Anomaly in Associations and Summits

Was looking at the tables that show your activations and chases for each country and region. All associations that I have activated in show the activations and chases for each summit except for Wales which only shows chases. Has anyone else noticed this?

This is the new 2018 version of Trivial Pursuits isn’t it? You say there’s a problem but don’t say which website, webpage you were looking at nor which browser and OS you were using. Now everyone else can take a guess or maybe you could fill in the blanks. :roll_eyes:

Sarcasm really becomes you Andy

5 Likes

Hi Esther

GW works for me Win 10/Chrome…and other associations.

Thanks for all the contacts yesterday AND over the last few weeks during my EI and G/DC activations.

73 Allan GW4VPX

1 Like

Thank you Allen! Can’t be my Mac etc as every other associationis showing activations and chasers! And many thanks for your EI summits - those squares gave me my first award in the WAI scheme!!
Esther
GI0AZA

1 Like

The members of the MT are not sat inside your head Esther, we can’t look through your eyes and see what you are seeing to know which webpage you are looking at. Hence, if you don’t tell us then we have to make some guesses and do some digging. But most importantly if you don’t give chapter and verse we have to SPEND OUR OWN TIME trying to find out what the problem is before we can fix it.

But it’s not just you. There are a never ending stream of people with questions and problems and none of us have the time to spend trying to help people who can’t provide the basic information. People who do provide information so that it’s easy to recreate the issue they are seeing get those issues resolved quickly.

You haven’t correctly setup your account. Edit it and check all the boxes are filled in as specified.

1 Like

Coincidentally, this issue happens to explain an oddity Caroline observed last night (activations using MO, MR and MQ prefixes missing from the list).

But it raises a question of design: Why do we have to enumerate our “alternative callsigns” for this feature to work?

We are always being told that activations are accounted to the person and not to the callsign used. My activations are all in the database under my account, so why can’t they be listed on that basis alone?

Moreover, different people can legitimately use the same callsign at different times. What if I’ve done some activations under a club callsign that has also been used by others? I can’t legitimately list it as an alternative callsign for me, because it’s not exclusively me.

Come on - surely this is just wrong. The database knows perfectly well what callsigns I’ve used for my activations - I shouldn’t have to tell it!

Martyn

1 Like

You mean like this GUI example:

m1maj_example

or this quick extract from the db showing every callsign variation you’ve used for SOTA:

Callsign
M1MAJ/M
M1MAJ/P
MM1MAJ/P
MW1MAJ/P
MR1MAJ/P
MQ1MAJ/P
MO1MAJ/P
MD1MAJ/P
MI1MAJ/P

or this for Esther:

Callsign
GI0AZA/P
G0AZA/P
GW0AZA/P
EI/GI0AZA/P
GM0AZA/P
ZL/GI0AZA/P
EI/G0AZA/P
G0I0AZA/P
HB9/G0AZA/P

leading nicely to my all-time favourite, for John G4YSS:

Callsign
GW4YSS
G4YSS
GM4YSS/P
GM4YSS
GX0OOO/P
GX0OOO
GS0OOO/P
G4YSS/P
GC0OOO/P
GX7OOO/P
GX4BP/P
GW4YSS/P
GQ0OOO/P
GO0OOO/P
GV0OOO/P
EA8/M1NNN/P
CT9/M1NNN/P
GT0OOO/P

Is that the kind of thing you mean?

1 Like

Exactly so. It seems obvious to me that it is possible to get this right, and equally obvious that the region display page hosted at www.sota.ac.uk is doing the wrong database query behind the scenes. I can’t imagine why anybody would think that having to enumerate the callsigns you’ve used as part of your account profile was a good idea. Maybe I’m missing something…

Martyn

1 Like

It gets better - the only way to identify which header records in the database actually belong to activations, and not to chases, is by nulling out those which DO belong to chases.

Well, yeah, stands to reason right? Uuuhhh, right?

1 Like

Detail… :slight_smile:

I’d have thought that would be a crack that could be papered over by providing a “view”. But obviously you know more about the schema than I do. I can’t see it - I can only infer things about it from observed behaviour (and occasional misbehaviour).

Martyn

1 Like

You know, I’m finding it pretty hard to believe you guys!

Martyn, you are so often highly critical of issues that most of us find obscure and certainly irrelevant to the day to day enjoyment of SOTA. You obviously have a vision of a perfect (for you) SOTA infrastructure but I wonder how much of the current operation, maintenance and expansion of SOTA you would be prepared to sacrifice and for how long to see this vision realised?

Look, we know that SOTA has been going for 16 years, and even I know that 16 years is aons of time in terms of IT. So the SOTA infrastructure creaks, having been cobbled together over many years by a number of people, so perhaps it is held together by a multitude of patches - but I have to ask, how does this affect the day to day enjoyment of chasing and activating by thousands of hams worldwide? How many of us go raking through the database with a fine tooth comb looking for anomalies to complain about? Dam’ few, I’m sure!

I find this sort of thing irritating if not downright annoying. If you find a problem why not just communicate it quietly to the people in a position to do something about it, instead of making a parade of your superior knowledge and wisdom on the reflector?

Been there, done that. No effect.

Sometimes one thinks that opening the lid of the jar might actually get somebody to clean the contents of the jar. Worth trying a few times. Been there, done that.

I feel for you, Brian, I really do. Try stroking a rhododendron, you’ll feel better in no time.

I’m so outrageously clever and wise :brain::brain::brain::brain::brain:, I’ve only just scratched the surface, Brian.

1 Like

Well, you’re certainly somewhat skillfull at the outrageous! :grinning: However, in my climate I don’t expect to see any rhododendron flowers before the end of February so I’ll stroke the cat instead!

Seriously, though, I read the moans in this thread and ask myself how do these alleged problems degrade my enjoyment of SOTA, and conclude that they don’t, not in the slightest.

Look, it is wet and miserable outside, in what I and my climber friends used to call the “padding season” (don’t ask me why!) when the rocks were too wet and greasy to climb on and the white stuff hadn’t appeared to demand the bite of an ice axe, and a weekend in the mountains meant splashing about on low level walks if you could face the rain and sleet. They call it “cabin fever”, a time when, balked of the enjoyment of outdoors life, the mind turns inward and worries at trivialities.

Perhaps it isn’t me that should be stroking a rhodie or the cat!:wink:

There I was, frittering away yet another hour, adding to the thousands already spent in building and maintaining sotamaps, trying now to find ways to replace Google Maps with an alternative. And there you are, with the world laying heavily on your shoulders:

And I thought I had problems! Brian, get out in the rain and stomp in a few big puddles. Does wonders for the spirit.

1 Like

Quick fix that has persisted longer than expected I think Martyn. Handling UK callsign formats is painful, well all callsigns are painfull (c.f. CEPT, portable, mobile etc. )

Just noticed this (sorry trying to do 3 things at once here)

Except it’s not the database doing this.

The website does count a statistic incorrectly for me (and presumably others) due to this. I have used club callsigns MX1SWL/P (ISWL) and GX4MWS/P (Macclesfield & DRS) for activations - but so have other people. So I do have these listed amongst my callsigns, but this causes one of my counts to include a couple of activations another club member did under one of the club callsigns.

It’s a slight error, and would be nice to have eliminated - but it doesn’t cause me any lack of sleep - mainly because the Database itself is also able to provide those statistics - and is always correct. So if I require this sort of information, I always go directly to the Database.

These are the only call signs that I have listed in my user profile G0AZA,GM0AZA,EI/G0AZA.
However the HB9, ZL/GI0, EI/GI0 etc still show on the listings.

It’s only UK calls you need to enter. As I said Jon added it as a quick fix. The data is visible in the database in a slightly different form where it doesn’t need this extra. IIRC, it wasn’t available in the database when Jon did this and as you can get the data from the horse’s mouth and he’s a very busy man, the need to fix this is down the list.