Structuring Unicycling Skills

[gossi]

Hello everybody,

I was questioning myself if there is a system that could structure unicycling skills across all disciplines. I have done an analysis of systems I found, find pros and cons for each and in the end I come up with a new approach. You can read the whole story in my article Structuring Unicycling Skills and I would love to receive your Feedback. Thank you very much in advance.

Cheers
gossi

P.S. (see IUF Blog Post)

[gossi]

Come on people. "Unicycling" needs your Feedback.

[Super G]

OK, I'll bite.

I love the IUF skill levels but many agree it's a bit dated. I'm all for keeping it plus have an alternative updated system.

As for your document, I recommend rewriting it in a less scholarly style. It's written like your trying to get it published in a scientific journal. That is necessary for science but tedious for getting your point across. I bet most people quit reading it before they finish due to the format. With that said, you've obviously put a lot of thought into it so I'd like to see something come of it.

[tesseracter]

I think maps/tags are a reasonable way to keep track of unicycle tricks, there will be a few tricks that end up blurring the lines, and there is definitely a problem with assessing skill required for a trick - no doubt you've heard of the dex system in footbag?

also, stylish tricks tend to be lost in this type of system, and if it takes off, people start hitting a checklist, instead of growing their own style as much.

ah well, for a system, maps/tags are a safe way to catch lots of information...but difficulty isn't one of those.

as far as writing style goes, I feel that it is reasonable, and shows that you have thought of most cases. possibly a prologue/preamble/abstract/introduction that explains everything including final results will help people know where you are going? since you're following a scientific style of writing, I hate to break it to you, but you can't leave a surprise at the end, it's just not the right type of writing.

[gossi]

Thank you very much for comments.

Originally Posted by Super G

I love the IUF skill levels but many agree it's a bit dated. I'm all for keeping it plus have an alternative updated system.

Yes, for sure. That's why I am committee chair for new skill levels, see here: http://blog.iufinc.org/2010/03/17/sk...ittee-started/ If you want something changed, please pm me But Structs != Skill Levels.


Yes for sure, there is a kind of a scientific writing style (even if my english is some kind of a limiting factor, my natural language is german). And yes, I'm going to be sport scientist, though why not putting this style into our sport, whatever you want, I will do this


For the structs, the current document is just the start and there will be a document at the end describing the system, which will be available to the public, which aims to be more like the IUF Rulebook of the writing style.

Tags VS Structs: Tags living in a technical world. Though unicycling lives in a sport world, that's why I decided to use the name "struct" (There is a similar sounding name for gymnastics in german). How would you call the assigning? We found some different words in the german forums, but I disagree with all those verbs, I'd rather create a new word. We have to tag for tags, how would you call this for assigning structs? I have structed a skill? No that sounds kinda stupid and people won't use it. Suggestions on a new word here?

[tesseracter]

Originally Posted by gossi

Tags VS Structs: Tags living in a technical world. Though unicycling lives in a sport world, that's why I decided to use the name "struct" (There is a similar sounding name for gymnastics in german). How would you call the assigning? We found some different words in the german forums, but I disagree with all those verbs, I'd rather create a new word. We have to tag for tags, how would you call this for assigning structs? I have structed a skill? No that sounds kinda stupid and people won't use it. Suggestions on a new word here?

I'm a programmer, so tags, maps, and graphs are the correct terminology for the sort of thing that you are doing. a graph is the most mathematically correct, although you could also use database terminology synonyms.

Maybe we should talk more, we should be able to either find a graph visualization program, or create one pretty quick in python.


Graph Visualization: http://graphexploration.cond.org/look.html#movies http://www.graphviz.org/Resources.php http://wotnews.com.au/boardroom_connections/ http://apps.asterisq.com/mentionmap/#user-barackobama

[tesseracter]

If you are set on using "Struct" then I propose "to map" as in "mapping the struct of a skill" as the verb. the problem is that you have 3 pieces here - the skills, the parts that a skill can contain, and the list of parts for an individual skill, and you haven't defined one of them.

damn programming, always making me get hung up on the details. I'm definitely interested in making this work however, maybe as a CSS3/Canvas webpage? people could map skills for you and such?

[gossi]

Hey Tesse,

I'm a programmer as well and yes you could give this some other names, meaning all the same. You announced, tags, maps, graphs one mathematician in the german forums announced attribution as well. I'd say all are correct. But people just hate our vocabular and they hate the programms we are developing, right? That's why I invented the word 'Struct' - as I described earlier, derived from a word I stumbled upon in the gymnastics world (In german the name is "Strukturgruppe", tranlsated "a structural group", I shortened it ). If you think of this as tags, maps, whatever this is absolutely fine, but a 5 year old kid won't do this.

I just realized that when you say the following "Cross-Over is a 1ft Skill". That will do the job. Taking away the complete complexity. They just need to know the different structs in their head. They don't even need to know that they are called structs, but they need a description of that.

Suggestions?

P.S. There are no parts of a skill. Skill is considered beeing atomic.
P.P.S. I created the trixionary, but this time I hadn't defined structs, so this is a category based system. I already mentioned it in my analysis, you should have a look at this. I'm also experimenting with graphs (but that's more locally on my dev-pc).

Cheers
gossi