Unosmium Results and the SciolyFF

[RoboMarth]

Hi all!

This summer I'm working on an open-source project to improve the status of Science Olympiad scorekeeping and results archiving. I want to introduce the project to you and ask for feedback and/or contributors, and some specific questions as well (see section below).

So far, the project has culminated into a website called "Unosmium Results". The website only has Nats results for now, but can easily accommodate results for any level of competition.

Links

• https://unosmium.org/results/
• https://github.com/unosmium/unosmium.org
• https://github.com/unosmium/sciolyff
• https://github.com/unosmium

Screenshots

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Background and Motivations

Currently (although correct me if I'm wrong; it has been a while), SO results are primarily recorded as PDFs on Dropbox or Google Drive and on web pages of various SO scoring systems like Avogadro and Ezra.

when you're trying to make event predictions

The trouble with this is that we are dependent on the owners of these sites and PDFs to keep them accessible, and that the classical way to display SO results can be difficult to read, especially on mobile devices. Unosmium Results seeks to solve these problems by creating a central archive of results on GitHub, and displaying them on a site that is both mobile and desktop friendly (see the screenshots above).

SciolyFF (Science Olympiad File Format)

Another issue with the current way of doing things is that it can be difficult to collect results to be parsed by a program for stats and predictions. PDFs don't always copy cleanly to spreadsheets, schools are not easily tracked across various tournaments, actual tournament dates are often not kept record of, and there can be some ambiguity to whether a team was disqualified, no showed, or only received participation points for an event. Also, exhibition teams are often completely excluded from results because of the complications they bring (see most of the official Nats results on soinc.org).

To partially address these issues, a standardized file format for Science Olympiad results was created, and files in that format serve as the backing data for the Unosmium Results website. More information about the SciolyFF can be found in the GitHub README: https://github.com/unosmium/sciolyff

A main takeaway to note from having a standardized file format is that if we can convince Avogadro, Ezra, et al. to output their results in the format, they (and we) could all benefit from having a nicer (imo) results display for many tournaments throughout the season.

Contributing

I welcome any contributions of tournament results (whether in PDF, CSV, or SciolyFF), code, documentation, and/or bug reporting (so anything, really). This can be done either through GitHub, or as replies to this thread.

Questions

While any feedback or questions about the project are welcome, I also wanted to ask some questions of my own that I felt the Scioly Forums would be well-suited to answer:

1. Which States/Regionals/Invitationals should I strive to archive for each year?
2. How can the project be more accessible to newcomers who want to contribute?
3. What are some things that could be displayed better / any annoyances in general?

Thanks!


Edit 2019-06-08: fixed links
Edit 2019-06-12: update links to shiny new domain (old domain https://unosmium.netlify.com will still work as a backup)

[EastStroudsburg13]

This is not the first time I am hearing about this, but I wanted to say that this fills a massive need in the SO community. Collecting results on the wiki is fine, but in an ideal world, all results are hosted in some central location built for that purpose, with the wiki providing a summary of the important information. So, I thank you for this effort.

Going to your questions:

1. Which States/Regionals/Invitationals should I strive to archive for each year?
2. How can the project be more accessible to newcomers who want to contribute?
3. What are some things that could be displayed better / any annoyances in general?

Thanks!

1. I would probably go with invitationals and states that reliably publicly post results online first. Some invitational or state results can surface one year and be completely absent the next, and when building the archive, I'd imagine you'd want to be reasonably sure that there'd be additions each subsequent year. The State Tournament Results Wiki functionally serves as a good way to check what states do (and do not do) a good job with publishing results.
   
   As for regionals, while there are some that are reliable with posting results, it's rare to get all regionals within a state to be accessible. PA is pretty rare in the respect that we have a reliable yearly archive of regionals scores, so I might recommend it once you start adding regionals.
2. If soliciting contributions, you'd probably want a place on the website where people can contact you with suggestions, comments, or offers to help. Posting to the forums also works, but threads tend to get buried sometimes.
3. As far as suggestions, I think as you start adding more tournaments, you'll need options to filter the tournaments displayed by year, division, and level. A geographic filter might also be useful.
   
   I would also suggest, if possible, to enable being able to select a team and view all tournaments for which that team has results. So, for example, when going into the 2019 Nationals Div B results, it'd be really cool to be able to select "Solon M.S." and be directed to a profile page for that school that has its past results. I understand that it's probably not a trivial undertaking to implement that, and expanding the archive is probably a higher priority, but I think it can take what already would be a tremendous resource to the next level.

It's always been my disappointment that NSO does not have a central public depository where people can view all state results. Even if it's not run by NSO, this would be a big step in the right direction, as the potential for its use as such a depository is clear. I commend you for taking on this project, and filling a big need in the community when NSO has not done so.

[windu34]

It's always been my disappointment that NSO does not have a central public depository where people can view all state results. Even if it's not run by NSO, this would be a big step in the right direction, as the potential for its use as such a depository is clear.

What potential use is there other than for people trying to make predictions? Many states use different scoring systems, some dont run all the events, some run extra events, etc. Why would NSO bother making a central depository of results when it really doesnt impact the quality of science olympiad for >99% that dont care what happens in other states?

I do think this is a cool project and I personally would certainly use this! I applaud your initiative in creating this depository.

[CookiePie1]

This is a really great project and it would be super helpful. I'd also like to say that I love the UI and it saves me a lot of finger-tracing and squinting.

For the questions:

1. I second what East said. I think it would be a good idea to try and find results that might be currently harder to keep track of.
2. I think GitHub is a great way of getting contributions, but it might be difficult for people who want to help but aren't too familiar with using GitHub. Maybe it would be nice if you added a place on your website where people can submit results and data.
3. I think the layout is great right now. As East said, it would be necessary to implement a search function and a way to filter tournaments.

Overall, this is a great resource! Thanks for coming up with the great idea.

[EastStroudsburg13]

It's always been my disappointment that NSO does not have a central public depository where people can view all state results. Even if it's not run by NSO, this would be a big step in the right direction, as the potential for its use as such a depository is clear.

What potential use is there other than for people trying to make predictions? Many states use different scoring systems, some dont run all the events, some run extra events, etc. Why would NSO bother making a central depository of results when it really doesnt impact the quality of science olympiad for >99% that dont care what happens in other states?

I do think this is a cool project and I personally would certainly use this! I applaud your initiative in creating this depository.

In my opinion, any high school team competition should seek to provide easily accessible results for participants, coaches, parents, and any other interested parties alike in an effort to provide as much of a sense of legitimacy as possible.

EDIT: I will add that if states did a good job of doing this themselves, the status quo would be acceptable. As it stands, about one-fourth of all states do not publicly post results.

[RoboMarth]

Thank you all for the kind words and suggestions!

Sorry it's been a while; a quick update on progress made in the meanwhile:

(A link again to the website: https://unosmium.org/results/)

3. As far as suggestions, I think as you start adding more tournaments, you'll need options to filter the tournaments displayed by year, division, and level. A geographic filter might also be useful.

3. I think the layout is great right now. As East said, it would be necessary to implement a search function and a way to filter tournaments.

I've added a search bar that doubles as a filter. It's a bit crude right now but should be fairly intuitive -- please let me know if you experience otherwise. I really like the idea the geographic filter -- as I understand it, having some sort of map that would filter by region or state, kinda like how soinc.org does for state websites: https://www.soinc.org/join/state-websites. Likely a future feature for now though.

2. If soliciting contributions, you'd probably want a place on the website where people can contact you with suggestions, comments, or offers to help. Posting to the forums also works, but threads tend to get buried sometimes.

2. I think GitHub is a great way of getting contributions, but it might be difficult for people who want to help but aren't too familiar with using GitHub. Maybe it would be nice if you added a place on your website where people can submit results and data.

Adding the search bar also added some empty whitespace between it and the results, so I'm going to try to put something linking to a contributor's guide there. I agree, using GitHub is probably not ideal for most people, so perhaps a Google spreadsheet they can copy and email to me might be the best way. Will want to streamline that workflow for myself first before I put out a guide.

1. I would probably go with invitationals and states that reliably publicly post results online first. Some invitational or state results can surface one year and be completely absent the next, and when building the archive, I'd imagine you'd want to be reasonably sure that there'd be additions each subsequent year. The State Tournament Results Wiki functionally serves as a good way to check what states do (and do not do) a good job with publishing results.

It's been a bit slow in adding results because I got very distracted with styling the search bar. I've added the 2019 States results for Pennsylvania and Ohio as a proof of concept for States results in general. There were issues with some of the data (participation-points-only teams vs. teams that just got last place) that needed to fixed due to an error in the csv2sciolyff convertor, but now with that mostly out of the way I should be able to get back to adding more results! Adding a contributor's guide sooner rather than later might speed this up in the long run though, so I'll try to work on that in parallel. Thank you East for the link to the State Tournament Results Wiki; it's been a fantastic resource and saves a lot of time in hunting down old results from archive.org and the like.

I would also suggest, if possible, to enable being able to select a team and view all tournaments for which that team has results. So, for example, when going into the 2019 Nationals Div B results, it'd be really cool to be able to select "Solon M.S." and be directed to a profile page for that school that has its past results. I understand that it's probably not a trivial undertaking to implement that, and expanding the archive is probably a higher priority, but I think it can take what already would be a tremendous resource to the next level.

This would indeed be amazing. For technical reasons, the Unosmium Results site might not be the best place to do it, but it is very possible as a separate project. (For speed, Unosmium Results is a static site, but you would probably want an actual database backing up a site that kept track of team performances. Of course, the data for that database would come from SciolyFF files. It could still be possible to do with a static site -- I just worry about build times, but Middleman 5 might solve that issue with its partial build capabilities.) I agree expanding the archive would be a higher priority at this point.

As a guide for the future though, I really like how NAQT does results for quizbowl tournaments: https://www.naqt.com/stats/tournament/s ... nt_id=9500 (which includes the feature East mentioned above), leading to spin-off projects like Groger Ranks: https://grogerranks.com/category/rankings/ -- so perhaps similar things may be in our future if this project goes well. = )

Thanks again to all for the support. Again, any feedback or suggestions are welcome!

I'll try to post updates in this thread documenting major features as they develop.

Edit 2019-07-14: Update link to unosmium.org

[sciolyperson1]

Similarly to Wikipedia - it may or may not be helpful if anyone could add tournament results. With a system like wikipedia's, more regionals and invitationals could potentially be added due to ease of access.

[RoboMarth]

Similarly to Wikipedia - it may or may not be helpful if anyone could add tournament results. With a system like wikipedia's, more regionals and invitationals could potentially be added due to ease of access.

I agree that making it easier for people to contribute results is an important priority; the project still needs quite a way to go in this area. However, using a wiki model of having anyone add results then moderating those changes after the fact somewhat defeats the idea of having this archive as a central resource for the Scioly Wiki to reference, as East mentioned. There is something to be said about allowing Invitationals and the like to add their new results, but I think that is best handled with me personally reaching out to the organizers to arrange that for now.

Side note: Congrats to CookiePie1 for making the first pull request! https://github.com/unosmium/unosmium.github.io/pull/1

[Pastaman202]

This is just a small petty thing, but is it possible to zoom out the full scores screen (I’m only on mobile but it’s a triggering my ocd because you have to scroll back and forth sometimes)

[RoboMarth]

This is just a small petty thing, but is it possible to zoom out the full scores screen (I’m only on mobile but it’s a triggering my ocd because you have to scroll back and forth sometimes)

Hey no worries; this whole project was built upon small petty things, so any more are welcome.

Unfortunately, I don't think it would be possible to implement something specifically for that without making it difficult for those who would prefer to have the results at a standard text size. (That text size seems a bit large, but not everyone has good vision, especially parents I find.) As a workaround, if your mobile browser has a "request desktop site" feature (usually found in the top-right corner menu), it'll try to simulate the desktop feel by zooming out, which reduces most if not all of the sideways scrolling. Additionally, if you click on a school name, it'll highlight all of its placings so don't have to keep checking if you're looking at the right row.

Hope this helps!