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Post by Demreb on Jun 11, 2006 22:17:57 GMT -5
In this week's report David brought up the subject of TQS and their reliability and issues thusly.
I am one of the owners David referenced in commenting about TQS' reporting. I've noticed, as have a lot of you, that the Live Stats basically suck. Players' stats are either not included or doubled (as Jerry Hairston's were tonight - I should have know the guy couldn't have gone 4-8 with four doubles, even if it was a doubleheader).
That being said, I don't have a problem with TQS as far as the stats/website/standings go. There are many places we can go for the current day's stats of our players.
As far as I know, TQS has been reliable and accurate with the standings and transactions. You can't beat the price.
Does anyone out there have a dissenting point of view?
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redhots
Rookie Part-timer
Posts: 90
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Post by redhots on Jun 13, 2006 12:17:13 GMT -5
I have used TQ for several years and in my opinion you can't beat it for the price. Is it perfect, no. But as you stated....you can go elsewhere to double check the stats on your players and as far as I know they have never made mistakes as far as actual stats for standings go.
I used USA Stats for one league I was in and was it nice......sure.....was it worth what it would cost? In my opinion, no....not for the league fees we pay.
Just my .02
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Post by Splinters on Jun 17, 2006 7:43:46 GMT -5
I hate TQS. When taking cost into account, however, I think TQS is quite possibly the best site from a value perspective.
One other thing for everyone to consider is the commissioner tools on TQS. The last time I remember TQS being discussed, David indicated that TQS was the best site for him to easily manage the rosters. I told David then (and still feel the same now), that my first choice in any site is for it to be as painless as possible for the person(s) administering the league.
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Post by Demreb on Jun 17, 2006 22:04:50 GMT -5
Teddy -
Thank you for mentioning the most important point! When I posted the original thought to start this thread, I remember (as I read your reply) that I wanted to include something that that affect.
While I don't share your hatred for TQS, I do share your point that whatever we use has to be (IMO) as helpful as possible for David to do all his magic that he does for us each day.
A few messed up "Live Stats" is a small price to pay if that means that David can get through all our transactions more quickly and have a few more personal minutes.
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Post by kenndoza (archived) on Jun 17, 2006 22:19:51 GMT -5
I'll also make the point made by others: David uses the software the most, and if it's significantly easier for him than CBS or whoever else, than it's worth a few screwy things for us.
That said, I do like CBS better for the features it has (day-to-day stats, customized reports, etc.), but TQS is fine for me now that I have less time to really take advantage of that stuff.
One thing bad about CBS: I found so many stat inconsistencies for both basketball and baseball that I found that I was either sending e-mails to my commish (which he probably ignored), or to CBS (which they definitely ignored). By inconsistency it would be stuff like if you looked on a team page, the stats would be slightly different than on the main standings page. That stuff to me is unforgivable, because leagues really can come down to an at bat or two, and if someone like me can uncover stuff like that, imagine how many other errors there are out there.
Unfortunately/fortunately, I haven't had the chance to look under any TQS rocks since I joined the CFCL. I'll have to take it on faith that their stats are "right".
One last note: happy father's day to all you dads out there!
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Post by Copperfields on Jun 20, 2006 7:47:03 GMT -5
Sorry - I haven't had much time to put together many thoughts on this topic. I appreciate the "whatever makes David's job easier" posts, and it is true that TQS's Commissioner interface if pretty easy to use. Aside from a few random college/high school players or obscure minor leaguers, I haven't had many problems with players not being in the TQS database (as reportedly happens quite often with some services like Yahoo!). That's not to say, however, that some other service's interface won't be just as easy to use. I hate TQS. When taking cost into account, however, I think TQS is quite possibly the best site from a value perspective. Cost-wise, I think you're probably right Teddy. From what I can tell, CBS Sportsline is the most comparable service features-wise, and they run about $30 more than TQS, so they're in the same general ballpark. Rotowire is cheaper, but I've read a lot of complaints about them. The question I have is why do you hate TQS? I'm not saying you're wrong ... I'm just curious. Reading some of the stat service debates on the message boards, it's a comment I see a lot -- there seems to be a lot of passion/venom when it comes to the various stat services -- but there's seldom much explanation beyond "I hate it/love it". What do you hate -- missing features, the interface, performance? Something else that may be helpful to the conversation is additional input from those of you that play/have played in leagues that use other services. For some of us CFCL oldtimers - particularly me and Rich - TQS is the only service we've ever seen or used. It might be interesting to hear about features or offerings that other services provide that you really like. Kenn touched on this a little bit in his post. For example, one thing I've heard about Sportsline is that every owner has the ability to create their own custom report using the stats they choose -- not just the ones the Commissioner sets up for the whole league. That sounds pretty intriguing -- I'd be interested in other info like that. David |
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Post by Nick's Picts (archived) on Jun 21, 2006 9:34:33 GMT -5
Admittedly, I'm pretty ambivalent about TQS as a service. I don't use many of the toys or much of the rotoshiite because I've found it mostly on the level of "Pujols is a pretty good pickup if you can still get him in your FA pool." Yahoo! doesn't excite me as a league/stats tool but I find it a bit more in-depth in terms of news and information. I don't have experience with any other stats tools although I am in the process (multi-year at this point) of building a stand-alone Java application that does draft and league management. I've used pieces of it the last two drafts with mixed results and have been alpha testing the league management bits this season as a shadow to TQS.
Anyway, I digress. The point of this message is that it is a poor time for TQS to go belly up since we're having this conversation. This is the second time this season (that I am aware of anyway) they have not rolled out current standings well into the next day. As of right now (Wednesday, 10:28 EDT) they're still showing standings as of Tuesday morning (Monday's games).
This is the sort of reliability problem that can get me advocating to shop around. The commissioner's UI is important, but so is accurate and timely reporting. If'n we can't depend on revised standings every morning, we may as well be compiling stuff by hand! <melodrama/>
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Post by Splinters on Jun 21, 2006 16:40:17 GMT -5
The question I have is why do you hate TQS? My "hate" for TQS is not nearly as strong as a reader of my original quote may believe. The original statement was made as strong as possible to bring even more weigth to the following statement in the original comments - despite the problems, I think it is the best value. I think TQS is the worst site that I have used from the perspective of features, content, aesthetics, and performance. However, I once again think you can not complain too much based on the price. One of my favorite features on other sites is up-to-the-minute standings. I spend a lot of time watching games online and I love to instantaneously see changes in categories and standings. I dislike TQS even more because their Live Stats applet doesn't measure all of our categories (e.g., holds or OBP). If I'm not going to get the instantaneous changes in the categories and standings, I do not mind having to wait until later the next day before they finally update the categories (assuming, of course, that it is correct). |
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Post by stones on Jun 21, 2006 23:12:13 GMT -5
I pretty much hate TQS (a lot) and would love to see a change. I have never played roto before though so I have no knowledge of a better alternative. I will say, that I have played in a Roto Basketball and Football league on CBS Sportsline.com as found them to run very smoothly. I have also played in a H2H Baseball league for many seasons and love this site. I, for one, would be willing to pay a little more for the extras we can get with it.
What extras, you say? Graphically it is far superior. It is a substantially more robust platform, with tons of up to date player information, direct trade offers and negotiation, a easy transaction review option etc. I am not sure if it allows our unique stats though.
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Post by Splinters on Jun 22, 2006 10:09:49 GMT -5
I am not sure if it allows our unique stats though. I think that one of the good features of TQS is their willingness to adapt their site to particular league formats. At least in the past, I do not believe that there were many alternatives for custom categories. |
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redhots
Rookie Part-timer
Posts: 90
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Post by redhots on Jun 22, 2006 15:26:12 GMT -5
I pretty much hate TQS (a lot) and would love to see a change. I have never played roto before though so I have no knowledge of a better alternative. I will say, that I have played in a Roto Basketball and Football league on CBS Sportsline.com as found them to run very smoothly. I have also played in a H2H Baseball league for many seasons and love this site. I, for one, would be willing to pay a little more for the extras we can get with it. What extras, you say? Graphically it is far superior. It is a substantially more robust platform, with tons of up to date player information, direct trade offers and negotiation, a easy transaction review option etc. I am not sure if it allows our unique stats though. Just for another point of clarification..........there are things that TQ offers that we (CFCL) do not utilize. Such as FAAB bidding directly on the site, direct trade offers, and negotiating of those offers. I believe the reason we do not utilize some (or all) of these features is that some of the owners are not as computer accessible as other owners and prefer the more traditional way of doing things. Although I believe all FAAB bids and moves are done via e-mail which can't take more computer time than accessing the TQ site and submitting moves or bids. I believe I had asked David these things when I first joined up and this was the answer I received (or something to this effect). I asked the question because I have participated in leagues using TQ where owners made their own moves and submitted their own bids. I was the commish of one such league and it really does save the commish a TON of time once it is all set up with league rules etc. I understand and respect David's stance but thought it a proper time to mention it again because these things may make some owners more apt to like TQ as it is WAY more functional than we utilize in the CFCL. It is not without it's problems but I don't believe CBS would allow for our unique scoring categories. USA or ALL-Star may, but that cost is way above us unless we increase our yearly dues. Just some additional food for thought. |
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Post by Copperfields on Jun 22, 2006 22:16:34 GMT -5
Bob, you're correct that we do not use all of TQS's possible functionality - specifically when it comes to owners entering their own moves and bids, etc. There are a couple reasons for this:
- As you mentioned, there are some owners who said they wouldn't feel comfortable entering their moves directly in the TQS interface, and we actually do have at least one owner who regularly uses voice mail rather than web/e-mail to submit their moves (which led to me mis-hearing "Vento" and "Pinto" last week.
- Not all owners (you and I included) have access to the TQS site during the day from the office, while we DO have e-mail access. If we were to have owners enter their own moves via the TQS page, some owners would need to submit their moves for Saturday on Thursday night, as much as 20-some hours before other owners.
- It's my understanding that TQS's auto-commissioner isn't quite as flexible in terms of contingent bids/moves as we've usually been. I might be wrong about that, but that's been my impression from looking at and reading about the system.
Good discussion, guys -- some good points raised...
David
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Post by kenndoza (archived) on Jun 22, 2006 22:29:37 GMT -5
Live standings updates! Wow...I've never been in a league with one. I doubt I would be able to accomplish anything in the evenings if I were exposed to such a tool.
The two things I liked most about CBS, which I mentioned briefly before:
* Custom Reports. Basically when you spend as much time on these pages as I do, it's nice to be able to customize things. I had a basic "free agent" report that would list all items, including position eligibility, all the league categories, etc. With TQS, you have to hunt around just to get that basic info, and the free agent reports there don't tell you a whole lot.
* Day-to-day stats. This was by far the item I used the most (although I could see a lot of people just ignoring it outright). Basically you can select any start date and any end date and run reports. The reports could be for accumulated stats only or for year-to-date major league stats. This comes in handy in so many ways, like making projections for the rest of the season, following trends, and so on. Especially helpful when making moves - how have your players done in the last three weeks? Last 9 days? Last two months? You can do it all. As far as I can tell TQS has nothing like that.
I have gotten used to TQS the last few years, but if I had a choice, I'd go back to CBS.
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Post by Copperfields on Jun 23, 2006 8:56:09 GMT -5
* Day-to-day stats. This was by far the item I used the most (although I could see a lot of people just ignoring it outright). Basically you can select any start date and any end date and run reports. You can kind of do this on TQS - it's under the Toys menu as "Past Stats Reports" or something like that. The name would make you think it's a way to generate the standings from April 30 or something, but actually it allows you to enter in a start date and end date and get the stats for that time period. Making it even more difficult to use, after you select the dates and submit the request, it displays the current standings report (it would be cooler if it displayed the standings calculated for the period you selected, but then you've got to click the team name to see the stats for the players on that team -- the year-to-date stats for the player are displayed in black and the stats for the period you selected are displayed in red below that (where the weekly totals usually are). It's not terribly useful because you've got to go team-by-team to look for players, and you can't get a sortable league-wide list (to see who's leading in TB for the past month or something). I'm sure SportsLine's reports are much better (I've heard raves about them elsewhere), but I did want to point out that a similar functionality is available at TQS in a fairly useless, half-assed way. |
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Post by Splinters on Jun 23, 2006 17:15:33 GMT -5
Live standings updates! Wow...I've never been in a league with one. I doubt I would be able to accomplish anything in the evenings if I were exposed to such a tool. One of my greatest Roto memories was a few years ago. I was in an AL-only league and had Giambi the first year he was with the Yankees. One night, I was listening to the game online with MLB radio when Giambi hit a walk-off grand slam. Charlier Steinner and the rest of the Yankees' broadcast team were going nuts. I was also excited, but starting going completely nuts when the live update showed that I had jumped 3 places in the standings. That may have been the first time that my wife realized that I was completely insane. |
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