Issue 27                                                                                                    December 2016
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Some have asked whether only members can view lists and be listed. EVERYONE (who competes in an organized competition run in accordance with WMA rules) can be listed and view everything on the site except for the current calendar year's rankings lists. This means that everyone can see the 2016 rankings lists on Sunday, January 1st.  

Are all your performances listed? If not, click here to submit all missing performances.  All inferior performances will be listed on your profile and the superior performances will be instantly updated on the rankings list.

The 2016 lists are about 78% complete. Some might think that is a lot of missing performances. I think it shows good progress considering last year at this time the 2015 lists were about 48% complete.

MastersRankings' policy was to complete compiling and checking outdoor lists by the end of February. Whether that will be accomplished this year is yet to be seen - it is still possible. The progress made with developing relationships, improving productivity, improving QC programs and inserting 540,000 performances in 2016 makes me optimistic this policy can be restored within the next year or two. Pretty good considering the volunteer resources and limited funding. 
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Photo by Frank Poulin
Generous contributions from Masters Athletes have kept this site going. MastersRankings.com, Inc. is a US 501(c)(3) public charity so your contributions are US tax deductible. Click on one of the convenient links below: 
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Ranked Athlete Spotlight

Lucho is competitive and likes to work at getting better plus take on new events. His work and determination has earned him the leading score for the Most Improved Ranked Athlete in South America

The extended feature in the past three newsletters has been very popular and it conveys the athlete's story better:  Luis Huarcaya - My Story

Want to be featured in future Spotlights? Have a compelling or motivating story? We'd love to feature you. Email me @ john.seto@mastersrankings.com with a little about you and your compelling story and I will send you a few questions to facilitate writing the article.
By the Numbers & Meet Results
This section normally includes statistics and links to complete meet results that have been inserted since the last newsletter. Most of the focus this month has been to the site's infrastructure and, while several complete meet results and other compiled lists have been inserted, most are not complete. Consequently, the complete meet results' links and inserted statistics will be combined into next month's newsletter.

Who had the best rankings in 2016?
Even though the lists are not complete, thought it would be interesting to see who had the most #1 rankings in 2016 (indoor and outdoor). Each of these athletes had 5 or more #1 rankings:
Pardon our appearance, we are under construction!
Coming changes were mentioned in  November's Newsletter . Below is a status on changes and 
Photo by Tom Phillips
some helpful information. Target completion dates are in parenthesis .

Fix site speed (March 31):  several pages, including the most popular, have been reprogramm
ed and post in half the time. The page look is temporary and includes most of the popular links. More pages will be reprogrammed over the next few weeks. 

Site redesign (March 31): the site slowed down when people started to use the new site introduced in February. The platform I picked is apparently not appropriate for a database intensive site like this. I am in the process of coming up with a new appearance which includes all the facets you like. Additionally, the new platform will retain site speed plus enable planned expansion and features.

Database redesign (complete): there are several databases dedicated to this site. Two of these would have reached the maximum size limit within the coming months. Two new databases were created and all the others were reworked to ensure capacities would not be exceeded. The changes were done without disruption!  

Watch for glitches:
this is a complex site with several hundred links. Changes mentioned above are significant and making sure several dozen pages all work properly will take time. Some links will be accidentally disabled and some things may not work properly. My apologies in advance for the mistakes and distractions. Please report any problems by filling out this form.

Your emails, correction requests, pasted / uploaded meet results...(2017): I have several thousand emails, 234 additional correction requests, a few hundred pasted meet results and over a thousand more meet results to convert - these grow every day. I am not complaining, just giving you an idea how much needs to get done so you can understand when it takes me a long time to reply. Sorry for the delayed action and response. Please do not let this stop you from sending more - your emails and correction requests are extremely helpful and most save me time (I don't have to spend as much time finding errors and sometimes these errors were caused by my programs so fixing programs prevents future error occurrence).

The processes and programs are mostly in place so I expect that the vast majority of emails, correction requests, meet result processing, etc. will be done quickly by this time next year.  Many of the emails and correction requests are easily fixed using programs (which I need to write). I hope to get through many over the next several weeks. 
Looking forward to a great yearMembersPrivaleges
Hope you have exceeded your expectations in 2016 and look forward to seeing you do even better in 2017. 

Thank you to everyone for all the suggestions, support and encouragement. It is my honor to serve Masters Athletes. I hope that everything coming over the next few months exceeds your expectations too.

Stay healthy and have fun!
John Seto
john.seto@mastersrankings.com
(845) 635-9487p
(845) 489-7818c
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