Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the detailed explanation! However, I have to say, this is the first time out of 35 meets I’ve attended that I’ve seen anything like this happen. I know this opens a different can of worms, but could you elaborate a bit more on what’s involved with protests and denials?

Also, I’m curious about the data validation process for results. How exactly is it ensured that the corrected data being republished is accurate and fair for all swimmers? Would love any additional insights you can share!

The default on the hytec computer system (this is what runs the swim meet results) is that anything that enters the computer system goes directly to meet mobile. This means it is uploading the pad times. If it is a 200, and the swimmer doesn't hit the pad at the finish, hytec initially takes the 150 pad time as the 'pad time.' It also flags it so that the operator corrects it and uses the button time. Slightly different scenario, but if the swimmer doesn't hit the pad, the buttons stop, then while waiting for other swimmers to come in, like 2 seconds later, does hit the pad, the computer will take that late pad time as the 'pad time' and also flag it for the operator for correction. As previously mentioned, this also doesn't include DQs.
If you are seeing results on meet mobile before a race is finished (e.g. heat results) then this default hasn't been turned off and they are meaningless.

The only scenario where I ever really see changes is if kid swam in a wrong lane/ wrong heat. Ideally this is caught by a coach and the timers, and the table reseeds the swimmers to reflect what they actually swum. But occasionally no one notices, and it takes a parent saying "my kid is showing as a no show, but he swam I watched him." That is the only scenario that a parent should say something to a coach based on what they are seeing in meet mobile. A variation of this would be "I noticed my kid was supposed to swim in Heat 3 lane 4, but I saw him swim in heat 2 lane 4, and his time is showing as different from what I saw on the score board when he finished."

Also- in terms of protests about a time- they are really uncommon. The rules of how you determine a time are set forth by USA swimming- I'm not looking at my rule book, but here you go as a summary- The meet announcement lists the timing system- automatic timing (touchpads primary) is the most common. The AO looks at the touchpad time and the button times- as long as one button is within .3 seconds of the touchpad time the touchpad is the time. If the buttons are within .3 seconds of each other, but not of the touchpad- then the average of the two button times will be the time. If the 2 buttons and the pad time are more than .3 seconds apart- or if one of those pieces of data is missing, and the two pieces of data you have are more than .3 apart- then the AO needs to gather more data. The watch time comes in here- if the watch time supports the pad the pad will be taken. The starter records order of finish- if the order of finish supports the pad, the pad will govern. Sometimes they will go get a coaches time- if the coach used a watch vs just writing down what the scoreboard shows- the coaches time wouldn't be the 'official' time- but it might validate the pad time, etc.

The much more common 'time' protest really comes down to someone not swimming the right heat/lane so they were given the wrong time- b/c they were given the time of whoever did swim in their assigned heat/lane...

Anonymous wrote:So will meet mobile no longer provide the Heat Sheets without paying extra? I saw it for free at the Monster Mash but not at the Rock and Swim this weekend.

Charging for heat sheets is purely up to the team. There is a box that can be checked on the AO’s view of meet mobile from meet manager to either publish heat sheets for free or charge an amount of their choosing. If they choose to charge, I assume meet mobile takes a small cut, and the team gets the rest. I’m not sure, since our team always publishes for free. If the host tells you that meet mobile is choosing to charge you, it’s not true.

Anonymous wrote:https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1193177.page#27080070

The post at 17:20 is informative

That was my post!

I’ll echo several PP’s above. Meet Mobile is NOT official and there are many times recorded forever on meet mobile that are not official and are not recorded as such by USA swimming.

The pathway from Larla swimming the 50 free to her time being officially recorded by USA swimming does NOT pass through meet mobile. A la schoolhouse rock, here is “I’m just a time”:

1. Larla swim the 50 free at a sanctioned USA swimming meet
2. The time is recorded by a pad,
plunger, or stopwatches (in order of preference)
3. The time is either captured, calculated, or manually entered into meet manager, the most common software used to run meets.
4. The AO confirms results are final. Sometimes a coach will request that we reexamine a time. Usually, it’s the time of a swimmer who didn’t strike the pad, and the plunger/stopwatches were used to obtain the time. Rarely, a result is changed. In my experience, it has happened once in 20 meets, and it was for a 7 year old who had a recorded time for 250 yds instead of 200 yds (they kept swimming and it took so long that the timers lost count). My experience differs from other ao’s and different meets have different rules on challenges. The stakes are pretty low in age group meets, not many kids are qualifying for jr nationals at age 12, so challenges are rare.
5. The AO creates a file from meet manager with all the results, and either uploads it to the SWIMS database or sends it to the LSC, who uploads it themselves.

Anywhere along the path, results can be uploaded to meet mobile. If it’s before step 3, the times can be incorrect (ao has not checked pad times against plunger/watch times) and will not show DQ’s. If it’s before step 4, it won’t show any changes after challenges.

To further complicate things, sometimes heats change after they are posted to meet mobile due to scratches/additions, and then the AO forgets or doesn’t bother to update the new info. A relay changes, or a swimmer switches heats with someone else. There are a lot of reasons why the info on meet mobile can be wrong. And because many parents think that meet mobile is official, many ao’s prefer not to avoid having incorrect info on there and to avoid confused parents.

Meet mobile is very convenient and I love it, but it just receives info, and it can receive info at any point in time before results are official. Don’t rely on it for official results. If you think about it, it’s reasonable for everyone to have to wait a day or two for official results from a meet with perhaps 1-2 thousand times that all are checked and confirmed with three timing methods and a real live person.

So will meet mobile no longer provide the Heat Sheets without paying extra? I saw it for free at the Monster Mash but not at the Rock and Swim this weekend.

https://www.dcurbanmom.com/jforum/posts/list/1193177.page#27080070

The post at 17:20 is informative

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for the detailed explanation! However, I have to say, this is the first time out of 35 meets I’ve attended that I’ve seen anything like this happen. I know this opens a different can of worms, but could you elaborate a bit more on what’s involved with protests and denials?

Also, I’m curious about the data validation process for results. How exactly is it ensured that the corrected data being republished is accurate and fair for all swimmers? Would love any additional insights you can share!

I’ve seen this happen several times over the years. I’ll let an expert chime in on how results are validated, but echoing the previous poster that Meet Mobile is not an official source of meet results. It may not be accurate or “fair”, because it’s not the authoritative source of data. It’s used at a point in time to more easily communicate results than the old school method of literally taping results to walls. it’s not a database of official results and may never be updated if official results are ultimately different than what was originally released during the meet. In short, while it’s usually consistent with final results, I’d call it more of a communications tool than a results tool. There’s a reason that the data is reported by meet and not aggregated by swimmer and event.

Thanks for the detailed explanation! However, I have to say, this is the first time out of 35 meets I’ve attended that I’ve seen anything like this happen. I know this opens a different can of worms, but could you elaborate a bit more on what’s involved with protests and denials?

Also, I’m curious about the data validation process for results. How exactly is it ensured that the corrected data being republished is accurate and fair for all swimmers? Would love any additional insights you can share!

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meet mobile is glitchy. It doesn’t have anything to do with the meet host. It also requires a reliable WiFi connection, especially if the meet host is relying on the public WiFi (as was true at swim and rock) and lots of parents have logged onto the public WiFi as well it will tend to be slow and miss things

It’s not just about WiFi or general glitches—here’s the issue further explained. Results are posting on the app and then suddenly disappearing. For example, when I log in away from the pool, I can only see today’s results, but none from Friday or Saturday.

It feels like more than just a connection problem

Results are “published” to MM and can be unpublished by the meet management team if they need to make corrections (appealing a protest denial, etc) or any other type of errors they might have found. Often meet results are cleaned up if there was some error during the meet and the results are republished. For instance Johnny was supposed to be in Heat 3, Lane 1 but the Heat 2 Lane 2 swimmer scratched and Johnny accidentally swam in the wrong heat. They have to make those corrections and ensure that Johnny’s time isn’t credited to whomever scratch in Heat 2, etc.
Give them a couple days to post the final meet results and hopefully MM updates.
FWIW, MM is NOT a database of record or considered official results. Sometimes swimmers who were DQ’d will have their times still posted to MM if the results are pushed in real time.
SWIMS database and the results posted on PVS swim is what is reliable

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meet mobile is glitchy. It doesn’t have anything to do with the meet host. It also requires a reliable WiFi connection, especially if the meet host is relying on the public WiFi (as was true at swim and rock) and lots of parents have logged onto the public WiFi as well it will tend to be slow and miss things

It’s not just about WiFi or general glitches—here’s the issue further explained. Results are posting on the app and then suddenly disappearing. For example, when I log in away from the pool, I can only see today’s results, but none from Friday or Saturday.

It feels like more than just a connection problem

The meet host reloaded Friday and Saturday results on MM earlier today and it seemed to wipe out times and places for many events.
It’s not uncommon to republish results once they’re official (a data person once posted a really helpful explanation here on releasing results on MM and why it varies by meet based on configuration settings). In the Swim and Rock situation today, something clearly went haywire when they republished the results. even if it never gets fixed on MM, the official results will be published to the PVS site this week and those will propagate to the clubs and various sites like SwimCloud, Swimmetry, etc.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Meet mobile is glitchy. It doesn’t have anything to do with the meet host. It also requires a reliable WiFi connection, especially if the meet host is relying on the public WiFi (as was true at swim and rock) and lots of parents have logged onto the public WiFi as well it will tend to be slow and miss things

It’s not just about WiFi or general glitches—here’s the issue further explained. Results are posting on the app and then suddenly disappearing. For example, when I log in away from the pool, I can only see today’s results, but none from Friday or Saturday.

It feels like more than just a connection problem

People were complaining that results from the last two days were missing so they reuploaded all the sessions to meet mobile. But bc it is glitchy some results vanished in the reupload so they are gone from meet mobile. Sometimes they show up on the individual swimmer rather than by race. Sea devils get results out pretty fast I suspect they are already in the teams hands and they will be on the pvs website tomorrow

Anonymous wrote:Meet mobile is glitchy. It doesn’t have anything to do with the meet host. It also requires a reliable WiFi connection, especially if the meet host is relying on the public WiFi (as was true at swim and rock) and lots of parents have logged onto the public WiFi as well it will tend to be slow and miss things

It’s not just about WiFi or general glitches—here’s the issue further explained. Results are posting on the app and then suddenly disappearing. For example, when I log in away from the pool, I can only see today’s results, but none from Friday or Saturday.

It feels like more than just a connection problem

Anonymous wrote:Roster decisions?

Probably a reference to a meet like Winter Classic. No QTs, but teams can only bring a limited number of swimmers.

Meet mobile is glitchy. It doesn’t have anything to do with the meet host. It also requires a reliable WiFi connection, especially if the meet host is relying on the public WiFi (as was true at swim and rock) and lots of parents have logged onto the public WiFi as well it will tend to be slow and miss things

Roster decisions?

Hey everyone,

Is it just me, or does Meet Mobile act a little weird sometimes? I’ve noticed at meets like Swim and Rock (this weekend at Oak Marr, hosted by the Sea Devils) that results will pop up and then disappear. It’s especially frustrating when you’re trying to keep track of times and roster decisions for big meets like championships.

Does this happen at other meets too, or is it just a glitch with this one? Curious if anyone else has noticed this or knows why it happens.

Thanks!