Contest series

A series is a named grouping for contests — a recurring olympiad, a weekly training round, a school league. It is one of the classification facts a contest carries, and it is the one that makes a set of contests findable as a set: the contest list filters and sorts by it, and the public contest page shows it.

A series is a label, not a container. Putting five contests in one series does not add their results together; that is what a combined or standalone scoreboard is for.

Where series are defined

Series belong to the space, not to a contest, and are kept in SettingsContest series. The table lists them by name, and each has:

Field

What it does

Name

What the series is called

Hidden

Keeps the series out of public listings

Translations

Per-locale variants of the name

Create, edit and delete are plain dialogs over those fields. Editing a series changes it everywhere it is used, since contests refer to the series rather than copying its name.

Putting a contest in a series

A contest's series is set on SettingsOtherClassification, along with the rest of the facts that describe the contest for catalogue purposes. The series has to exist in the space first.

The rest of the classification

The same dialog carries the other facts the contest list and the public contest page use:

Field

Values

Series

Any series defined in the space

Scale

Local, Regional, National or International

Country

The host country

City

The host city

Year

The year the contest belongs to

Difficulty

Very easy … Very hard

None of this affects how the contest runs, who may join it or how it is scored. It is descriptive: series, country, format and difficulty appear as columns and filters on the contest list, and the landing page shows the classification alongside the schedule. For a space that runs one contest a month, filling it in is what stops the list becoming unnavigable after two years.