Is AREA defunct?

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If TDs just knew what is needed in what particular form it could go a long way to provide Bruno with the necessary information that optimally would only need to be copied / pasted. And save him a lot of time trying to correct wrong spelling or to figure out missing information.

Maybe providing an "AREA report-form" downloadable with written instructions by AREA and made available somewhere (on the AREA site would be the obvious choice) would be of great help. It could be doable without much investment of time by Bruno if he so elected, I believe.
When Peter and I did the Arnhem Tournament we worked out an Excel format wrich Bruno could import into AREA without the need to manual input them hand by hand. The tournament director had to search the correct names before the tournament and while entering the results at the tournament not much work was needed.

As far as I remember this was a usable method for Bruno. I guess the “AREA report form” that tournament directors could use would be a very good option. Might save Bruno a lot of time.

On a side note I remember him saying (sometime last year) that he was going to follow a study which would limit his free time in the future. This could be the reason he hasn’t been able to update the site.
 

STAVKA

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Asked Bruno years ago in which exact format he would like to see each scenario played reported and here is the format below he wanted.

Round 2 , “FrF99", BOY SOLDIERS, Russian Victory, Melvin Falk, Patrik Hyvärinen, German.
 

von Marwitz

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When Peter and I did the Arnhem Tournament we worked out an Excel format wrich Bruno could import into AREA without the need to manual input them hand by hand. The tournament director had to search the correct names before the tournament and while entering the results at the tournament not much work was needed.
Exactly what I was thinking.

As far as I remember this was a usable method for Bruno. I guess the “AREA report form” that tournament directors could use would be a very good option. Might save Bruno a lot of time.


On a side note I remember him saying (sometime last year) that he was going to follow a study which would limit his free time in the future. This could be the reason he hasn’t been able to update the site.
Maybe so. Just for the record:

I am not "demanding" anything from Bruno. I rather highly appreciate what he has done for many years. AREA is one of the very valualbe 'tools' in the ASL hobby that he has maintained for a long time for the benefit of all. For that, he deserves high credit from us.

And most of us that have been hooked on ASL for long years know from their own experience that 'real life' demands - rightfully so - precedence over one's hobbies.

von Marwitz
 

bprobst

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AREA is one of the very valualbe 'tools' in the ASL hobby
Is it?

Honest question. What is its value? If there was no AREA, then ASL players would ... what?

I dunno. AREA always seemed like a "USA" thing to me, but I see from various responses that people in Europe invest some time and effort in it as well. I'm fairly confident that in Australia many ASL players would not even have heard of it, let alone use it for anything. What exactly are we missing?
 

jrv

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Is it?

Honest question. What is its value? If there was no AREA, then ASL players would ... what?

I dunno. AREA always seemed like a "USA" thing to me, but I see from various responses that people in Europe invest some time and effort in it as well. I'm fairly confident that in Australia many ASL players would not even have heard of it, let alone use it for anything. What exactly are we missing?
If you visit the web page, you will see that ASL AREA has been European since 1998. Your current rating is 1516.5, and your highest was 1570.8.

JR
 

jrv

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My rating, BTW, is currently 1664.9 and my high point was 1688.1. I'm not sure what this means exactly, but I believe it means everyone should send me their ASL gear, especially rarer items and/or items I don't own.

JR
 

GeorgeBates

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My rating, BTW, is currently 1664.9 and my high point was 1688.1. I'm not sure what this means exactly, but I believe it means everyone should send me their ASL gear, especially rarer items and/or items I don't own. JR
It means that all knives are out for you when you walk into the venue.
 

Paolo Cariolato

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In Europe all TD use AREA to determine seeds in tournament.
Even if not up to date, it's a great tool to evaluete relative players strenght, which is useful if said players comes from all over the world and don't play each other frequently.

For exemple When Alan Smee (an australian) played in Europe it was a breeze to determine that he's a very strong player and deserve one of the top seed (currently he's 40).


Is it?

Honest question. What is its value? If there was no AREA, then ASL players would ... what?

I dunno. AREA always seemed like a "USA" thing to me, but I see from various responses that people in Europe invest some time and effort in it as well. I'm fairly confident that in Australia many ASL players would not even have heard of it, let alone use it for anything. What exactly are we missing?
 

von Marwitz

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In Europe all TD use AREA to determine seeds in tournament.
Even if not up to date, it's a great tool to evaluete relative players strenght, which is useful if said players comes from all over the world and don't play each other frequently.

For exemple When Alan Smee (an australian) played in Europe it was a breeze to determine that he's a very strong player and deserve one of the top seed (currently he's 40).
This.

And AREA uses only games played at tournaments reported by tournament directors to AREA (i.e. Bruno).

In other words verified games played in tournament settings are used for tournament seeding.

As far as I can tell AREA provides the best ranking list which is available. This does not necessarily mean it's perfect, but it is much better than the one of the ASL Scenario Archive where one or two games seem to let your ranking swing wildly even if you have hundreds logged. Apart from not displaying the correct number of games that you've logged most of the time - probably while it recalculates entries.

By personal experience I can tell, that AREA gives quite a good impression. If another player's AREA-rating is 100+ points above my own, then I have it usually confirmed that his skill-level is better than mine because it can be felt when actually playing him.

You can roughly say that you'll have a crack player with an AREA of 1800+, a really tough one with 1700+, a very seasoned and experienced one with 1600+, and someone who knows his ways quite well with 1500+. If you look at the names next to these ratings, I believe you will find that this assessment is quite sound.

Of course, as always, these are only general guidelines subject to the number of games logged for the player etc. I can't remember at which level a new player enters the AREA ranking either.

As AREA only considers reported tournament games and Bruno's time is limited (i.e. this thread...), the ratings tend to lag a bit behind. For example, if you have a very prolific player that attends relatively few tournaments, then chances could be that his actual skill-level has increased quicker than AREA can "catch up" with it.

Another possible distortion of the world-wide AREA rating could be that the general skill level in some areas of the world might be higher than elsewhere. For example, it is sometimes said that the Scandinavians are pretty good players in general. Since by tendency the attendance of tournaments is highest of the local playerbase, this could mean, that a 1500+ Scandinavian AREA-rating might in reality be a bit better than a 1500+ German AREA-rating. But this is, of course, difficult to figure out in detail.

What remains is that AREA gives a decent idea which type of player you have (crack, extremely good, very good, good, etc.) if the sample is not too small and that the AREA rating is thus useful for seeding.

von Marwitz
 

Ganjulama

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In Europe all TD use AREA to determine seeds in tournament.
Even if not up to date, it's a great tool to evaluete relative players strenght, which is useful if said players comes from all over the world and don't play each other frequently.

For exemple When Alan Smee (an australian) played in Europe it was a breeze to determine that he's a very strong player and deserve one of the top seed (currently he's 40).
This.

We use AREA to seed the Bitter Ender and it has worked well. The final fours by year and seed with winning seed. 32 players total each year:
2012--1, 3, 4, 7 (1 wins)
2013--2, 3, 8, 9, (2 wins)
2014--1, 2, 11, 12 (2 wins)
2015--1, 2, 3, 4 (2 wins)
2016--1, 6, 7, 8 (1 wins)
2017--1, 2, 3, 4 (1 wins)
2018--1, 2, 11, 12 (12 wins, and he was probably under seeded but would not have been a top 4 seed)
 

bprobst

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JR partly beat me to it, but here is what you in particular are missing.
Uh ... creepy. Kind of like being told that your membership is good for a club you had no idea existed.

But I knew all that data already.

If someone else wanted to know how I went in tournaments, that AREA record wouldn't tell them very much. I've participated in many more tournaments than are listed there. (The short answer is that generally I suck, but I think that might be beside the point.)

It's all very well to say you "use it for seeding". But hasn't the discussion already demonstrated that the information is not currently being updated (so it's incomplete), and if my record is anything to go by, for many players it will be very incomplete.

I guess it's easier for us here in Australia, as mostly we already know each other (and how we rate as players), so seeding is very rarely a difficult exercise. AREA, as a tool, is pretty useless for us. And given the current state of the data, I'm struggling to see how it's very useful for anyone else. Maybe if I went back in time and organised an international tournament 5 years ago ...?)

So I'll continue to ignore it as being irrelevant, and I suspect most other Australian players will do likewise. (However ... for anyone who does believe that it is relevant and useful ... then I think you should be freaking out that the data is not being kept up-to-date. It's all very well to be a volunteer, and sure life gets in the way sometimes, but being a volunteer is not an excuse to not do a job at all.)

(I was recently bemused and confused by a comment on BGG to the effect of "an ASL player who doesn't have an AREA rating probably doesn't know how to play ASL and could not possibly have anything interesting to say about the game", as though having an AREA rating somehow "validates" you as a person. I don't buy it for a hot second.)
 

von Marwitz

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If someone else wanted to know how I went in tournaments, that AREA record wouldn't tell them very much. I've participated in many more tournaments than are listed there. (The short answer is that generally I suck, but I think that might be beside the point.)

It's all very well to say you "use it for seeding". But hasn't the discussion already demonstrated that the information is not currently being updated (so it's incomplete), and if my record is anything to go by, for many players it will be very incomplete.

I guess it's easier for us here in Australia, as mostly we already know each other (and how we rate as players), so seeding is very rarely a difficult exercise. AREA, as a tool, is pretty useless for us. And given the current state of the data, I'm struggling to see how it's very useful for anyone else. Maybe if I went back in time and organised an international tournament 5 years ago ...?)

So I'll continue to ignore it as being irrelevant, and I suspect most other Australian players will do likewise. (However ... for anyone who does believe that it is relevant and useful ... then I think you should be freaking out that the data is not being kept up-to-date. It's all very well to be a volunteer, and sure life gets in the way sometimes, but being a volunteer is not an excuse to not do a job at all.)

Basically, what you are saying is that because you do not put data in it, it is not useful.
Well, that's an insight. :clap::captainobvious:

AREA is as useful as you make it. Same with the ASL Scenario Archive, ROAR, or the Download sections of the Texas ASL Club or VASL.info. If you don't feed it with scenarios, playings, map files, play aids etc. then of course it is not useful.

If you feed it with data, then it becomes useful. And yes, it even remains useful despite it not having been maintained for a while: The skill level of ASL players tends to shift gradually and not quickly. The cases in which a long established player surges in skill level over the course of two years are pretty rare.

If you care to have a look at the AREA rankings, do you think that the ranking has fundamentally changed, especially in the upper reaches?
It continues even now to roughly class a player as I have elaborated on further up-thread. Even more so, when the maintenance is resumed.

von Marwitz
 
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ecz

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Basically, what you are saying is that because you do not put data in it, it is not useful.
Well, that's an insight. :clap::captainobvious:

AREA is a useful as you make it. Same with the ASL Scenario Archive, ROAR, or the Download sections of the Texas ASL Club or VASL.info. If you don't feed it with scenarios, playings, map files, play aids etc. then of course it is not useful.

If you feed it with data, then it becomes useful. And yes, it even remains useful despite it not having been maintained for a while: The skill level of ASL players tends to shift gradually and not quickly. The cases in which a long established player surges in skill level over the course of two years are pretty rare.

If you care to have a look at the AREA rankings, do you think that the ranking has fundamentally changed, especially in the upper reaches?
It continues even now to roughly class a player as I have elaborated on further up-thread. Even more so, when the maintenance is resumed.

von Marwitz
not exactly the same of ROAR.
In ROAR everyone should/could put his data in it. It works better if individual players put their data in it.
in AREA only the TDs could/should. It is irrelevant if individual players ignore it, like Bruce does.
If ROAR is not updated at the best it's our fault ( a little quota for everyone failing to put their data)
if AREA is not updated at the best it's a TD's fault.

The more the TDs send results to AREA the better the data are realistic. Here AREA and ROAR are similar.

The only thing individual players can do for this is ask the TD to send results to AREA. If the TD is too lazy to keep note of results during the event (yes it happens), any player can. He sends everything to Bruno with the permission/validation of the TD.

And about completness : yes, I think results of 5 years ago can be safely added. If a TDs has the data of a tournament held at Zihuatanejo in 2013 he's still in time to send everything to Bruno. No harm to add data and rebuild a tournament history
 

bprobst

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Basically, what you are saying is that because you do not put data in it, it is not useful.
That is absolutely not what I said, or even close to what I said.

ecz sums it up pretty well: it's not useful to me because the information contained in it is of no relevance to me. Why would I put data into a system that I consider meaningless?

For those people who do think it's useful, great. Except, not, because the information isn't being updated. If I understand it correctly, currently you're looking at a history of (some) players who have attended (some) tournaments at some non-recent point in time. Not exactly a precision tool. (I know, I know, it's not meant to be. Still: is a broken hammer better than no hammer at all? Maybe, maybe not.)

AREA is as useful as you make it.
Right. I have no use for it. I was trying to understand why (some) people do have a use for it. Given that it's incomplete and out-of-date -- and apparently that's not going to change any time soon -- I'm still trying to understand ....

I am also bemused by the simple faith that folk seem to have that magically it will become up-to-date again. As I said above: volunteer work is great, so long as the volunteer is actually doing the work. If not ... it's kind of a waste of time, isn't it?
 
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