Freezing Saddles 2015

[TwoWheelsDC]

I’m thinking I need to upgrade the FS graphic. That will be a good distraction from my schoolwork this week.

[Steve O]

@rcannon100 100126 wrote:

Random teams will only work if the team size is big enough to balance the random. I doubt TEN is big enough to do that.

I don’t doubt. Random only has to do better than this.

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[rcannon100]

Sorta.

What you see there is the result of a lot of substitutions and adding people on to teams after about a month, in order to maintain a competitive game. But for those substitutions and add ons, the spread would have been greater.

If you could expand the graph, you would see that Team Slackers was beating at least two teams, I believe, for the first period of the game.

Those substitutions and add ons were a pain in the butt. Someone can agree to be the Czar of substitutions and add-ons – and the captains can agree that they will once again negotiate these deals. I dont particularly want to again go through the substitutions, people who didnt show up, people who magically showed up who had not registered, people who dropped off, people who whined until they got there way……. And I would note that by the end of all the substitutions some captains were in full revolt and declaring to me “I dont care.“

I would like to create a scenario where it is “do it once, do it right” without the slings and arrows of last year.

[DismalScientist]

“I don’t care” means full revolt? I don’t care because everything seems so pointless.:rolleyes:

I think you should let the market take care of this. See how much everyone will pay for substitutions and just pocket the loot. You need to be compensated for the crap they give you.

[Raymo853]

@Steve O 100202 wrote:

I don’t doubt. Random only has to do better than this.

I do not think it was unfair last year, regardless still vote for completely random. I also like the idea of keeping ten teams,, but expand their size.

How about we have no late additions or substitutions? Instead, make all the teams the same size before the final calculations. How? Any member that does not ride at least 10 days be considered inactive and eliminated from the final calculations. Then what ever the smallest size team is after those cuts, will be the number of counted team members for all teams. Ex: Team B is the smallest with 13 active members, then all the teams final points are just calculated from their 13 best performing members.

[PeteD]

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[cvcalhoun]

@Raymo853 100210 wrote:

I do not think it was unfair last year, regardless still vote for completely random. I also like the idea of keeping ten teams,, but expand their size.

How about we have no late additions or substitutions? Instead, make all the teams the same size before the final calculations. How? Any member that does not ride at least 10 days be considered inactive and eliminated from the final calculations. Then what ever the smallest size team is after those cuts, will be the number of counted team members for all teams. Ex: Team B is the smallest with 13 active members, then all the teams final points are just calculated from their 13 best performing members.

Of course, this means that in Team A, with 16 active members, there is no incentive at all for the bottom three performers to ride at all. If the idea is to motivate people to ride, providing the least motivation for those already riding the least seems counterproductive.

[jrenaut]

No substitutions. Anyone who comes in late goes onto the Miserable Outcasts team and has to wear a dunce cap at the post party. Rule 5 applies to teams who lose a member due to injury or whatnot.

[cvcalhoun]

@TwoWheelsDC 100197 wrote:

I’m thinking I need to upgrade the FS graphic. That will be a good distraction from my schoolwork this week.

Maybe something based on this?

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[elwbikes]

@Arlingtonrider 99976 wrote:

I’ll work on setting up happy hours.

Let me know if you need help with that, or with anything else!

[cvcalhoun]

@rcannon100 100204 wrote:

Sorta.

What you see there is the result of a lot of substitutions and adding people on to teams after about a month, in order to maintain a competitive game. But for those substitutions and add ons, the spread would have been greater.

If you could expand the graph, you would see that Team Slackers was beating at least two teams, I believe, for the first period of the game.

Those substitutions and add ons were a pain in the butt. Someone can agree to be the Czar of substitutions and add-ons – and the captains can agree that they will once again negotiate these deals. I dont particularly want to again go through the substitutions, people who didnt show up, people who magically showed up who had not registered, people who dropped off, people who whined until they got there way……. And I would note that by the end of all the substitutions some captains were in full revolt and declaring to me “I dont care.“

I would like to create a scenario where it is “do it once, do it right” without the slings and arrows of last year.

Last year, my recollection is that we originally had a rule saying “no add ons” after the registration date, then had to change it because we couldn’t find many of the people who had originally registered. And a big part of that was that the only contact information we had for team members was forum names, and the default on this forum is that a member gets no notification of private messages. I ended up chasing down one team member on Facebook, making public posts on threads where other members seemed to be active, making a guess at the name of one member who was typoed on our list, and generally doing everything but a public striptease to attract the attention of members we were having trouble finding. Sloppy Seconds ended up finding all the members (and thus having no substitutions), but other teams were less persistent or less lucky.

Perhaps this year, we could start out by disseminating some contact information other than forum names? E-mail addresses, Strava links, or something? I suspect that a large majority of the confusion could have been avoided if we’d had a way to find members and get them signed up for the Strava clubs right away.

[elwbikes]

@cvcalhoun 100220 wrote:

Perhaps this year, we could start out by disseminating some contact information other than forum names? E-mail addresses, Strava links, or something? I suspect that a large majority of the confusion could have been avoided if we’d had a way to find members and get them signed up for the Strava clubs right away.

I second that. Some of us are unused to how the forum works (me!) and had no idea if I was on a team or not. Luckily, I was! Can’t wait to do it again this year, plus I’m recruiting lots of Women & Bicycles ladies.

PS if we do substitutions or late registration, I volunteer to be the czar of that!

[rcannon100]

This is an activity of this forum. Participants are either part of this forum or they are not. Members of this forum are volunteering and donating time and money to make this game work. One frustrating part from previous years has been to have people join the game that do not participate in the forum, do not come to forum events, do not volunteer, and do not get to know anyone on the forum.

This is a game among friends in this forum. If that’s not you, there are lots of other games and strava challenges. Using the forum as the primary means of communicating for the game reinforces this.

I suspect that a large majority of the confusion could have been avoided if we’d had a way to find members and get them signed up for the Strava clubs right away.

The troubles that we had last year had nothing to do with finding members due to a lack of contact information. Captains had contact information for their team members.

plus I’m recruiting lots of Women & Bicycles ladies

Please encourage them to join the forum.

[KelOnWheels]

@cvcalhoun 100196 wrote:

In the discussion of the bleedingly obvious, how did they omit flu shots?

I GOT MINE! Not being able to ride for 2 months right in the middle of Freezing Saddles last year sucked

[cvcalhoun]

@rcannon100 100226 wrote:

This is a game among friends in this forum. If that’s not you, there are lots of other games and strava challenges. Using the forum as the primary means of communicating for the game reinforces this.

I would just point out that many people who are active on the forum don’t get private messages on the forum. The default is not to get e-mail notification of private messages. And my experience last year was that even many active forum participants never saw their private messages.

[Author]

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