Wouldn't it be nice if Iron Chefs had a "builds summary" in the OP?

[Uncle Pine]

I haven't participated in any of the various Iron Chef competitions as of yet, but I find them both interesting and inspiring to read. In fact, I have scourged finished competitions for builds to use as PCs or NPCs alike in the past and I'll most likely keep doing it! There's only one little problem in this... most competitions have threads that are at least 8 pages long, often 12 or 13 pages, and it's never really clear-cut as to where builds start or stop being posted.

Now, I'm not going to ask if it's possible to go back to the threads of the almost 100 past competitions (and that's only counting the original Iron Chef series) and add a build summary with links to the entries under that "The Builds" field that I've always seen empty, as that'd require a lot of time and it would without doubt be quite selfish of me, but how about we start doing that from now on? Going back to the past threads would be a titanic task, but adding a dozen links to a message at the end of future competitions seems much more manageable. What do you think?


Tl;dr I believe making adding links to the entries of every competitions to the OP a staple in the format of future "Iron Chef" threads (and the like) would increase accessibility to said threads by a huge margin. Do you agree? Do you think it's feasible?

[Goladar]

Affirmative

[lylsyly]

Thirded, for all the reasons Uncle Pine stated.

[Zaq]

I agree with you, especially after building Cocus Ferrea (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20312808&postcount=127) (a build where I wrote a story about hunting down and eating nine previous gold medalist characters from earlier competitions). I just started chairing the E6 Appetizer competitions, but I’ve put links to the builds in the OP of my two competitions to date.

That said, now that I’ve done so, I recognize that it’s actually quite a lot of work. Mostly because making tables with forum code is kind of a nightmare, but even beyond that, corralling and posting all the builds is a nontrivial effort, and adding an extra step to Reveal Day isn’t always fun. So I’m not going to get too judgmental about competitions that don’t, especially since bigger competitions take more work in the first place.

Speaking of not getting too judgmental, you mentioned a summary. I’ve tried to post at least the class/race stub, but summarizing what the build does is actually kind of dangerous. A handful of rounds ago in the main competition, Darrin posted (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21950524&postcount=139) a table of the builds and included a column for each build’s shtick, giving a brief and pithy summary of the main trick being presented. I thought that was delightful and thought about applying it when making my tables in the E6 threads, but I quickly realized that it might not be smart for the Chair to do that, lest they offer the appearance of putting a thumb on the scale for one build over another by giving one build a punchier explanation. It’s fine for a judge or a spectator (probably the latter) to summarize like that, but it likely shouldn’t be tasked to the Chair.

Who’s the current Keeper of The Spreadsheet? Pretty sure there’s a spreadsheet out there somewhere that compiles all the rounds and builds, but I forget if it links directly to the builds themselves. That could be a tool to help look up earlier rounds, at least.

[Palanan]

Agreed completely.

Like the OP, I've often looked through for useful builds, but it can be really frustrating to poke through pages and pages of banter and judging issues in search of the particular page where a build is posted.

I find the Villainous Competition especially interesting and useful, and I've made the suggestion before about posting a link to the builds. Like the OP, I understand this would take a lot of work for archived threads, but it would be really helpful to have easy links in future competitions.

Alternatively, maybe we could have a separate thread where the competitors link to their builds as posted in the competition threads? That would spread the effort pretty evenly, so instead of a single person like Thurbane having to do all the work, each competitor could just link to their individual builds in the new thread. Sort of a compilation thread for finished entries, perhaps.

[Uncle Pine]

I agree with you, especially after building Cocus Ferrea (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=20312808&postcount=127) (a build where I wrote a story about hunting down and eating nine previous gold medalist characters from earlier competitions). I just started chairing the E6 Appetizer competitions, but I’ve put links to the builds in the OP of my two competitions to date.

That said, now that I’ve done so, I recognize that it’s actually quite a lot of work. Mostly because making tables with forum code is kind of a nightmare, but even beyond that, corralling and posting all the builds is a nontrivial effort, and adding an extra step to Reveal Day isn’t always fun. So I’m not going to get too judgmental about competitions that don’t, especially since bigger competitions take more work in the first place.

Speaking of not getting too judgmental, you mentioned a summary. I’ve tried to post at least the class/race stub, but summarizing what the build does is actually kind of dangerous. A handful of rounds ago in the main competition, Darrin posted (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=21950524&postcount=139) a table of the builds and included a column for each build’s shtick, giving a brief and pithy summary of the main trick being presented. I thought that was delightful and thought about applying it when making my tables in the E6 threads, but I quickly realized that it might not be smart for the Chair to do that, lest they offer the appearance of putting a thumb on the scale for one build over another by giving one build a punchier explanation. It’s fine for a judge or a spectator (probably the latter) to summarize like that, but it likely shouldn’t be tasked to the Chair.

Who’s the current Keeper of The Spreadsheet? Pretty sure there’s a spreadsheet out there somewhere that compiles all the rounds and builds, but I forget if it links directly to the builds themselves. That could be a tool to help look up earlier rounds, at least.

Maybe I should've been clearer, but when I said summary I simply meant somewhere you could find all the entries in the same place. The table Darrin wrote is indeed a detailed summary, but it's also in post #139 on the 5th page (out of 7) of a thread. Moreover, as you mentioned, a detailed summary can indeed risk being partial because you're describing a build rather than just directing a reader to it.
Here's what I had in mind as a "summary", using Iron Chef Optimization Challenge in the Playground LVI (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?342807-Iron-Chef-Optimization-Challenge-in-the-Playground-LVI) as an example:

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402544&postcount=211
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=212
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=213
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=214
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=215
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=216
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=217
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=218
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=219
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=220
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=221
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=222
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=223
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=224
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=225
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=226
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=227
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=228
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=229
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=230
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=17402547&postcount=231
Now that looks like a huge list, but making it became a lot faster once I realized I could just copy one URL and paste it 20 times changing only 2 numbers to it since all the builds are posted in consecutive posts.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Uncle Pine
The table Darrin wrote is indeed a detailed summary, but it's also in post #139 on the 5th page (out of 7) of a thread. Moreover, as you mentioned, a detailed summary can indeed risk being partial because you're describing a build rather than just directing a reader to it.

This exactly. It can take a lot of hunting to find even one build, much less several. I know this from painful experience.


Originally Posted by Uncle Pine
Now that looks like a huge list, but making it became a lot faster once I realized I could just copy one URL and paste it 20 times changing only 2 numbers to it since all the builds are posted in consecutive posts.

This may be a little easier in principle, but it still means a lot of work for just one or two people.

As I mentioned above, I think it would be simpler and much easier for the various contestants to each post a link to their build from a separate thread, maybe a Build Compilation thread or something like that. That might need a little curating itself, but it spreads the copy-pasting workload much more equitably.

[Uncle Pine]

As I mentioned above, I think it would be simpler and much easier for the various contestants to each post a link to their build from a separate thread, maybe a Build Compilation thread or something like that. That might need a little curating itself, but it spreads the copy-pasting workload much more equitably.

The problem I see with that finding all the, say, Dwarven Defenders from such a threads in all the different posts from the various users and put them together into a single post on another thread takes as much work, if not more, from finding any single build in the Dwarven Defender thread and then just go back a page to see where the chairman started posting builds. In fact, it's a lot more work than doing the latter when we're talking about a competition whose builds have just been posted because they're the latest things in the thread, or close to being that.

[Palanan]

What I mean is for each person who posted one of those builds to post a link in a separate thread. That way there's no one person doing all the finding and linking; it's one person per link, so the task is distributed and it's very little work for any one person.

[The Viscount]

Who’s the current Keeper of The Spreadsheet? Pretty sure there’s a spreadsheet out there somewhere that compiles all the rounds and builds, but I forget if it links directly to the builds themselves. That could be a tool to help look up earlier rounds, at least.

I guess technically still OMGPonies, but it's a collaborative sheet, so if people want to join in adding entries I can give permissions.

The sheet is currently up to date thanks to the efforts of Wolfem, and can be found here. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oyjVU5JmeCnC8YTMqDArDqE5PszHl0Ysadz630kuTGk/edit?ts=59a4835f#gid=0)

If it's a big enough concern for visibility we can ask Heliomance to add a link to the OP of Iron Chef.

[Darrin]

This exactly. It can take a lot of hunting to find even one build, much less several. I know this from painful experience.


Hoo boy, yes... It takes a lot of time to track down a specific entry! Many, many times I have contemplated asking the chairperson to add links to the builds in the first post. But I haven't... because it's a LOT of work. So what I do instead is I try to post a table as the judges weigh in, and I make sure there's a link back to each build. That way I know I can go to the end of the thread, look for the final rankings table, and get to the builds that way. (The chairperson usually grabs the table code from whoever did the last table... Usually, but not always, that's me.)

And yeah, one table I added a column for the schtick or summary... But it's hard to be witty and accurately describe each build. Can you imagine trying to do that with the Anointed Knight round? *shudder*

Hmm. I suppose we could start a new thread, post the code for the links, and then ask the chairs (current and former) to copy the links to the first post. There's also the Iron Chef Deep Freeze (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?422395-Iron-Chef-Deep-Freeze) project? For fixing the old table code?

Or just a new thread with the links? Could work either way. Easier if everyone pitches in, except the Deep Freeze project kinda sputtered out.

[Thurbane]

I started to do something similar when I was chairing Villainous Comp.

[The Viscount]

If you just want to make a thread with the links the spreadsheet has every single one. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oyjVU5JmeCnC8YTMqDArDqE5PszHl0Ysadz630kuTGk/edit?ts=59a4835f#gid=0)

[Uncle Pine]

I guess technically still OMGPonies, but it's a collaborative sheet, so if people want to join in adding entries I can give permissions.

The sheet is currently up to date thanks to the efforts of Wolfem, and can be found here. (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1oyjVU5JmeCnC8YTMqDArDqE5PszHl0Ysadz630kuTGk/edit?ts=59a4835f#gid=0)

If it's a big enough concern for visibility we can ask Heliomance to add a link to the OP of Iron Chef.

Oh Pelor, all my yes! That spreadsheet looks AMAZING. It's exactly the titanic amount of work I was only dreaming about- and it's already been done!

I believe linking the spreadsheet in the OP of Iron Chef would definitely solve the accessibility problem. I don't know if something like this has been done for the other Iron Chef-like competitions or if there even is a list of said competitions (or at least of those that have been running for a while, villanous competition and zinc saucier stand out in my mind), but I'd say since they are likely not close to the amount of editions of Iron Chef it'll suffice that chairmen for those start putting links in their OP. It's a little extra work but everyone will definitely appreciate it.



I started to do something similar when I was chairing Villainous Comp.

That's great, thank you for your help! :smallsmile:

[Heliomance]

Spreadsheet is now linked in the Iron Chef OP

[The Viscount]

Much appreciated, Heliomance!