Two and a Half Integral "If"s

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admin
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Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

There are two and a half "if"s that we can influence but cannot control that will be integral to our optimal success.

1- When the time is right, Forum Users joining this party. The more Forum Users we have, the better the Forum, the better the party. That's "if" #1. If Forum Users come to our party.
2- Game Schedules, Game Scores, and Rankings are a big part of the uniqueness of LaxPower. And (the previous Moderator or otherwise, correct me if I'm wrong), these three pieces are very much integrated with each other and, more importantly, non-existent without the efforts of the teams throughtout America providing this information. Especially the HS and D3 teams. That's "if" #2. If the teams simply stop providing the team schedules and scores.
And a Half- Though not critical, it'd be meaningful to save the forum posts, game schedules, game scores, etc. dating back numerous years. Not critical but it'd be better IF Active was to give us a back-up of the LaxPower database. It's lacrosse history that I do not believe is stored all in one place anywhere else.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts...
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

Agreed. I have some ideas of how to oprimize our chances of getting the back-up but... Agreed.

Any thoughts on one and two?
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

Understood. But the critical path is having teams plug-in their schedules and scores. I.e. This is the only aspect of the process thst is, so to speak, not controlable. No?
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by WOMBAT, Mod Emeritus »

Which is why I would reduce scope.

Stick to D1 and the forums at a minimum. And maybe not all of the subforums.

Maybe help facilitate a template style of web and db design, for other leagues to administer the accuracy on their own, and encourage those folks to post links and updates to a subforum here. But the accuracy is up to the folks involved in that league, and if it’s crap, it’s crap and that’s on them and what it says about them and their league.

Matt, don’t bite off more than you can chew. Keep it small, doable and fun. Not a chore, job or boat anchor around your neck.

Delegate as much as possible.

W
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

WOMBAT, Mod Emeritus wrote:Stick to D1 and the forums at a minimum.
Agreed. But that's the minimum.
the previous Moderator wrote:Yes, but folks need to have a reason to do so.
Agreed. I've been thinking specifically about this issue. If LaxPower goes back-up, why would some HS in Kentucky start sending their game scores to us? I have some thoughts about this but want to talk to you about them via phone.
the previous Moderator wrote: 1. Your ratings algorithm needs to be believable.

2. You need to remind coaches to submit their schedules and scores and thus you need to have an accurate dB of coach email addresses and 40-50% of them change year over year. Need to have a simple and straightforward way to do submissions and validate them quickly

3. You need to fix errors quickly and intercept bad submits before they get to your database - you also need to process and update everything multiple times a day

To give you an idea of the scope, in 2017 there were over 4,000 teams and in excess of 33,000 scores - not a one person job any longer

It is a HUGE undertaking.
1. Very do-able.
2. Understood.
3. Understood. My thoughts on #3 are directly connected to "teams need a reason to submit their scores" etc. I.e. To be discussed.

Even if Balso hates my idea, I'll post it. Just being temporarily cryptic.
Njlaxx11
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by Njlaxx11 »

How can I help? I loved LP and wanna make sure we get what we have we’re to the glory of old school LP!!
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

Tell me what you loved about LP. That's a good start.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by holmes435 »

1. LaxPower had a fairly easy to navigate structure to find aggregated scores, schedules, and various rankings. You didn't have to go offsite to get them, everything was on one or two pages, and you could get to most everything within 2-3 actions. You had other nice features like separating schools into conferences, etc. Simplicity is the name of the game. Unfortunately you're probably not going to be able to easily replicate it with Wordpress.

When I was voting as a college coach in weekly polls, it was extremely easy to pull up 30 or so teams, compare schedules, scores and more without doing a ton of searching.

2. Aggregate news releases. You could easily see new hires and fires and other important news stories without wading through tons of fluff. You don't have to write amazing copy or create human interest pieces or anything. Just the facts, ma'am.

3. Forums were a nice touch, but just killed time for me.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

holmes, thank you. that helps.
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thatsmell
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by thatsmell »

The forum was great, but it can be rebuilt and or take another shape.
I'm most disheartened that the lax records could be lost.
I loved the years and years of archived team pages and scores. Loved the conference divisions.
Loved being able to click on a team and see all of their scores back to 2005. Nice to see who the coach of a team was in 2007, and that it changed in 2009.
I even occasionally went back and "backdoored" the results from old laxpower- WHAT WAS IT '99-'00?
I considered the "modern age of lacrosse" anything Laxpower tracked...

The rest was ancient history and up for debate...

:D
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by Matnum PI »

Agreed. The schedule and scores, especially for high schools, was great. That'll be hard, if not impossible, to duplicate without getting the database.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

In the beginning of the year, when I was moving the Fantasy Lacrosse content from LaxPower to here, I looked into LaxPower's content policy (i.e. who owns the content) and... What I wrote within the forum is mine but Laxpower has the right to duplicate it, etc. If this was sports Illustrated.com or WarandPeace.com or some other content which is blatantly owned by a publishing company, we'd be out of luck. But this is very different. All this content, literally all of it, was created by lacrosse coaches, lacrosse fans, etc. Larry's Rating Formula, that's different. Larry created that. But the schedules, game scores, and forum posts were all created by LaxPower users. i.e. We, and this is a very big we, own the content. I think we might have a claim to this database.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by pcowlax »

I too would love to see the old forum posts brought over if at all possible but realize it may not be. If however the past scores, which the previous Moderator seems to say that he has access to, could be brought over that would be wonderful. I was like smell, I loved being able to look back through every teams' results over 10+ years. Put that up, have the forum organically grown and, if all scores can't be entered (agree it is just a superhuman effort required at this point), maybe we could have a "Top 50" thread when people who follow specific teams or leagues could list scores (all of them ideally or at least for the big games) for the top national teams. This could maybe then at least be displayed or organized in a way so that at least for a given season you could quickly look at the results of the top national teams.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

Doc, I'm curious what you think about this. After looking at the LaxPower fine print before it went dark, I think we have a legitimate claim to post the old forum posts within FanLax. AT LEAST the posts where the people who posted the original posts give us permission. According to LaxPower, the poster owns/co-owns the verbiage within the post. With this being the case, why can't i post all my posts within FanLax? I already copy-and-pasted all my Fantasy Lacrosse posts. And i'd be astounded if this merited a yellow flag. So why isn't this the case for you and everyone who wants his or her posts posted. Obviously, even if we're 100% right, we don't want to be sued. But maybe there's a way to protect us both personally and professionally and, even better, a way to make it clear that these are our posts and they, Active or otherwise, is wasting their time.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

Ongoing Game Schedules and Scores as well as Posts - I think the previous Moderator/we have the posts and the schedules and scores. (As a semi-aside, I think getting the rankings is trickier.)

Ongoing Game Schedules and Scores as well as Rankings - Our creating a Top 50 and updating their Schedules, scores, and rankings is relatively easy and most certainly do-able. Schedules, scores, and rankings is relatively easy with relation to Men's and Women's D1 Lacrosse. D2 is similar. The not so easy part is D3 and HS. Where formerly we were dealing with 10s, now we're dealing with 100s and 1,000s. If we divide and conquer, we can cover 1,000s instead of tens. For example, for Boys HS Lacrosse, for sure, we need to cover:

1 LI Section 8
2 LI Section 11
3 LI Catholic
4 Upstate NY Section 3
5 NJ
6 New England NE 1 West
7 DC WCAC
8 DC IAC
9 Baltimore MIAA
10 Philadelphia PA IAC
11 Connecticut CT L
12* National Conference - Out of Conference Games

That, pcow, is your, so to speak, Top 50 idea but more like 100. Which is pretty good and pretty easy. With this, we can create a rock solid ranking for each conference and a relatively solid National Ranking. So someone does 1, 2, and 3 and another does 4, and another does 7 and 8, etc.. Just schedules and scores and we'll have a system to manage the rankings. The key is... Someone does NY Section 1, 2, and 3 and someone does a conference in Texas and someone does another conference in Texas and a conference in NC and etc. Obviously it'd be better to have each individual coach plug in their game scores ala LaxPower but... That's not where we are. Granted, we may be missing a conference in Georgia but following 1,500 teams is better than following 100. And, hopefully, in time, someone from that GA conference will show up.

Forum Folk Joining the Party - If we take care of the top two, I think this one will take care of itself.

And those are the 2 1/2 "If"s from the original post. Which i officially want to change to 3 "If"s. The half "If", the archived game schedules, scores, and posts is a full If, not a half.

Holmes45 - PS Holmes45, I think much of what you're speaking to relates to the layout of the website/forum and usability. We first need to get the schedules, scores, and the other content and then... It'd help to get feedback in terms of what goes where etc. Prematurely, thank you.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by DocBarrister »

Hi, Matt.

In response to your question on the other thread ... first, a legal disclaimer that I cannot serve as your attorney. ;)

Now that we got that out of the way, details matter when it comes to contractual copyright issues, so I can’t really answer your question. However, you may want to contact Active and simply ask for permission to transfer the old LaxPower posts to this website. I’m sure the previous Moderator can provide you with better guidance on this issue.

Hope that helps.

DocBarrister 8-)
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by holmes435 »

Having worked with phpBB over the years, it's gonna be a PITA to recover old threads and posts and add them in from a technical standpoint.

Add on top of that, you'll probably only be able to contact a fraction of all the users from LP, and then you won't have everyone granting permission. That's going to lead to a lot of disjointed threads that won't make much sense.

It may be better to focus on other aspects of the site if you're trying to emulate LaxPower was regarding teams, schedules and rankings. If you are able to put out a good product and have coaches on board helping update, the boards will grow organically.
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by admin »

Holmes, very much agree. I'd love to have them but I'm not dedicating a lot of time to getting the old forum as well as game schedules and scores. My upgrading the backed-up database from a 1/2 to a 1 was more of a gesture. like you're saying, there are more important things to focus on. (as a semi-aside, i agree about the threads being jumbling, etc. But I'd still like to have them. If for no other reason so we can do a search of "Mundorf" and then see every post where he's mentioned. I think that's worth something.)
Njlaxx11
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by Njlaxx11 »

i'm a Jersey coach and would be more then willing to attempt to help with schedules/scores and some info if needed!
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Matnum PI
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Re: Two and a Half Integral "If"s

Post by Matnum PI »

NJ, yes, needed. And, I'll be posting something to everyone (including you) of how people can help before October 1st. Hopefully well before then.
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