Another negative topic!

[EddieH]

Ah but if my initial premise of this topic has a scintilla of truth that'll be because you are honest and obey all olive green shading and uncrossable features.

That's an idea All we need to do is find all those people that have all their best scores in urban events and we'll know who flaunts the rules

P.S. the face I chose is labelled "neutral" but I chose it cos it looks to me like Charlie Brown's "Good grief"

[Tatty]

I agree with Pete Owens. I find Urban easier - although I don't run at speed. However I am (usually - C of L excepted!) able to make decisions at the speed I run and therefore do comparatively well compared to forest orienteering where I am far too slow and tend to make huge errors 5 of my scores are Urban, the same as my daughter in law who came into orienteering from road running not very long ago

[Scott]

Conversely, I find it much, much harder to score good points at urban events, where my lack of pure running speed usually means that I finish way behind loads of super-fit people, a reasonable number of whom I would hope to beat in a terrain race through (marginally) superior navigation.

I don't think this is in any way a flaw in the ranking list - it's just that some of the people I would expect to beat in terrain are scoring way more points than me at urban events because they are much better than I am at the skills needed to do well in urban events.

[Kitch]

someone who can run fast on smooth surfaces, read a map at speed and make good route choice decisions quickly will tend to excel on urban courses.

you forgot to mention stay awake.

[IanD]

EddieH wrote

I'd expect someone from GO to notify BOF that their trail event should not be given points...

I can confirm that this issue is now in BO's hands...

But the points for the Guildford trail run are still there.

And more recently points have been added for the Chasing Start day of the Caddihoe - I thought chasing and mass starts were supposed to be excluded too?

[maprun]

Well spotted Ian, it never entered my head to check the BOF Results for ranking points for a chasing start event. Ranking Appendix K, says at 1.2.2, night, relay, score, chasing start and mass start events are to be excluded from the rankings.

Has anyone alerted BOF?

[andypat]

someone who can run fast on smooth surfaces, read a map at speed and make good route choice decisions quickly will tend to excel on urban courses.

you forgot to mention stay awake.

On yer bike Kitch

[SIman]

I asked BOF again recently about the non-inclusion of Night events.

Any decisions regarding the ranking system have been put on hold until the year end but your comment has been added to the list of things to be considered/addressed.
I have copied this response in to Mike Forrest who is Chair of Events Committee as it is they that have responsibility for the rankings rules.

[DeerTick]

someone who can run fast on smooth surfaces, read a map at speed and make good route choice decisions quickly will tend to excel on urban courses.

you forgot to mention stay awake.

No problem there - bumping into lampposts does the trick.

[ Rest deleted]

AP

[maprun]

After IanD spotted the Caddihoe Chasing Start had been added to the Ranking results on Tuesday, I emailed BOF the same afternnon pointing out the error. Still not received acknowledgement of the email and the event has now been added into the rankings. Does BOF have any control over the ranking system, as it appears anything is accepted and processed without question?

[DJM]

I have had a reply about this

As I understand it, results have to be re-uploaded by the club in order to prevent their inclusion for rankings points, and this creates a potential delay.

The obvious solution is to write into the algorithm the inclusion of some sort of "button" which can switch off rankings status from a set of results at a single click. This feature is on the agenda for future development of the system.

[madmike]

DJM, that's good - do you know if the view personal scores facility is also on the future update list?

[maprun]

Thanks DJM. Perhaps I was too diplomatic.

[EddieH]

DJM wrote "As I understand it, results have to be re-uploaded by the club in order to prevent their inclusion for rankings points, and this creates a potential delay."

This is incomprehensible to me. Why would a second download have a different result to the first one?

Both the Guildford event, a month old now and the Caddihoe chase are still scoring points.

It is pretty obvious to me why mass and chasing starts should not be included, but why night events should be less valid than park runs I don't see.

regardless of the rules they are clearly not only not being followed, but it seems from teh above quote that the system conspires to break its own rules.

[HarryO]

I know its been talked about elsewhere, but can anyone remind me why courses which are lower than TD5 get ranking points? Surely this shouldn't be.
I assume it is common knowledge that there are people out there who look for events with light green courses that have enough ranked participants in order to boost their ranking points. Sad