C'mon Milesplit!

R

Runningfast

Active member
Just here to complain about Milesplit.

Here I sit on Monday 10:30am, and conference meets from last Friday are still not populated into databases. I know the raw results for our meet were posted by about 10pm Friday, so Milesplit has had the data for 2.5 days at this point.

I get that there are tons of results to be posted, and I get they need to be formatted before they appear in the databases, but if you're going to charge a fee for your service, you should deliver that service in a timely fashion.
 
 
I'll never understand it. Some meets format almost immediately, others take days or weeks.
 
Very glad this subject has come up again...

From a coach's point of view, the primary value of Milesplit is the database with the ability to sort the data to evaluate competition and make strategic decisions... like responsibly ranking and seeding teams for post season competition, anticipating how other teams will deploy their athletes in competition, plotting paths for team and individual advancement... etc. With this in mind, the value of this or any database depends on its completeness and accuracy.

Other content is nice... the pictures and videos have some value and may serve to promote interest in the sport. But these features are secondary to the value of a comprehensive database and the tools to work with it. Posting articles proclaiming "The top whatever rankings ..." is at best low value (we could sort the data ourselves to create the same information) or, at worst, erroneous and insulting when many, many performances are omitted because they are not in the database to begin with.

As an entry portal, Milesplit is just another one of the several coaches are now familiar with. Each have pluses and minuses, but none of the pluses/minuses are significant enough to be anything more than a slight preference or a minor annoyance. What is more than annoying is having qualification into championship events based on marks in a singular, incomplete performance database.

Sorting through meet results individually, it seems the Milesplit rankings omit performances for entries through portals other than Milesplit. If this is unintentional, a programming bug, I hope the problem can be fixed soon. If intentional, it seems like a bad marketing plan... the less comprehensive and therefore less useful the database becomes the more likely regular users will be to look for other, more compete data sources. This can't be good for site traffic, subscriptions and advertising revenue.

My opinion... for what it's worth...
 
galesxc said:
Very glad this subject has come up again...

From a coach's point of view, the primary value of Milesplit is the database with the ability to sort the data to evaluate competition and make strategic decisions... like responsibly ranking and seeding teams for post season competition, anticipating how other teams will deploy their athletes in competition, plotting paths for team and individual advancement... etc. With this in mind, the value of this or any database depends on its completeness and accuracy.

Other content is nice... the pictures and videos have some value and may serve to promote interest in the sport. But these features are secondary to the value of a comprehensive database and the tools to work with it. Posting articles proclaiming "The top whatever rankings ..." is at best low value (we could sort the data ourselves to create the same information) or, at worst, erroneous and insulting when many, many performances are omitted because they are not in the database to begin with.

As an entry portal, Milesplit is just another one of the several coaches are now familiar with. Each have pluses and minuses, but none of the pluses/minuses are significant enough to be anything more than a slight preference or a minor annoyance. What is more than annoying is having qualification into championship events based on marks in a singular, incomplete performance database.

Sorting through meet results individually, it seems the Milesplit rankings omit performances for entries through portals other than Milesplit. If this is unintentional, a programming bug, I hope the problem can be fixed soon. If intentional, it seems like a bad marketing plan... the less comprehensive and therefore less useful the database becomes the more likely regular users will be to look for other, more compete data sources. This can't be good for site traffic, subscriptions and advertising revenue.

My opinion... for what it's worth...
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Still too much garbage in / garbage out... Very glaring reporting errors of performances. Hand times reported as FAT and just some "there is no way they ran that" stuff. As stated above, people are making decisions based off bad info. Kids are being seeded using bad info. Incomplete is one thing. Not all of our meets are uploaded anywhere. Dual meets. So, there are gaps in the info that is out there.

I will say that we finally got the live results working this year and it was nice. Had a few minor issues where we had to log out of milesplit and back in to get the data to update, but it was easy enough.
 
psycho_dad said:
Is there a cut off? Seems like our conference meet was not included last year or this year.
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In the past, it felt like there were just a few cases when results were missed. When I contacted Milesplit on these, they were quick to respond and fix the oversight.

In the past, the database was close enough to complete (for Central Ohio at least) to be useful; including virtually all invitationals... all our FAT dual/tri meets (by Timing companies)... most FAT meets timed by the host schools themselves...
 
galesxc,
I agree it seems to be getting worse. The meet I'm waiting on is from one of the small handful of MAJOR timing companies in the state. Meets from the same timing company that ran Saturday are posted, this meet from Friday isn't.

It's frustrating when I'm working on district entries and it is repeatedly autopopulating PRs that are incorrect. It's frustrating when my kids don't get to see their names on the leaderboards. It's frustrating when I try to make educated decisions about how to best set our athletes up for success at districts and beyond and I'm working with partial data at best. All 21st century problems, as I understand our sport functioned for decades without 24-hour access to sortable leader lists and virtual meets, but, again, I've paid for a service that isn't being delivered.
 
Runningfast said:
galesxc,
I agree it seems to be getting worse. The meet I'm waiting on is from one of the small handful of MAJOR timing companies in the state. Meets from the same timing company that ran Saturday are posted, this meet from Friday isn't.

It's frustrating when I'm working on district entries and it is repeatedly autopopulating PRs that are incorrect. It's frustrating when my kids don't get to see their names on the leaderboards. It's frustrating when I try to make educated decisions about how to best set our athletes up for success at districts and beyond and I'm working with partial data at best. All 21st century problems, as I understand our sport functioned for decades without 24-hour access to sortable leader lists and virtual meets, but, again, I've paid for a service that isn't being delivered.
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I agree the results not getting populated quickly is a problem, but I have no idea what it is you think you are paying for.

Registration for meets is free for both entering teams and hosting teams. Posting of results is also free.

Sure you can pay for additional details in rankings, but there's nothing in meet registration/results rankings that is costing anyone anything other than time.
 
I understand I can enter meets and see meet results without paying, but can I run virtual meets and see in-depth rankings beyond the #1 kid in the state? These features are very helpful when thinking ahead to future meets, seeing how our team stacks up to others in various event areas, etc. When I log out of my account and visit milesplit, it tells me I need to become a Milesplit Pro to see these features.
 
galesxc said:
In the past, it felt like there were just a few cases when results were missed. When I contacted Milesplit on these, they were quick to respond and fix the oversight.

In the past, the database was close enough to complete (for Central Ohio at least) to be useful; including virtually all invitationals... all our FAT dual/tri meets (by Timing companies)... most FAT meets timed by the host schools themselves...
Click to expand...
We do not register our dual meets. We do them on the fly. We FAT the races and hand write all the results. We don't give other teams our entries and don't expect them to give us theirs. Too much strategy and on the fly decisions being made. Don't want to give that up. Too much fun.

Lying about seed times has gone to a new level with some of the results posted on milesplit this season. Too many poorly reported times.
 
Runningfast said:
Just here to complain about Milesplit.

Here I sit on Monday 10:30am, and conference meets from last Friday are still not populated into databases. I know the raw results for our meet were posted by about 10pm Friday, so Milesplit has had the data for 2.5 days at this point.

I get that there are tons of results to be posted, and I get they need to be formatted before they appear in the databases, but if you're going to charge a fee for your service, you should deliver that service in a timely fashion.
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Totally agree!!
 
I see the problem with milesplit being that they have an editor who is not suited to do the job. He is either not paid well enough to do this as a regular job, is busy with something else (is this person a student? married with kids? it's a PT job?), or simply doesn't have the skills to do the job. In the past, a gentleman named Mark Dwyer seemed to be in charge. His name still appears in some places but I do not believe he is responsible for the day to day operations. I think he was better at responding and correcting mistakes. It's far more difficult to get a response now.

In fairness, perhaps it is a bigger challenge to do this now with all of the meets that are recorded on milesplit. Dual meets, middle school meets, etc. that did not used to go on milesplit are going on milesplit far more frequently now.

Regardless, milesplit is not doing a good enough job. They charge a fee and don't deliver a good enough service to the customers. In additon to the problem with getting results in a timely manner, their coverage of meets is very weak. So many big, impressive meets happen within a season and most of them get no live coverage, video coverage, photos, interviews, etc. And why should we have to sit through ads?
 
Mark Dwyer has FIVE (5) states that he's responsible for covering, not just Ohio. Primarily a story person. I have no idea who is responsible for the actual machinations of meet data.
 
Not a very big deal, but the 1600 on the girls’ ranking page has been wrong for over a month now
 

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4Runner said:
Not a very big deal, but the 1600 on the girls’ ranking page has been wrong for over a month now
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Some of it is a big deal. Boys Hurdles has kids with 3-5 second PR's in the 110H. There may be coaches deciding to not run kids in the hurdles at district because it looks like they have no chance. Lane assignment are also based on seed times.

The top 4 110h rankings for D2 are Bogus. Not one of them made it out of the District they were in.
 
4Runner said:
Not a very big deal, but the 1600 on the girls’ ranking page has been wrong for over a month now
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This has been true, but when you click on the 1600m link itself, it shows the proper rankings. Not sure what the disconnect there is between the leaders list and the individual list.
 
The top girl in D3 in the NE is from Oberlin HS according to milesplit. A little research finds a girl with the same name at Oberlin College. So, although it may not cause people to scratch like a running event, misinformation is problematic.
 
JAVMAN83 said:
This has been true, but when you click on the 1600m link itself, it shows the proper rankings. Not sure what the disconnect there is between the leaders list and the individual list.
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I figure it’s just some sort of a glitch. I reached out about it over a month ago because there were a number of inaccuracies in the rankings. The others (that I was aware of at least) were fixed, but this one was not.
 
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