This thread is in response to Jim Thorton's thread about his AA time being disallowed.I think that if a swimmer swims in a USMS sanctioned meet and that the time gets to the "official" Top Ten list that it should count.Otherwise one could go back and check the length of ,say the Amarillo pool from the first Masters Nationals and if it was 1 cm short disallow the swims.There must be a statute of limitations and I think it should be when the official TT times are posted.
Okay, super simple solution to this- how about just not accepting swims that come from pools with no measurement on file (for fixed wall pools) or not accompanied by pool length certification forms (for bulkheaded pools)?
Well that is already the rule, it is just how you interpret "on file with USMS," which is the phrase used in the rule book for both records and TT. Our current practice is basically: for records it means it must be in the central database, for non-record TTs it means on file with the LMSC (which are of course part of USMS).
Your suggestion is the direction we're heading. But IMO it would be too disruptive to do it all at once. Many meets would be excluded if we implemented that policy immediately and strictly; the outcry would likely dwarf what we have here. It isn't JUST a matter of work, getting all 52 LMSCs to change abruptly really is like herding cats. (But many of them DO in fact currently send in their measurements anyway.)
I think the national certification database needs to be cleaned up before it can play a bigger role. Right now the TTRs are reviewing the database and comparing it to their records, making corrections and sending in new info as they can. Consolidating records between a national database and 52 LMSCs is not a quick process, especially when some of the files in the LMSCs are old and undoubtedly lost due to TTR turnover. (And not all LMSCs use TTRs for this task anyway.)
And just this year we also changed the policy and the Guide To Operations for TTRs so that all new pool certifications, not just for pools that had records set, should be sent into Walt so that he can add them to the database. Walt tells me that these two changes have resulted in a surge of submissions of measurements to him; it's a start.
Maybe full implementation in E2EEM is not needed but it would help a lot. At the very least having the certification info in a real database, accessed thru a web form, would be a vast improvement over what we have now: an Excel spreadsheet that some people have trouble reading. The reason E2EEM implementation would be helpful is, among other things, it would standardize LMSC practices and (hopefully) force everybody to input measurements.
Realize also that currently the single most common "violation" of the LMSC Standards (ie, USMS' "best practices" document) is the timely uploading of meet results. I may be misremembering, but someone at Convention told me that compliance with the results standard (S8 on the standards document) is something like 50-60% by LMSC. Adding additional measurement requirements to the process thru E2EEM (ie, measurements must be included with the results) would make things worse.
Okay, super simple solution to this- how about just not accepting swims that come from pools with no measurement on file (for fixed wall pools) or not accompanied by pool length certification forms (for bulkheaded pools)?
Well that is already the rule, it is just how you interpret "on file with USMS," which is the phrase used in the rule book for both records and TT. Our current practice is basically: for records it means it must be in the central database, for non-record TTs it means on file with the LMSC (which are of course part of USMS).
Your suggestion is the direction we're heading. But IMO it would be too disruptive to do it all at once. Many meets would be excluded if we implemented that policy immediately and strictly; the outcry would likely dwarf what we have here. It isn't JUST a matter of work, getting all 52 LMSCs to change abruptly really is like herding cats. (But many of them DO in fact currently send in their measurements anyway.)
I think the national certification database needs to be cleaned up before it can play a bigger role. Right now the TTRs are reviewing the database and comparing it to their records, making corrections and sending in new info as they can. Consolidating records between a national database and 52 LMSCs is not a quick process, especially when some of the files in the LMSCs are old and undoubtedly lost due to TTR turnover. (And not all LMSCs use TTRs for this task anyway.)
And just this year we also changed the policy and the Guide To Operations for TTRs so that all new pool certifications, not just for pools that had records set, should be sent into Walt so that he can add them to the database. Walt tells me that these two changes have resulted in a surge of submissions of measurements to him; it's a start.
Maybe full implementation in E2EEM is not needed but it would help a lot. At the very least having the certification info in a real database, accessed thru a web form, would be a vast improvement over what we have now: an Excel spreadsheet that some people have trouble reading. The reason E2EEM implementation would be helpful is, among other things, it would standardize LMSC practices and (hopefully) force everybody to input measurements.
Realize also that currently the single most common "violation" of the LMSC Standards (ie, USMS' "best practices" document) is the timely uploading of meet results. I may be misremembering, but someone at Convention told me that compliance with the results standard (S8 on the standards document) is something like 50-60% by LMSC. Adding additional measurement requirements to the process thru E2EEM (ie, measurements must be included with the results) would make things worse.
