The New Picking Contest

When you first visit the picking contest site, you will not be recognized by the system. You will have four options available to you; logging in with a known user ID and password, registering, getting a new password sent to you, or just going to view the results.

Since the contest is new and separate from the older contest software, everyone will need to register anew. Registration is much different from the old software. You will have only one registration that is shared across all the contests. Each email address will be allowed only one registration (so, if you forget your password, you can have a new password sent to you at your registered email address, and you can use that to log in.) You will not select mailing lists with the registration, mailing lists are handled separately.

All that is required for registration is your surname and given name, your email address, and your desired alias. The alias must have some alphabetic characters. You will be assigned a numeric ID, and a new password; these will be sent by email to your listed email address.

The database and the registration software will try to insure there are no duplicate names, email addresses, or aliases. When you have successfully completed the registration, you are presented with a Continue button to take you back to the initial page.

Your email will look like this:

You have registered in the Sagarmatha Picking Contest.
Your ID is 12345 and your password is:

G4cp3x

Good Luck!

Select Log In and enter the ID and password, and you have completed the steps to get started.

Each screen includes two links to the top right. The first, contact will put you in the registered mail program; this system is designed to allow you to send mail to me for questions, clarifications, and feedback. I may not always be available to respond quickly, I hope I've designed this to be intuitive enough for you to figure out what's going on. I appreciate all feedback I get to make this even better.

Next to that link is a help link. Click on this link and you get a context specific help message that attempts to describe your options at a given screen. There is a link at the bottom of each help message to close the window, keep it open and further requests for help will appear in the same window.

Once you have logged in, you are presented with the main page. The number of options on the main page varies based on the contests and groups you have joined. There are initially five options illustrated to the right. When you have joined a contest, three more options will appear, described below.

The first thing you will probably want to do is change your password to something that makes more sense. I don't know about you, but G4cp3x is not the most intuitive password. You may want to change it to something you can remember.

Of course, you can see the results of all the contests at any time.

Joining contests is critical to being able to play. When you select Join a Contest you are presented with a list of open contests on buttons. Click on the button with the desired contest, and you will have joined that contest.

It gets a little tricky from there. If the system is configured to have associated mailing lists, you will be presented with a screen where you can subscribe to those mailing lists.

Because of the scourge of spam, many sites have taken to tighter controls on incoming email. When the older software was written, it wasn't a problem to have the mailing lists managed from within the picking contest software, in this era, that is no longer the case. For these contests, I am using majordomo, and the picking contest software will only be able to send subscribe and unsubscribe messages at your behest. To prevent the accidental subscription of an email address (or to prevent the mail bombing of an email address) you will be asked to confirm each subscription by return email. This is an asynchronous task from the rest of the picking contest software. You will receive a message like this: Someone (possibly you) has requested that your email address be added to or deleted from the mailing list "hooppicks-late@mlist.sagarmatha.com". If you really want this action to be taken, please send the following commands (exactly as shown) back to "Majordomo@mlist.sagarmatha.com": auth 38370df4 subscribe hooppicks-late user@example.com If you do not want this action to be taken, simply ignore this message and the request will be disregarded. If your mailer will not allow you to send the entire command as a single line, you may split it using backslashes, like so: auth 38370df4 subscribe hooppicks-late \ user@example.com If you have any questions about the policy of the list owner, please contact "hooppicks-late-approval@mlist.sagarmatha.com". Thanks! Majordomo@mlist.sagarmatha.com Just follow the instructions to confirm your subscription. You can use the Notifications button to change your subscriptions at any time. If you change your email address, you are automatically unsubscribed from all lists.

I must apologize for the complexity in the mailing list management. We can all thank those people who send, and who respond, to spam.

Once you've made your mailing list decisions, you may proceed to the management of the picking contests.

Also, note that on the main screen, three new options appeared. These are discussed below.

You reach the main contest screen by the link Manage My Entries in a Contest. If you've joined more than one contest, you will need to select the contest to manage. When you have done so, you will be at the main contest screen.

I hope the choices are intuitive.

The biggest difference between this contest and earlier contests is that the concept of the "round" is removed from picking results. Each game has its own closing time, so if you are a day late, you only miss the games played that day, not all the games for the round.

As an administrative bonus, the lack of rounds makes it easier for the administrator to make corrections, and to even delete unplayed games. If, for example, the game between Coppin State and South Carolina State is delayed by a snow storm, all that is required is for the administrator to change the date and time of the game, and all the picks move with the change. Before, the game would end up unscored, and may be re-entered in a later round.

The picking screen after Make Picks is similar to the old screen, except all the open games are listed. You do not need to select all the open games to make picks, but you should make picks in all the games that are near closing. After you make your picks, a tally of the number of picked and unpicked games is presented.

At any time, you may select Show Picks to see how everyone has picked. A summary screen is presented, and you can select games to see a list of all the picks. Where possible, a mean and a deviation on the picks is also provided.

Examining results is the most similar to the old contest software. When you view results, you are provided a list of contests, and then you are provided a list of all the results files. Just select the file you want, and it is displayed.

Pick History is also similar, except there is no breaking up of picks for rounds.

The newest feature is the My Contest Standings link. This will provide you with a single screen summary of your current results, your rank in the contest, and your rank in any groups.

Data for all entered contests is provided.

One of the new features of the software is the groups feature. With this, you may create a group of players that is scored as a subset of all the competitors in a contest.

The person who creates the group is automatically the leader. Groups are associated with a single contest (so a group of friends in multiple contests will need to make multiple groups, sorry.) The name is important, as new members will need to enter the name exactly as you have to be able to enter the group.

The other important choice is the group style. Anyone can join an open group if they know the password. If they know the password of a closed group, they must still be approved by the group creator.

Once you've joined a group, you don't have to do anything. Separate score pages are created, that you can examine. Your rank in the group is displayed with your rank in the overall contest. You can quit the group at any time.