Update on Q1 2012 Playoff

As some of you may recall, we started a new qualification procedure for this playoff, in which a selected subset of the top-25 ranked players are asked to take three qualifier quizzes to verify their outstanding performance in the previous quarter.

For the Q1 2012 playoff, we asked six players to take the qualifier quizzes.

Much to my surprise and, I must admit, disappointment, all six players have been disqualified: three failed due to simply not taking the qualifiers at all (in fact two of these players stopping taking quizzes in early April - likely after they realized they would have to take qualifiers) and three others did not score well enough to match (or come close to matching) - and thereby validate - their previous performance.

So we have recalculated rankings for Q1 and will now proceed with our new top 25 ranked players and those who are invited to play through the correctness or wildcard selection.

I am, therefore, pleased to announce the following players are invited to compete in the Q1 2012 championship playoff. The number in parentheses after their names are the number of playoffs in which they have already participated. See the FAQ for an explanation of the three ways a player can qualify for the playoff.

Congratulations to all listed below on their accomplishment and best of luck in the upcoming competition. We will schedule the date of the playoff very soon.

Name	Rank	Qualification	Country
Stelios Vlasopoulos (2)	1	Top 25	Belgium
Frank Schrader (6)	2	Top 25	Germany
Jerry Bull (3)	3	Top 25	United States
Zoltan Fulop (0)	4	Top 25	Hungary
mentzel.iudith (5)	5	Top 25	Israel
kowido (4)	6	Top 25	No Country Set
Yuan Tschang (2)	7	Top 25	United States
Syed Ariful Bari (2)	8	Top 25	Bangladesh
Viacheslav Stepanov (4)	9	Top 25	Russia
Siim Kask (5)	10	Top 25	Estonia
Chad Lee (3)	11	Top 25	United States
Kevan Gelling (4)	12	Top 25	Isle of Man
Krzysztof Helbin (0)	13	Top 25	Poland
Vincent Malgrat (1)	14	Top 25	French Republic
Sebastian Kolski (0)	15	Top 25	Poland
Goran Stefanović (0)	16	Top 25	Serbia
Joaquin Gonzalez (4)	17	Top 25	Spain
Niels Hecker (6)	18	Top 25	Germany
Dieter Kowalski (0)	19	Top 25	Germany
_tiki_4_ (1)	20	Top 25	Germany
Marco Siefert (0)	21	Top 25	Germany
Michal Cvan (4)	22	Top 25	Slovakia
Vladimir Drozdov (0)	23	Top 25	Russia
Mike Pargeter (5)	24	Top 25	United Kingdom
Ivan Blanarik (0)	25	Top 25	Slovakia
Jack Callaham (1)	26	Correctness	United States
Sean Stuber (3)	27	Correctness	United States
Justin Cave (4)	28	Wildcard	United States
Ninoslav Čerkez (2)	30	Wildcard	Croatia
Thierry Poels (2)	32	Correctness	Belgium
norton (0)	33	Correctness	United States
Randy Gettman (5)	35	Correctness	United States
Alexander Polivany (3)	37	Wildcard	Ukraine
Anna Onishchuk (4)	38	Wildcard	Ireland
Tobias Stark (0)	40	Wildcard	Germany
Jeff Kemp (7)	54	Wildcard	Australia
Vebjørn Koksvik (0)	58	Wildcard	Norway
haennesche (0)	76	Wildcard	Germany
Nick Cook (0)	78	Wildcard	No Country Set
Gideon Bruggink (1)	80	Correctness	Netherlands
sbramhe (3)	91	Correctness	No Country Set
Rimantas Adomauskas (0)	104	Correctness	Lithuania
Alain Boulianne (2)	174	Wildcard	French Republic
Elena Rakhimov (0)	175	Correctness	Canada
Sanjuinfo (0)	328	Correctness	No Country Set

WYSIWIG HTML Editing in Version 2.2 of PL/SQL Challenge

Many players have had the pleasure of submitting a quiz and then seeing it played by hundreds of developers aroudn the world. If you have not yet done so, I encourage you to give it a try.

Other players review quizzes to help us make sure they are free of errors and as interesting as can be.

All of these people provide content that usually benefits from HTML tags, especially showing code in a fixed font format.

When we upgraded to 2.2, we started using the native CKEditor for our "rich text fields". This has caused some confusion, because the toolbar of HTML tools that was previously always visible is now hidden initially. This is good because it takes up less room on the page. It's bad because players might not be able to find it. Hence, this post.

So if you are typing into a field and would like to do some HTML formatting, look for the small arrow in the top right corner of the field:

Click on that widget to display the toolbar:

And then if you would like to change the font for code, click on Normal and change to Formatted:

 

I hope that helps with your editing.

A Discussion Forum on the PL/SQL Challenge?

A player submitted this request yesterday:

"Hello Steven, I just wonder that are you planning to open forum in pl/sql challenge? Because I really would like to discuss and talk about quizzes. I think the only shortage in this site is forum. There should be a forum for users in order to discuss and talk about quizzes. Please do something for this. Thanks for your help."

While we have no plans to implement a "typical" forum on the PL/SQL Challenge, such as you would find on OTN or many other places, with our recent upgrade to version 2.2, you can now do precisely what this player desires.

Each quiz has a Commentary section, as you can see in the sidebar on the left side of the Quiz Details page (drill down from Library or home page):

There are three different kinds of comments/discussions you can have on a quiz.

Ask for Help - you are trying to use the feature that is the focus of this quiz and could you use some help.

Raise Objection - you think there is a problem with the quiz as it is currently presented, and think it should be changed - or the scoring for the quiz should be adjusted.

Start Discussion - general discussion about the feature that is the focus of this qui. In other words, you don't think there is a problem with the quiz, but you have some thoughts about or experience with the feature that you want to share with others.


Click on the View Commentary to see all the comment threads published; click on one of the buttons to start a new thread.

We will be going back over the posts to this blog that are specific to a quiz and move the content into the online commentary. This will take some time.

In the meantime, there is nothing stopping any and every player from using this feature to discuss the features tested in the quizzes.

Enjoy!
Steven Feuerstein