What should happen with the UWR?

[Ron]

Hi all,

The Unofficial World Records at http://www.speedcubing.com/records haven't been updated for ages. I simply do not have the time anymore. Sorry.
What should happen with the UWR?

Should we just remove them all?
Or should we keep them alive? And if so, who would be interested in updating them?

Any feedback is welcome.

Have fun,

Ron

 

[Anthony]

I definitely vote towards keeping them alive if they can be updated at least every now and then. You're obviously a very busy guy and it's understandable that you can't update the page as often as everyone would like.

I'm sure there are many people on this forum, including myself, who would be more than happy to help out with it, you just need to pick the right person.

Just my two cents.

 

[Faz]

I think it would be nice to keep them alive. I remember a few people saying they would be happy to run them, but I can't remember who.

 

[Mike Hughey]

I've always thought they were a lot of fun. I've been wondering about it - I figured you just didn't have the time anymore. I know qqwref has an alternate list that people just update themselves - maybe we could transfer the records over there? I suspect it's getting to be almost too big of a job for one person to manage by hand anymore. If there are a few bad entries, it won't hurt that much, as long as we can keep spammers out (but maybe that is too much of a challenge?).

I must admit, I miss the unofficial list. Many of my favorite "events" will never be official anyway, so it's the only way I can get my results listed.

 

[qqwref]

I think it should be kept online, but you should hand over the responsibility to someone more willing. I am sure there are people in the community who'd be willing to help out, and I'd love to help except that I don't think I'd have time to deal with the main UWR list (since I recently changed majors in college and have to start finishing a bunch of reqiurements). I do think the UWR list is an important thing to have, though (even if the fastest people don't post) and I'd much rather have someone else keep it alive than see it stop completely.

 

[blade740]

I'd be willing to help update, as long as I'm not the ONLY one doing it.

 

[CharlieCooper]

I don't mind helping somehow. I think the best way to do it would be maybe to have one that people update themselves, but then there are a few mods (I don't mind being one of them) that see new posts and can remove any spammy records.

 

[Radu]

I don't think they should be removed either. I know it's very time consuming, but my opinion is that another one or two WCA delagates should be made responsible for this.

The update should be done once a month for example. On every 1st of every month this delegate should make the job: analyze and evaluate the received records from the month before. I think you got the idea.

UWR are not some records in my opinion that should be updated daily.

 

[rahulkadukar]

I am willing to help update it. I think they should be kept alive. Moreover as pablobaluba has said we need to update them say once a week and not daily.

 

[PatrickJameson]

I'd be willing to help update it, but like some other people said, as long as I would not be the only one doing it.

 

[hawkmp4]

Yeah, I think the idea of having everyone be able to update it themselves but giving a few people the ability to remove records is the way to go. Handling spammers is another problem altogether, though...

 

[fanwuq]

Keep it alive! I forgot what are some of my PB's because it wasn't updated for so long. Sorry that I do not have the computer knowledge or time to help out this year.

 

[ajmorgan25]

Well considering I'm 2nd place in one of them (out of 2 in skydiving ) I'd like to keep it alive, but I can definitely understand how it's overbearing for you.

 

[Edmund]

I love checking the UWRs and it's good to see how cubers are doing not just in WCA competitions because not every cuber can get to a competition every month or 2. I'll help out if needed.

 

[tim]

I suggest a wiki-style UWR list (yes, everyone can edit anyone's records). So spammers could be kept out and suspicious records could be discussed on a "comments" page.
Another suggestion: A simple submit form to submit your own times, which will immediately appear on the list and every visitor has the chance to click on a "fake" button. Once a record has > X spam clicks he's getting ignored.

If someone knows of any other awesome idea to avoid fake records, let me know and i'll implement it in Cubemania (which, btw. became much faster and you can view all your old times now. I guess Sarah's happy now ).

 

[qqwref]

I would suggest that, in certain important events, anyone who submits a time under a certain threshold would have to submit some kind of proof that they can actually get such times, or the record would simply not be posted. That would get rid of a lot of cheating times because nobody could just go submit a 0.01 or whatever. For instance, anyone submitting a sub-10 second 3x3 average or sub-8 second single would have to provide some kind of proof. (Personally, I consider having a fast youtube video or getting a decent average in competition proof of legitimacy.) I think cubemania suffered from having a lot of unrealistic times that were not deleted simply because they were still plausible - right now, out of the 9 people with an average under 10 seconds, I have no clue who 4 of them are (so they're probably not legit) and one of them seems to have been just timing F2L. If we simply prevented records from being 'approved' once they were sufficiently fast, we'd prevent a lot of cheaters from posting obviously fake times.

I like the Wiki format, although we'd need a few moderators to make sure people don't go erasing tons of pages. One thing we could also do in that case is have articles per person (which would ideally display all of their records as well as their contact info and WCA profile link) - so for example it might go "Erik Akkersdijk 9.24 seconds" and you could click on Erik's name to go to his page. This should probably be separate from the userpages.

 

[Erik]

The UWR page is kinda outdated since a lot of cubers have stopped posting their times there. Is it even worth it to keep it going if it is not a very good representation of the unofficial records that are going on? Ron already has so much things to do, I'd say let someone else manage it if he/she really has a fetish for it or drop the whole UWR section. After all it's official times that count most

 

[tim]

Ron already has so much things to do, I'd say let someone else manage it if he/she really has a fetish for it or drop the whole UWR section.

Sure, that's why Ron came here in the first place .

 

[Faz]

Yes, the wiki idea sounds good. Just allow users to edit the pages.

 

[blade740]

See, I'd rather a system like now, but with several active "moderators" that will be willing to check the list regularly and approve anything that seems reasonable, ask for followup on suspected false results, and deny any spam. The problem with allowing all records outright is that someone with a bit of time could submit 1000 false records by script, and totally fill up the page with spam until some moderator wants to take the time to change it. I'm sure it wouldn't take long for the spambots to come running.