Gap Game
What is a Gap Game?
The original Gap Game took a selection of projects currently in a DP round, and sorted them by the available page count. Projects were grouped in slots 10 pages in size; there was a slot for projects with 0–9 pages remaining, another for 10–19, and so on.
There are two ways to play the game. Some players like to try to keep projects sorted so no more than one project is in a slot at any time. Some players like to try to get as many projects bunched into one slot as possible. These conflicting goals result in all projects in the game being worked on simultaneously by many proofers, moving them quickly towards finishing the round.
Today, the term is sometimes used for any project list, even if it's not color-coded or "played" in the same way.
How did it start?
A couple of DPers created the game to help keep them focused on proofing in P3. They select a list of projects, and try to plough through them in 10-page increments. The theory was that if they got bored with one, they could move on to another, and after a while they could cycle back to the original one with renewed interest.
To make it more interesting, bfoley wrote a script that checks the P3 rounds periodically and displays useful statistics for the chosen projects such as the number of available pages, average bytes per page and how long each has been in the round.
Take a look at this post for a bit of history.
How does it work?
The way it works currently is that the script loads a list of current projects from a text file, then gets a list of available projects from the P3 rounds page on DP and compares the two. If projects are still in P3, it'll display them along with some interesting stats in the 'Queued for Service' table. If a current project is not still on the P3 rounds page, the script assumes it has completed P3 and displays it in the 'Finally Done' table.
The list is manually updated to include whatever projects the team is currently concentrating on. Whoever does this job will be supplied with the link and a password for the web interface for editing the list.
A list of the current Gap Games:
Archers' Gap Game: The Archers target projects in P3 which have less than 100 pages remaining, helping speed them into F1.
P3 Diehards' Gap Game: The P3 Diehards team is dedicated to proofing and groofing select "older" and "slower" projects in P3.