- What is it?
- Where is it?
- How to use it?
- How to...
- Problems
- What this doesn't do but may do in the future
- What this won't do
- What this isn't
- Privacy/cookies notices
- Questions
This is an attempt to help out parkrun volunteers doing results processing who encounter problems with the results. It's something that several times I have wished I had available to me when I've been processing results myself.
It attempts to detect problems with timer and scanner files dropped into it, and provide ways to fix some of the problems it identifies. You can then use it to find out what adjustments you need to make to the results in EMS. Alternatively, you can download modified timer and scanner files and upload them in to EMS.
It can be found here.
Before you can use Results Tidyup, you must first download from EMS any files you wish to use with it. On the page in EMS that lists the files that have been uploaded, click or tap the timer or scanner icon to view the contents of the file. Then click/tap Save. Save this somewhere on your computer or phone.
You can then load the timer and/or scanner files into the application, using the 'Upload files...' button at the top. You can also drag files into the browser window, but note that some browser antivirus plugins will block this.
You don't have to upload both timer and scanner files. You can upload only timer files, or upload only scanner files, or upload both.
- Upload two timer files.
- If an offset is detected between the times on the two timers, choose to apply the offset to one timer. (If this happens, it usually means that one of the timers was started late, so choose to add the offset to the slow timer.)
- Review the list of times in the list on the left. Untick any times recorded on one timer that are incorrect.
- Download the merged list of times using the button above the times.
Sometimes, courses may be found to be short, and a suitable correction factor would need to be applied to all times to address for the short course. You can either enter the scale factor yourself, or calculate it from the expected distance and actual distance using the Riegel formula.
To do this:
- Upload one or two timer files.
- Click 'Timer Operations'.
- Use the options in this window to specify the scale factor, or the expected and actual distances.
- Click 'Apply scale factor'.
A lot of parkruns have multiple 'sets' of tokens, and sometimes these are given out in the wrong order. For example, you may have tokens in sets of 100, i.e. 1-100, 101-200, 201-300, 301-400 and so on. If, on one event, the tokens were given out in the order 1-100, 101-200, 301-400, 201-300, then you would need to swap over token ranges 201-300 and 301-400. To do this:
- Upload all barcode scanner files.
- Click 'Token Operations...'.
- In the dialog that opens, click 'Swap token(s)' and enter 201-300 in one of the two fields and 301-400 in the other.
- Click 'Swap tokens'.
After making a large-scale change to tokens like this, you can download a single file containing all of the scanned barcodes. You would then upload this into EMS and deselect all of the others.
Occasionally, a set of tokens at a parkrun will be given out in the wrong order. For example, suppose your event has sets of tokens 1-25, 26-50, 51-75, 76-100 and so on, but the 51-75 set was given out in the wrong order, i.e. they were given out in the order 1-25, 26-50, 75-51, 76-100. You need to reverse the tokens in the range 51-75. Sorting this out is similar to the previous step:
- Upload all barcode scanner files.
- Click 'Token Operations...'.
- In the dialog that opens, click 'Reverse tokens' and enter 51-75 in the field.
- Click 'Reverse tokens'.
Results Tidyup can identify various problems in the results and offer ways to fix some of them. Any problems it identifies appear in the top-right of the page.
Results Tidyup can identify the following problems with the files uploaded:
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Time offsets detected between the times in two timer files, indicating the timers weren't started at the same time. You can fix this by adding or subtracting the detected time offset from all times on one of the timers.
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The same athlete barcode scanned with and without a finish token. EMS will report a warning in the scanner file for an athlete-barcode scan without a corresponding finish-token scan, so you might think that this athlete had scanned in but won't get a result. However, we can ignore the row without a finish token.
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The same athlete barcode scanned with multiple different finish tokens. Results Tidyup can't by itself tell which finish position is correct for that athlete: you will have to figure this out for yourself. To help you, the athlete IDs link to the athlete's results history. If you've loaded one or more timer files, then the times recorded against the positions are also shown, allowing you to judge which of the finish positions is the more likely one.
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More than one athlete barcode scanned with the same finish token. Again, there's no obvious way to sort this out, but the links to the athlete results might help you identify which athlete was most likely to have finished with that finish token.
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Finish tokens scanned beyond the end of the list of times, e.g. there are 99 times but someone has scanned finish token 100, so the athlete in 100th place doesn't have a time. A time will need to be inserted, or a finish token/position removed, to correct this.
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Athlete barcode scans with no associated finish token. (If the athlete barcode and finish token have been written down, you can double-click on the barcode-scanner row to add the missing information.)
Development of this application started before the use of the Virtual Volunteer app everywhere was made compulsory. Use of the Virtual Volunteer app has removed a number of problems that had previously been encountered with results processing, such as barcode scanner volunteers scanning athlete barcodes and finish tokens the wrong way around, so the ability to detect such problems has been removed. It's also a lot less likely that volunteers will end up with practice scans left on their phone (I haven't seen this happen since the Virtual Volunteer app became compulsory, but I saw it happen several times before), so Results Tidyup no longer offers to set the event start time and check for scans before it.
Results Tidyup still supports detecting mis-scanned barcodes and
unrecognised lines. I've seen the Opticon scanners misread a barcode and
generate nonsense barcodes such as &d084. In theory, the Virtual Volunteer
app shouldn't scan any barcode that isn't an athlete or finish-token
barcode, but I'll leave this check in just in case.
This tool has so far been based on what I've seen happen when processing results. Doubtless there are other things which Results Tidyup could include support for, such as:
- Handling three or more timers. (Do events often use three or more timers?)
Results Tidyup will never magically fix all results-processing problems at an event. It can detect a number of problems, but it never makes any corrections if you don't tell it to. As a results processor you will always need to understand what has gone on during the event and use your judgement to decide what modifications to make to the results, if any. Some modifications suggested by Results Tidyup may in fact be incorrect.
Results Tidyup will never be able to look up athlete names from athlete barcode numbers. That would require access to the parkrun database but for data-protection reasons we can't have that.
This isn't an official parkrun tool. If it doesn't do what you want, it's not their fault. Don't contact them for support with it - they will not be able to help!
This isn't guaranteed to be bug-free: I hope it is but I make no guarantees.
Results Tidyup runs entirely in your browser and doesn't send your data to any servers. Whilst this does impose some technical constraints, it helps avoid any privacy issues. I don't have to say what the servers that host Results Tidyup are doing with your data, because they're not doing anything with it at all.
Your browser also might say that Results Tidyup is "Not secure". What this means is that any data transmitted between your browser and the server isn't encrypted and can be intercepted. As Results Tidyup doesn't send your data to a server, there is no data transmitted to the server so no data that can be intercepted in this way.
Results Tidyup does not use any cookies nor 'local storage' in your browser to store any data.
Are you using Safari on macOS? File downloading is believed to not work on this browser, although I don't own a Mac so I can't test this for myself. Please use Firefox or Chrome instead.
I don't own a tablet computer so I don't know how these behave.
Steve Megson's stopwatch comparison tool, at http://stopwatch.megson.org/, is widely known among results processing teams and often used for merging together two sets of timer times.
I can't say exactly how this tool compare its timer times, so I can't say whether Results Tidyup is better or worse than it at comparing times. All I can say is that it is different.
However, one particular difference regards handling timers not started at the same time. In this situation it can be useful to correct the offset between the timers.
If the two timers are not started at the same time, Steve Megson's tool and Results Tidyup can usually detect the difference. However, only Results Tidyup gives you the option of which timer to apply the offset to and in which direction: either adding it to all times on one or subtracting it from all on the other. Steve Megson's tool automatically adds the offset to all times recorded on the timer deemed to have been started later than the other. Most of the time, when there is a difference between timer times it is because one of them was started late, but on one occasion I have seen a timer appear to be started early.
Steve Megson's tool can have its offset detection thrown off if the first times recorded on the timers have a different offset. I have two timer files, with a time offset of two seconds between most times, but with an extra three-second offset in the times recorded for the first finisher. Steve Megson's tool doesn't detect a time offset for these files, whereas Results Tidyup identifies the correct 2-second offset.
At the time of writing I am not aware of other stopwatch comparison tools.