From: mpconmy@gmail.com   
      
   Yazoo  wrote:   
   > On Mon, 4 Nov 2024 13:20:28 -0000 (UTC), Mark    
   > wrote:   
   >>   
   >>I used to update it a few times during the season - fully automated and   
   >>taken straight from the F1 web page - but they've made the data _so_   
   >>horrible (and change it even mid-season) it's become semi-manual and   
   >>long-winded.   
   >   
   > F1 webs were always horrible. They don't understand that if they make   
   > the site user friendly it will help F1 to be more popular.   
   > If they make API for data to be freely used by others, many will use   
   > them and spread the word (open data concept).   
   > Not only schedule, but all data: live timings, standings, other   
   > statistics, everything.   
      
   It is one of the reasons I'm a bit slower with results the last couple   
   of years. For a decade, that was fully automated. A Python script would   
   parse the F1 website, compile the full set of results and inject them   
   into the SQL table. Another script would then build the results post.   
      
   The pages were never great (malformed HTML and XML), but a few filters   
   carefully nudged it into compliance for the full parse. All I had to do   
   was run them, check the results were right and hit "post". Literally -   
   even with a proper check - 60s of my time.   
      
   About 18 months ago, they changed it mid-season. Suddenly, it was *so*   
   badly malformed, I was writing a whole new custom parser (as I couldn't   
   use the short-cut of using a standard XML parser), but it not only   
   needed to be essentially tailored to their weird* layout, the nature of   
   the brokenness changed from weekend to weekend. That 1 minute job became   
   (often) an hour or two making automation pointless as it's easier to   
   manually record the results.   
      
   Finally, I gave up completely on automation for this season. It means I   
   have to find time to check results (and there have been a lot of late   
   appeals and amendments), and manually update the results file (I still   
   automate the updates). As a result, I mainly don't even try to publish   
   the same day.   
      
   All because web designers these days are *so* sloppy, they can't even   
   get basic validation of data right...and browser companies are complicit   
   as they have built acceptance of this brokenness into their browsers, so   
   that they can render even the most broken pages (mostly).   
      
   * I'm talking about a level of unmatched and mismatched tags that it   
     makes validation tools and parsers give up in frustration. Just a   
     simple example is the 96 violations (24 errors, 4 warnings, 68 info   
     advisories) that the W3C validator comes up with just on the front   
     results page:   
      
   https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.formula1.com%   
   Fen%2Fresults%2F2024%2Fraces   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)