OLC Scoring for 2011

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:17:07 -0700 (PDT), "noel.wade"
wrote:

I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: How
much does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC -
in terms of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. We may not like
it, but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. :-/

--Noel
P.S. I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Hi Noel,

don't worry - us Germans are much more pi**ed off about the OLC
rulemaking than you guys on your side of the big pond.

So far noone in Germany was able to influence OLC rulemaking, although
quite a few rule changes are necessary to make the majority of gliders
competitive again (the current index calculation clearly favours
gliders with a high index and an engine).


Example:
Taking a closer look, many rules (index calculation, removing of a
return-bonus) are tailor-made for 18m motorgliders, rendering
club-class gliders without an engine chanceless.
These rules were introduced after the OLC guys had bought 18m
self-launchers...



Andreas

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 23:59:46 +0200, Andreas Maurer wrote:

On Tue, 19 Oct 2010 13:17:07 -0700 (PDT), "noel.wade"
wrote:

I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: How much
does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC - in terms
of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. We may not like it,
but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. :-/

--Noel
P.S. I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards the
operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the exchange
rate the last couple of years!

Hi Noel,

don't worry - us Germans are much more pi**ed off about the OLC
rulemaking than you guys on your side of the big pond.

So far noone in Germany was able to influence OLC rulemaking, although
quite a few rule changes are necessary to make the majority of gliders
competitive again (the current index calculation clearly favours gliders
with a high index and an engine).


Example:
Taking a closer look, many rules (index calculation, removing of a
return-bonus) are tailor-made for 18m motorgliders, rendering club-class
gliders without an engine chanceless. These rules were introduced after
the OLC guys had bought 18m self-launchers...

Maybe if you spoke to John Bridge you could get hold of a copy of the
software used for the BGA league and run your own.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

On Oct 19, 1:17*pm, "noel.wade" wrote:
I'm not thrilled about the OLC changes; but I have a question: *How
much does the SSA (or do USA pilots) contribute to running the OLC -
in terms of $$ or equipment?

If its funded primarily by the Germans then we're kind of stuck with
their rules, since we're partying on their system. *We may not like
it, but its not "ours", so we can't control it or expect the owners to
necessarily accommodate our wishes. *:-/

--Noel
P.S. *I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. *However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Noel,

If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

So, the rules are set simply based on: randomly at the whim of the
OLC if no sponsor cares, whatever a sponsor wants or, as Andreas
implied, the personal preference of an OLC principal and their
friends.

Do you see there a paying American sponsor that would care about the
15km rule? I don't.

Similarly, given this is a niche market owned by the OLC, which
has achieved critical mass, we can't expect any further
significant innovation from OLC. Why bother innovating or
improving? The pilots will still upload their flights, the sponsors
will still pay.

Unfortunately, if and when a potential competitor would enter the
arena with innovative solutions to the competitors needs, *then*
the OLC would just copy those quickly. So the new entrant would
have little chance for a little market. Looking forward and reasoning
backwards I don't expect any such competitor to bother. But who
knows, maybe? Open source project?

Until then, seems like we are stuck.

Regards,

David

David wrote:
--Noel
P.S. *I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. *However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Noel,

If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

Also don't forget that the entity you're probably donating to does not
actually run the OLC. There's "Segelflugszene e.V." where donations
go; but they have no influence on the OLC. The OLC is run by
"Segelflugszene gGmbH", which is entirely different, a company founded
and owned (94%) by Reiner Rose. He is the only one to decide. This
company gets all the sponsor money.

Similarly, given this is a niche market owned by the OLC, which
has achieved critical mass, we can't expect any further
significant innovation from OLC. Why bother innovating or
improving? The pilots will still upload their flights, the sponsors
will still pay.

Unfortunately, if and when a potential competitor would enter the
arena with innovative solutions to the competitors needs, *then*
the OLC would just copy those quickly. So the new entrant would
have little chance for a little market. Looking forward and reasoning
backwards I don't expect any such competitor to bother. But who
knows, maybe? Open source project?

Until then, seems like we are stuck.

We have discussed this on a German forum already, there are a number
of problems with the OLC:

- it is not democratic, the OLC does not listen to pilots, Reiner Rose
decides everything. There has been no public discussion about the
new rules. The new rules were made public only a few days before
the season started.

- new rules don't make any sense.

- pilots who criticize the OLC have been banned for being
"unsportsmanlike".

- Reiner Rose has threatened to remove XCSoar from the list of
approved software loggers, because I have criticized the OLC, and I
happen to be member of the XCSoar development team.

- the OLC watches over their data under the disguise of privacy, which
is bull****: every pilot has agreed to publish his IGC files, there
is no privacy which can be protected. The OLC allows IGC file
downloads only for registered users, and only 10 files per day,
threatens to ban users who reach this limit too often (that's really
written in the OLC rules officially!). Even scientific projects
have been denied mass access to IGC files. (If there really was a
privacy problem, then the OLC couldn't allow you to download a
single IGC file)

The list may not be complete, but that's enough reasons why the OLC
needs to be replaced with something better.

I had a look around and saw there were already a number of rivals
(sis-at, xcontest and a dozen of paraglider contests), none of which
had reached the critical mass. My conclusion was that creating yet
another contest wouldn't help, it would fragment the "market" even
more.

My idea: we must undo the fragmentation. We must bring the OLC rivals
together by merging their flight databases. This is the only way to
ever reach the critical mass.

Let's build a global shared IGC file database. Everybody (individual
pilots, sis-at, xcontest and all the others) may upload any number of
IGC files, and the database allows anybody to donwload any number of
IGC files.

Now the daily score of sis-at would include xcontest flights and vice
versa.

Anybody could create charts of thermal sources, collect weather data,
or just anything with those files (given free unlimited access, some
bright minds would surely come up with more clever ideas). Or just
create a new scoring page with new rules. National contests such as
the German DMSt could feed from this database instead of having to pay
OLC.

Everything open source, of course.

Since both the software and the data is "open", anybody could create a
mirror. A dictatorial leadership like in the OLC cannot ever happen,
because everybody has the same rights, no dangerous power
concentration.

Max

On Oct 20, 6:37*pm, David wrote:
If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

There are really a lot of them! I don't immediately see what donation
is required to get to each level of sponsorship.

If the actual web hosting of OLC costs more than a few hundred a month
then they are being ripped off. Is everyone under "About Us" being
paid a salary?

On 10/20/2010 6:06 AM, Bruce Hoult wrote:
On Oct 20, 6:37 pm, wrote:
If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

There are really a lot of them! I don't immediately see what donation
is required to get to each level of sponsorship.

If the actual web hosting of OLC costs more than a few hundred a month
then they are being ripped off. Is everyone under "About Us" being
paid a salary?


Is the OLC following the Google model, where you provide a service for
free, then use that service as an advertising medium? If so, the
"sponsors" actually are advertisers, and they presumably think that
their advertising dollars are being well spent.

Are you sure that the advertisers are spending thousands of dollars a
month? Maybe each is spendng a few thousand per year?

Greg Arnold wrote:
Are you sure that the advertisers are spending thousands of dollars a
month? Maybe each is spendng a few thousand per year?

I don't know that, but you can look up the official financial
statements of Segelflugszene gGmbH on
https://www.ebundesanzeiger.de/ebanzwww/wexsservlet (no deep linking
possible, unfortunately). The statement of 2008 and 2007 says they
had an income of about 50.000 EUR each year.

The OLC software (or part of it) is developed by at least two
commercial software companies, namely Instant Solutions
(http://www.instantsolutions.de/referenzen_de.html) and Hosting Agency
(http://www.onlinecontest.org/olc-2.0...corganisation).

I guess this is where much of the money is spent.

Max

On Oct 20, 7:25*am, Greg Arnold wrote:
On 10/20/2010 6:06 AM, Bruce Hoult wrote:

On Oct 20, 6:37 pm, *wrote:
If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

There are really a lot of them! I don't immediately see what donation
is required to get to each level of sponsorship.

If the actual web hosting of OLC costs more than a few hundred a month
then they are being ripped off. Is everyone under "About Us" being
paid a salary?

Is the OLC following the Google model, where you provide a service for
free, then use that service as an advertising medium? *If so, the
"sponsors" actually are advertisers, and they presumably think that
their advertising dollars are being well spent.

Are you sure that the advertisers are spending thousands of dollars a
month? *Maybe each is spendng a few thousand per year?


The OLC clearly follows the model of a web service based on taking
user generated content (*our* flights), providing a (free) useful
service
to the users by processing our data, implementing "game mechanics"
to keep us coming back and engaged. Once critical mass is achieved
sponsors want to be featured. This part is not free. More about this
on
another post.

I have no factual knowledge how much are the sponsorships in the
case of OLC (notice I said "can be" not "are). But I do have factual
knowledge about other similar web services using the same model
and I have been really surprised about how much the sponsors pay.

Enough for the principals to not want to attract too much
attention to it (and competition), and just keep the $ flowing.

Clearly, there is no other web service in the soaring space that
attracts
this number of users or have that level of user generated content.

So, yes, for OLC it could be thousands a year, not thousands a month.

Regards,

David

On Oct 19, 11:21*pm, Max Kellermann wrote:
David wrote:
--Noel
P.S. *I know that some of us have made donations to the OLC. *However,
$5 donations by a couple-hundred US pilots do not count much towards
the operating costs of the whole OLC system; especially given the
exchange rate the last couple of years!

Noel,

If you go to the OLC web site, on the right pane you will see
who pays the bills (and funds their retirements) over at OLC.
The sponsors. They are all there, Gold Sponsors, Silver Sponsors
etc. Each can be thousands of $$ a month. Your donations are
peanuts.

Also don't forget that the entity you're probably donating to does not
actually run the OLC. *There's "Segelflugszene e.V." where donations
go; but they have no influence on the OLC. *The OLC is run by
"Segelflugszene gGmbH", which is entirely different, a company founded
and owned (94%) by Reiner Rose. *He is the only one to decide. *This
company gets all the sponsor money.

Similarly, given this is a niche market owned by the OLC, which
has achieved critical mass, we can't expect any further
significant innovation from OLC. Why bother innovating or
improving? The pilots will still upload their flights, the sponsors
will still pay.

Unfortunately, if and when a potential competitor would enter the
arena with innovative solutions to the competitors needs, *then*
the OLC would just copy those quickly. So the new entrant would
have little chance for a little market. Looking forward and reasoning
backwards I don't expect any such competitor to bother. But who
knows, maybe? Open source project?

Until then, seems like we are stuck.

We have discussed this on a German forum already, there are a number
of problems with the OLC:

- it is not democratic, the OLC does not listen to pilots, Reiner Rose
* decides everything. *There has been no public discussion about the
* new rules. *The new rules were made public only a few days before
* the season started.

- new rules don't make any sense.

- pilots who criticize the OLC have been banned for being
* "unsportsmanlike".

- Reiner Rose has threatened to remove XCSoar from the list of
* approved software loggers, because I have criticized the OLC, and I
* happen to be member of the XCSoar development team.

- the OLC watches over their data under the disguise of privacy, which
* is bull****: every pilot has agreed to publish his IGC files, there
* is no privacy which can be protected. *The OLC allows IGC file
* downloads only for registered users, and only 10 files per day,
* threatens to ban users who reach this limit too often (that's really
* written in the OLC rules officially!). *Even scientific projects
* have been denied mass access to IGC files. *(If there really was a
* privacy problem, then the OLC couldn't allow you to download a
* single IGC file)

The list may not be complete, but that's enough reasons why the OLC
needs to be replaced with something better.

I had a look around and saw there were already a number of rivals
(sis-at, xcontest and a dozen of paraglider contests), none of which
had reached the critical mass. *My conclusion was that creating yet
another contest wouldn't help, it would fragment the "market" even
more.

My idea: we must undo the fragmentation. *We must bring the OLC rivals
together by merging their flight databases. *This is the only way to
ever reach the critical mass.

Let's build a global shared IGC file database. *Everybody (individual
pilots, sis-at, xcontest and all the others) may upload any number of
IGC files, and the database allows anybody to donwload any number of
IGC files.

Now the daily score of sis-at would include xcontest flights and vice
versa.

Anybody could create charts of thermal sources, collect weather data,
or just anything with those files (given free unlimited access, some
bright minds would surely come up with more clever ideas). *Or just
create a new scoring page with new rules. *National contests such as
the German DMSt could feed from this database instead of having to pay
OLC.

Everything open source, of course.

Since both the software and the data is "open", anybody could create a
mirror. *A dictatorial leadership like in the OLC cannot ever happen,
because everybody has the same rights, no dangerous power
concentration.

Max


Max,

You raise some interesting issues.

The main point I was trying to make is that OLC is a business. As a
business they will listen to their customers. However, we, the users
that
upload our flights are *not* the customers, although we seem to feel
we are. The sponsors are their customers. We just provide the content.

Once this is understood, things make a little more sense.

Their rules have often unintended consequences. Motorgliders are
very different than pure gliders in their capabilities (by design).

Soaring in Germany is very different than soaring out of Hollister,
CA.

How can you have one set of rules for all that will still make sense
under that wide level of variation? That's the challenge.

They can't please everyone, all the time. They just need to decide
who do they want to please most of the time :-)

Regards,

David

I am really have trouble figuring out how the OLC is scoring the FAI
triangle points. Look at USA Ken Sorenson's flight on Tuesday out of
houston and tell me what you think? He did not get any points for the
triangle, yet I could have easily plotted close to the entire flight (if
not indeed the entire flight) as a FAI triangle? Yet my flight last
Saturday was scored with much higher FAI points with much less (if any at
all) triangle flight trace.

CH Bewildered in Phoenix