Ranking Lists

[King Penguin]

I have just noticed there is now a "Forest/Urban" filter on ranking lists. I don't know how long it has been there. Maybe it has been ages and I have been unobservant ?

[sborrill]

I have just noticed there is now a "Forest/Urban" filter on ranking lists. I don't know how long it has been there. Maybe it has been ages and I have been unobservant ?

I've only just seen it, but a quick glance shows it is not working correctly. The British Sprint champs are down as Forest.

Stephen

[King Penguin]

... and the Scottish Nights are down as Urban - but then they were urban / park rather than forest

[King Penguin]

It is only as good as the event categorisation when events are registered. Tick / not tick the urban box and it will be i the wrong sub-set of results.

[King Penguin]

I see the weekly ranking update emails now give positions overall, forest and urban.

[Atomic]

The WOC Tour Indoor shows as Forest! Feels like the filter is set to assume it was forest unless someone told them it wasn't.

[Auld Badger]

All races in 2025 for Scotland are now correctly encoded as Forest or Urban. It's not possible to retro-convert events that have already taken place, so you'll just have to wear the errors until they drop off the ranking list, unless BOF can amend these at a higher level.
Area Fixture Secretaries can amend the entries for races yet to happen , but it's preferable if club fixture secretaries do this when registering the event.
As Atomic says, unless the event type is set to Urban or Sprint, the list assumes that all races are on terrain.

[awk]

I see the weekly ranking update emails now give positions overall, forest and urban.

The maths is no different, so no more reliable (or, more pertinently, no less unreliable).

[sborrill]

All races in 2025 for Scotland are now correctly encoded as Forest or Urban. It's not possible to retro-convert events that have already taken place, so you'll just have to wear the errors until they drop off the ranking list, unless BOF can amend these at a higher level.

The British Sprint Champs now look to be correct, so I assume this means BOF has amended those past events.

Stephen

[Gnitworp]

Excellent refinement

[ricardito]

Mmm, some work still needed I think… just looking at my own scores

“Forest” score = unfiltered score (though top 6 are not the same)
“Urban” score = different (lower) number, not the sum of the stated top 6.

[srocmapper]

Has anyone worked out how to include this when generating ones own listing, it isn't mentioned in the EMBED section.

[buzz]

A great new feature - thanks! I imagine the gremlins will be ironed out as the categorisations catch up.

My next request would be filtering on major and national events which in principle should be more representative of orienteering ability filtering out lower quality events and points aquired running round the same set of local areas once a year.

No doubt there are arguments against such as expecting people to travel, but if its easyish to add filters why not? It might even encourage attendance.

[Atomic]

A great new feature - thanks! I imagine the gremlins will be ironed out as the categorisations catch up.

I'm not sure it helps: you now need 6 urban events in the last 12 months to get a meaningful urban ranking and 6 other events to get a meaningful forest ranking. So yes the most regular participants in any one category will now be ranked against other avid participants in that category but it ignores the (I suspect quite large) number of people who mostly run one discipline but are quite handy at the other one anyway but don't do it enough to get a proper ranking. Theres some weird things happen because of this - Freddie Carcas Overall 6th, Urban 245th, Forest 3100th!! Probably a bit of an exception but I didn't have to do much looking to find that irregularity. I'm delighted to apparently be a better Forest Orienteer than Freddie.

My next request would be filtering on major and national events which in principle should be more representative of orienteering ability filtering out lower quality events and points aquired running round the same set of local areas once a year.

I don't understand the benefit you are hoping for. The ranking scheme is interesting to see where people fall in the mix not to work out who is the best at major/national events - BOC, JK etc do that far more definitively. If you start filtering for 6 national level events you are going to be very selective on who makes the cut (especially since no rankings at relays, not everyone runs nights, not all clubs make it to CSC final etc).

There is already a requirement that events are level C (so have a controller) to get ranking points - so they should all be "reasonable" quality. Last week there was some commentary on the fact some level C events were better quality than level B's.

No doubt there are arguments against such as expecting people to travel, but if its easyish to add filters why not? It might even encourage attendance.

To me the whole point of the ranking scheme is I can see roughly where I fall without travelling! I think you need to be particularly keen to go to the top events in the country to get ranking points rather than just to try and beat your fellow competitors. Whereas

[buzz]

My next request would be filtering on major and national events which in principle should be more representative of orienteering ability filtering out lower quality events and points aquired running round the same set of local areas once a year.

I don't understand the benefit you are hoping for. The ranking scheme is interesting to see where people fall in the mix not to work out who is the best at major/national events - BOC, JK etc do that far more definitively. If you start filtering for 6 national level events you are going to be very selective on who makes the cut (especially since no rankings at relays, not everyone runs nights, not all clubs make it to CSC final etc).

There is already a requirement that events are level C (so have a controller) to get ranking points - so they should all be "reasonable" quality. Last week there was some commentary on the fact some level C events were better quality than level B's.

No doubt there are arguments against such as expecting people to travel, but if its easyish to add filters why not? It might even encourage attendance.

To me the whole point of the ranking scheme is I can see roughly where I fall without travelling! I think you need to be particularly keen to go to the top events in the country to get ranking points rather than just to try and beat your fellow competitors. Whereas

Regarding event quality, in principle level A and B events should be better areas, more up to date maps and more experienced planners and controllers putting in more time. I agree that some major events aren't better than level C, but we should still expect them to be a better test of skills and design a ranking system accordingly - the norm in most sports.

The problem with not travelling is that you aren't testing your skills on different types of terrain, and more significantly you're competing on the same areas each year so local knowledge starts to play a part. This tends to skew the rankings in favour of stronger runners with weaker technical skills.

If its just a filter you can ignore it and still see where you compare against your local rivals on local terrain.