Submit Bout Stats

How does this work?

Send Flat Track Stats your stats sheets and we'll parse, validate, correct, and format them for presentation.

Send us an e-mail with the stats sheets attached, and we'll take it from there. We aim to build a comprehensive database of historical bouts as well, so do send us your backlog.  

Formats and versions

Our stats parser is built generically and not tied to a particular format. In theory, it will adapt to any past or future version or variation of any stats tracking scheme your league uses.

In practice, we are set to go for parsing WFTDA's Stats Workbook in Microsoft Excel format.

If you have a standardized stats tracking format that's not the WFTDA Workbook format, let's talk.

Validation

Stats sheets have errors. We know how tough it is to track stats in a game as action packed as roller derby, so we have a system in place for working with errors. First, before any stats are written to the database, we validate for a ton of different scenarios: unknown or missing players, valid input (depending on the context), valid penalty and ghost point codes, data that's required, illogical scenarios, and a bunch of other things.

What we get back is a list of all the errors that the parser found.

Making corrections

A lot of errors can be corrected intuitively, or by sleuthing around the stats sheets. If an error has a non-ambiguous and obvious correction, we make the correction ourselves.

If it's a recent bout that you can weigh in on, we may be in contact with you for feedback. Some things are of course impossible for us to figure out having not been there.

Depending on the circumstance, if an error is not correctable we will either drop the stat (if it's low priority like a penalty), or mark it as unknown (if it's critical like a player missing from a lineup).

Bottom line is our philosophy is to clean things up and make them presentable, but not invent any data or take liberties. As always, we intend on making the integrity of the data clear so you as a visitor know what you're looking at.

It's certainly possible to let leagues and NSOs pre-validate their stats sheets to root out these errors on their own. While this isn't available currently, it's something that we've discussed.

Non-destructive corrections

A key feature of our stats system is that when we make corrections, we do not directly edit the stats sheets by hand. Instead we tell the FTS parser what needs to be corrected. What's great about this is that a copy of the original stats document still exists for reference.

Even more importantly, a record of all corrections made are stored in the database alongside the bout stats themselves. This makes it easy to lookup exactly what corrections were made and why. If we need to track inquiries about incorrect data, a record of transactions are available.

This log of corrections is not currently viewable online. I'm hesitating because I don't want to imply a "shame on you" to the stats officials involved. Quite the opposite -- going through this project I have a gained a much deeper understanding of what goes into collecting stats. So it remains to be seen how or if this log is foregrounded, or if it's even meaningful at all to viewers of the site. If anyone is curious about specific bouts, we are happy to share these logs offline for now.

-- Aaron