Changing rules on the fly!

Walla Walla · Post by **Walla Walla** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 4:53 pm

Greg, My last question was a softball. Now to the real point. If you have rules than you have to stick to them. If it just happens to be the second place team in the overall complaining on the messege board it doesn't matter. The rules are the rules. Telling one group oops better luck next week. Than extending the deadline the next week has pretty much made a joke of the bidding rules. Yeah I know Stats will fix it. For four years I've heard that. The phone rule was a joke. No one phones in thier picks. The point was the system fails alot. Than you bend the rules for the top runners. If the system fails than fix the rules to account for it. Please don't give me the Stats says it'll never happen again. It always happens again.

KJ Duke · Post by **KJ Duke** » Mon Aug 06, 2007 6:07 pm

Originally posted by Walla Walla:

Greg, My last question was a softball. Now to the real point. If you have rules than you have to stick to them. If it just happens to be the second place team in the overall complaining on the messege board it doesn't matter. The rules are the rules. Telling one group oops better luck next week. Than extending the deadline the next week has pretty much made a joke of the bidding rules.

Walla, you are so off base with this statement ... why would you make a statement implying something that you know isn't true?

Greg explained all of this as clear as anyone possibly could. Last week he tried to stop the process in time to fix it, but was unable to. He said then he would stay on top on it if it happened again. It did, and he handled it exactly as he said he would. Move on, there is nothing here to complain about. It's not a perfect world; you need to allow people slack when they're doing their best.

Quahogs · Post by **Quahogs** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 2:28 am

Walla -

unforeseen circumstances like sunday require a dynamic approach. You need someone to remain fluid and get jiggy with the situation. Ying requires yang, not some a staid static non- response. Ya follow ?

Q

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 4:11 am

Originally posted by Walla Walla:

Greg, My last question was a softball. Now to the real point. If you have rules than you have to stick to them. If it just happens to be the second place team in the overall complaining on the messege board it doesn't matter. The rules are the rules. Telling one group oops better luck next week. Than extending the deadline the next week has pretty much made a joke of the bidding rules. Yeah I know Stats will fix it. For four years I've heard that. The phone rule was a joke. No one phones in thier picks. The point was the system fails alot. Than you bend the rules for the top runners. If the system fails than fix the rules to account for it. Please don't give me the Stats says it'll never happen again. It always happens again.

Again, it's fine to question our judgement or the decisions we made the last two Sundays when the system was obviously faulty. I'll say it again, I DID ask STATS to not release the winning bids last Sunday and to figure out what was slowing down the system an hour before our deadline and I was unable to get in touch with them. They ran the winning bids before they ever received my e-mail to tell them to stop. It had nothing to do with who was complaining about the faulty system as I tried my best to contact STATS and to extend the deadline that night.

This Sunday, I got in touch with STATS at 5:10 p.m. CST after folks e-mailed me (I didn't have MB access), they said there was no problem and by 5:30 they were back in touch with me to tell me they had found the glitch. We agreed to fix it at the top of the hour, to extend the deadline since it was obvious that the last hour was faulty and to make the e-mail changes once the system was fixed. That happened at 6:15 p.m. CST and it took us one hour to manually enter all of the e-mail bids, which allowed the system to be open for everyone.

Those are the facts and from what I can tell everyone had the same amount of time to place their bids this week as past weeks. Yes, it was open one extra hour, but the system was also basically down for one hour (from 6-7 p.m. EST). So we adjusted and nobody gained an advantage. It's not like a player got hurt during that time or a game result affected bidding during that time. We just allowed every NFBC owner a chance to still get their bids in on time and I wish we could have offered the same luxury the week before. Trust me, I wanted to extend the deadline the week before, too.

Again, I have no problem with people second-guessing the decisions we make when there are technical problems. I don't enjoy these technical glitches either, but when I'm put in a spot where there are glitches it's my job to figure out what to do next. And extending the deadline was the only other option we had as we allowed folks to e-mail me their bids and then we went in and placed them after the glitch was fixed.

Some folks don't like STATS and honestly we've had glitches throughout the four years of the NFBC. But so have other commissioner products as this isn't a foolproof system. Glitches happen, but STATS is hired to make our system as foolproof as possible. I continue to support them as our back-end provider and I think they've made several great changes to our game this year. Now it's time to get past these Sunday delays and make FAAB a smooth process like it's always been before.

Thanks for the feedback. It's always appreciated.

Spyhunter · Post by **Spyhunter** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:17 am

Greg,

If we could add the capability to type in a name while adding free agents to a conditional bid list (instead of having to use the various drop down filters and page to the right person), that would be very helpful. The amount of time it takes to update / manage conditional bid lists is a TON!!!

Spy

Quahogs · Post by **Quahogs** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 8:27 am

Originally posted by Spyhunter:

Greg,

If we could add the capability to type in a name while adding free agents to a conditional bid list (instead of having to use the various drop down filters and page to the right person), that would be very helpful. The amount of time it takes to update / manage conditional bid lists is a TON!!!

Spy I couldn't agree more. Kind of a one stop shop as opposed to running down the aisle again and again for the same thing.

Q

Greg Ambrosius · Post by **Greg Ambrosius** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:27 am

Originally posted by Spyhunter:

Greg,

If we could add the capability to type in a name while adding free agents to a conditional bid list (instead of having to use the various drop down filters and page to the right person), that would be very helpful. The amount of time it takes to update / manage conditional bid lists is a TON!!!

Spy I've sent the request to STATS, along with another one from KJ Duke. Thanks.

Nutty Scrats · Post by **Nutty Scrats** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 9:35 am

I think if stats has a problem with the system a global email should have been sent out stating that stats had a problem with the system and the deadline has been extended to at least midnight PST (or whatever time) to accomadate any Sunday problems that may have arrived. Just posting this on the message board isn't enough to notify all people of any problems. Every participant should at least receive an email letting them know a problem has occurred and here is what is happening to correct the problem. I don't think everyone checks the message board on a daily basis but may check their email daily. Just a thought.

sportsbettingman · Post by **sportsbettingman** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 3:02 pm

Java!

Big Mac Attack · Post by **Big Mac Attack** » Tue Aug 07, 2007 6:14 pm

Originally posted by Nutty Scrat:

I think if stats has a problem with the system a global email should have been sent out stating that stats had a problem with the system and the deadline has been extended to at least midnight PST (or whatever time) to accomadate any Sunday problems that may have arrived. Just posting this on the message board isn't enough to notify all people of any problems. Every participant should at least receive an email letting them know a problem has occurred and here is what is happening to correct the problem. I don't think everyone checks the message board on a daily basis but may check their email daily. Just a thought. Great point!

As one of the "silent majority" that doesn't necessarily get to spend much time on the boards, I would definitely prefer an email blast when/if problems arise. Greg and crew have always been good to include proposed rule changes, etc that may generate from message board discussion in some form of email. However problems such as these, that evolve over a short length of time, are not discussed anywhere except the message boards.

Using the board as the primary tool to send info makes sense b/c of the quick turnaround, and I suppose the case could be made that everyone should just gravitate to the boards when things aren't working correctly (and I typically do). But, whenever possible, it would seem helpful for some type of initial notification to go out via email to let as many customers as possible know of the problem, and that they should look for updates on the message board.

Nutty Scrats · Post by **Nutty Scrats** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 12:33 am

Originally posted by sportsbettingman:

Java! Corona!!!

Spyhunter · Post by **Spyhunter** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 3:36 am

Originally posted by Greg Ambrosius:

quote:Originally posted by Spyhunter:

Greg,

If we could add the capability to type in a name while adding free agents to a conditional bid list (instead of having to use the various drop down filters and page to the right person), that would be very helpful. The amount of time it takes to update / manage conditional bid lists is a TON!!!

Spy I've sent the request to STATS, along with another one from KJ Duke. Thanks. [/QUOTE]Thanks! one of the limiting factors around participating more in NFBC is time to manage free agents. This will be another big step forward in reducing time.

Spy

Sheep · Post by **Sheep** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 5:57 am

If we could add the capability to type in a name while adding free agents to a conditional bid list (instead of having to use the various drop down filters and page to the right person), that would be very helpful. The amount of time it takes to update / manage conditional bid lists is a TON!!!

I add a conditional bid on an early player in the list (close in Alpha) and scroll up/down to the player I want.

ToddZ · Post by **ToddZ** » Wed Aug 08, 2007 6:43 am

Another option is to filter by the last period's AB or IP and the current active players always remain on the first page when doing conditionals.