As we've mentioned in our weekend roundup, the November update of the Scottish Roller Derby Ranking system is also available today. This draws from Flat Track Stats records for the 12 lunar months upto and including the 1st November.

SRD Rank is an evolving system, but there's four changes we want to particularly mention for this second update. (The original SRD Rank document is here.)

Firstly, SRD Rank is now hosted off of this wordpress site, at our technical web hosting: HERE.

This allows us to provide a much more responsive view of the Ranking Table than we could previously. You can now interactively select and limit the data on a large number of factors (geography, "gender" etc) as well as jump around in the table with some quick links.

Secondly, we've looked at the performance of the October SRD Rank and have decided that the blended approach we're using doesn't add as much to the accuracy as it needs to, given the additional limitations it brings. SRD Rank is now based entirely on score ratio based calculations. We also show how the rankings have changed month on month - these are calculated with respect to the ratio-only rankings for October.

Thirdly, we've completed the additional work needed to show "ghost ranks". As our rating scheme only includes the set of teams which have all played other members of the group in the rating period, it is possible for a team to leave the ranking from one month to the next, if the only bouts which connect them are now 13 lunar months away. In order to provide continuity, we place these "technically unrankable" teams in a special (hidden by default) "GHOST" category, in the position in the ranking where they would most likely be, if they could be ranked.

Fourthly, we've completed the additional work we needed to do to provide relative "confidence" measures for any given rating and rank. These are hidden by default to make the table narrower, but clicking "Reveal Confidences" shows them. Larger numbers are better, and show there's more evidence linking the rating to the rest of the teams. We actually provide two Confidences, as some cliques are more "confidently" rated within their own clique than they are to the rest of the world. [These cliques, or "Local Groups", are automatically detected by the SRD Rank processing, and you can interactively hide or show any combination of them, too. Nicely, they tend to map to actual divisions in the Flat Track derby community - the first "Local Group" proper turns out to be Men's Roller Derby, for example.]

Finally: In order to improve the quality of FlatTrackStats and our predictions, we've also done a bit of research to fill in missing bout data. Thanks, especially, to: Demolitia Derby Queens, Heart of Appalachia, Cornfed Derby Dames, Dark River Derby Coalition, Cen-Tex Rollergirls, Big Easy Rollergirls, LeHigh Valley Rollergirls, Neo Roller Derby, Cape Fear Roller Girls, Hammer City Roller Girls, Sintral Florida Derby Demons, Grand Raggidy Roller Girls, Piedmont Riot, Hellions of Troy, Black Hills Wildfire Roller Derby, West Coast Derby Knockouts and Peterborough Area Roller Derby, who have all responded to requests for missing bout data when I couldn't identify it elsewhere.

[<a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="https://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/4.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License</a>.]

It's another weekend, and while there's apparently something happening in the USA, there's still tons of roller derby going on elsewhere. As always, for most events here, we're using the FlatTrackStats database, so if you want to be featured, please add yourselves. We also use our own November release of SRD Rank, our own ranking scheme.

[Thanks this time, especially, to (deep breath):

Demolitia Derby Queens, Heart of Appalachia, Cornfed Derby Dames, Dark River Derby Coalition, Cen-Tex Rollergirls, Big Easy Rollergirls, LeHigh Valley Rollergirls, Neo Roller Derby, Cape Fear Roller Girls, Hammer City Roller Girls, Sintral Florida Derby Demons, Grand Raggidy Roller Girls, Piedmont Riot, Hellions of Troy, Black Hills Wildfire Roller Derby, West Coast Derby Knockouts and Peterborough Area Roller Derby, who have all responded to requests for missing bout data in Flat Track Stats as well. Please let us know if we can help you to get missing bout data into FTS, and we will do our best.]

Scotland

Starting out in Scotland, there's two things going on:

• In Edinburgh, Auld Reekie Roller Girls B are hosting the rising Granite City Roller Derby. We've previously written on this here. [FTS link]
• In Dundee, the annual home teams tournament is running. We've written about this here. (There's no FTS link as FTS does not track these home teams.)

UK

In the wider UK, there's also plenty of Roller Derby going on:

• In Croydon, there's a double header, as Croydon A take on Dublin Roller Derby B, [FTS link] and Croydon B take on Dublin C! [FTS link] (FTS expects the hosts to win the A game, but Dublin C to win against Croydon B. SRD Rank thinks that Dublin might get a clean sweep.)
• Rainy City Roller Derby continue their busy year, hosting a double header, featuring Wirral Roller Derby A v Rainy B, and Wirral B v Rainy C! [FTS links 1, 2] (SRD Rank gives Rainy B the win on the first bout, and Wirral B the win on the second.)
• On Sunday, Deathrow Hull are hosting Sunderland Roller Derby for the latter's 2nd ever public bout! [FTS link] (with just one bout to go on, FTS thinks that Sunderland might be the likely winners - SRD Rank opines oppositely.)
• And, finally, Severn Roller Torrent are hosting Nottingham Roller Girls.[FTS link] (FTS expects a closeish game, with the hosts winning, SRD Rank agrees.)

Europe

• As we've written about here, while Dublin B and C are off in Croydon, Dublin Roller Derby A is hosting Glasgow Roller Derby in Ireland! [FTS link] (The hosts are likely to win this, from FTS and SRD Rank.)
• Up in Sweden, Norrköping Roller Derby are hosting a double header, with Norrköping B taking on Uppsala [FTS link] on only their second game and the A team playing  the mighty Kallio B [FTS link] (FTS and SRD Rank both consider Kallio B to be terrifying, and likely to take a win against the hosts; with only one bout to go on, the B game is harder to predict, and SRD Rank cannot rank the B team as they're not connected to the main group.)
• Nantes Derby Girls are hosting their own triple header tournament, hosting Gent Go-Gos and Dirty River Roller Girls (of Turku, Finland). [FTS links: 1, 2, 3] (FTS considers the hosts to be the most likely winners here, and SRD Rank agrees)
• Also in France, the 2016-17 French Championships continue, with Lille Roller Girls hosting a 2 day tournament also featuring Miaous' Roller Derby Panthers, Creil's Knock'n'Roll Cannibals, Calaisis' Black Tagada, Pigalle's Les Gueuses de Pigalle and Switchblade RollerGrrrls (of Lille) [FTS tournament page] (The Switchblades are overwhelmingly the favourites here, with Miaous's Panthers following slightly behind.)
• Over in Tenerife, Tenerife Roller Derby are hosting their own triple header, hosting Paris Roller Girls B and Royal Windsor B! [FTS links 1, 2, 3] ! (FTS considers Tenerife and Paris B to be near identical in strength, taking into account home team advantage. It believes that Royal Windsor is much lower strength. SRD Rank agrees, but thinks that Paris is likely to win overall.)
• In Stuttgart, the Bundesliga 2016 continues as they host St. Pauli (of Hamburg). [FTS link] (FTS predicts a close game, with a slight edge to the visitors. SRD Rank agrees.)
• also in Germany, the Baloney Ponies of Kaiserslautern are hosting the Sisters of Mayhem [FTS link]  (FTS cannot rank these teams, and thus cannot predict this. This is unsurprising, as they're essentially exhibition teams.)
• and in Vienna, Vienna B are hosting Gothenburg Roller Derby Badass Beavers [FTS link] (FTS rates the hosts as the likely winners here, as does SRD Rank.)

Late Additions

• Also in Ireland, Cork City Firebirds are hosting the East Coast Cyclones (of Wicklow). Thanks to the work of the FTS Admins this is now on FTS (FTS Link), where they call it as a very close win for the visitors.. SRD Rank can't call this, as there aren't enough recent connected bouts on record for Cork.

Earlier this month, there was some considerable excitement in the Scottish roller derby community as a crowd-funder launched to support a new Junior Roller Derby club in Glasgow: Resistance Roller Derby.

This excitement wasn't simply because Junior derby itself is relatively rare in Scotland still; Resistance Roller Derby aims to be something more than that, with commitments to be a specifically inclusive LGBTI space built into its founding principles.

To find out more, we talked to founders Feminist Killjoy and Fever.

So, you guys sort of burst into visibility from almost invisibility... How long have you been planning Resistance Roller Derby?

Killjoy: Erm…. [since] May?

Fever: Yeah, several months.

Killjoy: The idea of … I have been, internally, thinking about how to make Juniors happen  in Glasgow, since UKROC 2014. Which was, I guess, November that year.

Fever: I'd been thinking about the need for a specifically… we'd both independently been thinking about this thing…

Killjoy:…making some kind of space of this nature, with an LGBTI focus of roller derby, Queer-focussed roller derby. Inclusive Roller Derby. Junior Roller Derby.

But definitely, that was I went to a workshop in UKROC2014, got excited by it,  but then thought "no, if someone wants to do this, they really have to do that thing". And didn't really think about it again for a long time.

And then we [looks at Fever] were discussing earlier this year…

Fever: I think we were discussing. Yeah, because I was looking at, I was more thinking about Inclusive spaces in Roller Derby, and the fact that there really isn't something there, at least not what I wanted, and we thought "what if we made this thing".

Killjoy: Yeah, I think there was a desire on behalf of both of us to tap back into some of the ways that Roller Derby actually could be genuinely revolutionary; as opposed to something which started in a revolutionary way, and is maybe …

Fever: …drifting sideways…

Killjoy: … in the wrong direction…

Fever: …becoming more like every other sport.[laughs]

Killjoy: And so we thought that maybe embedding more of the anarchist principles of.. [for example] being financially inclusive, in that that's an issue with roller derby, of the costs. The idea is to be inclusive, and oppose all axes of oppression, as much as it possible can be.

And I think also being explicitly, and radically, Queer, is something that [is important]. Of course, Roller Derby is miles ahead of so many other sports already in that kind of inclusion, but the need for spaces which say, right up, this for you, this is what we're here for...

Fever: [This space] is for you, rather than … you're not a side-, an after-, thought that we're happy to take along, it is for you.

Killjoy: "We're not against homophobia, against transphobia, we're for people who are [LGBTQI]".

— Because, as you've said, Roller Derby is pretty inclusive compared to most sports for LGBTI, and also other areas of discrimination, say mental health. We've had, for example, the engagement of Auld Reekie Roller Girls (and other leagues) with the Rainbow Laces campaign, the existence of various exhibition teams (Vagine Regime, but also Crazy Legs, Metal Legs and so on)

Are you moving beyond merely being inclusive, to doing something specifically for those minorities?

Killjoy: Yeah, I think it's about not just saying it's inclusive, but practically embedding those values into the structure, the culture itself. So, [laughs] in terms of policies, the [roller derby] clubs which already exist have been built on a kind of sports-club model, that include things like attendance polices, which are particularly limiting for people who struggle with mental health issues, or various disabilities...

Fever: ..or just financially can't get to practice that week, or having disruption due to home or  just can't maintain a regular attendance..

Killjoy: so lots of these things that are, and even in league leadership positions that are, when you see how they're like "Club Presidents" and the ways that decision making happens, even though it is democratic, it is not always collectivist. And so I think it's about radical inclusivity as opposed to just being a safe space, or being an inclusive space..

Fever: And there's also the fact that, as an adult, you can kind of seek out these kind of spaces. But specifically in Glasgow, for young people, there are very very few places where it is safe to be Queer and Trans, and particularly spaces that aren't sexualised or alcohol-based.

This is a provision which doesn't exist very much, especially in a sports kind of venue, where you have the opportunity for like, body-positivityandconfidence-buildingandskillsandcreating a community that just, so I think it's just, the age group is really important, because it's a group which really doesn't have that view of the world and doesn't really have access to the adult roller derby leagues in the way that people over 18 do.

Killjoy: Yeah, and also in terms of collectivism in an intergenerational sense as well, (I say "intergenerational", but I'm only 23!) , it's just a spectrum of age, so in terms of decision making, in terms of the voice of a 12-year old who's just joined the club being as important to the decision making as us two.

All of those things help to build a culture, but also to sustain these attitudes of collectivism. The thing we've been saying is that "we elevate each other", and the idea is that if we can help to kickstart a culture, that hopefully will sustain itself, then that's really supportive.

Fever: Yeah, maybe some young person will understand that they're valued, their opinion matters, they have a direct say in this thing that they feel really important, and that's maybe an attitude that , with that support, they can carry on in advocating for themselves, in other areas of their life. In their school, or in other places where they're not treated to maybe entirely fairly, and it gives them that backup and that support system and that awareness that they are entitled to equal treatment, they are entitled to a voice.

 So, it's equally not just a Queer-inclusive space, but also a directly Collectivist one, what the Scottish Green Party call "radical democracy".

Killjoy: Yeah, it's not a process, it's consultation; it's about let's see what you want. When the community exists, it'll be about people making decisions for themselves.

So, obviously, it's the two of us just now who have been planning this, but the reason it's been in our heads and not in the world for most of the time it's existed as a concept is because we were really trying to take the time to make sure that our governing document, our policies, and the kind of things that are the bones of the community and the thing itself, exist as something external from us, external from the club when it does exist, whoever is a part of it, and that hopefully that is something that can be in collective ownership, rather than...

Fever: It is intended to be self-sustaining, so we took a long time to work on everything, to make sure that when it came into the world it was something that existed in its own right, and we do need funding to start it, but it already has a form that is external to us.

Click here to get to the next page, where we talk about the funding drive and other topics.

On that note, we should talk about the crowdfunder! Apart from its existence in itself, can we talk about what it will be funding specifically? As the Target money is quite low, people might be concerned about…

Fever: sustainability! Yeah...

Killjoy: The first key cost, to allow us to just begin, is insurance. I've been looking at costing, talking to other junior derby leagues, on the insurance premiums they paid in their first year, and in an ongoing way, we know how expensive that is; that's part of the cost that's factored in.

Fever: Basically, the goal of the fundraiser is: in order to apply for sports funding, or register as a proper charity, in order to do all the things that allow us to grow, you first have to exist as a thing that is happening, which is offering training, that has young people using your service. So the goal of the fundraiser, and the reason why it's not a huge target is because that's basically the starting money we need to get our insurance, get kit, take in our small first intake, and become a Thing that Exists. That is offering this service to young people in Glasgow. Once we're a thing that exists, we can apply for other funding, we can look at becoming a proper charity, we can grow from there.

But essentially, this is just to get us our first intake off the ground.

Killjoy: I think, we don't want to... it would be hypocritical of us to be asking for a lot of money from people who are in the roller derby community, given that our whole kind of thing is that the sport as a whole should be financially accessible. [pause] It is just true that most of the people that will be giving to this fundraiser are people who are already a part of the roller derby community.

And so, asking that community to part with significant sums of money is quite presumptuous. Our intention is to be …

Fever: self-sustaining?

Killjoy: Yeah. We need this kind of support to get going, and obviously, however much we can raise is brilliant, and if people want to give what they can give, but it's not for us to be like "we need this amount of money and then we'll be …"

Fever: ..."here's two years of running costs and we'll try and raise this", that isn't what we're trying. This is just what we need to get started, and we can take it from there.

Killjoy: We'll be doing fundraising scrimmage.

Fever: Yeah, we've got monthly scrimmages planned for fundraising - adult pickup scrimmages with skaters from other derby leagues, officials training that we're going to do as part of that, we have ongoing fundraising plans.

Killjoy: And through small-grant funding, as we hopefully get more distribution. Sports clubs, especially for young people, operate as charities which is our intention. If we can get access to the kind of funds that are coming from these big trusts, these big grant-awarding-bodies, even with small funds, external money, public funding, these kind of things, those funds are there and it makes more sense for us to be trying to source funding from that kind of avenue.

Fever: Yeah, rather than from people from the community. There's such a need for this kind of provision, and there's so little of it, that it is definitely a good funding opportunity, once it is a thing which actually exists in the world.

- So, you've said fundraising bouts and adult pickup scrims... will Resistance be mostly Recreational, or are you planning any competitive component?

Killjoy: I think our intention is to allow the league to be shaped by the people who skate regularly with the league. It's impossible for us to say right now how how it would look like a year from now, or three years from now. I think... people who play roller derby now in the sport are looking for so many different things, and any given group of people that are coming together to play roller derby might have different ambitions and different goals in that regard. Maybe if we begin with an intake, for example let's just say that they're all 12 to 14, five years from now, those people are going to be thinking about adult roller derby. And maybe [Resistance is] going to have to be a thing which moves in that direction, or maybe people will be very comfortable with aging into the other leagues which are available in Glasgow, so I think it's impossible for us to say.

Definitely, in terms of how we aim to begin, in terms of the way in which adults can be involved as skaters,  it's definitely a recreational, learning, scrimmage environment

Fever: yeah, 'cause we're gonna, we're definitely beginning as a youth league, but we'll have adults at our monthly scrimmages, with the intention of doing learning, training, but mostly fundraising for the continued [support]

Killjoy: And in terms of.. there obviously is a competitive junior roller derby community... not in Scotland...

- There is one other junior team in Scotland...

Killjoy: There is, and we would love to be in a position [to work with them].

Fever: I mean, if they want to end up as a junior buddy league, if that's what the young people want, then we'll go in that direction.

Killjoy: If they want to play other teams, there are junior leagues popping up all over the place. I don't think we're saying we're Recreational in that we can only bout internally or scrimmage internally or anything like that, if people want us to move towards being travelling and playing other places or...

Fever: Yeah, we'll grow where the young people want to grow to basically.

Killjoy: But we're not approaching this from the idea that "this is how we get top-level roller derby elite athletes, start them young and then …"

Fever: train them

— You're not an incubator.

Fever: We are not an incubator. We're very much about the experience of being in the league, at that point in that person's life, and the value to the person in that. We're not about what value that person might be to other roller derby leagues in the future, because that's a really weird [both laugh] way to be looking at it.

Killjoy: I work in sports inclusion, in my day-to-day life, and work with LGBTI young people, and one of the things they always get excited by, is when I talk about the fact that I'm involved in roller derby. And, it's always frustrating to them to then have me explain that do this for three years, or this is a sport you can only access as a spectator, or you can't even [pause]

Fever: I mean even NSOs…

Killjoy: Because of insurance, yeah. Most adult leagues' insurance doesn't really cover having juniors as NSOs. So, being able to be a space where…

Fever: They can be part of this really awesome thing, because roller derby's pretty great! And a lot of young people are really  really interested in it, so.

— So, can we talk about what it is about Roller Derby that interests the young people that you [Killjoy] talk to?

Killjoy: For the people, I feel like I'm just going to end up repeating myself, but for a lot of queer kids, like, queerness is something that's politicised, roller derby is so much more inclusive than other sports.

The fact that, I work with a lot of transgender young people, and the fact that they can be talking to a transgender adult who's having a great time in as mainstream a version of the sport - it's not fringe roller derby that's inclusive, it's roller derby that's inclusive. So I think the sport as a whole is a major attraction in that sense.

I think the fact that the roots of the sport are fundamentally feminist is particularly attractive for anyone who's ever considered gender politics.

I think all of those reasons are reasons for teenagers, particularly people who are at an age where they are beginning to simultaneously recognise and be able to articulate a lot of the ways in which they are being marginalised and disenfranchised by the structures which exist in our society, but are also coming into an age where they're being able to identify their own agency within those systems, so these little kind of pockets and things that they can see that are inherently equipped to be a part of that challenge but at the same time being a nurturing space it's not like jumping into the front line of some kind of political...

Fever: You get to come and skate with your pals.

Killjoy: Its a symbiotic kind of relationship, I give to a movement but also get so much from it.

—So, last topic: Why Resistance Roller Derby?

Killjoy: I just have one answer, it's going to be repeating myself! Because it's about resisting! I think we don't want to be polite about the fact that we're here as a direct challenge to a lot of the social structures and …

Fever: All the terrible things that we do to teenagers.

Killjoy: [laughing slightly] …the terrible things that we do to teenagers. The terrible things that the world does to poor people. All of the things that we just kind of accept with "this is the way it has to be, this is the way you do things" I think we don't want to be quiet about the fact that we're angry about those things.

— That's a fair answer.

Fever: Because, being a teenager is quite often not fun. Being a queer, trans teenager is worse. Yeah, it depends on school environment, it depends on family, but it can be terrible, and it can be an environment that you're stuck in for years, that you have very little power over and very little ability to get out of, and within that struggling with all these things. We're just offering a space where you're allowed to acknowledge that those are challenges that you're facing, and hopefully gain support and gain  confidence and in… resisting those things.

— Yes, one of the issues for trans or queer kids, must be the societial assumption that you can't know you have a non-cis identity, or a non-straight orientation, until you're an adult of whatever "default" gender you appear to be.

Killjoy: It's a fucked up sexual politics, which kind of equates the idea of having a gender identity with  having sexuality. Which is really kind of messed up. But I think that's also something that it's very important for us to acknowledge, there's no gatekeeping, there's no quiz, there's no "fill in this form and tell us all the ways you're gay" [Fever laughs], we're going to be really explicit about why we're here, and it's up for people to - we trust people to know themselves.

Fever: If you feel like this is the space for you; then we're here for you. Whatever form of fluidity within that space that you need to be a part of, it's up to you.

---

The Resistance Roller Derby Indiegogo is still raising funds here: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/resistance-roller-derby-glasgow-lgbt--2/#/

You will also, as mentioned, be able to sign up for regular donations via Paypal here, soon: http://resistancerdg.tumblr.com/support

Dundee Roller Girls are shaking up their three year old home teams season with a round robin style tournament on the 5^th of November.

Showcasing the skating talent from their brand new intake as well as the old veterans and favourites from the Silvery Tayzers and the Bonnie Colliders. We see three teams, Jutes of Hazzard, Jammin' Dodgers and Press Gangsters battle it out to be crowned the tournament winner!  Each team representing aspects of Dundee life and history often summed up as jam, jute and journalism.

Home Teams for DRG is a chance for old and new skaters to have some fun on track while showing off their fancy moves and skills. A great day for all the family with fake mustaches, cakes, savoury treats, hook-a-duck, fancy feet and fun on skates!

Doors open at 11:30 with the action getting started at 11:45 with skate outs. Each team will play each other in three 30 minute rounds, with the final kicking off at 16:00.

Along side the tournament, DRG will be holding a Foodbank Collection for Dundee Foodbank run by the The Trussell Trust! So if you have anything you would like to donate, please bring it along. Check out their website for more information on what you can donate: https://dundee.foodbank.org.uk/

So come on down to the D.I.S.C in Dundee for some high action fun on skates! For more information check out the facebook page Home Teams Tournament 2016.

After a pretty good crop last weekend, we've decided to do this round up again - and due to some pretty exciting things happening in the Southern Hemisphere, we've making this a Euro+Australia update! As always, this information is from bouts submitted to Flat Track Stats. If you don't feature here and want to, please consider helping Flat Track Stats to track all of flat track roller derby by submitting your leagues' games!

Starting close to home though:

Scotland

• As we've previously written about, Mean City Roller Derby are hosting a Halloween double header, Hallowmean, with Mean City (Women) facing off against Auld Reekie Roller Girls All-Star Rookies (ASTROS) (FTS link), and Mean City (coed) facing Bairn City Rollers (coed) (not tracked by FTS). [FTS and SRD Rank agree that the ASTROS have the advantage here, although we think they have more of an edge than FTS do.]

UK

Over in the UK, there's one big tournament we're aware of:

• Central City Roller Derby's Jamdemic sees the hosts' B team face off against Oxford Roller Derby, Brussels Derby Pixies, Leeds Roller Dolls B, Tiger Bay Brawlers B and London Roller Girls C!  Astonishingly, this is a full round-robin tournament, plus additional final placement bouts! (FTS tournament page) [We would expect Brussels and London C to top the list, with Tiger Bay B and Oxford fighting for 3rd place. FTS disagrees slightly, believing that Tiger Bay can take the silver.]
• Also in the south, Royal Windsor Rollergirls are hosting Hot Wheel (both fresh from bouts last weekend) (FTS link) [FTS and SRD Rank concur that Hot Wheel are the likely victors - FTS has the benefit of the last weekend's bouts and thinks things are closer than we do.]
• And Rebellion Roller Derby have a double header planned  as Rebellion A take on Brighton Rockers (FTS link), and Rebellion B take on Southern Coed Roller Derby's Apex Predators (FTS link) [We and FTS think that Brighton have the likely win; neither of us can call the other bout as there's not any records on file for Rebellion B.]

Europe

Mainland Europe, Ireland and Scandinavia have a massive load of roller derby this weekend!

• In France, the  2016-17 season of the  French Championship in kicks off, with Rouen/Montreuil, Lutece/Orléans on Saturday, and more bouts on the Sunday featuring additionally the Psyko'Quads of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois and Paris Roller Girls C,(FTS tournament page) and a second hosted section of the Championship in Oisan, with hosts Sc'Alpes Hell versus the Rabbit Skulls of Avignon and Roller Derby Saint-Etienne. (FTS tournament page) [In the first tournament: FTS and we agree that Lutece is the strongest team, but we differ on the rest of the ordering (notably, we rate Rouen second, and FTS prefers Orléans).  In the second, FTS and we agree that the hosts have the advantage over Rabbit Skulls. Saint-Etienne have played so infrequently that SRD Rank can't rank them - FTS makes a guess that they're the weakest competitor.]
• Meanwhile, Germany is just finishing off its own championship, as the Bundesliga 2016 comes to a close with Frankfurt's Bembel Town hosting Cologne (Köln). (FTS tournament page) [FTS and we agree that Köln is likely to win, with us predicting a closer game than FTS.]
• In northern Finland, on Sunday, we see the start of the Pohjola Cup 2016/17 (FTS tournament page). We will have more about this tournament series in a future article. [FTS and SRD Rank agree that Riverdale is very likely to defeat Seinäjoki, but can't predict Jyväskylä B v Shitty Village, as it's the former's debut bout.]
• In Denmark, Aalborg Roller Derby host Copenhagen Roller Derby B in a halloween-themed bout (FTS link) [SRD Rank can't predict this, as Copenhagen B haven't got enough recent connected bouts. FTS is willing to take a stab at Aalborg being the winners.]
• Over in Namur, Belgium, the home league is hosting a double-header on Saturday, as Namur B take on Charleroi's Blackland (FTS link) and Namur A faces Paris Roller Girls B (Les Quedalles) (FTS link) ... and then are playing a friendly intraleague on the Sunday as part of the Beautes Soniques music festival! [FTS and SRD Rank concur that Paris B has the likely win over Namur, and that Namur B the win over Blackland... but we differ significantly on how close they will be (recent performance by Blackland has been much lower than expected, and SRD Rank responds faster to recent results than FTS).]
• In Ireland, Dublin Roller Derby (fresh from playing 2 bouts away last weekend!) host a three-way triple head, as the hosts' B team plays Limerick Roller Derby, and Roller Derby Porto flying over from Portugal! (FTS links: 1, 2, 3) [FTS thinks that Porto will be the overall winner, and Limerick the overall loser... but SRD rank disagrees and ranks Dublin B top of the list.]
• Moving back north, in Sweden: Uppsala Roller Derby B host Växjö (FTS link) [This is Växjö's debut bout, so no predictions are possible!]
• and in neighbouring Norway, Oslo Roller Derby hosts a triple header, with Oslo A playing Stockholm's Royal Swedish Army A (FTS link), and Oslo B playing both Royal Swedish Army B (FTS link) and Karlstad's Sun City! (FTS link) [FTS and SRD Rank agree that Oslo A have the advantage, and Karlstad the disadvantage. We disagree over the middle bout - FTS believes that Royal Army B will take it, whilst SRD Rank favours the home team B.]

Pacific

Moving over to the Southern Hemisphere, then, both Australia and New Zealand also have big tournament events.

• In Australia, the 2016 Bendigo Rebellion is kicking off on Saturday (in Bendigo, hosted by Dragon City Derby Dolls), and coming to a close on Monday. Essentially the entirety of Australia is involved, from Victorian Roller Derby League B, through Melbourne, the Adeladies, Glenorchy's Convict City, Sydney's South Side and more... and across three different skill divisions! (FTS tournament page) [Our predictions for the three skill divisions are: Victorian's Queen Bees to top "The First Order", Canberra's VCB's to top "The Jedi Masters", and Otway or Wagga to top "The Clones". FTS would differ, due to some results in October (which aren't included in our ranking), placing Queen Bees to win "The First Order", Diamond Valley in "The Jedi Masters", and East Vic to take "The Clones". (Our least certain result is for Wagga - they have only one bout in our rating period...) ]
• Somehow avoiding this, Varsity Derby League B are hosting Adelaide's Light City in their native Canberra. (FTS link) just to ensure that every piece of Australia is playing derby this weekend. [FTS and SRD Rank agree that this is a close bout - but we disagree on the winner, with FTS favouring the hosts.]
• Meanwhile, across in New Zealand, the New Zealand Top 10 Tournament (New Zealand's national championships) is coming to a close as Wellington's Richter City host opponents Pirate City of Auckland, and a bout between Dunedin and Christchurch's Dead End. (FTS tournament page) [FTS and we call the hosts as winners of the first bout, but we believe it will be very close, while FTS considers it a done deal. For the second bout, we disagree, with FTS favouring Dunedin, and us Dead End.]
• Finally, and not on FTS as it's an intraleague, we'd like to give a shout out to Okinawa's Devil Dog Derby Dames, who are hosting a Halloween-themed game, with music from the Okinawan-Hispanic Ballet Folklorico Mexicano de Okinawa at half time!

Latin America

Also not on Flat Track Stats until a volunteer discovered it [Please, Latin American leagues, add stuff to Flat Track Stats - you're mostly invisible to the world unless you let us know about you!], there's yet another big tournament this weekend, in Chile!

• The third "Latin American Roller Derby Tournament" (Tercer Torneo Latinoamericano de Roller Derby) features 3 days of competition between 9 teams for the "Latin Cup". (There's also an opportunity to see  Latin American National teams - Perú, Chile, Argentina and Colombia - play in the last day in a round-robin; and a Men's derby demonstration bout.) The hosts, Metropolitan Roller Derby, of Santiago, compete against ToxicLima (of Lima, Peru), Tacones Banditos (of Vińa del Mar, Chile), Complot Derby Club (of Santiago), Liga Buenos Aires Roller Derby (of Buenos Aires, Argentina), No Excuses Roller Derby (of Buenos Aires), Ladies of Hell Town (of São Paulo, Brazil), Bogotá Bone Breakers (of Bogotá, Colombia) and Sailor City Rollers (of Buenos Aires). (FTS tournament page) [It's basically impossible to call this tournament with SRD rank, as the Latin American leagues aren't connected to the main group we rank. FTS also has only sporadic records from them, so it has issues too.]

Late Mentions

• Late mentions to Dorset Knobs Roller Derby hosting Bristol Roller Derby [added to FTS here]
• And to (not on FTD as its a charity intraleague), Grin 'N' Barum Roller Girls' Bout Against Cancer on Sunday.

After the release of WFTDA's new bout stats management / collection project, bouttime (or BoutTime) as "Open Source", we wrote an Explainer (linked) to let the less technical members of the derby community in on why this was exciting.

One of the points we made was the "Open Source" is essentially the tech world's equivalent of "For the Skater, By the Skater": it's an encapsulation of the community spirit that says we should all collaborate and share to make things better.

In fact, far from being a property unique to Roller Derby, this community spirit lives on in many groups. The creative arts community, for example, has a concept and movement called "Creative Commons", formed from the concept that modern restrictive copyright is actively against the spirit of collaboration and improvement of works by the community. Such bodies as Wikipedia, the TED Talks, MIT, and the Brooklyn Museum (as well as many more: including this very blog) release some or all of their works under Creative Commons. YouTube, Flikr, SoundCloud, and many other content hosts, also recognise Creative Commons, and support their users in adopting these licenses if they wish.

Creative Commons understands that, however, the amount of "sharing" you might want to do can vary, for entirely legitimate reasons. So, if you put something into the Creative Commons, you get to choose from a palette of options concerning what rights you want to give to the world, and which you want to limit:

The basic level of Creative Commons* is Attribution (CC:BY):

Releasing as CC:BY means that you're giving everyone the right to do anything with your work at all (including using bits of it for their own work), as long as they give you credit.

CC:BY is nice, but it lets people make things with your stuff which is not in the Creative Commons itself. You might morally object to this (since the point of Creative Commons is to enrich the community), in which case you want to add the Share-Alike (SA) property:

Adding SA to your Creative Commons license means that anything that anyone else makes using your work must also be released under the same Creative Commons terms.

You might also have a moral (or legal) objection to people making money off of your work, or things using your work. (For example, American 501c3 non-profits, like WFTDA, can't allow people to use their work for profit.) In this case, you want to add the Non-Commercial (NC) property:

Adding NC to your Creative Commons license means that anything anyone else does with your work cannot be sold or used for commercial gain. [Donations etc are of course acceptable]

Finally, there are some kinds of work which (for practical or moral reasons) that you might want to let people copy and redistribute... but not make anything different out of. (This is generally the most controversial kind of CC limitation, given that Creative Commons wants to enrich the creative community, but it can make sense for, say authoritative rules sets or specifications.) This is what you want the No-Derivatives (ND) property for:

Adding ND to your Creative Commons license means that all people can do with it is to share it freely (via making copies, printing them out, email, or whatever). [If you don't specify NC as well, they're also allowed to sell copies, of course.]

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We at the Scottish Roller Derby Blog believe that the Creative Commons is fundamentally compatible with the core spirit of Roller Derby (as expressed as "For the Skater, By the Skater"), in a way which traditional copyright is not. Given that WFTDA seems to be realising that the "open sharing" community is a reflection of the same spirit, we'd like to see the organisation take this additional step of applying appropriate Creative Commons licenses to their non-software work.

In particular, the "Rules of Flat Track Roller Derby" are currently explicitly Copyrighted (the license on the website reads: "©2014 Women’s Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA). The Rules of Flat Track Roller Derby may not be reproduced or translated in whole or in part in any manner without the permission of the WFTDA."). Technically, this means that anyone at all (especially non-WFTDA leagues) who even prints out a copy of the WFTDA rules (or makes a copy of the PDF) is potentially breaking the law. (We're also vexed by the explicit translation restriction, as we're aware of unofficial translations to many languages which WFTDA has not officially addressed, and all of these are also potentially forbidden under the current license; although of course we understand WFTDA's concern about the accuracy of translation in complex rules sets.)

We believe that, given that a huge community of Roller Derby, outside the set of WFTDA member leagues, use the WFTDA rules, that this kind of heavy-handed Copyright is both unwarranted and unneeded.

Given the options available for Creative Commons licenses, we believe that the true spirit of Roller Derby would be better reflected by releasing the next version of "The Rules of Flat Track Roller Derby" (due in December this year) under a CC:BY-NC-ND license. This would, unlike conventional Copyright, allow the free sharing of the Rules across the entire community. It would prevent anyone from profiting from doing so, and would prevent anyone from releasing modified copies. (This would also prevent translation of the Rules, but we believe that WFTDA can address that by directly inviting potential translators to engage with them, which we believe is something in progress at the moment.)

The second aspect where we think that WFTDA might work to improve their use of modern collaborative community spirit is in the reuse and support of common repositories for statistics. Historically, the WFTDA has maintained its own "silo" of statistics for Sanctioned Games, hosted in the WFTDA Stats Repository. Whilst we understand that part of the draw for WFTDA membership is the "official" Sanctioning of games, we don't see how this warrants siloing off their statistics into a separate location. The FlatTrackStats website has been maintaining Roller Derby statistics for the entire Flat Track Roller Derby community, for longer (we believe) than WFTDA has had a Stats Repository. (FTS dates from 2008, whereas the Stats Repository copyright is from 2012). In addition, FlatTrackStats is already a member of the Creative Commons community - the entire website, and all of the statistics collected within, are licensed CC:BY-NC-SA.

Given that the community benefits from the sharing of resources (rather than their splintering apart), and given the existence of a prior community resource suitable for the purpose: we believe that the true spirit of Roller Derby would be better reflected by WFTDA working directly with FlatTrackStats to act as a host for the WFTDA Stats Repository, and that the Stats Repository should therefore be licensed under the same CC:BY-NC-SA license.

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*Strictly, there's also CC0 "Creative Commons Zero", which doesn't even have Attribution attached to it, but this actually has less effect than you might think, as many countries have laws which prevent you from waiving your right to Attribution! So, effectively, CC0 acts a lot like CC:BY, in most Western countries.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, because anything else would be hypocritical.

Dublin Roller Derby have been a very busy league this year - earlier on, as we reported, they joined Auld Reekie and Newcastle at Gold Coast's Beach Brawl in Florida. Last weekend, they went across to play Middlesbrough Milk Rollers and Hot Wheel Roller Derby [as we reported in our roundup]. This weekend (as we will be reporting), they're hosting a triple-header for their B-team.

And on November the 5th, they're hosting again, as Glasgow Roller Derby travel across to Ireland to take them on.

Glasgow have had a difficult year, and Dublin Roller Derby are flush with increased confidence after their performance in the US: Flat Track Stats predicts a 90% win probability for the home team. SRD Rank (using the 1 October rankings*) agrees, and also concurs with FTS's approximate prediction that Dublin should score about 70 to 75% of the total points. That said, Glasgow's Irn Bruisers have been working hard to rebuild, and they may still surprise us.

Doors open at 12pm for 1pm start. Hosted at Dublin Roller Derby's usual venue, Shoreline Leisure Greystones, Dublin.

Tickets: €7 (under 16's free, accompanied) on the door.

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*Our next ranking calculation will use the 1 November data, but it obviously can't exist yet. We'll update our prediction here before the bout!

Update: this post has been updated to include additional FTS data.

On Friday, we published a list (link) of all of the bouts we and Flat Track Stats knew about this weekend in Europe. We might keep doing this, regularly or semiregularly - if you want us to mention you, we'll probably find you if put yourselves in FTS!

What we also did for each bout was to say what our ranking scheme, SRD Rank, and the Flat Track Stats ranking scheme predicted for each game. Now that they're all over, how did we do?

Well, let's start with a graph (bouts are listed in the order we mentioned them in the original article).

Clicking the image makes it bigger.

Each vertical is a bout, and the values are the "share of the score" which the first team (usually the host) was expected to get. The horizontal line is at 50% - a draw, where both teams have the same share of the score - and points above are a win for the first team, points below are a loss.

Each bout has three points: the circle is the actual result, the downward triangle is FTS's prediction, and the upward triangle is SRD Rank's prediction¹. There is one bout (Hot Wheel B v York Minxters) where SRD Rank could not predict; there are three bouts (the Habour Girls bouts in the KickAss Cup) where FTS could not predict - those are missing the appropriate symbols [update: FTS could predict these, but only in the non-default Europe ranking, we've added their predictions to the graph].

As you can see, neither FTS nor SRD Rank are perfect - that's pretty much expected when trying to predict any sport, as performance on the day is never 100% predictable, and even includes random elements. However, for the most part, both ranking schemes did okay - each only predicted one win incorrectly (and in both cases, said it would be tight). However: SRD Rank, whilst not uniformly beating FTS (our predictions about Munster v Bremen were way off) for the most part did either as well as, or better than, FTS's Elo ranking.

(In particular, we're pleased to see that Middlesbrough Milk Rollers seem to be as good as we think they are - which is rather better than FTS or WFTDA thought...)

This is perhaps easier to visualise with a different graph:

Here, we've plotted the difference between the real result and FTS(+) and SRD Rank(x). The red line in the centre is a perfect prediction. We think it's pretty clear that SRD Rank is generally the winner here - and remember, our ratings use only data from 1 October and earlier at present, whilst FTS has 2 weeks of more recent results to work with. [Update: adding the Harbor Girls bouts from FTS above makes things more even, closer to a wash.]

[For statisticians: the rms error on SRD Rank's predictions is 0.147 while FTS's is 0.145 . The bulk of our error comes from two very incorrect predictions - most notably the Bremen/Munster result - setting both of them to the rms error as placeholders brings our error down to 0.120, whilst doing the same for FTS's two worst results brings them to 0.125, as their errors are more uniformly distributed.]

¹For those wanting to use SRD Rank for prediction - the current table's ratings are approximately log(score ratio)/10.32. So, for a pair of teams, A and B, the expected score ratio R= A/B is exp( (A-B)*10.32). The score share can be computed from this easily as R/(R+1).

So, there's a lot of Roller Derby going on, and it all deserves a bit of a shout-out.

We've looked at Flat Track Stats and (with the addition of some tip offs from others), compiled this list of all of the Roller Derby going on across Europe (and a bit outside) this weekend:

The United Kingdom

By itself, the UK has a pretty huge amount of Roller Derby going on this weekend.

As we've reported before, Newcastle Roller Girls are hosting a double-header against Edinburgh's Auld Reekie (A v A, B v B). FTS link (A), FTS link (B)

Oldham's Rainy City Roller Derby are also hosting a double header on the same theme against Croydon Roller Girls (B v A, C v B). FTS link (BvA), FTS link (CvB) [Our own ranking scheme, SRD Rank, and FTS disagree slightly over these bouts - we both think they'll be close, but we think that Rainy B has a slightly bigger advantage over Croydon than FTS does]

Not to be outdone, Hot Wheel Roller Derby are hosting  triple header (!) in Leeds, with Dublin Roller Derby taking on Middlesbrough Milk Rollers (FTS link), and Hot Wheels A (FTS link) before Hot Wheels B take on the York Minxters (FTS link). [This is another place that SRD Rank favours one team more strongly than FTS - we think MMR is quite a bit better than FTS (and WFTDA) do, and has a pretty good chance of winning against Dublin.]

Finally, Nottingham Hellfire Harlots are hosting Wirral Whipiteres, in what looks like a likely victory for the hosts. (FTS link), in a double header with co-ed intro bout (not tracked by FTS).

[And, of course, most of Scotland is competing in some way in Fierce Valley Roller Girls' Sur5al tournament, which is not tracked on FTS.]

Mainland Europe & Scandinavia

Moving across the Channel, there's even more derby happening!

Firstly, there's the Kick Ass Cup, hosted by Harbor Girls Hamburg. This is a 2 day, round-robin tournament, featuring (in addition to the hosts), Amsterdam Roller Derby A, Antwerp Roller Derby A and Helsinki Roller Derby B! (That's 6 total bouts over the 2 days). SRD Rank says that this is actually a pretty competitive lineup, with One Love (Antwerp A) and Helsinki B having the edge over the other two teams. Flat Track Stats host the tournament page here.

Nantes Derby Girls are also hosting something big, with a triple header. Starting with their Rec League (not tracked by FTS, or SRD Rank), the following two bouts see their B team take on Lille Roller Girls B (FTS link) and then  Lille's Switchblade RollerGrrrls (FTS link). [SRD Rank and FTS agree that the hosts are likely to defeat Lille B's Glorious Batardes, but lose to the Switchblades.]

Moving back to Germany, Kaiserslauten's Roller Girls of the Apocalypse are hosting their own triple header (in honour of the league's 5th bouting anniversary), with RGA:A taking on Zurich Rollergirls (FTS link), RGA:B competing against Roller Derby Luxembourg (FTS link) and the Mannheim Delta Quads taking on a mixed challenge team (not tracked by FTS). [SRD Rank and FTS agree that Zurich have the advantage in the first bout, but RGA B's Night Terrors are likely to take the home win second.]

Bremen's Meatgrinders are taking on Münster's Zombie Rollergirlz (FTS link). Despite home team advantage, we (and FTS) predict that Münster take the win.

Over to the Netherlands, where The Parliament of Pain are hosting a double header at The Hague, with their B-team (The Jokers) are hosting Nijmegen's Roadkill Rollers in what looks to be the latter's debut bout. (FTS link). The second bout sees PoP A take on "The World", an open pick-up team.

And, moving north, Sweden's Norrköping Roller Derby (B) are taking on Sundsvall, in what looks like the first bout for both teams! (FTS link)

Finally for Mainland Europe and Scandinavia, staying in Sweden, we have a Men's bout, as Gothenberg's Salty Seamen take on Tyne and Fear B from Newcastle (in a glorious piece of symmetry for where we started). (FTS link) Neither we nor FTS are capable of predicting this bout, as there's no connectivity between the teams in our ranking period.

Iceland!

Finally, over in Iceland, Roller Derby Iceland's Ragnarök is hosting Västerås Roller Derby from Sweden.(FTS link). This is only the 5th roller derby bout in Iceland, and we know that the wider Roller Derby community has come together to support it with referees and NSOs travelling from far and wide. SRD Rank and FTS agree that this is a very likely win for the Swedes, but in this case, it's a win for the spread of Roller Derby in any case!

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Late Updates

Missing the first round of this, because they didn't put anything in to Flat Track Stats (an issue which has been fixed by Flat Track Stats' volunteers, who also informed us):

Birmingham Blitz Dames are hosting a birthday double header, with the A team taking on Royal Windsor A (FTS link), and the Bomb Squad taking on Bristol Roller Derby B (FTS link). SRD Rank and FTS agree that this looks good for the birthday hosts in the A team bout, but probably better for the visitors in the B bout.

The Hellveticats are hosting Belfort's Knee Breakers on Wheels in Luzern (FTS link), which we and FTS agree looks good for the visitors.

Finally, Hull's Angels B are hosting Manchester Roller Derby B (FTS link), which SRD Rank can't compare (we can't find the Furies in our graph of bouts), but FTS is prepared to call for the visitors.

Since the WFTDA announced that they were working on a replacement for the WFTDA Statsbook online bout repository, there had been some speculation as to what this replacement would look like.

Today, WFTDA announced part of this answer, with the release of "bouttime", the replacement for the old Rinxter program. bouttime is a full solution to allow the tracking of all of the bout statistics normally associated with a bout - like Rinxter, it can be simply run on a laptop to enter all of the stats after the fact, or it can be used live (via tablets or laptops) in all of the NSO positions to capture the events as they happen. (So, given the removal of the penalty whiteboard as a requirement, the penalty trackers could now just have a tablet each to track penalties as they happen, for example.)

bouttime is designed to be used via a web browser - it's written in "JavaScript"*, which is the code used to make web pages do interactive things (such as our 3d animated globe). We've not used it yet, but we assume that every NSO would simply load the website for the bout (or tournament) on their tablet (or phone, or laptop), and enter (or check) information as normal. (You'd also need a laptop somewhere actually providing the website for the tournament itself.)

The big part of the announcement, however, was that bouttime has been released as an "Open Source Project". Whilst the techies in Roller Derby mostly rejoiced, we know that the majority of the community may not be au-fait with the cultural and technical aspects of this phrase, so we've prepared this explainer for you.

The "Open Source" and "Free Software" movements are related concepts in technical culture which consider the sharing of knowledge and information in the community to be the highest value that can be aspired to. (There are disagreements as to precisely how to manage this, which is why there are two terms, but the differences largely don't matter at this level.) The Open Source movement considers that this is best done by making the "source code" to any piece of software widely available and accessible.

By analogy, consider the workings of a restaurant**. You can go and buy a meal there, but most restaurants won't let you know the recipes they use, even if you offer to pay them. Similarly, "commercial software" - much of the software you use - is made from "source code" (the human-readable recipe which is followed to make the resulting program)... but the seller won't let you see the source code, or even buy it.

Open Source Software projects are like a restaurant where everyone is allowed to see the chefs at work, look at their recipe, and even borrow it or suggest improvements, as long as everything remains in the open. (Perhaps you have a really good idea for making that pastry chef's eclairs even better by changing the filling... and if someone else sees your improvement, then maybe they might use that filling in an entirely different bake, which might inspire someone else to start baking with their own ideas... and maybe the original chef will learn something and improve their original recipe as a result.) The Open Source Initiative argues that this enriches the community overall - by allowing everyone to contribute to a project, or to make their own projects based on existing work, problems can be noticed and corrected more quickly, good ideas can be used in innovative ways, and society as a whole can get smarter and more creative, more quickly.

You've actually almost all used some Open Source software without using it - the software running on many external harddisks, smart TVs, "action cameras", and all Android smartphones is partly or completely Open Source, as is that in many other products and areas.

In this way, then, WFTDA's release of bouttime as an Open Source Project is a gift to the community in the strongest tradition of Roller Derby. If "For the Skater, By The Skater" means anything at core, it means that the community should act in precisely this way - sharing knowledge, and improving each other as a result.

At present, bouttime is considered "Alpha" - a term which means that, while it probably works, all of the checks necessary to guarantee that there aren't any serious mistakes have not been done. Nonetheless, the entire source code and related files are available at github, a popular website which allows coders to make open source projects available for collaboration. As the existing coders, and now the entire community's worth of additional skilled (and less skilled) coders, work on bouttime, we expect it to grow into something that is truly a product of the Roller Derby community (beyond just the WFTDA itself).

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With bouttime also comes another new standard, which has had less comment so far: "DerbyJSON". If bouttime is the program that lets you input all of your bout stats... DerbyJSON is the language in which those stats are represented. Just like bouttime, DerbyJSON is an "open" standard - in fact, it's based on a general standard for representing data called "JSON".

To risk giving you slightly too much technical detail in the hope of showing you how non-scary this is: JSON data is just text, but laid out in a particular way. The example DerbyJSON file provided with bouttime starts like this:

{ "name": "Demo Game", "venue": "The Internet", "date": "07\/31\/2015", "time": "5:00 PM",

which should be fairly readable - there's things called "name", "venue", "date" and "time", which all have values "Demo Game", "The Internet", "07\/31\/2015", "5:00 PM", with a colon joining each pair.  So, this is a "Demo Game", held at "The Internet", at the 31st of July 2015, at 5pm. If we want to group some properties together (say we want to describe all the properties that a team can have, but all in one place), then we can put { and } around them to keep them together. The next part of the example does exactly this "home": { "name": "Atlanta", "initials": "ARG", "colorBarStyle": { "backgroundColor": "#2082a6", "color": "#ffffff" }, "logo": "\/images\/team_logos\/Atlanta.png",

Here we have a thing called "home" - which we might guess is the home team. Unlike the simple items above, "home" has lots of different properties we want to keep together, so we use a { to say that we're going to be listing lots of things.

After the {, we start listing all the properties that "home" has, each of which has its own name. So, we can see that a "home" has a "name" ("Atlanta"), "initials" ("ARG"), a "logo" (the place you can find their logo image), all of which are simple properties. The properties of "home" can also have their own contents, though - "home" has a "colorBarStyle" (which presumably determines how to colour their part of the scoreboard), which itself has two parts - a "backgroundColor" (The color teal , represented in a particular "web" format) and "color" (white) of the text to use.

("home" doesn't stop where we stop here - it also contains items for every player in the team, each of which has its own properties (as skaters have "names" and "numbers", and potentially "points", "penalties" and so on). But the hierarchical design of JSON means that we can keep all the important things together - we don't need to think about all of the things that "home" contains separately, we can always know that we can get the bits that we care about when we need them.

More importantly, the very next thing, after we've finished describing "home", is a thing called "away". "away" has exactly the same types of properties as "home" (it's just the other team!), so we know that if "home" has a "name", then so will "away", and that their skaters will all have the same kinds of information present. )

Because DerbyJSON (and JSON in general) lays out all the information in this really simple manner, its really easy for other people to write software to work with it. So, there's nothing stopping your league writing their own special program to handle any league statistics you want... or Flat Track Stats from writing a tool to let anyone submit DerbyJSON data to their repository.

(As bouttime is also open source, it's even easier to do this, as you can use its existing source code as the basis for anything you do - bouttime already has recipes for creating and interpreting DerbyJSON, of course, so you don't even need to understand how to do that step yourself!)

The bouttime Github repository is here: https://github.com/WFTDA/bouttime

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*Technically, it also uses something called "Node.js", which is essentially a toolkit allowing the quick development and creation of interactive websites [and other programs].

**We may have been watching the Great British Bake-Off when writing this...