An event comes, and an event goes, and it's always interesting to see how quick the organizers are to get results posted. Right now we're waiting for the "A" meet results from this past weekend, mainly to see if the event actually took place or not, or whether perhaps a plague of gypsy moth caterpillars made the thing untenable. How do results match up? Here are the standards:

The Gold Standard: some years ago many economists and bankers argued for the backing of all money by fixed amounts of gold. You don't hear as much talk about this in these lower inflation times. But the Gold Standard in results constitutes results in real time, plus commentary and pictures, and also a way for distant followers to interact with the results/announcer folks. The God Standard is still pretty elusive.

The Viking Standard: many of the more important O' meets in Scandinavia regularly achieve the VIking Standard, which is comprised of real time results (or close to it) plus hopefully at least a little commentary. This was the standard achieved by Stigtomta Kavlen, as an example.

The Cowboy Standard: Results are posted the same day, as is typified by the RM 1000 Day.

The USOF Standard: Results are posted within a few days, or maybe a week. Right now Quantico can still achieve the USOF standard.

The OK/NEOC/SLOC standard: Do these clubs even have "A" meets anymore?

The Maple Leaf Standard: Does anyone actually travel up there to orienteer anymore?

The Hopelessly Hapless Standard (in some circles aka the "MR" standard): On rare occasion the organizers get things so screwed up they can't even provide same day results *at the meet site*, and any subsequent result reporting is likely to be so heavily flawed it must be viewed with extreme suspicion. Brand new, never field-tested, home written computer code is invariably involved in the most spectacular of these snafus. We will refrain from mentioning any events or clubs by name here, as an act of kindness.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), April 23, 2001

Answers

The results from the Quantico event are up (and even the day one results were apparently posted on the weekend). But, QOC has done something very unusual -- they posted the results, but they aren't available if you go to the normal QOC web page! There is some sort of technical reason for this. If you want to know, I think Sid Sachs is the person to talk to.

QOC results are at:

http://209.31.144.44/~sachs/qoc/

-- Michael (meglin@juno.com), April 24, 2001.

The God Standard is rarely achieved outside of the Homeland. When it is, the world takes notice. The first half of Jukola in 2000 was pretty decent. Let's see if they or 10-Mila can keep it up for the entire race this year!

Some observations on the QOC results... they really haven't done all that badly, or at least not quite as badly as the hopelessly hapless (I think I can mention some clubs like SMOC who have achieved this).... Snorkel showed up for a post-retirement showdown with Bob Lux on Sunday's Green Course. It was the talk of the weekend. First, however, Snorkel warmed up on Saturday with a nice foot-stomping of Larry Berman on brown. Things were looking good at that point and Snorkel may have had a bit of an inflated ego. When he showed up on the starting line on Sunday he was joking around casually making snide remarks at the meet officials. This meet was in the bag! Snorkel outkicked bob to take first on the green course... or so he thought! Whoops! Not so fast... it looks like a junior girl took top honors for green!

As for QOC... they have Peggy's club affiliation down as "OK/QOC". Yeah, go get your own members! It has been a while since Peggy won F21 at an A-meet (I think). What's in store for Peggy this year?

The Russians were out in force on the blue course... and American Greg Balter. A lot of people boomed, especially on the first day. Spike learned a few things that will help him in Michigan. We'll know more in a week.

-- Mook (everett@psi.edu), April 24, 2001.

How weird that the results aren't on the usual club page or meet site page! In a 7-2 ruling, the Supreme Court has held that until the results appear on the site a typical user would surf to, the results aren't considered to be published on the internet. Special, secret, sachsian pages don't count, they said.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), April 24, 2001.

While the reference to the "God" standard in my original post was a mistake (should have been "gold" there, too), I like this name just as much or even better.

Tio-Mila is taking square aim at the God Standard this year and will have real-time results automatically updated approximately every other minute, and a direct-send of the announcing, with enough capacity for 1000 people to listen in via the internet.

Naturally, one can wonder if that will be enough capacity, and then also we all know that unexpected problems can, and often do, crop up with these attempts to put newer technologies to work. Murphy is alive and well, and never forget it!

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), April 24, 2001.

The QOC results _are_ available from the club home page. (They are not listed with the A meet info.) Instead, look on the menu bar on the left. It has a "results" link. All club event results, including the A meet, are listed there.

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), April 24, 2001.

Nope, at least not on the version of the club's home page I just checked. But they are at the special "secret" url Spike gave earlier.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), April 24, 2001.

For you information Snorkel did have the fastest minutes per KM on the Green course on Day 2. I have decided to direct all my future energies to mapping Sope Park. Especially in early December.

-- Snorkel (danielmeenehan@aol.com), April 25, 2001.

Looks like SMOC is aiming for the elusive OK/NEOC/SLOC standard now. Perhaps they were not impressed with the lethergy exhibited by the Swampfox when he helped pick up controls from Day 2?

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlinbk.net), May 05, 2001.

Perhaps the good folks from SMOC are not aware there are any events reporting standards because now, more than 2 1/2 weeks after their "A" event, there still don't seem to be any posted results. That's a good sign that they won't be appearing until they show up in ONA. Thus, they earn the "ONA Standard", which is at least one entire level below the OK Standard.

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), May 16, 2001.

I agree that SMOC is way down there on the standards range, but I resent the implication that OK is also down there. When we _do_ have A meets, our results are posted very quickly (at the meet site). We also posted something to the Onet that night. How long did it take us to post last year's KS Champs on our web page, Mike? Not very long. Probably a "silver" standard.

Now, what do we say about CNYO? Everything should be on their computers already, but we see no results on the Web yet. Are they setting a new standard???

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), May 16, 2001.

No negative implication was intended in the OK/SLOC/NEOC standard in terms of posting event results quickly. Probably these clubs are all the quickest in the land. Maybe even quicker than Snorkel eating a Chocolate Rock!

Rather, the problem with this grouping of clubs is that it seems that it's been so long since they've held any "A" meets that it's difficult to remember just how awesome they were at posting results.

In fact, there are some newcomers to the sport who will assert with some (misguided) confidence that these clubs have *never* held any "A" meets.

As for CNYO not posting results yet, they are still probably busy looking for Blue #2 on Day 2. Just a guess!

-- Swampfox (wmikell@earthlink.net), May 16, 2001.

The US Champs results are now on WinSplits.

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), May 17, 2001.

SMOC must have been embarassed by the "ONA standard" designation. They posted results on their web site on 17 May 01.

-- Mary (maprunner@juno.com), May 19, 2001.

DVOA goes for the Viking Standard in event reporting at the dual meet with HVO at Washington Crossing on Dec. 2. (wireless service coverage permitting!)

Check it out at www.dvoa.org

-- JJ too (jjtong@nerc.com), November 29, 2001.