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Scoring delay?

6K views 48 replies 22 participants last post by  Roadkill_751 
#1 ·
I'm wondering why scores take so long to finalize. If prelim scores can be up in 24 hours, why is it a month before they are finalized? I realize that there is a ton of info to compile, but the majority of the work is already done after the prelims are figured.
 
#4 ·
GSSF has a 30 day period to resolve any scoring issues. Some issues are not easily resolved. Not every competitor is on the computer every day. You must learn to be patient. In 1999 it took 90+ days.
 
#6 ·
I'll admit that patience is not my strong suit. It's one of the reasons I rarely shoot USPSA. The ridiculous scoring takes too long to post.
Yea, we all want Instant Gradification(IG). 30 days is IG to us and we bear with GSSF because we know they have a life too without us.
 
#7 ·
I'll admit that patience is not my strong suit. It's one of the reasons I rarely shoot USPSA. The ridiculous scoring takes too long to post.
I've shot USPSA at 5 different ranges in the greater Charlotte area. Some have them up the same day, at the worst usually the next day. Major matches are a day or two.

That's reasonable to me.
 
#8 · (Edited)
Most small matches around here take the better part of a week. Bigger matches usually two or three days. I've seen some matches going to computerized scoring with tablets. That is a huge improvement that can get scores out in an hour or so after the match wraps up.

I much prefer IDPA scoring. I know before I leave if I won or not.
 
#10 ·
I think the answer to why it takes 30 days is "it has always taken 30 days." May be back then folks didnt have as easy a time to access the internet. I just expect it to take that long, no big deal. It would be nice to have a policy change of say 7 days, may be one day it will.
 
#11 ·
GSSF can probably do that if they cut the number of matches and limit matches to just one day, but I for one would not appreciate it.

If a two-day match has 600 entries, that's 1,800 score sheets. With that many, there are bound to be a few errors. When pistols are at stake, no one wants any errors that might cost them a pistol.

Now there is staff time. Two per match, leaving on Thursday or Friday and not returning until Monday night or Tuesday. Many weekends have double matches. Every now and then they even get a day off.

Finally, there are now 100,000+ members to take care of.

Bottom line, GSSF does an amazing job, thanks to a very dedicated staff.
 
#12 ·
I'll admit that patience is not my strong suit. It's one of the reasons I rarely shoot USPSA. The ridiculous scoring takes too long to post.
Try going up to the clubhouse and helping GSSF sort "1800" (or more) scoresheets by hand, by entry number for computer entry (and later reference). You'll get an idea of the enormity of the job to get prelims up so quickly. Perhaps GSSF isn't your sport if you can't wait 30 days for corrections. If those required corrections were your scores, you may appreciate the delay a little more.

Most small matches around here take the better part of a week. Bigger matches usually two or three days. I've seen some matches going to computerized scoring with tablets. That is a huge improvement that can get scores out in an hour or so after the match wraps up.

I much prefer IDPA scoring. I know before I leave if I won or not.
...and you know that how? Does everyone keep track of their own scores and exchange notes before leaving the range? We have ~40 shooters at our IDPA matches and 4 squads and it's like herding cats to get them squadded and shooting - then all but a few take off before tear-down.

If I wait 2 or 3 or 4 days for IDPA or Steel Challenge or Bowling Pin scores, I am very happy with that because someone else is taking their own time to do that for the shooting masses within their discipline.

I must be the perfect competitor; I'm an IDPA SO, Steel and Pins and GSSF RO, help set up, help tear down, and never complain about scoring delays. Try it at IDPA and GSSF sometime. GSSF always welcomes the help and it will get you closer to understanding the system and what’s involved.
 
#13 · (Edited)
I'll admit that patience is not my strong suit. It's one of the reasons I rarely shoot USPSA. The ridiculous scoring takes too long to post.
This venue teaches us to slow down and not rush, Must be slow to be accurate to avoid penalties,yet fast enough to keep the times low,

This entire venue is all about waiting

We have to wait for the event,then wait for our credit card to be charged the Wednesday before the event,waiting to pick up our stickers,waiting to get on the sign in sheet,waiting to give in your stickers,waiting to get on the tree,waiting on deck,waiting for the pre lims,waiting on the finals,waiting on the certificate or the prize, waiting for the next event again,

I would say to anybody who doesnt have the ability to wait for things and need to be gratified instantly ,this may not be a good venue for you.

the shooting part of this venue as we know if all goes well should only be a couple of seconds.

This venue is all about waiting

All that being said . I absolutely love and enjoy every bit of the venue except all the grumblings of the people who don't realize waiting is a large part of this venue.

I also think the journey to a destination most of the time is far better then the destination it self, that being said I actually enjoy the days and weeks after an event daydreaming and thinking about what gun I am going to purchase when I win a random gun certificate, it helps me pass the time while waiting for the next event in my area,like buying a lotto ticket its so much fun thinking about what you may win, once the result post you cant day dream about it anymore
 
#14 ·
I'll admit that patience is not my strong suit. It's one of the reasons I rarely shoot USPSA. The ridiculous scoring takes too long to post.
At most of the clubs in my area, results are up on the same day. The club I do scores at is moving to electronic scoring, and preliminary testing indicates that we'll be able to have scores within 5-10 minutes of last shot fired.
 
#15 ·
To all the guys that have these wonderful clubs that post results the same day or a day or 2 later, how many of these could do this with 500 to a 1000 entries? And allow a protest period? At the IDPA regional I shot sure we had the results that afternoon. We had to start at 7:30am and I think I left the range after 7pm after the awards were all presented. I think we got a 15 minute protest period. Yeah, I get a little impatient too sometimes but overall I am happy with the process and I can wait. :whistling:

And I agree with the IG statement, this is what our society has turned into and in most cases I am not sure it is a good thing. :dunno:

Scott
 
#16 ·
I think gssf does a great job and 30 days to contest an error is a very reasonable amount of time. What if for example a competitor has to mail in his carbon copy that come in with what is probably hundreds of other items to gssf daily? There is an enormous amount of work that goes into gssf and other than the profit gained by us buying guns it does not make the company any money to speak of. I wish other companies would develop similar types of events
 
#18 · (Edited)
I have seen cases where a shooter was listed in the wrong division and it changed who won guns, after he saw the prelims and notified GSSF. It's worth the time to get it right.
 
#19 ·
Everyone makes mistakes, no reason to rush to set them in stone. After a couple of weeks of no one raising issues then it seems reasonable to lock it in and if someone finds something later, well, they had ample opportunity to pull their crumpled score sheets out of the range bag and check them.
 
#20 ·
I'll admit that patience is not my strong suit. It's one of the reasons I rarely shoot USPSA. The ridiculous scoring takes too long to post.
You better say a little prayer that you don't win a gun!

First, you wait for the certificate, then you wait, wait, wait for the gun.

Your head will implode and you will never get to enjoy your free Glock :animlol:



It is nothing like waiting for Christmas when you were 6.
Its more like waiting for your tax refund when you are 76.
:wedgie:


 
#21 ·
To all the guys that have these wonderful clubs that post results the same day or a day or 2 later, how many of these could do this with 500 to a 1000 entries? And allow a protest period? At the IDPA regional I shot sure we had the results that afternoon. We had to start at 7:30am and I think I left the range after 7pm after the awards were all presented. I think we got a 15 minute protest period. Yeah, I get a little impatient too sometimes but overall I am happy with the process and I can wait. :whistling:

And I agree with the IG statement, this is what our society has turned into and in most cases I am not sure it is a good thing. :dunno:

Scott
FTR, I wasn't complaining. The GSSF folks do a darn fine job getting prelims up very quickly. My last 2 GSSF matches were up same day I shot (Sunday). That's a pretty impressive feat with hundreds of entires.

Just pointing out that USPSA scoring ain't so bad if you have a decent club.
 
#22 ·
GSSF staffers have to attend each and every match.

They can only do finals when they are actually in the office.

They typically travel to a match on a Thursday or Friday, do the match Saturday/Sunday, and travel back on Monday.

Which typically leaves them Tuesday & Wednesday to do "office stuff" which not only includes doing final results and awards, but gathering and shipping the match stuff necessary for the match they are doing two weeks out.

"Oh, sorry, the targets/scoresheets/pasters/timers did not get here in time for this match because two weeks ago, I took 2 days to get out the awards from the XYZ match that happened 3 weeks ago. Sorry, you 200 people with guns who showed up here today, expecting a match, but I am afraid you are just going to have to turn around and go home. However, I am sure you will be happy to know that the participants of the XYZ match DID get their awards, and are happy at your sacrifice. "

NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.

And this time of year, full-time GSSF staffers are doing 2, sometimes three, weekends PER MONTH.

It is not a question of how "slow" they are in getting finals and awards out.

It is a miracle that they get them out as FAST as they ARE.

So quit your whining, and stop biting the hand that feeds you.
 
#23 · (Edited)
To all the guys that have these wonderful clubs that post results the same day or a day or 2 later, how many of these could do this with 500 to a 1000 entries? And allow a protest period?...
Scott
I think you may have been reading too fast to gather context.

The comments about "clubs having results posted same day" weren't made as a reflection about GSSF.

The OP also went on to post that he didn't shoot USPSA because of long delays for results, the several replies I saw to that (mine was one) addressed local **USPSA** results. Nothing to do with GSSF. So you have to be aware that there are TWO conversations within this one thread.

Now, regarding the GSSF stuff... I think GSSF does a find job on the prelims, but certainly think they could cut down the time on making the results final. After all.... if someone doesn't have a computer, they're not even going to know what their results ARE, to dispute them, irght? And two weeks is more than enough time to get online and look at your scores.

If you don't care enough to get online and look at your scores within two weeks, you obviously don't care enough about the competition for it to matter anyway. Or you know you're not in the top 3-5 or something.
 
#24 ·
10 years ago, as Danny said, it took way longer. At least we generally have preliminary results within about a week of the match now. Back when I first got started >10 years ago, some of us were pretty vocal about how moving to some kind of scanned bubble sheets would speed up the data entry. Obviously, that never happened. It just occurred to me though, with the leaps technology has made in that time, how far off might we be from the following setup:

At registration, they print and hand you a single "card" per entry with a 2-D bar code and the human readable text for your name/entry number/division. At each stage, the scorer has a tablet (ipad, android, whatever). They scan your code card, the tablet brings up a representation of a score sheet with your name and entry # on it. As you shoot, your times are recorded in the app. When finished, your scores are entered. Once approved (by scanning your card again), the score is uploaded to "the server" and maybe emailed to the competitor. At the end of the match, GSSF snags a CSV dump from the server, imports it into their spreadsheet software, does whatever calculating they need to do, and export a PDF.

The technology for that is all here today. The only things stopping that from being a reality are the cost of the hardware, programming, and IT personnel it'd take to make it happen. With that, you could have preliminary results as soon as the match is over (actually, preliminary results could be viewable in real time as the match progresses and the whole data to PDF part could actually be automated or skipped in favor of html generated from data in the scores db).

I suspect they'd need enough spare tablets to swap them out at least once during the day for battery charging. It'd probably be a few grand each in hardware and software, and they'd need either internet or a local WIFI network setup at each match.

It's something to dream about at least.
 
#25 ·
...Back when I first got started >10 years ago, some of us were pretty vocal about how moving to some kind of scanned bubble sheets would speed up the data entry. Obviously, that never happened. It just occurred to me though, with the leaps technology has made in that time, how far off might we be from the following setup:.....

...It's something to dream about at least.
I'm a super-techie and considered and suggested a similar system about 3-4 years ago when I got into GSSF. It only takes a casual observer a couple of minutes and one single match to realize there are MUCH better ways to do this. The technology was there >10 years ago; now the technology is cheaper and easier to implement.

Unfortunately, this largely falls on deaf ears. GSSFs IT savvy and (apparently) budget is nil. They can't get past the same old website they've had for (??) years and keep GSSF documents up-to-date. :crying:
 
#26 ·
I'm a super-techie and considered and suggested a similar system about 3-4 years ago when I got into GSSF. It only takes a casual observer a couple of minutes and one single match to realize there are MUCH better ways to do this. The technology was there >10 years ago; now the technology is cheaper and easier to implement.

Unfortunately, this largely falls on deaf ears. GSSFs IT savvy and (apparently) budget is nil. They can't get past the same old website they've had for (??) years and keep GSSF documents up-to-date. :crying:
Oh, the web site used to be far far worse. For a while, it was so broken, you actually got different content depending on your browser's user-agent. Not all the content was being updated...so some of us wouldn't see things others saw.

I think the biggest problems with higher tech scoring (anything reliant on a "computer" at the stage) is the cost of the equipment (both initial and maintenance) and the need for power at the stages. I doubt any tablet or common netbook would last from 9-5 under constant use. I suppose you could put a big external battery pack at each stage...but that's another expense and think of all the wires that'd be involved in recharging all that gear Saturday night and before the next match.

Unless the technology eliminated a staff person, there's probably no savings for GSSF/Glock, so what's their incentive? I'm sure we all want faster scores...but who wants to put someone out of a job? Actually, even if it did put someone out of a job, it'd likely create the need for a more expensive (IT) person to manage and keep all the gear running.

There's also the saying, To err is human. To really foul things up requires a computer. Think of the chaos if the electronic system fouled up and large numbers of scores were lost or corrupted. At least with the paper sheets, that really can't happen. Sure, you could put a printer at each stage too...but that's even more $.
 
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