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Caption Changes Committee


CloudHype

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JohnD suggested that we think up of a schedule for the way we submit captions, this schedule will have to do with when we get our bonus points and how many changes to be made. We all agree that last season was the smoothest ran season to date, growing pains... yes, but no missed changes. With that in mind, I ask for John and Jeff keep an eye on this thread and if ANY IDEA does not work with the system in place, let us know and we can move on from that.

Directors that have been in DCP-I for a long time know that how, when, and why have been the biggest issue in this league next to having your captions correct, and the latter problem was not a problem last season. Let us look over some of the ways we did captions in the past and come up with pro's and con's of each, that way we can look at them and form something we all can agree on. The Proposal will not be my Proposal, it will be our Proposal. :)

My first season was season 4 (live season) and we had this rule: 3 changes per week till Regionals, 10 after that, you got a bonus point at every 5 shows.

Pro's (IMO): Variety in the first half of the season and you felt like a director, keeping track of changes and submitting when you wished.

Con's: Work load was heavy for directors and Steve and Jeff which caused mistakes. The second half of the season had no limit on how many captions you could change at one time and we saw corps make 21 place jumps when they changed all their captions at once to match the top corps.

Season 5 (off season): I proposed a change that had your caption changes and bonus points awarded on a set time frame of dates, that passed. There was 3 changes on set dates through out the season, you got your bonus points on those dates.

Pros: Eliminated the copy cats, season was unpredictable and the director workload was decreased since we knew when changes where to be made.

Cons: Steve and Jeff got hit with changes all at once and since things where done by humans, mistakes happen. Some complained on the lack to make a load of changes at once.

Season 6 and 7: We went back to (by a close vote) to the old system, see my take on season 4. In season 7 we went to the current system of sending in captions but there was still human error.

Season 8: We know what the first 6 weeks where like, unlimited changes but no bonus points and I jokingly called the league the "Xerox League" because copying was going on. After some gameplay complaints we put in a way to limit the amount of changes and add bonus points. Two changes per week and Two captions per day.

Pro's: The "non- human" system work and worked well, other then a small problem finals week, things worked. IMO, this was the easiest year for me to keep my corps up to date.

Con's: IMO, and the opinion of a few other directors, the 2 per day rule was a tad too extreme and limited the director on changes he could make. We agree that it was proper for finals week but not during the season. Oh... and unlimited with no bonus was fun for 2 week but grew into chaos.

This is just my take on the way things have been done, everyone will see it different, maybe we can get something that we will all be happy with.

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I would also suggest coming up with a cut off time.... like last season, most cut off times was 12 Noon. The way it worked is that at noon, a program would run that would gather all of the current caption selections and e-mail them to myself. We can set this up for just about any time... so I would get an opinion on that as well.

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My only complaint as a "West Coaster" is more a legistics thing. In the past a person on tour could pre-send in their captions to take effect on a certain day that way they didn't need to be on the computer to get their changes in. The last two weeks of the season I wasn't by a compter much, especially on the important bonus point days. Knowing it was a tight season, simular captions selections were going to happen, getting in late was to a great disadvantage. Which forced me to think out side the box (although it worked to my advantage in the end [made semis with only 132 points]). Knowing that can't be changed, thought I'd bring it up.

I think we should have 3 caption changes per week, be it 3 at once or one at a time all season long. In an eight week season, that's 24 changes MORE than enough to figure out were you want to go with your corps. That's not even counting the 1st 9 to start the season.

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I've told others that I like the idea of 3 changes per week. One director suggested to me that we awarded bonus points every two weeks and the option to change 3 captions every week with a max change of 3 on a day. This fits good with the directors that like to change captions often and maximize picks for the time of the season ( Matt Smith comes to mind) and directors that don't like to overload themselfs with keeping up with things (That's how I am). Can copying still happen, yes but be hard to do. Difference between this and season 5 is that changes won't be put in on the same time and we have a larger time frame to put in changes, a week versus 3 days.

Discuss :)

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Just as a refresher - in the spirit of making sure that everyone is on the same page:

The system presently supports enforcement of the following 'limits':

Total 'cost points', on a per-division basis: The Caption Selection Editor will enforce a limit of X 'cost points' for Division I, Y 'cost points' for Division II, and Z 'cost points' for Division III. Directors may not select a caption roster that exceeds these cost values per Division.

Caption Submissions per Day AND per Week, on a per-division basis: The permits the Executive Director to define the number of Caption Submissions (change submission events) that the system will accept - using two independant criteria ... changes per day and changes per week. For instance: I can limit Div I corps to 1 change per day and 7 changes per week - allowing the director to submit one update per day, every day of the week. I can also define 7 changes per day and 7 per week - allowing the user to make a total of 7 changes at any time during a 7 day period. The eighth change during the week would be rejected (even though 7 per day were allowed), because the 7/week limit was reached. I realize it may be a bit confusing ... but trust me, it is very powerful given the way we've designed it and I believe we can accommodate most of the objectives being raised in this recent discussion.

Captions changed per Submission: This simply limits the number of captions a director may change with each Caption Submission, according to the limits above. Once again, these parameters are defined on a per-division basis.

Please keep these features in-mind as you consider the ways you would like to see your league run. I suspect that with some thoughtful application of the features that we've already provided - you can configure the system to provide the protections and benefits that you desire.

One more note .... we've also developed an 'audit' feature that will allow a Director to review the Caption Submission history for his/her corps. This will allow directors to see what changes have been recorded in the database for their corps ... and the dates they were submitted - just in-case you have a question about why a particular limit was reached. Mike finished the code just after DCI Finals - so I haven't had a chance to validate the operation yet. It'll be ready for DCPI-9.

If you have any questions on how these features operate or depend on one-another, please don't hesitate to ask.

Thanks

-john

PS: I'm off to DCA early in the morning, so will be focused on the various events in Rochester and our coverage there thru the weekend. It may take me a bit of time to keep-up with the proceedings here in the Rules Congress.

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Is there any way of making the program so it is able to store caption changes for a certain date? For more clarification: The last caption change of the season this year going from semis to finals, I was in the middle of real life drum corps and there was a glitch in the system for some unknown reason. This happened at the only available time for me to update and I am 100% sure I was within my limits to do so. I was unable to submit my caption change that would've awarded me a finalist position. If we could find some way to setup caption changes in advance, even just for finals week, then we could plan accordingly, submit them, and have them take effect on the designated day/time. I don't know how much of a pain it would be to do because I don't know much about programming but it really would be helpful.

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Harry brought up the issued that occured finals week. I know he was not alone. I didn't have the problem but I also made no changes the round prior.

Do we know what the cause was?

We might want to think about a system where the director could send his picks via pm or email if the director believes there is a problem... that is time dated , Or extend the entries and delay posting results.

The only problem I see with early submitting during finals week is that lets say you pick your week but don't advance to finals. Another director is set to make his final changes but it was going to be the corps that missed out corps finals changes. They

wouldn't get that set. Also, I along with some others wait till scores for all corps to post before we submit... Is it fair for those directors? Then why doesn't everyone send in early?

One solution would be to stop finals week changes ala fdci. I don't like that but it is totally fair and would work.

Edited by CloudHype
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From an automation standpoint, the scheduling of caption selections is a bit of a problem ... especially as it pertains to interactions with some of the other features of the system. Some of the questions it raises are:

Does a pre-scheduled change count as a "Caption Submission" and if so, for what interval?

Is there any way of un-doing a pre-scheduled Caption Submission, thereby restoring the count for the submission limits that may be in-effect?

As was pointed out, a pre-scheduled selection set removes that specific combination from being duplicated by someone else .... but effective with what date? How are conflicts resolved?

What happens when a selection set is scheduled to take effect, but on the date/time it becomes effective there's an active set that's a duplicate? Who is entitled to the caption selection set? How are the disqualified duplicates handled and directors notified?

..... and that's what I can put in this message in < 5 minutes. I've actually given this some thought and find that the operational issues (in some ways) are greater than the programming issues.

Of course, when done by a human manually - all of these 'minor' things become much easier .... but I must consider the logical steps involved, so we can someday reduce these rules to programming logic.

Let's continue to consider the possibilities ... and what it'll take to administer and automate.

-john

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Is there any way of making the program so it is able to store caption changes for a certain date? For more clarification: The last caption change of the season this year going from semis to finals, I was in the middle of real life drum corps and there was a glitch in the system for some unknown reason. This happened at the only available time for me to update and I am 100% sure I was within my limits to do so. I was unable to submit my caption change that would've awarded me a finalist position. If we could find some way to setup caption changes in advance, even just for finals week, then we could plan accordingly, submit them, and have them take effect on the designated day/time. I don't know how much of a pain it would be to do because I don't know much about programming but it really would be helpful.

Harry,

Did you notify Jeff or I of the issue you had with the system? If so, we could have updated the database manually for you. There was a single person that reported a problem (that I am aware of) and it was handled manually.

People - if you find problems with the automation, you MUST let us know about them ASAP. Without your feedback, we'll never know that there are problems with the system.

If you don't tell us about legitimate problems you're having - we'll never know.

-john

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