Hi,
I have been playing around with creating a daily summary of forum activity. Basically it reads some activity from the forum and throws you a daily e-mail listing the activity. Obvioulsy that may be pointless for some who spend all day check what is going on, but someone might find it useful.

It has all the good newsletter features, like being able to unsubscribe when you get fed up etc.

Constructive comments welcome, although scope for development is limited.

It would be good if open meetings results could be included. Perhaps within 24hrs of the event and not the often 1 to 2 weeks.

^^Is this a volunteer - quick sign him up!!^^

tried to sign up but got a 'website under review page' ?

.netii.net

Providers of free webhosting under the subdomain netii.net (and others it seems) hence the sailwhatever.netii.net.

Its purpose in life to plaster banners and adverts across the net, and suck people into to trivial affiliate schemes.

It also seems they think forums are the best method of scraping traffic.

Would i like a summary of forum activity - no thanks.

Totally wrong - this initiative was developed by me.  The hosting company is 000Webhost.com, and there is no free advertising etc etc. Although rather inconveniently, they have just started to do a manually review of my newsletter website right at the point that I thought I'd publicise it on here, ugh, and hence the 'under review' comment, that is comming up. Please don't bother to sign up until I let you know. If they don't stop reviewing my website saillist.netii.net site, I'll move the newsletter onto my dedicated (but slightly slower) server that I run www.sailfun.co.uk from later today / tonight.

I'm not sure, but I would guess that much of the issue about getting open meeting results up quickly is getting the results in a decent form from the organising club. Clubs that use SailWave and publish on them on the web seem to have a process that works swiftly. I suspect the issue is where clubs do the results locally on paper or a spreadsheet or a blackboard (Hampton?), the prizes are given, every one goes home exhausted and satisfied with the sucess of organising another event, and the task of publicing the results goes in to draw (except the Blackboard, which gets put back into the gents changing rooms), whilst thoughts turn to beer and then preparing for the week of work, and only get attention when the poor results compiler gets hassled approximately next Friday.

If a club is selected to host an Silver Tiller event or area event then one of the conditions should be that results are sent to the results officer for that championships within a certain time ?

I still get emailed results that are copied off a blackboard/whiteboard (i.e. top 5 only, and no crew names) or sometimes I get a PDF which contains a scan of the paper printout from sailwave...sadly useless.

Most clubs are only populated at weekends, so if the volunteer doesnt secure the full results in the right format within 2 hours of getting changed, they probably have to wait a whole week.

I think you will find the ST results were normally updated within a few days of most events last year. There were only a few opens where I had to wait a while to get the results. Generally they were sent to me within 2 days of the event.

Looking at the 2008 results on the website, there are five opens that do not have results against them. One, Banbury I am sure is a ST event

Good news. My web site is now 'approved as not a phising or other spamming site' and functioning, so please sign up to the newsletter, if you want to.

Despite 'daves' negative comments regarding the hosting company I am using, it is the fact that it is a free host that attracts spammers etc. and that is why they (the hosting company) take the time to 'approve' sites to reduce the sort of rubbish 'dave' was talking about. I have used this company for a while, for other free newsletters and there has been no 'leaking' of e-mail addresses.

At the moment there are no adverts on the newsletter, you can unsubscribe easily and it complies with all the current recommendations on good practice regarding newsletters. Although if there is reasonable take up of this service, I will add some discreet, sailing related, advertising to keep the free service free.

Please be aware, that the first day after you subscribe, you may get some older forum entries, this soon disappears as the system catches you up'.

I would be interested in CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, by e-mail.

Thanks

This may be very apposite to this thread.

What happened to the new RYA portsmouth yardstick initiative. I thought the theory was that clubs could upload their sailwave and other results direct to the RYA site and therefore killing two birds with one stone, a central publication of results and the ability to have more dynamic yardsticks. They way the current system works means that any change to performance may take several years before the averaging and algorithm catches up. Maybe that is a good thing, as it means temporarily some classes get a boost when they make a change. For instance, I suspect the recent good showing of Phantoms in handicap events could be related to the current rig allowing lighter people to sail this powerful boat,and the fact that they are winning or at the top, starts to attract sailors etc. I'm even tempted, but I want an excuse to loose weight not and excuse to put it on.

Anyway, regarding the newsletters, I have put the subscribe page via the www.sailfun.co.uk on the basis that many of you have visisted that and perhaps trust it more than the .netii.net subdomain.

RYA will reveal the new PY figures at the dinghy show this weekend. They have taken into account the information submitted online I believe.

The 2010 RYA published Merlin PY is.... 1006!
Comments invited....

To save you drilling down, try the link below.

Those who have subscribed to the daily e-mail, are you actually getting the daily e-mails.
Just wanted to check. e-mail me directly if you are not getting any.
Thanks

yes thank you.

dv