Updated Rankings

[jerrymilne]

www.inthehook.com has updated some of it's rankings.

Top North American Rankings (USA and NA portions)
www.inthehook.com/top_north_american_rankings.html

Top Ten Overall North American Rankings (USA and NA portions)
www.inthehook.com/top_ten_overall_north_american_rankings.html

Top Armwrestlers by Province / State (USA portion)
www.inthehook.com/top_by_location.html


Other rankings can be found at www.inthehook.com/rankings.html




These were sent to me by Josh Handeland on the 19th and I'm sorry for taking so long to put them up.

[Jeff Miller]

Thanks guys!

[matty]

What a joke.

[John Milne]

You'll probably realize that the Canadian portion hasn't been updated in a while. I'm trying to get in touch with Jason Manjin currently but am probably going to look for someone else to start doing the rankings if he doesn't get back to me.

Again, check the date that the rankings are updated.

[jerrymilne]

Argh. The above comment was made by me on John's account by accident.

[Jeff Miller]

Is Chris Gobby doing the rankings?
Yeah I see the Canadian ones are majorly outdated, which doesn't work for the North American Rankings. We (Jason Tibok, Andrew Grant, Mike Rooney, myself) have to do a Western one, somebody can do the Eastern one, and then we just mesh the lists together.

[Andrew Grant]

I would like to thank the people who have built this list, but clearly we can do a better job at keeping up to date rankings.

Has Lee Saitz even pulled since 2010 nationals? We need to public scrutinize the list to keep it valid.

The full National rankings is a very difficult job for one person to do well without any help. I would suggest more of a collaborative effort to ensure the rankings are the best they can be.

We could have a rankings forum to discuss and submit match data and video for each class. That would really help to sort out who is active in each class and how they've done lately.

Up to date rankings will encourage competition between closely ranked pullers, which will lead to more accurate rankings. It is a great tool to promote our sport and encourage attendance.


Also:

When a ranking is changed based only on opinion, not match data, it should only be done by someone who pulls regularly in that class.

Guys that attend and win major events should never be ranked below tournament dodgers that have never beat them.

People should be ranked more so on the matches they've won, and less on the ones they've lost. This encourages attendance. (a highly active inconsistent puller is still performing better than one that only pulls when they know they will win)

When ranked pullers don't attend nearby major tournaments it's not really fair to the people that travel around trying to earn themselves a spot.

[Andrew Grant]

I also like Jeffs idea of regional rankings meshed together.

[Eric Roussin]

If someone is interested in taking on the job of maintaining the National rankings for IntheHook, I'm pretty sure all that would be required is an email to Jerry Milne.

As the person who did the rankings from 2005 to 2011, here are my thoughts:

The rankings can be a great tool for encouraging competition, as mentioned by Andrew. However, this is only successfully accomplished when the rankings are updated very regularly (i.e. every week assuming an event is held). For this to be done, FULL results should be posted as soon as possible -- this falls on tournament directors. In the majority of cases, this is done well for Canadian tournaments, but not always. Drawsheets are even better, but I know not everyone is set up to provide these.

I favour one person taking on the job, as opposed to several. As you add people, the timing tends to suffer. Not everyone has the same level of interest and dedication to maintaining rankings. That single person should outline their basic methodology for adjusting the rankings (I suggest using Josh Handeland's method), and this methodology should appear on the InTheHook to avoid the recurring questions.

This one person would be able to update the rankings quickly, and then people can comment on any possible errors. These errors tend to occur when the posted results don't show the full story (e.g. someone gets injured during an event). Then minor adjustments can be made.

A full revamp of the rankings would likely require a few hours of work, given that they haven't been updated in over 8 months. But once done, maintaining them is relatively simple if you stay on top of them. One thing that can be tricky to track is removing people after 12 months of inactivity, but really, this shouldn't be that difficult.

And I think it's important to state what the rankings should represent. When I maintained them, I wanted them to represent the top competitors. Basically, #1 is the person most likely to win an event where all competitors are present, #2 is the second most likely, etc. They were never about activity. Not to say that they can't be, but that was not their original purpose.

So, who wants to step forward and take on the rankings?

[jerrymilne]

+ 100 to Eric's post!

Chris Gobby did take over the rankings after Eric Roussin. Since Chris wasn't available to take the time required to maintain the rankings, he stepped down.

Jason Manjin said he'd maintain the rankings after Chris and the rankings currently reflect his choices.

I'm all for someone taking over the Canadian and Ontario portion of rankings.

Once I hear back from Jason about the rankings, I'll decide on how to proceed.