Rules and scoring thread

[Steve O]

@hozn 168983 wrote:

Maybe rule details need a new thread.

Here it is, and here’s hozn’s post that reflects my thinking as well:
@hozn 168895 wrote:

I think one could pretty easily argue against a points system that simply rewards based on mileage (and some bonus for daily participation). This make it hard for folks who don’t have the luxury of being able to spend 4 hours a day on their bikes to ever hope to compete in the points competition. I think adding a social component to scoring could make it competitive to a much larger group and keep the competition more dynamic. I liked some ideas thrown out earlier (perhaps last year) about having bonus points based on winning some of the ongoing pointless prize competitions too, not sure how exactly that gets managed technically, but anything to keep the competition open seems like it would be an improvement.

Topic

[rcannon100]

@Subby 169289 wrote:

The best way to make freezing saddles more appealing is to dump individual stuff outside of pointless prizes and to focus on teams and making the team competition and experience better.

So……. more hills?

[cvcalhoun]

@Rod Smith 169230 wrote:

Ok, its decided. Time in the saddle multiplied by weight of bike plus number of changes in direction of travel.

What, my weight (as opposed to the bicycle’s) doesn’t count? I was assuming that would move me way up in the rankings!

[JennaV]

Aah, now I get it!
[ATTACH=CONFIG]15826[/ATTACH]

[Rod Smith]

@cvcalhoun 169314 wrote:

What, my weight (as opposed to the bicycle’s) doesn’t count? I was assuming that would move me way up in the rankings!

Bike + rider + everything attached. If it was just the bike, you’d have too much advantage

[drevil]

@Rod Smith 169326 wrote:

Bike + rider + everything attached. If it was just the bike, you’d have too much advantage

If you don’t know Rod, this is why he’s a shoo-in:

[ATTACH=CONFIG]15827[/ATTACH]

😮

[rcannon100]

Boss? (aka they guy in control of the tech Hozn)

What did you decide about the individual leaderboard? Wear you gonna nix it? I always thought it was my favorite graph – sorta proved what a silly thing the whole thing was. Anyway the reason I ask is it looks like a few people from work are registering for FS. Thus I was thinking about having our own Pointless Prize side wager based on the fellow employee who scores the most points.

[sjclaeys]

@rcannon100 169357 wrote:

Boss? (aka they guy in control of the tech Hozn)

What did you decide about the individual leaderboard? Wear you gonna nix it? I always thought it was my favorite graph – sorta proved what a silly thing the whole thing was. Anyway the reason I ask is it looks like a few people from work are registering for FS. Thus I was thinking about having our own Pointless Prize side wager based on the fellow employee who scores the most points.

No, the best is the chart showing total distance versus total climbing. That is silly sick!

[AlanA]

Arrgh,

The competition hasn’t even started, and I already have a headache from just reading this one post.

Personally, I think the 10 pts (or whatever it is you decide) per ride (sleaze points) are bogus. Just go out and ride your bike for the fun of it and enjoy yourself. And if you start to add social points, that really doesn’t work for people who aren’t able to get their ass out of bed to made those Oh Dark Thirty coffee clubs.

Oh, and I do like the idea of the distance vs. climbing chart. I’m all for that!! 😎

[rcannon100]

All rules bias the game in one way or another. Originally, this was a game by a community of daily commuters. The 10 points a day kicker biases the scoring towards daily riding – commuters. Thus a cyclist who rode its bike everyday could score better than a spandex king who did centuries on the weekend. This was modeled after the LEague of American Bicycles National Bike Challenge that has a similar scoring system – again, specifically designed to favor the daily rider over the rider that can pound miles.

[musclys]

@Subby 169289 wrote:

The best way to make freezing saddles more appealing is to dump individual stuff outside of pointless prizes and to focus on teams and making the team competition and experience better.

In which case you’re saying you’d rejoin?

[Kitty]

*Kitty, having managed to survive the Oct-December treadmill of holiday and professional obligations through triage and caffeine, now turns her attention to the next thing: BAFS. Over coffee she reviews the sticky and notices a rules change from past years. Sealing herself, she ventures into the thread she swore never to enter, the dreaded “Rules and scoring thread.” Patiently, with an eye on the clock since she needs to gear up to ride to church, she goes through 11 pages of temporally crystallized early-December to come to this spot…

She grimaces and takes a sip of her coffee before holding up a finger that seems to speak for her ‘Now hold on just a minute…'”**

Eleven pages. Eleven pages of bickering, and I didn’t see a single thing about not accepting manual entries this year. Did I miss that somewhere in the applied calculus theory-crafting of pages 2-5?

Can I get a referee to explain this to me? I get trying to avoid cheating, but my phone (aka my “Magic Strava Machine”) is reaching the end of its life and prone to dying in cold weather. (Say nothing of the times when Strava fails on a whim) This causes me to have to do a follow-up Strava post to log the missing miles. I wish I could just rely on an error-free upload but that’s not the case.

[DismalScientist]

To summarize this rule change: sometimes life just sucks.

[Judd]

@Kitty 170288 wrote:

Can I get a referee to explain this to me? I get trying to avoid cheating, but my phone (aka my “Magic Strava Machine”) is reaching the end of its life and prone to dying in cold weather. (Say nothing of the times when Strava fails on a whim) This causes me to have to do a follow-up Strava post to log the missing miles. I wish I could just rely on an error-free upload but that’s not the case.

TLDR version: Manual entries make a bunch of other leaderboards very difficult to implement because they lack elevation and geographic data.

This does present a challenge for folks using phones to Strava since cold weather kills batteries (even worse when combined with an old phone). The good news is that you’ll still be allowed to upload a file to Strava, so if you have a fail on a regular commute, you can download a previous commute, edit the file to change the date/time and upload it. If it’s a non-commute and you’re riding with someone, Strava now allows riders to easily copy rides from other people within Strava. If you have a Strava fail this year, I can help you with doing either of these.

[Vicegrip]

Put the phone next to you on the inside of the insulation layers. Now if it gets too cold the phone is the least of your worries.

[cvcalhoun]

@Kitty 170288 wrote:

Eleven pages of bickering, and I didn’t see a single thing about not accepting manual entries this year.

1. We didn’t accept manual entries last year, either.

2. See the sticky at the top of the forum? The one that says, “Freezing Saddles Important Information”? The one that is linked (twice!) right on the registration page, and again in the welcome e-mail that already went out? It says, “We no longer count manually entered rides.”

[Author]

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