A long ignored issue was once again raised recently, regarding the difficulty in finding out who controls a driver and what type of drivers a team owner may need for any given series:
Nuppiz wrote:peteroli34 wrote:I think also we should have a simplier way to see who controls what driver and whether or not they are available it can be a bit confusing i know we have a thread that list all drivers but how often does that get updated and even then its multiple pages long.
Technically, you don't need to browse through the entire thread because all lists should be collated in the first post. Of course, this only happens if us moderators keep editing in all of the updates.
If you have an idea for how to create an automatically-updated driver list which won't become excessively long, I'm all ears. Because as long as such a list is updated by a handful of humans it will always be very long and more or less outdated.
So, let's do something about it. I've created an online spreadsheet, that is accessible to edit and update by anyone, so that we have the most up to date information possible. If every driver owner updates their info as and when needed, it should always be current.
The document in question will always be available at;
www.formularejects.com/driverlist
The document is already live, and my drivers are there as an example, so between all of us we should be able to get things up to date quickly. If you want to add your drivers, but don't remember everything from memory, don't worry - you can still use the old, archived thread as a reference to add drivers to the new one.
However, because this is a completely open document, I kindly ask you all to respect the formatting rules of the document. This will only work properly if people fill in the data in exactly the correct way, otherwise it will become unmanageable and unusable in a hurry.
Things to remember in this regard are;
- Please make sure forenames and surnames are in the correct fields. This is to allow the list to be sorted alphabetically by surname. If you are looking for a particular driver, you can always press Ctrl+F, and type the driver's surname into the box to find them.
- The nationality list is to help in regards to series that have nationality restrictions (there are a few). Please follow the naming conventions established - country names written in English, in full (no abbreviations).
- You will notice cells are coloured based on the driver's availability. This is done with something called conditional formatting - this means you don't add any colours in yourself, the sheet will do it for you. By putting in "Open to offers", it will automatically turn blue, by putting in "Not currently fielding enquiries", it will turn orange, "Under contract but open to offers" for yellow, and "Retired" for red.
- "Looking for..." is indicative. Drivers are not necessarily restricted to the series listed here, but this is their preference.
- CRITICAL INFORMATION REGARDING SORT Do not press any sort buttons that aren't contained within the submenus accessed by pressing the blue down arrow next to a column header. Using a full sheet sort will mix the headers into the list and just make things harder to understand.
Remember, by following the formatting rules correctly every time, it allows things like filtering to work effectively, making it much faster to compile a list of candidates for a seat. For example, you can go to nationality and select only "Australia", or select just "Ghana, South Africa", etc if you are looking for a national series driver for F5000 or ARL respectively.
So let's fix this problem once and for all. Start adding your drivers to the list!
