14meters Blog

14meters development blog

[14meters]

Tons of Recent Updates

 Since our last blog update, there’s been quite a few new additions.

NCAA Fantasy Fencing 2016

We put together a quick Fantasy Fencing bracket for this year because I noticed no one else was doing it.  You can view it or sign up here: http://ncaa.14meters.com/

Since we cooked this up really quickly and very last-minute, there certainly will be a few issues, so if anyone sees anything, make sure to drop an email to [email protected].

The fun part and the thing that people seem to like the most is the ability to compete against your Facebook friends.  Give it a shot, it only takes a few seconds (unless you really want to study up for your picks).

14meters Feature: Qualifications

We now try and estimate what (US Fencing) events you’re qualified for based on your rankings and position on various points lists.  The only thing we don’t handle just yet are Regional Points, but hope to have that addressed in the near future.

This is particularly useful for coaches trying to keep tabs on all of their fencers’ qualifications.

US Fencing Membership Data

We created a place that surfaces as much of the data on the US Fencing membership report as possible.  Check it out here: https://www.14meters.com/usfa_data

Since 14meters already ingests the report on a weekly basis, we’ve been just sitting on this data for a long time.  But its about time to make it public in a useful way.  If there are any interesting data points you’d like to see, drop us an email and let us know!

US Fencing Referee Report Card Updates

Finally, we updated the Referee Report Cards.  You can view them here: https://www.14meters.com/referees

The major change is informing the Referee on career advancement.  The minimum qualification requirements to advance have been taken from the FOC guidelines and placed in the app to give you advice on how to move up.  Additionally, you can see the average level of performance for people your rating and the one above you.  

[14meters]

New Dashboard & Stats Updates

This week’s updates are more visual than last week’s.  The Fencer Dashboard got a bit of a rework and some of the stats that were previously on the Dashboard are now found in the bouts list in some form or another.

New Dashboard

The old Dashboard was very utilitarian and a byproduct of how the old system used to work.  I was constantly getting feedback on how to improve it and while the rework isn’t done, its moving in the right direction. In particular, there are two major areas of improvement:

The dashboard is now united.  No split between FRED/USFA/etc bouts.  All stats are representative of all data in aggregate.

Some stats on the dashboard weren’t that valuable because they were global.  For example, do I really need to know how often I win a la belle bout over my 15 year history of fencing?  No, I probably want to know that information on a smaller timescale.

Stats Updates

So that’s why we moved some stuff from the Dashboard and onto the Bouts list.  To use the same example, now you can know your la belle win rate over whatever custom data slice you want.  We added in a few other things, like upset rates (both positive and negative).  

If there are any other interesting data points you want to know about or ideas for things you want to see on the dashboard, let us know in the comments or send an email to [email protected]!

[14meters]

Launch!  Also, custom bouts and journal entries.

Over the last few months, 14meters has been quietly open for business.  But we’ve been spending our time working on the product and fixing issues for customers as they crop up.  That’s just the product launch process - build, release, improve, repeat.  

But as of October 2015, we’re putting the word out - 14meters is open for business! If you’re active in the fencing community, you’ll be seeing a lot more from us in various places.  

And as always, if you like what we’re doing, tell your friends about us and like us on Facebook! 

Custom Bouts and Journal Entries

Along with our official launch, we’re finally getting some much-requested functionality improvements in - custom bouts and journal entries!

Custom bouts allow you to create and edit your own bouts.  This is particularly useful for the occasional event that doesn’t publish their results on AskFRED, or for recording bouts from practice that you feel are important.  You can basically add whatever you want in there and it’ll show up in your aggregate bouts list just like everything else!

Journal entries are exactly what they sound like - they’re a miniature, private blog that allows you to record global notes about your fencing progress. They operate in a manner similar to bout or opponent notes, but are more easily accessible in a single place and are designed to be organized chronologically.

Misc Fixes

Along with the major changes, we have a few smaller ones worth noting.  First is the sidebar.  In order to make room for custom bouts and journal entries, we’ve simplified the sidebar a good bit.

We’d love to hear any feedback on the sidebar changes.  Did we remove anything that you thought was really important?  What would you like to see in the sidebar that didn’t exist before?

Behind the scenes, we’ve been doing a lot of work to improve the quality of the product and improve performance.  As the site grows, the data we’re working with only gets significantly larger.  That takes a lot of proactive work to stay ahead of.

Thanks for reading the update and I hope you’re enjoying the product!  As per usual, if you have any questions, comments, thoughts or feedback, we’d love to hear them -- drop us a line at [email protected] to chat!

[14meters]

Filtered Bouts Stats

 This week’s major change can be found on the bouts listing page.  You’ll now find a small table with stats that auto-update with the filter.  As you slice into the data available using the filters, you’ll be able to get an idea for the basic statistics available for the bouts you’re seeing (win/loss ratio, total bouts, etc).

This isn’t as large of a change as I was looking to make because I ran into two problems:

First, I’m also working on custom bouts and a few other smaller features at the same time.  I wanted to kick out Filtered Bouts Stats ASAP because it was an oft-requested change that could be done in some form fairly quickly. So I decided to table the other stuff for a short while and push out some version of this feature now and see what people thought.

And second, the bouts listing page is a bit cluttered at the moment.  There’s a lot going on and there’s not a lot of room for more stuff here.  I want to make sure that if I’m making a major change, its a change in the right direction and that means taking some extra time to talk to people and figure out what should and should not be included.

I’m always interested in what everyone thinks about the changes!  What kinds of stats do you want to see here?  What works?  What doesn’t?  

[14meters]

Improved Data Integrity

This week’s update features an improved data integrity process.  I heard from a few customers that there were some weird things happening in the data. Basically, intermittently missing bouts.  

The AskFRED API and USFA data source can both be a bit wonky.  I’ve put in quite a few safeguards to try and ensure that the full set of data gets processed from any source.  However, lately it seems that its been less effective and that has resulted in some support emails.

So the latest major changes to the site include improving the data import and integrity processes the site is built upon.  This includes three major things:

(1) We were relying on what AskFRED was self-reporting as recent results.  This has proven to be inaccurate and we’ve introduced a new method that reaches back 6 months is in place.

(2) Every month every tournament in the entire database gets checked to make sure the results are accurate.  At minimum.

(3) The new “Missing Event Data?” functionality allows you to queue up fresh data reads when you think something is missing without having to wait to find out or contact support.

Based on initial tests, these changes have caught quite a number of incorrect or incomplete events - things we wouldn’t have seen otherwise.  If you do see any problems, definitely reach out to us at [email protected] so we can investigate further.

Other Changes

While the data integrity rework was a big one, there were a few other things done this week:

More Bout filters.  Now you can filter by season, age restrictions, gender restrictions, and rating restrictions.

The Bout lists can now be table sorted.  Click on the header of the table and it will sort based on that column.

The public data for Fencers and Referees now has a search box for ease of use.

A few homepage usability tweaks including more useful error pages and some statistics about the site on the homepage.

Tons of bug fixes, including addressing an issue where the fencer selector dropdown was inconsistently working (the most commonly reported issue).

[14meters]

Dev Update: Notes

Just a quick update on features, functionality and bugs.

First, Notes.  

When you’re looking at a bout, you’ll see a Notes widget on the right.  This lets you add new notes or edit existing notes.  Notes can be about a Bout or about an Opponent.  If you enter any Notes, they’ll follow that thing appropriately.  For example, if you enter in Opponent notes, you’ll see and be able to edit the same Notes across every bout you fence vs this person.  If you enter in Bout notes, they’ll always show up for this specific Bout, wherever it shows up.

If you have any other ideas about what you’d like to see Notes attached to, drop us an email!

Next, support!  You’ll notice a floating “Click here for help!” button in the lower-right of your screen.  This is a direct line to support.  If you have any thoughts, ideas, bugs, questions, comments, concerns, feature requests or anything else, use this form to get in touch.  Also, we have a Knowledge Base that can be found here.  Common questions and answers can be found there in case you need an immediate response.  If not, you can still reach out to us using the widget or sending an email to [email protected].

Lastly, bugfixes.  There were a few weird things with passwords, emails, and a few other misc parts of the system that should now be flattened out.  As usual, if you encounter any issues, let us know, either through the new widget or via an email to [email protected]!

[14meters]

2 Month Update

Hello everyone!  I wanted to write up a short little piece as a two month update for the 14meters relaunch.  Here goes:

The soft launch went well!  All things considered, there were very few issues that came up along the way.  As the name implies, it was a very soft launch.  I intentionally kept it quiet despite having many people ask me about it.  The only thing I did was make a post on Facebook about the new Referee feature.  I did not want to overwhelm the system or give myself too much to handle. The soft launch process is preparation for a larger, proper launch.

Speaking of launching, I’ll be doing a larger, proper launch around October 1st.  By “proper”, I mean it’ll include an ad buy and media blitz.  Keep an eye out, because you’ll definitely see a lot more 14meters stuff around early Fall!

Now, what have I been up to?  Primarily answering support requests.  Everyone turned up bugs, as expected.  Its been my job to squash them.  Also, just in general I’ve been taking the temperature of subscribers and potential subscribers to see what features they want.  And I’ve tried to collect that feedback into something meaningful to move forward with. 

I also took some feedback and created a Referee Report Card.  Using the USFA data I had on hand, I could create a quick and easy list of Referees and the bouts they’ve officiated on a national level.  You can see more here: https://www.14meters.com/referees

And lastly, what am I working on next?  Custom bouts.  This seems to be the biggest ask from people, so it will be the next feature to ship.  It’ll be followed closely by some improved statistics and fencer vs fencer comparisons.  And then FIE data sourcing provided nothing else jumps up higher on the list in the meantime.

As usual, if you have any thoughts, feedback, bugs, questions or feature requests, don’t hesitate to reach out to me at [email protected]!

[14meters]

14meters v3.0

Well, we’re back in action!  The new version of 14meters is now live.

This version represents a completely new codebase.  Everything was rebuilt from the ground up with a much broader focus.  The original 14meters was built on top of AskFRED.  This new version now works with both AskFRED and US Fencing national results.  And FIE data is on its way in the near future.

This is a fundamental shift in the direction of 14meters, away from an AskFRED-only application into a full fencing data platform.  Fencers and coaches alike now have access to powerful statistics and analytics across multiple data sources.

Along with a shift in scope, we’re shifting to make 14meters primarily a private, paid platform.  Its our hope that this will help address the variety of issues that lead to us having to go offline over the last 2-ish years.  Our goal is to make this a long-term service for the fencing community, and to do that, we have to build ourselves as a sustainable, stable business from the start.

As always, we’d love to hear from you!  Have any thoughts, comments, ideas or bugs?  Send us an email, respond to this blog post, or leave a comment on the associated thread on Reddit.