New server operational

By Crisu May 14th, 2012, under Site-related

It’s been a busy few days since the weekend. With all the errors happening in the first 3 rounds, it was clear to us to have to move again to someplace larger. That move happened over the weekend and was actually in place Saturday night. We were watching things closely during Aquamarine 4 voting, but no crashes occurred, which is great news.

There were some reports of slowness, still, and during the busiest moments in the first 30 min, a vote might not have written to the database successfully. Adjustments will be made for Aqua5, since we have more resources to afford now.

The larger server means our annual operating costs have increased, and this is reflected on the donation page. We are still fully paid for ISML 2012, though, which is great. Thank you to everyone so far who have begun donating early to fund ISML 2013 next year. Our latest donor is superunature, his second gift to the project in the past year.

Thanks for all your patience and support; we’re working hard to make sure things run smoothly.

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Opening rush

By Crisu May 10th, 2012, under Site-related

So far after three rounds, the first 90 minutes of each voting period is always our busiest. If you can afford to wait, please wait about two hours after voting begins before accessing the site. There is an entire 24-hour period available, and all votes count the same no matter when they are submitted.

That said, this week has shown us how much our participation has grown since last year, so we will be preparing for a server move at the end of Aquamarine Period or sooner. Hopefully the new location will have enough resources to support the rush that occurs at the start of the voting day, as ideally we should still stay online and not have to ask you to wait.

Stay tuned for more updates.

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Database errors at voting start

By Crisu May 8th, 2012, under Regular Season

Sorry for the rough start to the season. Today when voting started, we had a database error that caused the site to go offline for about 40 minutes. We have restored capability enough for voting to continue today, but there will be more work done once polls have closed. If you regularly visit our forums, there may be moments of downtime while we investigate and repair the issue. Thank you very much for your patience, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

For now, let’s get back to voting!

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Voting graphs available

By Crisu May 8th, 2012, under Regular Season

The images that show voting over time are now available on the main page. Regional maps are available, too, though we are working on correcting a typo with the Contestant names in the scripting. We apologize for the long delay.

In case you miss them entirely on the main page, all results are archived in the Statistics Portal. See Aquamarine results here:
http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/statistics/aquamarine/

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Statistics updated

By Crisu May 8th, 2012, under Regular Season, Site-related

Aquamarine 1 Statistics are now properly updated. ISML 2012 introduces partial points, which are awarded to losing Contestants in each match. VF/VA points are awarded, meaning that losing by 1 vote will earn 0.999 points. Losing by 1000 votes will earn much less.

We have removed the SoS column and the PB column from the ranking tables. The SoS column is redundant, because it has the same value as the Points column. Points are still alternatively referred to as a Contestant’s Strength of Schedule (SoS). Our SDO and SAO tiebreakers continue to be based on Points, which are changing a little bit this year with the partial points system. The PB column just took up space, as it simply was a subtraction operation to show how many points a Contestant was behind the leader.

The ranking table might appear to be flipped from the previous version (which was calculated using 2011 rules), but this is just the case during the first round of a Period. As more round results are factored in, the rankings will better represent which girls will make it to the Necklace Round .. and eventually the Postseason.

Thanks for your patience! Round 2 begins soon…

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Statistics delayed

By Crisu May 8th, 2012, under Regular Season

Rankings are currently incorrect, as I have not implemented the fractional points that would be awarded starting this year. This was something not realized until late, so I apologize. The match results themselves are final, however.

I’ll post again when the rankings are done properly.

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Welcome to Aquamarine

By Crisu May 4th, 2012, under Regular Season

We are a few days away from the start of the Regular Season. Thank you for your patience! The website is entering Aquamarine colors, and we have the match preview for Round 1 available on the voting page. Good luck to all of our Contestants!

This year we will be doing 2-vs-2 matches for Exhibition. And each day, we will have two of these matches. As always, exhibition matches are just for fun; they don’t count towards rankings or final standings. You will see both old and new faces in the exhibition, and even some Contestants may make an appearance. A lot of our matchups follow a theme, so try and guess at what they are when you see them.

Site-related stuff: updating contestant profiles is still in progress; we’re looking to finish them up just before matches begin on Sunday. Some character name translations are still in the works, too; please bear with us.

As always, don’t forget to register for our forum! The Space Opera project is always looking for new creative volunteers to try and illustrate the results of the tournament as a dramatic, intergalactic war. Art contests will be held later in the period to award the winners of our exhibition matches. And there’s always Fantasy to play, too, where you try to guess the winners of each round before results are released. Lots of things to do! We’re all excited about another great Regular Season coming up.

(If you’re subscribed to our voting updates feed – http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/voting/rss/ – sorry for the error this morning; we had a mixup in some scheduling parameters that caused a lot of entries to be printed by accident.)

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Preliminary Period Complete

By Crisu April 14th, 2012, under Preseason

Congratulations to our new Contestants! The end of Phase III marks the conclusion of the Preliminary Period, and we have our full roster of Contestants for the Regular Season. It was a very climactic final round, and we thank you for voting and following our Candidates’ progress throughout the Period.

The League enters a three-week break in preparation for the Regular Season. Contestant profiles are currently being updated. More images and artwork will be available later on. This Regular Season will be unique from previous years, since we have two Divisions.

For all of the Candidates who did not make it this year, we should expect to see many in Exhibition matches throughout the season.

While you wait, consider joining our forum or follow us on Facebook for continued saimoe content during the break.

Also a thank you to our recent donor, spickeri. Thanks again to everyone, and we’ll see you in a few weeks!

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New PV and Phase III Preview

By Crisu April 2nd, 2012, under Preseason

We had a little bit of fun with a special splash page for our website on April 1. Sorry if you were a bit frightened, but we hope you enjoyed celebrating the ‘holiday’ with the rest of the Internet. If you looked further, we also had a “new” PV featuring anime girls and their love of tuna.

In case you missed it or you want to see it all over again, we have archived that page here:
http://www.internationalsaimoe.com/community/april1.php

Now that April 1 is over, we can move forward. The real PV for ISML 2012 is now on our main page. Brackets for Phase III as well as the match preview are also available. Thanks to KholdStare for making great PVs for us year after year! Thanks to melange for the bracket images and great visualizations as always!

Phase III Day 1 will feature Brackets A through H in both divisions. Voting begins in about one week.

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Phase II Completed

By Crisu March 29th, 2012, under Preseason

Congratulations to our new Contestants after Phase II! The Contestants page has new faces, and we are still working on updating their biographies. Thanks to everyone for voting.

We take another break to prepare for Phase III. This final phase is a single-elimination tournament with brackets of 4 Candidates. This will be the last chance to enter the Regular Season, and Phase III will admit 16 girls from each Division.

Brackets will be released next week. The first voting round begins on Sunday, April 8.

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