Minor issue: .000 milliseconds are never displayed
4 years ago
France

http://puu.sh/EWIuU/2812cc4bbf.png

For instance, in this leaderboard, we have two runs that end up with .000 times. These milliseconds are not displayed. Expected outcome would be to display 6:48.000 and 7:14.000.

Any opinion about this (minor) issue?

Ideally, we would have a way to only use centiseconds as well, as these are not used so often on the leaderboards.

Netherlands

Why would you wanna display redundant 0's? If a run is timed as 6m48s and 0ms, then there are no microseconds, then I don't see why you'd wanna display three 0's for no reason if a run is timed to the second perfectly.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
TrenttheN642, SuperAL1 and 2 others like this
Antarctica

The only benefit I could see to displaying the zeros would be aesthetic reasons of every time being the same length. But that’s more of a preference than an issue if any kind.

TrenttheN642, Nightcat and 4 others like this
Netherlands

I don't really see how displaying 3 extra 0's has any "aesthetic" value. Its more clutter than anything. Lets say you have a lot of these runs in a row, you'd end up with a ton of redundant 0's on a board, for basically no reason.

Antarctica

That’s why I said it’s preference. You see no aesthetic value whereas I see a lot of aesthetic value by having every time in that column being the same length visually.

TrenttheN642, Chlowah and 4 others like this
Netherlands

Optionning this could be nice but still. With that same reasoning, make 6m 0s display as "6m".

@Daravae The aesthetic is purely cosmetic. There are tons of other things in the world done just for cosmetic / non-functional reasons.

TrenttheN642 and Nightcat like this
Netherlands

I'm gonna stand by my argument that it doesn't make sense and its just unnecessary use of 0's and with lots of these runs, you have a lot of redundant 0's on your board.

Example: 6:48:000 6:52:123 6:56:000 6:58:000 7:01:000 7:04:475 7:05:000 7:06:000 7:07:000 8:01:000

European Union

Except that the zeroes are not redundant and occur relatively rarely (1/100 if game uses centiseconds).

You can do the same with eights. Are they redundant?

6:48:888 6:52:000 6:56:888 6:58:888 7:01:888

This is a very minor issue though.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
United States
talia
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

https://imgur.com/hOFgvHp

(please at least consider making it an option for leaderboard mods)

Canada

[quote=tako_pi]You can do the same with eights. Are they redundant?[/quote]

...no, that's not at all the same thing. Trailing zeroes are redundant, as 1.15 is identical to 1.15000000000000000, the infinite trailing zeroes are implied. Eights are not redundant, because 1.15888888 is a different number.

Anyway, regarding the actual suggestions here, there's a technical reason for why this currently happens that would not necessarily be trivial to fix. For milliseconds, 0 is the same as no value, so causing milliseconds to always show even when they are 0 would be incorrect for runs that deliberately do not list them. Having an option could be useful for games that always time to the millisecond, but many games only use it for some categories, or only top times, etc, so it wouldn't help those cases.

Being able to use centiseconds or deciseconds instead of just milliseconds would also be good (I think this has come up a lot in the past), especially for games like this that use an in-game timer that only displays centiseconds, so the third zero on those times is entirely redundant, and occasionally leads to some mild confusion when people submit their runs.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
SpeedyFolf, Hako, and Imaproshaman like this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

6:48 and 6:48.000 are not the same thing. 6:48.000 is a much, much more precise measurement.

Helix, Pixiuchu and 7 others like this
European Union

6:48, 6:48:000 and 6:48:00000000000000 are not the same thing if the measurement is precice to 3 decimal places. 6:48 implies any time from .000 to .999.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Laika_the_Spacedog, Chlowah and 7 others like this
France

[quote]6:48 implies any time from .000 to .999.[/quote]

Yeah, exactly. Displaying .000 milliseconds would clear up that doubt. This feels important to me for top tier times. We do use the fact that it implies times from .000 to .999 on the lower runs of the leaderboard, by displaying nothing.

[quote]That’s why I said it’s preference. You see no aesthetic value whereas I see a lot of aesthetic value by having every time in that column being the same length visually.[/quote]

Agreed

[quote]Anyway, regarding the actual suggestions here, there's a technical reason for why this currently happens that would not necessarily be trivial to fix. For milliseconds, 0 is the same as no value, so causing milliseconds to always show even when they are 0 would be incorrect for runs that deliberately do not list them. Having an option could be useful for games that always time to the millisecond, but many games only use it for some categories, or only top times, etc, so it wouldn't help those cases.[/quote]

Yes I agree with you that this is not trivial. Fixing this issue would require some thinking to find a good user interface that is easy to understand, and makes it easy to choose between displaying .000 milliseconds and nothing (there are some cases when we want to be able to display both, even in the same category). Also while finding a good solution for the existing runs on the database...

But yeah. I get that this is a minor issue and that there are probably better ones to fix. Just putting my two cents, haha

Edited by the author 4 years ago
North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany

https://www.speedrun.com/racps4

"When submitting runs, please do not include milliseconds in your time. That slot exists solely for Hoverboard Race submissions."

If this ""issue"" were 'fixed', then leaderboards like this one would look like a mess.

United States

@SpiderHako Then a "seconds" option like the previous centisecond and decisecond option suggestions could be added.

My two cents say that having .000 would be nice to indicate precision, but the current implementation works well enough for most tasks.

6oliath likes this
Italy

option to choose showing .000 .00 .0 or nothing for each category would be pretty good, as it's already been discussed for years.

Helix and Imaproshaman like this
Italy

Yeah like there's no option needed, whatever you put as milliseconds, if you put nothing you get nothing, if you put .26 you get that, put 000 and you get that

Imaproshaman, Quivico and 2 others like this
Canada

[quote=dha]if you put nothing you get nothing, if you put .26 you get that, put 000 and you get that[/quote]

I do agree that this would be the best and most intuitive way to handle this, but again, there is a technical reason for why this isn't as easy as it sounds. For milliseconds, 0 is the same as no value internally. To facilitate 0 and "none" being separate unique values, we would have to make some sort of change to how milliseconds are stored internally, and rework everything on the site that handles or displays them.

That's not to say that it can't or won't happen, but that is quite a bit of work for a relatively rare edge-case that only results in a minor visual issue.

Imaproshaman, Quivico and 4 others like this
Washington, USA
EmeraldAly
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

Because 6:48.000 indicates that, and 6:48 does not. 6:48 is 6:48.xxx. Could be anything from 6:48.000 to 6:48.999. If 6:48.000 is the correct time for the run (and especially if the run is tight enough that it matters) then 6:48 is imprecise. Imagine if all the top times for Super Mario Bros 1 just said 4:55 or 4:56.

Canada

Shout-out to @Caitlyn664 for making an account literally just to revive a dead topic with an argument that's already been thoroughly discussed.

Imaproshaman, xDrHellx and 6 others like this