The first "beta" version of the Team Challenges stuff should arrive on my stats site over the weekend. There are a few difficulties, such as the fact that the project against which a given challenge is targeted is not present in the XML data, and will have to be "scraped" from the HTML version, so that will come along later.

At the same time, I'll remove the "Ranking Gains" section of the stats site, because it's been pretty meaningless since WGC started deleting non-active users on a very regular basis.

Dave,

I've been thinking about this. When I first saw you announce it I thought 'That's a shame, I used to find it a stimulus when I first started with the team', but I DO see your point that it's become almost meaningless.

But I just had an idea. It's more work on your part, and you may not think it worthwhile, but it doesn't seem too hard. It's simply this:

Don't show any gains which are not more that the number of users who were deleted since the previous run.

For example, if a single user was deleted, only show gains that are for two places or more. I guess the ideal solution would be to find where the deleted user was in the rankings and to discount all gains caused by their deletion, but I think that this is a simpler approach that will at least reduce the volume of data shown but still provided encouragement to those who are moving up the ranks.

What think you (and everyone else)?

Thanks for the feedback. I've left the "ranking gains" section in there for now. I think it's possible to work out how many have been deleted etc etc, but the problem is working out which gains are genuine and which are as a result of deletions. It's do-able but fiddly. Once the challenges stuff is finished, I'll give it some thought. On which note...

A preview of the Team Challenges section is now live!!! Please see the caveat at the top of the section. Also, I realise that there are arguably some presentational issues. Also, there is a reasonable chance it will break on the overnight stats run, so don't be surprised. Feedback appreciated as always.

Hi Apis,
Very good point about the rank. I'll fix that when I update it to add the project names later. Where exactly are the "system-defined short names" listed to which you refer? Are you referring to the prefix on the work units, or is there something official somewhere?

Thanks Apis. I've never bothered to dig too deeply into those files in the past. The only reaon I started using the shortened names was to stop the pie charts getting mangled by the labels. I've now used them on the challenges because I'm short of column space. It never occurred to me that there were any official short codes, and indeed, for OpenZika I don't use one at all, because it's so short. TBH I probably won't change them in the short term, unless I end up with two almost identically named projects