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How to follow skating - tips and tricks, resources

GraceAndPower

By GraceAndPower
in Yuzuru Hanyu

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GraceAndPower

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Hi everyone!

 

I thought a thread where we share tips and tricks about where and how we follow skating, how we search for things, etc., would be cool.

 

A bit of background on why I'm doing this:

  • Right now, I'm focused on managing to watch Olys... especially on demand, due to the timezone that's far from ideal for Europeans. I imagine finding live links won't be too hard; but for those of us who can't watch live, finding full archived streams of the events, and opening them without spoiling ourselves in the process might not be so easy. So I'm hoping if we pool our ideas, it'll be as painless as possible! :)
  • I also remember the time the WTT gala was pulled due to a copyright claim last year. The scramble to find it was... not fun. And that was not even a time-sensitive competition! I had only managed to get my hands on it thanks to kind Russian- and Chinese-speaking posters here and elsewhere; so I'm including a section on searching in other languages.
  • Last year during Worlds, I had already asked how everyone was keeping up on here, and then posted my own answers after googling a bit more. Since then, I had kept compiling more links and tips with the intent of posting them... and never did... so I'm doing it now. Better late than never! Especially as I imagine there's gonna be a big influx of newcomers during and after the Games. So hopefully, you guys will find this useful, and then they will too :)

 

Without further ado... let's get into it!

 


Where to find info


https://www.soyouwanttowatchfs.com/navigation

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/FigureSkating/

 

https://www.goldenskate.com/forum/threads/2021-worlds-practice-reports-videos.88053/ (providing this old link as an example; I'm not seeing a Beijing thread, oddly)
 
http://absoluteskating.com/index.php?cat=1&id=reports

 

https://twitter.com/fskatingtimes/status/1483146761795366912

 

https://twitter.com/fskatinglinks/status/1485682551830487040

 

http://olympicsstreams.carrd.co/

 

https://skate-calendar.com/


Some Twitter accounts, more on the media side AFAIK.
(Two disclaimers: 1) I don't follow any of them, so I don't know how "spammy" they are. 2) This isn't me endorsing anyone! I'm just copy-pasting what I found in Paul Péret's mentions. I'm aware some of those are not Yuzu-friendly, if not outright nasties. Don't @ me!)


A comment I saw on Reddit last year about update accounts:

Quote

 those accounts solely with updates are harder to come by on twitter, i think on instagram there are more of them. on twitter a lot of the fan accounts are kind of like a account who do some updates whenever they happen, but a lot of the time will post many other things that may not be skater specific and more random. on instagram, most skaters have official fan accounts for them, i’m pretty sure official meaning the skater’s management is actually in charge of the account or at least endorses it. and on those accounts 99-100% of the content will be about the skater it’s dedicated to, and there’ll be a lot more updates there. on twitter there’s less of that and more just all over the place fans! here’s a few insta accs that are great on updates and info for some skaters i like in case you like them too and want to check them out: - for yuzuru: @yuzuruoi , @yuzu_yuzuru (i know he’s your favorite, i don’t think he has an official fan page but i like these two!) - for sasha trusova: @teamtrusova_official , @avtrusova - for evgenia medvedeva: @team.moonbear - for aliona kostornaia: @kostornaiateam


General info during the Olympics: during Tokyo 2020, the Olympic Channel was doing a daily live-blog. It was just someone finding stuff on Twitter remotely, and not an insider, but it was still interesting. I imagine they'll be doing the same for Beijing.


Where to find more info about a skating event:

  • PH: fluff thread, Team Russia, Team Japan, etc.
  • GS: individual fan fests, (event) general info, (event) pre-game chat
  • Reddit
  • FSU, probably?
  • Facebook (I don't know the exact groups, though)
  • tags on Twitter and Insta

 

 

Photo banks

 

https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/beijing-olympics

https://www.imago-images.com/photos/skating

https://www.aflo.com/ja/editorial-images/search?package_id=158139893

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_online_image_archives

 


Twitter tips and tricks


 

Explore page

 

You can follow the "figure skating" topic to have the most popular tweets on your Explore page (yes, I know this is probably obvious to most people; although I don't know exactly how it works...).


 

Twitter lists

 

You can create lists of users to follow a certain topic more easily.

 

A list can be about:

  • only TCC skaters
  • only French skaters
  • only Japanese ladies
  • only pairs
  • anyone associated with FS in Spain and Portugal
  • only FS journalists
  • only FS bloggers
  • only FS coaches
  • only Kosto update accounts
  • only discourse type accounts
  • only scoring analysis
  • only informative accounts like wtficedance
  • only Yuzu ubers
  • only Yuzu antis (can be useful to gauge the mood on something)
  • etc. The possibilities are endless!

 

Lists can be public or private. I don't have any myself, but I'm welcoming recommendations, especially if they're not too overwhelming.


 

Related tweets

 

If you follow an embedded tweet to Twitter, Twitter provides all the tweets it deems related underneath.


If you follow a tweet on Twitter itself, however, it doesn't. But you can force it to, by copying ?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw at the end of the URL!

 

 

Research skills: using boolean operators

 

Try this:

[worlds OR world] "figure skating" ["practice reports" OR "practice report" OR "practice notes" OR "practice update" OR "practice updates" OR "run-through notes" OR "runthrough notes"]

 

(I'm told this kind of search doesn't work when you're not logged in. It only takes a second to create an account with a throwaway email!)


 

Using Tweetdeck to do filtered searches

 

With http://tweetdeck.twitter.com/, you can perform a filtered search. Some examples:

  • only tweets in Italian
  • only tweets with at least 50 likes
  • only tweets with links

 

You can also keep several of them as ongoing searches to keep tracking a topic if you wish; business intelligence, basically.

 


Searching in another language

 

Sometimes you're desperate for a link and English doesn't yield any results... In that case, searching in another language can help.

 

You can find the translation of the competitions' names on Wiki. But for more specific titles like "WTT gala", it's harder, especially with Japanese, Russian, Chinese, etc., that use a different writing system.

 

To help us, I created an Excel spreadsheet where posters speaking various languages can add translations for a number of terms. Also, the names of the skaters themselves! Check it out / contribute here.

 

(A small disclaimer here too: I feel like I mostly hear about "Chinese" in the fandom, so that's what I wrote. My apologies if that's wrong/insensitive/inappropriate. If "Mandarin", "Cantonese", "Simplified Chinese", etc., would be better column headers, please do feel free to change this!)

 


Using all the right keywords / synonyms / abbreviations to get all the results

 

I put that in the Excel spreadsheet as well. Again, feel free to contribute. :)

 


Getting to know other countries' social media platforms


If anyone wants to write a primer on what the non-Western social media sites are... Like, I know VK is the Russian Facebook, and Weibo is the Chinese Twitter. But that's about it. So I added that to the Excel spreadsheet too! Well, a very incomplete version, anyway. Have at it!

 


Getting to know the channels and websites that air the Olympics

 

I feel like there are four main options:

  • watch on TV: depending on your broadcaster, you'll have either great or terrible commentary, and your coverage could show a heavy nationalistic bias; more importantly, you might not see all the groups, your channel might cut back to the studio a lot, add commercials, etc. I think finding the OBS stream online is a better bet if you want to see the warmups and all the other "in-between" bits.
  • watch a full OBS stream online on a TV broadcaster's website: you'll get to see everything, including the VCs, usually. A number of websites offer all the OBS streams, in Canada, France, Japan, Germany, Mexico, Australia... If we take 7Plus and France TV as examples: the former has the official English-speaking OBS commentators; the latter has no commentary.
  • subscribe to a dedicated service like Eurosport (I'm not very familiar with that option yet, although I think that's my best bet this time around. Need to look into it!)
  • watch another stream online (http://live.qq.com/10012776, https://vk.com/video/@figure_skaters_ru, etc.); QQ is live only. I'd be interested to know if any others allow you to watch the events later.

 

Tbh, I'm hoping full events will be available for download somewhere. Feels safer having the video on my laptop, and I like fast-forwarding through the slower parts sometimes.

 

Also, if people find on-demand videos during the Games, could we maybe have a dedicated thread where those links get shared? That would allow us to access them without getting spoiled.

 

For now, I'm just sharing those two links:
https://olympics.com/en/beijing-2022/where-to-watch

https://old.reddit.com/r/olympics/comments/ozf0ly/olympics_day_fifteen_megathread_saturday_august_7/h81zvxu/

 

For more information, maybe a separate "How to watch the Olympics" thread could be good? If someone from every country shares their intel, that's quite a lot of material :)

 


Best Olys resources in general / for other sports

 

Just a few:

 

[Technically, this is off-topic here. Should I post it in the "other sports" Fluff thread, or create another separate thread?

 

I wasn't sure where to put this whole post either, btw; but I saw "Accessing Japanese TV online" was here, and figured there would be more visibility too.

 

May I suggest a dedicated Resources/Howtos/Meta/Whatever subforum, to group all those, the glossary, etc.? I think it could be quite convenient. :nod2:]

 


Your tech setup

 

Even outside of skating, if you're an Olys addict like me, how do you make sure you have as little FOMO as possible during the Games?

 

Some examples of my own tips:

  • I use the wifi on my previous phone in order to have one more screen.
  • For my (desktop) browser, I prefer Firefox: it has a feature where you can "detach" the video player and it displays on top of your other windows/tabs. Ideal to do something else during the replays and still not miss one second of the action! And you can also resize it to your taste.
  • For VPNs, I only have experience with Opera's so far... It offers 3 options in theory, but the "Americas" option has never worked for me.

 

 

***

 

Okay, I'm done for now! What are your tips and tricks? :9:

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