The FIA already provides us with a handy guide to overall results in the form of a World Driver Championship table and although that might be fine for ordinary people it's simply not good enough for knowledgeable experts like us. So we have an abundance of scorecard threads which all seek to put a unique spin on the relative performances of the pilots employed by any given team. These try to take into account, variously, performance in testing, practice sessions, qualifying results, fastest laps, overtaking stats, catwalk profile, girlfriends, column inches, tweets, luck and even finishing position. Others will simply use a binary 1-0 system to cover the whole weekend, season or career because anything else, it doesn't matter.
The idea of the thread is not to mock or re-score the various scorecards but to evaluate and learn from the systems employed around the forum and from those who may not otherwise publish their views other than within the confines of a thread which a lot of other members will not visit because they have little interest in the team. Perhaps we can come up with a method which is fair and reasonable or which reflects some of the more subjective and nuanced opinions which people hold as well as the binary thinkers?
Specific rules for the thread in addition to the house rules are;
- Please don't just post your current score. Explain the system, say why you use it and why it is better than the FIA's or any of the others.
- This is not about discussing the FIA points system.
- It would be nice if we can have sensible ideas but feel free to contribute outlandish or heavily biassed systems if the mood takes you.
- Really stupid systems which stand up to challenge and scrutiny will win my enduring respect. Actually, any system which stands up to scrutiny will deserve serious respek all round but stupid ones are just that bit more special.
- Driver names are essentially irrelevant and therefore should be avoided as far as possible.
- If you offer a methodology and something happened which made you adopt that approach, please say what that was.
- Offering praise and encouragement to others is encouraged and praiseworthy.
- Critiquing a system should be done constructively. For example "1-0 does not reflect that driver B finished only 1s behind drive A" is better than "lol wut", "derp", or "I can haz cheesberger."
- As per rule #5, please don't mention driver names.
- If you think the thread is stupid, it probably is. It probably does not warrant your attention and definitely not a click on the reply button and any number of keystrokes to explain yourself. No, it's just too dumb for you so click the one-star rating and pass by. These are not the discussions you are looking for. <waves hand mysteriously>
- No, there is no poll.
- In view of rules #5 and #9, names of drivers should not be used.
- Oh OK then, If it is necessary to mention a driver name, it should be in the context of an illustrative incident or race and used to justify your scorecard and not to discuss the score.
- If Jonpollak contributes an asshat to the thread, it will be awarded to the post which mentions the most driver names and yet stays within these rules. Or it will be awarded to the post of his choice. To be honest, it's his asshat to hand out so I guess it goes where he wants it.
- People who break these rules are raving lunatics.
It's not easy to evaluate relative performance. A driver who finishes ahead of his teammate might still have gone backwards in the race and performed poorly relative to the other who came up from starting in the pitlane. A driver who finishes just behind the other may have been told to hold his position. Some will consider that three overtakes and a crash is better than going backwards but finishing. This will mean that there will be no 'right' answer but maybe lots of reasonable ones and certainly one that's better than the awful Castrol thing.
