Where We Stand in the Rankings...

I'm wondering how accurate that is though, too. I know a number of Austin writers aren't showing up if you run a search for everyone, either by location, home region affiliation, or both. A couple examples, my daughter and I, so that's almost 35K words not in the count, too. It seems to be a known bug, hopefully fixed soon.
But in other words: we may be better than we look, even! :)

" ... but what the hell, I'm not Salinger or Pynchon. I can't be. I'm here."
-- Guy Gavriel Kay

Although Search is not working properly, I believe the numbers on the Word Count Scoreboard (WCS) are accurate - they appear to include the word count of all 472 Austin homed peeps who have reported word count, including you, rianlrt.

I'm not a programmer, but I think I have a reasonable mental picture of what's going on. First, there is THE DATA. This includes your user name, your status (have you logged in since Oct. 1?), your regional affiliations, your home region (if set), your word count (as entered by you), etc. This is a lot of information. It's collected for each participant and stored in the master database.

Then, there are different modules (sections of code) that access the database. Each module asks for (queries) only the information that it needs, compiles it, and displays the result on a particular page on the site. The Word Count Scoreboard shows our word counts (and donations), the Donation Derby shows our donations and compares them with last year's data, etc.

Although these pages are updated frequently, they aren't automatic. Queries against the database are run on a set schedule. I'm not sure what the frequency is, but the word is that it's more often than in past years. When you update your word count, it's written immediately to the database, but it won't be included in the WCS (or Derby, or anywhere else) until the query is run. There is always going to be a time lag between your entering your word count and having it show up on these pages.

OK. Then there's Search. These queries are done on the fly, by you, rather than on a set schedule. Queries to Search, such as "everyone homed with Austin" should return a list of everyone homed with Austin, but there are some problems with the code that Dan hasn't had time to address. There is nothing wrong with the underlying data, and if you go to the Author tab and search for your name, you should show up just fine. The query to the Seach module isn't grabbing everyone, for some reason.

As long as the WCS and Derby code are working fine, and I believe they are, the word counts and donations of everyone homed with Austin should be showing up accurately (adjusted for the time delay between data being written to the database and returned to the site.)

My concern at the moment is the 105 people affiliated with Austin who have word count, but haven't set a home region. These folks have written 462,479 words so far. Clearly, from their location information, some of them are not in Texas, but there are a fair number who are in Austin, or they've input "Texas," or left the Location field blank, or input something cryptic that could mean they are anywhere. This is why I keep asking folks to home with Austin. We could use those words!

ML Captain of Capital Ideas & Austin, TX Municipal Liaison