The new WTA website

indiana · Tennis legend

The new WTA website

steven · Tennis legend

insomniacfolder wrote:
I have now spent over 8 hours trying out, stress testing almost everything about the new website I can think of, and recording the results.

I have 137 consistent factual errors - where the website brings up incorrect information, in any context, every time, or where the functionality repeatedly doesn't work.
I have 54 consistent omissions of data previously available.
I have 87 minor quibble about stylistic content in the context of usability.

I have tried to contact the WTA, but one of the errors I have is that the contact form doesn't work!
Does anyone have a contact e-mail address for the WTA?

I'm decidedly anxious to contact them

I am very much a creature of habit, and relied on the WTA website to supplement and inform me about many things and facilitate the way I followed tennis - I probably visit it more than 50 times a day.
So, I say, in what I very clearly understand will almost certainly seem like a ridiculous over-reaction to any sane person, that if some of these things remain unresolved, then I don't think that I will be following tennis in 2013. So entrenched are my routines and so absolute my incapacity for change, I simply won't be able to. As I said, I know that seems unspeakably stupid, petulant even. Unfortunately, I don't think that this is the place to spend 10,000 words explaining it in full.

That's .. er .. conscientious in the extreme! But it does show quite how much they have inadvertently or deliberately (and seemingly completely pointlessly) sacrificed in pursuit of a couple of tiny improvements and a questionable improvement in looks. They do need to be told, at least about the most important things. If they hadn't gone live (i.e. if the front page still said the site was being updated like it did early yesterday) then I'd contact them now, but since it has gone live, it's either too late already or, if it isn't, then given that your list is so long, it's probably worth waiting a few days and letting them sort a few things out (maybe in response to other complaints) first so you don't have to send them quite so long a list.

Whatever happens, I hope you don't end up feeling like it's too much hassle to follow the WTA any more, but I must admit I nearly gave up the top 25 tables after the ITF fiasco, which certainly hasn't been put right - only one or two of the problems have been sorted out and the site is still is far slower and more crash-prone than it ever was before, making all the stats stuff still far more of a chore (and hence less fun) than it used to be.

That also means I am not as confident as one poster above that many of the problems on the WTA site will be put right either.

I might not mind quite so much if it wasn't for the fact that every time the ATP, WTA or ITF make a major change, the usability of the site concerned deteriorates. You'd think that they might once in a while manage to make it easier for those of us trying to provide more tailored info for people to help them follow things rather than harder, but apparently not ...

It's almost funny that one of the things that doesn't work is their contact page - there is a contact email address on the pdf version of the rankings (which is still available, at least for this week, even if the link to it has gone) at http://www.wtatennis.com/SEWTATour-Archive/Rankings_Stats/Singles_Numeric.pdf but if you do decide to write to Kelly Frey, I'd put only the rankings-specific stuff in there.

-- Edited by steven on Wednesday 12th of December 2012 04:39:12 PM

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

korriban wrote:
Blimey! I hope your local Tesco's or Sainsbury's doesn't reconfigure its aisle layout or we'll be sending you emergency food parcels!

smile

That actually wouldn't be a problem, acute agoraphobia means I don't leave the house. Thank goodness that supermarkets deliver, and computers allow me to work completely from home!

Steven: thank you for your wise counsel. I shall leave it alone for a couple of weeks - which will be excrutiating for me - and then perhaps try contacing them at the e-mail address you suggested, if I still feel it necessary.

Edit: Shamefully, I had initially spelt Steven's name incorrectly, with a 'ph' - I'm really sorry about that.

-- Edited by insomniacfolder on Thursday 13th of December 2012 01:09:13 AM

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

I have now spent over 8 hours trying out, stress testing almost everything about the new website I can think of, and recording the results.

I have 137 consistent factual errors - where the website brings up incorrect information, in any context, every time, or where the functionality repeatedly doesn't work.
I have 54 consistent omissions of data previously available.
I have 87 minor quibble about stylistic content in the context of usability.

I have tried to contact the WTA, but one of the errors I have is that the contact form doesn't work!
Does anyone have a contact e-mail address for the WTA?

I'm decidedly anxious to contact them

I am very much a creature of habit, and relied on the WTA website to supplement and inform me about many things and facilitate the way I followed tennis - I probably visit it more than 50 times a day.
So, I say, in what I very clearly understand will almost certainly seem like a ridiculous over-reaction to any sane person, that if some of these things remain unresolved, then I don't think that I will be following tennis in 2013. So entrenched are my routines and so absolute my incapacity for change, I simply won't be able to. As I said, I know that seems unspeakably stupid, petulant even. Unfortunately, I don't think that this is the place to spend 10,000 words explaining it in full.

Helen40 · Grand Slam Champion

Wow, IF, I admire your dedication! I have had a quick look and as you so eloquently say it's c**p!

Although not a big a fan as you are, it seems pretty rubbish at giving me simple lists by country, let alone being able to drill further without more grief. I'm just hoping that they're launching it off season, and as with the Roland Garros website which was bad during qualies but much better during the MD, this will be the case with this site too.

Josh · Challenger level

I've noticed in the new ranking breakdown pages they don't seem to be able to make the distinction between 128-player draws and 32-player draws. For example Laura's Guangzhou finalist result is listed as a QF, which is the corresponding round in a GS for 4 main draw wins and a defeat in the 5th match. Similarly Laura's SF at Palermo is listed as 4R, however Heather's title at Osaka is also down as a 4R which I can't work out.

Peter too · Tennis legend

This is clearly WTA's latest attempt at killing off its troublesome fan base. Their first attempt was when they threatened to sue anyone who published competition entries ahead of the tournament site or WTA site. That irritated a lot of people but didn't really stop them following tennis. What they really want is a business financed entirely by corporate sponsors who pay huge sums for seats at tournaments that they rarely use, no more than 100 players and certainly no pesky fans. So they are now making their site look pretty to attract corporate sponsors but make it as difficult as possible for fans to follow tennis. The ultimate measure of success will be when they can rip out all the seats at Wimbledon apart perhaps from a few in the Royal Box.

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

Steven, is coretennis.net any help? They also lack the ability to filter the rankings by country but may solve some of your other issues.

steven · Tennis legend

Peter too wrote:
This is clearly WTA's latest attempt at killing off its troublesome fan base. Their first attempt was when they threatened to sue anyone who published competition entries ahead of the tournament site or WTA site. That irritated a lot of people but didn't really stop them following tennis. What they really want is a business financed entirely by corporate sponsors who pay huge sums for seats at tournaments that they rarely use, no more than 100 players and certainly no pesky fans. So they are now making their site look pretty to attract corporate sponsors but make it as difficult as possible for fans to follow tennis. The ultimate measure of success will be when they can rip out all the seats at Wimbledon apart perhaps from a few in the Royal Box.

Obviously not true (at least, I hope not!) but they do give that impression sometimes, don't they, whereas you'd think more fans posting stuff and getting the data out in more tailored ways would be a measure of the WTA's success. I mean, the whole idea of what we're doing here is trying to make it easier for British tennis fans to follow the home players year-round instead of only during the grass court season and other sites like TF, like them or hate them, have similar aims - how can that be a bad/dangerous thing?

The thing about entries you mention made them (and still does make them) look stupid but my guess is the problems here are more likely to be due to incompetence and to the changes being controlled by people who aren't tennis fans - you can just imagine the scene:

"XYZ web promotions designed the website for ABC band so they must be really cool and in with the yoof of today - think what they could do for our site" "Let's take them on and give them carte blanche to do what they like"

Obviously this can't be the whole truth because if it was, there probably wouldn't be anything as 'uncool' as numbers (results, rankings, anything ...) left on the site at all.

steven · Tennis legend

RBBOT wrote:
Steven, is coretennis.net any help? They also lack the ability to filter the rankings by country but may solve some of your other issues.

They do some things a bit better, some things a lot worse (no entry lists, no full list of a player's results without clicking through to every tournament, etc), though the site does at least run quickly. The problem is, I don't really want to have to visit even more different sites just to pick up the basic data - I want to be able to pick up the basics from the official sources and that used to be easy enough to do using ITF for historical data and ITFs/Futures and the ATP & WTA sites for their own events while those events were on and for rankings data.

insomniacfolder · Challenger level

RBBOT wrote:
I think it says something about the state of the top 100 that when I view the players page, Google Chrome's automatic translation clicks in and attempts to translate the page from German.

tony_orient wrote:
Stop Press - The WTA Rankings page now has links to the player's pages!

And ITF results are now included in players results pages again. Also, Olympics points are now given, and correct.

3 down, 276 to go...

****Edit**** 27th December 2012 - the eve of the new season's first match - Johanna's qualifying in Brisbane

Unfortnately, this appears to have been as good as it got. There are still dozens of things that are in error on the web site, and/or omitted.

I did contact the WTA on a couple of occasions, through 2 different channels, with a short list of 15 key questions and suggestions.

I received back a form letter response, identical both times to the effect, that: they realise some people won't like the changes, but they're very satisfied with them, and the general response has been overwhelmingly positive... especially from mobile and tablet users... They're sorry you don't feel the same way, they don't envision any substantial changes to the, now finished, redesign, but hope you're lookng forward to the new season....

So, that's it for me. There's no way now for me to follow WTA tennis the way in the highly structured way I need it to be, and so have to quit - cold turkey (appropriately enough at this time of year!).

I'd like to thank everyone for all their entertaining and though provoking debate, information and informed opinon over the last 8 months, and hope the new season serves (pun intended) you all well.

I added this as an edit to this post because I didn't want to bump the topic pointlessly. This way, at least my gratitude is recorded, although it is most likely that none will ever read it.

Most Sincere Regards,

insomniacfolder,

Maidenhead, UK

***** End of Edit *****

-- Edited by insomniacfolder on Thursday 27th of December 2012 03:47:26 PM

RBBOT · Futures qualifying

I think it says something about the state of the top 100 that when I view the players page, Google Chrome's automatic translation clicks in and attempts to translate the page from German.

tony_orient · ATP qualifying

Stop Press - The WTA Rankings page now has links to the player's pages! biggrin

Peter too · Tennis legend

When you do a player search for UK players it says we only have two players. It seems to only consider the top 100 players.

I suppose ultimately if the WTA do not replace the information we used to use there is the possibility of producing it ourselves. However to achieve that we would require a reliable source of at least the minimum data needed to compute the tables i.e. personal details of existing and new players, results of matches etc.
We could for example carry a table of the previous week's rankings to compare with the latest rankings, much as TBE must do at present.

steven · Tennis legend

insomniacfolder wrote:

****Edit**** 27th December 2012 - the eve of the new season's first match - Johanna's qualifying in Brisbane
Unfortnately, this appears to have been as good as it got. There are still dozens of things that are in error on the web site, and/or omitted.
I did contact the WTA on a couple of occasions, through 2 different channels, with a short list of 15 key questions and suggestions.
I received back a form letter response, identical both times to the effect, that: they realise some people won't like the changes, but they're very satisfied with them, and the general response has been overwhelmingly positive... especially from mobile and tablet users... They're sorry you don't feel the same way, they don't envision any substantial changes to the, now finished, redesign, but hope you're lookng forward to the new season....

How they have the nerve to try and claim it is an improvement, I don't know, but the ITF was the same - not quite as bad, i.e. they did make some changes - but the site is still much harder to use than it used to be.

The myriad downgrades/problems with the rankings pages are completely indefensible and have generated loads of complaints on the forums - I just hope enough people will complain when the new season properly starts (which is the first time most people will even notice) to force them to rethink, though I won't hold my breath.

-- Edited by steven on Saturday 29th of December 2012 01:58:02 AM