Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

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dl1911
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Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by dl1911 »

Yes, I know it's loved by many IDPA/USPSA match/program directors, but from a shooter's persepctive, it sucks. Why even register on their site when it doesn't help at all? Want to see the matches that you've registered for through the site? Nope. Come time for squadding, can you do it through the web site? Nope, don't lose that email with the link or you're SOL. Maybe for the scores being posted to a match you signed up for through the site? Nope. Better hope you can figure out what the director calls the match or something similar or you may never find out how you did unless you go through a lot of match scores for that day (and there are a lot). Don't even bother with the app for your smart phone if you're expecting to use it to find matches or anything else. Once again, it's designed for the people running the match and there's nothing there for the typical shooter. It seems they've put all the energy into convincing hundreds of clubs to use it while not putting any though into the thousands of shooters who participate in the match.

If you're a Range/Safety officer working a match where they're using practiscore. Try and get every shooter to look over, review and approve what you've entered. Make sure you know how to enter the information as well. If there's a mistake, there's no way to see it later. Recently shot a match at a club using practiscore and tablets for the first time. No one in my squad was checking the tablet and don't think we were even offered the opportunity. Going forward, I'm going to insist on verifying it. From the scores that were posted ("only" took 2 days to find them), I can be pretty sure that a number was entered in the wrong place. Instead of 3 PD on one target, 3 PEs were entered. 1.5sec vs 9sec, so a fairly substantial difference! At this point, I have no faith in the scores from that match and they're worthless to me.

On a printed sheet handed back to me, I would have noticed it right off. In the past, I've sometimes taken a photo of my score sheet and friends have done the same. On a late lunch stop after the match, I'd enter them into a spreadsheet and we'd have bragging rights determined before the meal arrived. Actually caught a mistake once in what was posted and sent them the photo. They corrected it and reposted the scores. But with everything electronic, no chance of that if you don't take the time to verify the scoring right there as you're winding down from the stage.

For now, knowing that there was at least that one very big mistake, I have to wonder how many other mistakes were made and if the staff had any idea how to use the tablets. I do know the R/SOs will probably not care for me the next match. I'll be a real pain with insisting to see the tablet and verify the scores! If it bothers them enough, well, doesn't do me any good to shoot a match to see how I'm performing if I can't trust the results.

For now, I'm glad that most of the clubs and matches I shoot don't use practiscore and the tablets to score the match. If you go to a club that is using it and the tablets for scoring, make sure you verify what they've entered for every stage before they start the next shooter. After unload and show clear, you should have been walking with them and verifying the targets and scoring. It used to be you could check the scoresheet for everything after that. Now, you'll have to have them show you what they've entered into the tablet. If they won't, have a talk with the program director at the club.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by Brian D. »

Not too familiar with this but your description fills in the major blanks for me pretty well.

In yon olden days, one could go to an out of town club, shoot the centers out of the targets with great rapidity, only to get "homered" by the locals when totaled results were mailed out a few weeks later. Some of us "ringers" from Cincinnati were discussing a club about 50 miles away and reckoned that place was making a habit of cheating us.

Took some scheming but we managed to get their USPSA charter yanked a couple months later. That set off a chain of events that caused the entire gun club to go under.

If in doubt, verify and document your scores whenever it seems prudent.
Quit worrying, hide your gun well, shut up, and CARRY that handgun!

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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by Brian D. »

Of course, what you describe COULD just be ineptitude, honest mistakes.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by dl1911 »

Brian D. wrote:Of course, what you describe COULD just be ineptitude, honest mistakes.
I'm sure they were honest mistakes on the scoring of the match. Just annoyed with what I'm sure are growing pains. The shortcomings of practiscore from a shooter's standpoint do remain though. If you're going to have people sign up for your site, you should be doing a little more for them. Give them an easy way to see all the matches they've signed up to shoot, squading through the website and not a link, automatically show scores for the matches you've shot. Did find a way to list the scores from PCSI several weeks ago but nothing about the one I just shot.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by MyWifeSaidYes »

I would say Practiscore is still in beta, considering all the changes and tweaks they mention on their FB page.

Contact them and let them know what you need to see as a shooter.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by dl1911 »

MyWifeSaidYes wrote:I would say Practiscore is still in beta, considering all the changes and tweaks they mention on their FB page.

Contact them and let them know what you need to see as a shooter.
I've been working on a list! Not sure what they'll do though as they really market to the clubs and program directors. Even though it's free, that's their "client." Thought it might go better if they came from one or more clubs that were using it.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by MyWifeSaidYes »

dl1911 wrote:
MyWifeSaidYes wrote:I would say Practiscore is still in beta, considering all the changes and tweaks they mention on their FB page.

Contact them and let them know what you need to see as a shooter.
I've been working on a list! Not sure what they'll do though as they really market to the clubs and program directors. Even though it's free, that's their "client." Thought it might go better if they came from one or more clubs that were using it.
I think they'll realize that the donations they are seeking will come from the shooters, or rather they won't if the shooters don't like the app.

It certainly can't hurt to point out any shooter-side failings to each and every club-side entity. :twisted:
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by Dave Shooter »

dl1911 wrote:
If you're a Range/Safety officer working a match where they're using practiscore. Try and get every shooter to look over, review and approve what you've entered. Make sure you know how to enter the information as well. If there's a mistake, there's no way to see it later. Recently shot a match at a club using practiscore and tablets for the first time. No one in my squad was checking the tablet and don't think we were even offered the opportunity. Going forward, I'm going to insist on verifying it.

I'll be a real pain with insisting to see the tablet and verify the scores! If it bothers them enough, well, doesn't do me any good to shoot a match to see how I'm performing if I can't trust the results.
Here's how we did it when I worked a major last year. I brought the shooter back to the stage table. I read aloud as I transcribed from the iPad to their paper copy, "twelve alpha, three charlie, time, etc". Then turn both the paper and iPad to the shooter; "initial here please and hit enter." They have been presented both paper and trons for verification, and the shooter hitting enter makes their score official.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by landrvrnut22 »

Don't worry, it sucks for those running he match too. Last time took me 2 weeks to upload scores. One match the scores say they uploaded, but have disappeared completely. :evil:
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by Bruenor »

I always make sure I am walking with the RSO during scoring, Can't contest a score once a target has been pasted. The RSO Should be calling out the scores, and the scorekeeper with the tablet should be calling the scores back to the RSO. and I'm visually verifying the targets while this is going on. Once scoring is complete that should be stated by the scorekeeper, and the tablet shown to the shooter in review mode to verify entries before the score is saved. If the shooter is nowhere around at this point, the review step is often skipped to save match time. If the shooter has no interest in viewing the tablet, it's not the Score keepers job to run him down.
If that is not how the match is being run, I would have a talk with the match director.

it IS possible to go back and look at a previously scored stage in practiscore. you can make corrections on that previously scored stage, and in the newer versions that shooter is marked as being edited.

I shoot regularly at 5 different clubs that all use practiscore and have not run into any scoring related issues that were not self inflicted. The app does what it supposed to with the data that is entered. Your thought that the scorekeeper didn't know how to properly enter data into practiscore is probably spot on.

I do agree it would be nice if your login on the practiscore website you could see all the matches you are registered for or easily view scores from previous matches. Luckily the clubs I shoot at are consistent with the names the matches are posted under and are easily found using the search function for looking up scores. One of the clubs I shoot at exports the data as a spread sheet and posts it to their own website to make it easy to look at all your recent matches there.

As for squadding for matches, that is done when we register for the match, If selecting your squad is not being presented as an option when you register for the match, I think that has to do with how the match director setup the match on the practiscore website.

It's not a perfect system, but it does save our match director a lot of time when he's dealing with over 100 shooters for each match. He doesn't get paid, so anything that helps him run the match and keeps it going is a good thing imho. a day or so to get scores is far better than the week or more it used to take for them to enter all the paper score sheets into a spreadsheet to be calculated, then posted.. that's a lot of someones time.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by BadCrosshairDay »

I was reminded of this thread when I used the site just now. There doesn't seem to be the capability to search for matches by location.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by BadCrosshairDay »

Specifically, what I tried to do is search for matches in Ohio.

(Double post because I am unable to edit previous one)
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by dl1911 »

BadCrosshairDay wrote:Specifically, what I tried to do is search for matches in Ohio.

(Double post because I am unable to edit previous one)
I'll add that to the list of items in the email I'm working on to send them.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by Bruenor »

not as convenient, but you can search for clubs and matches by location on both the IDPA and USPSA sites.
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Re: Rant on why I do not care for Practiscore

Post by jobu72 »

I must admit, the site does have quite a learning curve for us first time users of it. It is has a ways to go to be more user friendly. Hopefully they will get there.

As a side note, one of my scores from that last match had a very impressive shoot time of 0.7 seconds. I assumed it was supposed to be 7 seconds so I informed the match manager and he fixed it pretty quickly.
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