2020 scoring system – is it an improvement?

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  • March 11, 2020 at 1:47 am #921826
    jrenaut
    Participant

    Team 10 has been the top team pretty much every day of the competition, so I feel pretty strongly that the new scoring system has been a failure. I don’t mean to knock team 10 – they’ve been fantastic, and deserve to be #1, but we had a non-competitive competition last year, so the new scoring system hasn’t been an improvement.

    What do we do next year? I’d like to award negative points for days that people don’t ride. I know that the True Meaning of BAFS is up for debate, but for me, riding every day, no matter how nasty it is, is the #1 goal.

    I’m open to suggestions, but for next year I think we should go back to the old scoring system except I would add a 10 point deduction for every day you don’t ride at least a mile.

    March 11, 2020 at 2:11 am #1105163
    Smitty2k1
    Participant

    Hey us over in team 24 have been trying to keep it competitive…

    March 11, 2020 at 11:34 am #1105167
    jrenaut
    Participant

    My point is it HASN’T been competitive. Has there been a lead change since the first week of the teams being full? I don’t think there has.

    March 11, 2020 at 12:12 pm #1105168
    huskerdont
    Participant

    @jrenaut 199215 wrote:

    My point is it HASN’T been competitive. Has there been a lead change since the first week of the teams being full? I don’t think there has.

    Wintry Mix(t)es caught them for about 10 minutes once, but then SteveO uploaded all his rides and they pulled away again, so it was a bit of an illusion.

    I would not say it’s been a failure. I mean, I don’t really care what scoring system is used, but that team just has a couple of people in it who ride a lot of miles. (Kris and Lynn both have more miles than our top rider, but Lynn has fewer points because of the scoring system.) We have stayed competitive-ish not because we have anyone with quite that many miles, but because most of our team rides every day.

    March 11, 2020 at 12:24 pm #1105169
    Hancockbs
    Participant

    I like the idea of the current point system in that is seems to encourage riding daily (it has for me), but doesn’t cap points for those who ride long miles. I will say I rode more miles last year, because I was trying to hit the cap every week (and I did.) Since there is no cap this time, and the most efficient points ride seems to be around 10 miles, I haven’t been motivated to go much more as a weekly average. In point of fact, my current weekly average is, you guess it, 70 miles. The point system has encouraged me to ride more than 1 mile, even on sleaze days. my average sleaze ride is closer to 4 miles. Ultimately, if there is no mileage cap, those people with the time and motivation to ride long distance are going to rise to the top and if there ends up being more than one or two on a team, that team will rise to the top. Perhaps a mileage cap is needed, but maybe more than the 100 miles we used last year. It could be interesting to run data based on a 200 mile per week cap and see what that did to the scores.

    March 11, 2020 at 1:20 pm #1105172
    Steve O
    Participant

    Note that the Bollard Busters would be farther ahead under the previous scoring system. Currently about 1000 points up, but would be more than 1300 points up under the original system (not sure what effect the weekly cap would have).
    Adding a penalty would likely exacerbate the gaps between teams; someone could run these numbers and check.

    The real problem is that the teams are not balanced, not that the scoring system is bad. This has always been the problem. If Team 10 and team 24 were closer in miles, they would also be closer in points. Swap the first two players on those two teams and you reverse them in the standings.

    This seems to be an intractable problem, though. Three different people have tried their hands over multiple years to create evenly balanced teams and it never works .

    IMO the only way to fix this is to have some sort of system that rebalances or handicaps or something. Every attempt to predict in advance how it will play out has proven to be impossible.

    March 11, 2020 at 1:39 pm #1105173
    rcannon100
    Participant

    @jrenaut 199215 wrote:

    My point is it HASN’T been competitive. Has there been a lead change since the first week of the teams being full? I don’t think there has.

    Altho to be fair…. it rarely has been competitive.

    March 11, 2020 at 4:06 pm #1105174
    bentbike33
    Participant

    There has been a lot of position changes among 4th, 5th, and 6th places that probably would not have occurred under the old scoring rules.

    March 11, 2020 at 6:25 pm #1105177
    Steve O
    Participant

    @Steve O 199220 wrote:

    IMO the only way to fix this is to have some sort of system that rebalances or handicaps or something. Every attempt to predict in advance how it will play out has proven to be impossible.

    Another way to (sort of) fix this is to have more, parallel leaderboards, so different teams can lead in different ways. Why not leaderboards for team hashtags, like #FS2020coffeeride and the like? And have those leaderboards be more prominent, so the focus is not only on the days/miles leaderboard.

    Your team is near the bottom of the days/miles? All your rides are short? But you’re at the top of the #adulting team leaderboard because a lot of your rides are errands! Then you can fight that one out with another team that does lots of dry cleaning, grocery shopping and hardware store runs. And you can trash talk their e-assist bakfiets v. your human-powered long tail.
    The possibilities!

    March 11, 2020 at 7:20 pm #1105164
    DismalScientist
    Participant

    Next year, we just need to establish a pointless prize for the post exhibiting the most sanctimonious whine or the most ridiculous bloviation.

    March 11, 2020 at 7:28 pm #1105165
    BTC_DC
    Participant

    In years past I would ride almost every, if not every day because that first mile was so distinct in terms of bonus. Now it just seems somewhat diluted by all the other bonus points up through 10 miles, so in some ways it seems less significant and / or motivating now. My thought (probably misguided) being that unless I do that full 10, or at least 4 or 5, it really isn’t keeping pace with others out there (competition wise, that is, I will still do short rides if for other reasons), so will just take the day off. My math might be off, and my thinking probably certainly so, but that has been the way I have viewed it, and my number of ride-days are well short of years past.

    March 11, 2020 at 8:06 pm #1105180
    Steve O
    Participant

    @DismalScientist 199227 wrote:

    Next year, we just need to establish a pointless prize for the post exhibiting the most sanctimonious whine or the most ridiculous bloviation.

    “we”
    Pointless Prizes are established from the grass roots. It’s not too late for you to offer one for this year if you like. Just let accordioneur know and he can add it to the list.

    March 11, 2020 at 8:08 pm #1105181
    Steve O
    Participant

    @BTC_DC 199228 wrote:

    In years past I would ride almost every, if not every day because that first mile was so distinct in terms of bonus. Now it just seems somewhat diluted by all the other bonus points up through 10 miles, so in some ways it seems less significant and / or motivating now. My thought (probably misguided) being that unless I do that full 10, or at least 4 or 5, it really isn’t keeping pace with others out there (competition wise, that is, I will still do short rides if for other reasons), so will just take the day off. My math might be off, and my thinking probably certainly so, but that has been the way I have viewed it, and my number of ride-days are well short of years past.

    That first mile is worth 20. The second one only 9. So it’s still a pretty big difference.

    March 11, 2020 at 11:23 pm #1105182
    DismalScientist
    Participant

    @Steve O 199232 wrote:

    “we”
    Pointless Prizes are established from the grass roots. It’s not too late for you to offer one for this year if you like. Just let accordioneur know and he can add it to the list.

    Geez… I am not even participating this year.:rolleyes:

    March 12, 2020 at 12:57 am #1105184
    Greenbelt
    Participant

    I like this year’s scoring system a lot. It is more fun being a captain when there’s such a nice bonus for short- and medium-distance participation, without over incentivizing one-mile rides. This year’s system encourages bike rides to do things, without overincentiving either one-mile rides that are kind of worthless usually, or super long-distance rides, which are unattainable for many.

    I think this year is great, despite our being out ridden by the Bollard Blasters and out-participated by the WintryMixters. -Jeff (Team 3)

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