A couple of weeks ago it was mentioned how far ahead of its time the IBM
Web coverage of the Atlanta Olympics was. I agree that it was excellent,
except for access speed. One other disturbing feature was that the site
disappeared just a week or two afterwards. There was still a mine of
information which I wanted to access for statistical purposes. Unless
someone made a private copy of the site (which I have not heard is the
case) these data are lost.
Now we have the excellent Web coverage of the USOT, with even the
reaction time graphs for the starts. This is absolutely vital historical
and statistical information for our sport and should be maintained for
ever. Can anyone confirm that these data will remain accessible for more
than a week or two? If they are also going to disappear, I think that
there should be an effort (by the ATFS?) to provide a site where they can
be archived.
David Dallman
On Wed, 26 Jul 2000 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> Since I've been critical in the past, I should only be willing to
> congratulate successful efforts to make results available online in a timely
> manner. I'm referring to the recently completed Olympic Trials in
> Sacramento, which as far as I can tell became the first U.S. Olympic Trials
> or U.S. outdoor national championship to be able to do so.
>
> Thank you very much to all those involved. It appears that the credit for
> the official site (trials.dataclarity.com) goes to Finishlynx -- if others
> were also involved, thanks to you as well. It was very well done and, most
> importantly, was large enough to handle requests at the peak times (i.e.,
> during the meet).
>
> For those of us unfortunate not to be able to attend the meet, but still
> intensely interested in following it, the Dataclarity site worked
> wonderfully. Other sites provided commentary, pictures, and/or unofficial
> results -- these were nice as well, but somewhat slower or with too much
> gimmicky graphics.
>
> Whoever puts on future outdoor NCAA or USATF meets, please use the same
> system and server that was used here.
>
> -- Howard Willman
>
