Sunday, November 29, 2009

Coin Counts

It is ever more clear that there are a multitude of problems with the IWON accounting of even individual coins accumulation. That is exacerbated by the absolute certainty that some of the individual coins are not being properly credited in the MVP races, and possibly not to the team for which one plays. I have had a personal case of near-certainty that my first day of play in January did not add to the team total, and wound up leaving, then re-joining Tigers in order to gain the certainty that they were from that point, credited. Although the team feed has improved so greatly that it now has become useful, there is still such a lack of transparency in the individual totals versus the credits awarded the team from those individuals, that I feel a need to push an earlier informal proposal for a solution to this issue.

This proposal has the advantage of allowing individual players to monitor their contributions to the team. That will relieve us, and IWON, of the vast number of complaints about what those contributions are. Better, when there is a problem, if this proposal is carried through to include the daily totals, both the date of the problem, and the extent of the problem, become visible to the individual. That is a detail of vast import in defining the cause of the problem and seeking to resolve it. It would allow the individual to file a useful complaint - errr, "question" with support, and allow them to look at a specific portion of the log for confirmation or explanation.

Following is the text of the question filed to IWON support:

'090108-002647'

Highlighted by recent problems with team credit for individual player coins, we need a new tool from IWON. I suggest on the profile page, near the Team Name link, that those who are members of teams have a gadget added to show the current (MTD) coin credit contributed to the team by that player. Ideally, it would have a popup either showing or offering, a table by date of the days that month, with a coin total contributed for each.

That would relieve your support of the uncertainty of whether an individual's coins were credited for a given day, and would allow the player, upon review, to specify precisely the date in question, together with any supporting evidence (s)he may offer that the total is incorrect. The elimination of numerous ill-founded, or ill-documented, complaints that I know are being filed on this very issue, would offset the work involved in installing that feature.

Since there are most assuredly some of those complaints that are indeed well-founded, whether or not well-documented, those would be visible to address, leading possibly to getting the numbers right, and the process for accumulating the numbers right, for all time. Sorry, that sounds as though it might threaten downsizing the support staff - but there are so many other problems that require focused effort, that there is surely no immediate danger of staff cuts due to this implementation.

My next step is to see if some Team Founders and/or leaders from other teams will join Tigers in pushing this suggestion (unless I find a better suggestion from them, or other reader's comments).