BPersons&average=Average

What's wrong with that and why do we need something more complicated (or more arbitrary) than that? That clearly shows who has been the fastest this year and who has been in the what rank for the current year IMO...


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

Faz said:


> My idea would be the following: (Of course, this is arbitrarily determined)
> 
> For most events, take the mean of the best 5 averages of a competitor in the last 12 months.
> For things like 6x6, 7x7, megaminx, etc. as they are held less frequently, perhaps take the mean of the best 3 averages.
> ...



Poor Piti and Asia, sub-10 in 3x3 but excluded from the ranking.

But could be fixed by taking the mean of *all* averages if there are fewer than five. That still disadvantages people who can't get many, so maybe just take all averages, not just the best (up to) five. Testing a few variations:



Spoiler: 3x3 one-handed ranked by mean of "best five" averages in the past running year



Using data from WCA_export513_20141116 and Stefan's WCA Statistics Tools.


*Cuber**Mean**#Averages*Antoine Cantin12.5618Przemysław Kaleta12.7335Michał Pleskowicz12.8324Feliks Zemdegs12.9118Justin Mallari13.9010Bill Wang14.108Collin Burns14.2514Dmitry Zvyagintsev14.2920Bhargav Narasimhan14.3323Cornelius Dieckmann14.4518






Spoiler: 3x3 one-handed ranked by mean of averages in the past running year



Using data from WCA_export513_20141116 and Stefan's WCA Statistics Tools.


*Cuber**Mean**#Averages*Antoine Cantin13.6818Michał Pleskowicz14.1024Feliks Zemdegs14.1718Justin Mallari14.2010Przemysław Kaleta14.3735Bill Wang14.628Anson Lin14.892Piti Pichedpan (ปิติ พิเชษฐพันธ์)14.912Hyo-Min Seo14.973Collin Burns15.1014






Spoiler: 3x3 one-handed ranked by median of averages in the past running year



Using data from WCA_export513_20141116 and Stefan's WCA Statistics Tools.


*Cuber**Median**#Averages*Antoine Cantin13.5418Michał Pleskowicz13.9324Feliks Zemdegs13.9818Justin Mallari14.2610Przemysław Kaleta14.3635Bill Wang14.598Anson Lin14.892Piti Pichedpan (ปิติ พิเชษฐพันธ์)14.912Hyo-Min Seo14.963Collin Burns14.9914




Interesting... the latter two versions are so correlated that they list the exact same people in the exact same order.


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

NewCuber000 said:


> EDIT: Wait... they already did that?!?! When did this happen? Let me guess, it's been there forever and I just haven't noticed...



Quite possibly since the current system was introduced in 2006/2007. The oldest archive.org entry (from 2007) already shows it:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070704070633/http://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/events.php


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

qqwref said:


> I agree with Dene that the WCA menu wording could use improvement. Perhaps something like "Best Results" (for Records) and "All Results" (for Rankings).



"Best results" is just as ambiguous, and "All Results" is simply wrong (Closest to that is the "100/1000 Results" view, but that still doesn't show all results. And it isn't and shouldn't be the default view).



qqwref said:


> Also, from the home page, *the Rankings menu* should be called Rankings, because Competitions makes it seem like you will not find PBs or WRs there, just information about competitions.



Nice try, calling it Rankings menu to convince us that it should be called Rankings 

Rankings fall under "Competitions" at least as much as competitions fall under "Rankings", so I find it better the way it is (note: I say better, not best). The "Competitions" entry simply contains data of competitions, shown in various ways. "Competitions/Results" might be better, but I can't think of a single-word option better than "Competitions".


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## qqwref (Nov 16, 2014)

Stefan said:


> "Best results" is just as ambiguous, and "All Results" is simply wrong (Closest to that is the "100/1000 Results" view, but that still doesn't show all results. And it isn't and shouldn't be the default view).


It's just a suggestion, feel free to suggest something better. The problem with "Rankings" vs "Records", as people have said, is that it is not immediately clear which one you want to click on. They both contain records, after all: WRs are in both lists, the only difference is that one shows everyone's personal records and the other doesn't. Indeed, I've seen some people say things like "National Record #2" to mean 2nd place in the country.

Anyway, re: All Results, you can view All Persons, right? That's what people would probably want anyway (interpreting Results as in "each person's result, pluralized"). But I'd like to have some kind of paging system whereby you aren't just limited to the first 100 or 1000 but can view all of the PBs or results without having to load everything at once. So instead of "100 Results" it would be essentially "All Results, 100 per page" and at the bottom you could go to the previous or next set. minesweeper.info has a version of this (with a page selector instead of Next/Previous buttons). Bam, now it really is All Results (or All PRs), and the database usage still doesn't go through the roof (assuming you have a good backend), and it's more useful for people wanting to look at their 100-to-150-ish-ranked rivals.



Stefan said:


> Rankings fall under "Competitions" at least as much as competitions fall under "Rankings", so I find it better the way it is (note: I say better, not best). The "Competitions" entry simply contains data of competitions, shown in various ways. "Competitions/Results" might be better, but I can't think of a single-word option better than "Competitions".


I don't know what you're trying to say in the first two sentences, but my point was that the same menu gets two different headers, depending on where you are. Whichever header you prefer, I'm sure you can see that that is confusing.

Since that submenu is almost entirely information about the times people have achieved, perhaps we should just split it up. Yes yes, more menus less simplicity blah blah, but it would make more sense for people trying to actually go to a particular area. "Competitions" gets the Competitions and Multimedia pages, "Results" gets everything else.


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## Username (Nov 16, 2014)

qqwref said:


> I've seen some people say things like "National Record #2" to mean 2nd place in the country.



You mean like NR #2? In which case it's used as "National Ranking", not record


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

qqwref said:


> It's just a suggestion, feel free to suggest something better.



My suggestion is to keep it like it is 



qqwref said:


> The problem with "Rankings" vs "Records", as people have said, is that it is not immediately clear which one you want to click on. They both contain records, after all: WRs are in both lists, the only difference is that one shows everyone's personal records and the other doesn't.



Personal records are trivial - everyone gets some just for doing stuff at all. They're almost too trivial to call them records, and I find it appropriate that a page listing "records" doesn't show them but focuses on the actual meaningful records.



qqwref said:


> Indeed, I've seen some people say things like "National Record #2" to mean 2nd place in the country.



I'd say that's nonsense, as also evidenced by Google not having seen it.



qqwref said:


> "each person's result, pluralized"



_"each person's result"_ doesn't make sense, except for the people who only have one result.

A paging system might very well come, yes.



qqwref said:


> I don't know what you're trying to say in the first two sentences, but my point was that the same menu gets two different headers, depending on where you are.



Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you meant a split. Thought you wanted to rename Competitions to Rankings.



qqwref said:


> "Competitions" gets the Competitions and Multimedia pages, "Results" gets everything else.



Competitions show results as well, that's the issue I have with that split. But it's not that bad, and might be better, yes. However, persons are similar to competitions, why shouldn't they get a menu entry just like competitions do?


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

qqwref said:


> The problem with "Rankings" vs "Records", as people have said, is that it is not immediately clear which one you want to click on.



What exactly is the problematic use case? What exactly are they looking for, where it's not clear which of the two they should click?

Another thought: If you're at some competition and some reporter asks you "What are the records?", are you going to tell them everybody's personal records? No, you'll understand that they mean world records and tell them those. Because that's what's commonly meant with records, unless "personal" records are explicitly requested.


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## qqwref (Nov 16, 2014)

Stefan said:


> My suggestion is to keep it like it is


Cute, but I don't think you understand that the current menu structure is literally confusing people. I've had issues and someone else on this topic mentioned the same, and there's no way we're the only ones. If you are confusing your users it is bad UI design and needs to be improved.

You seem to be arguing as if this only affects you and you like it the way it is (so why should you change?). I get the impression that you are arguing not to develop better wording but to fight against any proposed changes. But this affects everyone who goes to the site and indeed that is the place where all official solves, competitors, etc. are stored and viewed. It should be as easy to use as possible for people who are not part of the WCA website development team, and in (at least) my opinion it is not easy to navigate now. Please listen to the users.



Stefan said:


> _"each person's result"_ doesn't make sense, except for the people who only have one result.


Result in the sense of, you know, "a final score, mark, or placing in a sporting event or examination." The final score that each person's solving results in. The WCA database's usage of "result" does not match the usage of result in normal English speech, which is probably why you're confused. Perhaps instead of the WCA development group inventing their own specific meanings for common words, they should try to use words that match what normal cubers (or normal native speakers) use.



Stefan said:


> Oh, sorry, I didn't realize you meant a split. Thought you wanted to rename Competitions to Rankings.
> 
> Competitions show results as well, that's the issue I have with that split. But it's not that bad, and might be better, yes. However, persons are similar to competitions, why shouldn't they get a menu entry just like competitions do?


I'll explain in even more detail since I think you still don't quite see what I mean:

On https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/:
- Top-level menus: Information, Competitions, Regulations, Forum
- Competitions top-level menu contains subitems: Competitions, Rankings, Records, Persons, Statistics, Multimedia, Miscellaneous, Database Export

On https://www.worldcubeassociation.org/results/competitions.php (or any other /results/ page):
- Top-level menus: Information, *Results*, Regulations, Forum
- Results top-level menu contains subitems: Competitions, Rankings, Records, Persons, Statistics, Multimedia, Miscellaneous, Database Export

So you see the menus are the same but that word has been changed, which is confusing. At the very least they should use the same word on different parts of the site. My further suggestion is to split off Competitions entirely, to wit:
- Top-level menus: Information, Competitions, Results, Regulations, Forum (or change the order, I don't care)
- Competitions top-level menu contains subitems: Competitions, Multimedia
- Results top-level menu contains subitems: Rankings, Records, Persons, Statistics, Miscellaneous (Database Export is in Miscellaneous; that should be enough as normal users do not need or want to download the database)

If you want to split Persons (which is very awkward and should be renamed, btw) off into another menu, go ahead. I have no objection.



Stefan said:


> What exactly is the problematic use case? What exactly are they looking for, where it's not clear which of the two they should click?


The problematic use case is where I am wondering something about the database, like "what other USA cubers are ahead of me in 5x5x5" or "who had the Megaminx WR before Yu Da-Hyun" and it is not immediately obvious which to click to get the page I'm thinking of, and indeed sometimes I click the wrong one first.


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

qqwref said:


> If you are confusing your users it is bad UI design and needs to be improved.



Depends on how many users are how confused. If we're confusing just two people, I think that's really good.

We have changed stuff based on user feedback before, we're certainly listening to the users. You and Dene are just not "the users", sorry. You're two out of many thousands. And if we change it to something that works for you two (assuming you two can agree on something), that might cause confusion for others. You need to convince us that it's better overall, not just better for yourself.



qqwref said:


> Result in the sense of, you know, "a final score, mark, or placing in a sporting event or examination."



The result of a solve or an average definitely fits that definition. Yes, you can call someone's record a result as well, but I think it's more appropriately called a record, and less confusing than reusing "result" like that. Also, by calling *more* things "result", you're not getting *down* to singular. Unless you're *not* calling single solve results or average results "results", in which case it's *you* who's not using the word as it is commonly used.



qqwref said:


> the menus are the same but that word has been changed



Didn't know that. Agree, that should be fixed.



qqwref said:


> - Top-level menus: Information, Competitions, Results, Regulations, Forum (or change the order, I don't care)
> - Competitions top-level menu contains subitems: Competitions, Multimedia
> - Results top-level menu contains subitems: Rankings, Records, Persons, Statistics, Miscellaneous (Database Export is in Miscellaneous; that should be enough as normal users do not need or want to download the database)



That's what I thought you meant (except for the export). I still don't like that a competition page, which mainly shows results, wouldn't be under Results, but I'll ask Lucas what he thinks (he's into it and the authority at the moment, I'm not, but I'm more likely to have seen this).

What would be better than Persons? People? I don't like Competitors, because it looks confusingly similar to Competitions and because I eventually want to support non-competitor people.



qqwref said:


> The problematic use case is where I am wondering something about the database, like "what other USA cubers are ahead of me in 5x5x5" or "who had the Megaminx WR before Yu Da-Hyun" and it is not immediately obvious which to click to get the page I'm thinking of, and indeed sometimes I click the wrong one first.



Sorry, but I find those straight-forward. For the first one you want to know your rank, so you obviously go to rankings. And something like "fourteenth place" is simply not a record, so you obviously don't go to records. For the second one you want to know who had the record (it's even a(n abbreviated) word in your question!), so obviously you go to records. I think the system is not the problem here.

Dene, would you be confused in these two cases as well? Or do you have different use cases that confuse you? Anybody else?


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## Stefan (Nov 16, 2014)

I just googled athletics records and rankings and checked out the first six sites. I didn't check anything else, so I'm not cherry-picking (unless you call my search expression cherry-picking, but I think it's quite straight-forward and appropriate). They all show "Records"/"Rankings" pretty much like WCA does (although it's more like the other way around, i.e., the WCA being modeled after such sites).

http://www.anzrankings.org.nz/ Records and Rankings like WCA (but rankings also called "Lists" (with ranks))
http://www.all-athletics.com/ Records and Rankings like WCA
http://www.athletics-oceania.com/ Records like WCA, Rankings like WCA with our "All Results" option
http://www.iaaf.org/ Records like WCA, Rankings like WCA with our "All Results" options and called "Lists" (with ranks)
http://www.european-athletics.org/ Records like WCA, Rankings like WCA but called "Lists" (with ranks)
http://www.paralympic.org/ Records and Rankings like WCA (though they sub-categorize their events by disability classes)

Btw, if I remember correctly, it wasn't even me who called them Rankings and Records, so it's not like I'm defending my own stuff. I think Ron chose those words after looking around how similar organizations do it. My own terms were Events and Regions (named after the primary parameters), which you can see on archive.org and sadly currently still in our URLs.

Edit: Slight correction: I had actually googled records and rankings first, but the first result, http://www.aneki.com/, was utterly useless. I didn't look further but immediately added "athletics" to the search.


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## qqwref (Nov 16, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Depends on how many users are how confused. If we're confusing just two people, I think that's really good.


And here you go, assuming that literally everyone who didn't complain here is completely OK with the topic. Think about it - with your constantly abrasive mood, do you honestly expect everyone who doesn't like the site to personally contact you?? At least I have the patience to put up with a couple of your rude posts! And if you really care about what the community thinks, put up a survey. I think you're just saying the "two out of a thousand" thing to be an ass to me.



Stefan said:


> Didn't know that. Agree, that should be fixed.


A simple thing, and it took how much arguing and explaining, and how much dealing with you being a jerk? No apology, no explanation, just "agree, that should be fixed". And you act like nobody has a problem with the site because nobody contacts you. Unbelievable.



Stefan said:


> What would be better than Persons? People?


Yes. Obviously.



Stefan said:


> Sorry, but I find those straight-forward.


Guess I'm just an idiot then! I should just leave navigating the site to the designer, he knows everything soooo much better than stupid users like myself!


EDIT: Saw your second posts, checked some of those links. Some of them use RESULTS for a list of times, not "Rankings" which means something else (e.g. a ranking of who is the best overall, for a particular time period or all time). Results vs Records would be less confusing.


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## Stefan (Nov 17, 2014)

qqwref said:


> And here you go, assuming that literally everyone who didn't complain here is completely OK with the topic.



I suggest you look up the meaning of "if", instead of putting words into my mouth.



qqwref said:


> At least I have the patience to put up with a couple of your rude posts!



Well I think that's only fair, given that I have the patience to put up with your rude posts.



qqwref said:


> And if you really care about what the community thinks, put up a survey.



And if you really care about what the community thinks, put up a survey.



qqwref said:


> I think you're just saying the "two out of a thousand" thing to be an ass to me.



Feel free to think that, but I just said it to explain my point that you two are not "the users", which you pretended to be or represent.



qqwref said:


> A simple thing, and it took how much arguing and explaining, and how much dealing with you being a jerk?



It took you pointing it out just once, nothing else.



qqwref said:


> No apology, no explanation, just "agree, that should be fixed".



Why would that need an apology? And an explanation? What's not clear about it?

Also, I'm btw the one in this thread who said "sorry" and similar stuff, while you'd have plenty of stuff to apologize for but don't. And now that I think of it, I think I vaguely remember this kind of thing happening before somewhere. I really shouldn't talk with you anymore.



qqwref said:


> Yes. Obviously.



Uh... sorry for asking? I guess I should not value your input?

First you basically tell me that my English is bad because I'm not a native speaker, then when I ask you an English question precisely because of that (and because you're the one who requested that change), this is your response. Awesome. So friendly.



qqwref said:


> Guess I'm just an idiot then! I should just leave navigating the site to the designer, he knows everything soooo much better than stupid users like myself!



Like I said, I'm not the designer of that bit, but only a user of it as well.



qqwref said:


> EDIT: Saw your second posts, checked some of those links. Some of them use RESULTS for a list of times, not "Rankings" which means something else (e.g. a ranking of who is the best overall, for a particular time period or all time).



I think I got them all correct, but I'm gonna check again if you tell me which ones of them, and where.

Edit: Oh well, I did check them all again, and I still think I got them all correct and don't know what you mean. One thing that's unclear is whether you're saying that "Rankings" means something else on those sites or that "Rankings" means something else in general.


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## Dene (Nov 17, 2014)

As entertaining as all this bickering is, I guess I should interrupt and answer a few questions.



Stefan said:


> Pretty much like this thread, in my interpretation.



I was referring more to his method of getting the rankings. The other thread was talking about using competition wins to create a ranking system (at least in the OP, which is all I read). 



Stefan said:


> How is the current year ranking that we do have not an up-to-date ranking? (And the current main ranking btw is up-to-date as well, except for recent results not yet entered into the database.)



Fair enough... but it's still not exactly the same thing. Hear me out. At the moment, if you want to know who the best is you look at the WRs. If you want to see who has been the best thus far this year you look at the results filtered to this year. But this second option isn't exactly given any prestige, so to speak. It's susceptible to one-off good results. It's also a process to find it (not arduous, but still...), and I don't think too many people think "I want to know who's the best, so I'll go and filter by current year to see who's on top" (I could be wrong).

A separate ranking system as proposed in this thread would give a more accurate idea of who is a top trending cuber. Fluky results wouldn't have much bearing. And if such a system was accepted by the masses, it would have as much prestige as having a WR.

Anyway this is just why I think it would be different, and better. Obviously the point of this thread is to see what people think about it.



Stefan said:


> Or do you have different use cases that confuse you?



I don't really want to get involved in this discussion, as tbh it doesn't really bother me. But because you asked nicely, I'll try my best to describe what confuses me (bearing in mind any confusion lasts about 1 second, until I realise I've selected the wrong option, and choose the other one instead).

I guess when I get it wrong it's when I'm looking for "rankings", but I select "records". I think what compels me to do this is I don't think of "records" as "World Records/NRs/CRs". I think "records" as in "archives" or "historical records". That is, a _record_ing of the information.

If you look at it this way, can you see why I get it wrong? I'm not sure why I think of it this way; perhaps it has something to do with the education I've done. But that's what it is. I can't think of any obvious way to rectify the situation though, other than me teaching myself that "records" means "WRs/NRs/CRs". Overall it seems like too much effort to me though, when I can just click one, and if it's the wrong one click the other all in about 2 seconds


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## Stefan (Nov 17, 2014)

Dene said:


> As entertaining as all this bickering is



I hope you're not just saying that 

To everyone not entertained: Sorry we cluttered the thread like that.

Let me maybe make up for it by analyzing again those six sites I mentioned, but this time concerning "all-time vs current" rankings:

http://www.anzrankings.org.nz/ Default ranking is 2014. All-time ranking exists.
http://www.all-athletics.com/ "Rankings" use a complicated "score" computed mainly from recent results. Their "Lists" correponding to our rankings appear in the menu first in a yearly version (2014 being the default) and then in an all-time version.
http://www.athletics-oceania.com/ Looks like all-time rankings before non-all-time rankings but it's confusing and really I can't take a website seriously when it publishes records/rankings as a mix of poorly organized and ugly .pdf files and even a .doc file.
http://www.iaaf.org/ Default ranking is 2015 (facepalm). All-time and other years exist, all-time on top but I think that's mainly to not bury it.
http://www.european-athletics.org/ "Season Lists" (with 2014 on top) come first, "All-Time Lists" come second.
http://www.paralympic.org/ Apparently *only* yearly rankings, with 2014 being the default.

Looks like most prefer a "current" ranking over the "all-time" ranking, giving it much of that prestige Dene talked about. Of course I know our current year rankings aren't very prominent/prestigious, all I said was that we have them. But I agree that they, or something like what Feliks and Tim suggested or what all-athletics.com does, would be nice to have as a prominent/prestigious ranking.



Dene said:


> I think "records" as in "archives" or "historical records".



Woah... ok... I know that meaning, but it never occurred to me that someone would think of that instead of the intended meaning. I really hope you're a rare special case with that . And while those six sites I checked don't exactly agree with us about "rankings", they all agree with us about "records", so I think that's really the standard.



Dene said:


> If you look at it this way, can you see why I get it wrong?



Kinda, although I find it hard to look at it that way, and I might still need an explicit use case to really see how it can go wrong. Anyway, I'm glad it isn't a big problem for you and appreciate your answer.


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## Ranzha (Nov 17, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Woah... ok... I know that meaning, but it never occurred to me that someone would think of that instead of the intended meaning. I really hope you're a rare special case with that . And while those six sites I checked don't exactly agree with us about "rankings", they all agree with us about "records", so I think that's really the standard.



I have this same problem, but at this point it's user error since I should know the difference.

Perhaps a "best in the past year" system as described earlier would be a more realistic indicator of who the current contenders are.


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## Dene (Nov 18, 2014)

Stefan said:


> Kinda, although I find it hard to look at it that way, and I might still need an explicit use case to really see how it can go wrong



"Hmmm I wonder if John Smith is in the top 10 in 5x5. I'll go check the records to see..."

"Ohwoops"

Although I wouldn't exactly go through that thought process in my head. More like I click the drop-down menu and have to decide which one to choose, and am automatically drawn towards "records" without putting any thought into it.


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