Discussion: Or, MeOS, other software alternatives to DNF or DQ results?

Our club uses Or and I am familiar with it. There are days, though, where the old style punch card results seemed "kinder", especially when talking kids that are experiencing the sport the first time. All they may see on the screen, when they tried sooo hard, is a DNF or DQ, totally disappointing and I heard a whole bunch of them the other day saying "I failed" when they got their print-out. With the old punch cards, we hung them on the string, in order of time for no punches missed, then in order of time for 1 punch missed, then 2, etc. Still gave the young kids or novices a better sense of accomplishment, something more realistic to improve on than DNF or DQ, where I personally find DQ worse than DNF, because DQ usually implies that someone may have done something that was against the rules.
Anyone aware of software out there where one could adjust the results by sorting people by the number of MPs?

In MeOS, there is a setting which we use a lot here in Uppsala, called no timing. This is designed for the youngest classes, and the idea is that thinking about how fast or slow you do the orienteering can be de-motivating... especially if they are slow. Instead it is just "approved" or "not approved"... in Swedish the DNF or DQ or MP is usually just rolled up into one term for "not approved." (For what it is worth, the default in MeOS seems to be giving the term MP)

I realize that you are asking for something different, but the only way that I think to use the existing software to display results in this fashion is to set up two events. One with the course as a point-to-point, the other with the course as a rogaine. You can check each runner with the point-to-point download, then you can display the results from the Rogaine.

We use OE at School event, and give a 10 min penalty for each wrong control, then make them official again

In OE, there is also a no timing setting

Adrian's suggestion of ranking results by number of controls found followed by time taken largely gets rid of that failure result (though perhaps finishing after the event deadline might yield such a result, so that people don't just keep looking, for safety and logistical reasons). This weekend's event at Petrified Forest in Arizona used such a system, as is normal for Rogaines.

I figured out how to manually manipulate Or data, but it is strictly a post-event process.

@Andrea: Don't you use the little SI printer that doesnt render a judgement on control order or absence? If not, I would suggest calling each course a score-O using just controls on each point-to-point course.

For teaching I use the little SI printer, and actually have a lot of fun with the altered outputs, and so do the kids. The thought came up for events where the screen is used, and the display on the screes shows DNF or DQ.
@Jim Rogaine would still be more of a Score-O handling by the software, is that correct?

Related to this is the distinction between MP and DNF. In the US rules, MP is used if a wrong control was punched instead of the correct control. DNF is used if one or more controls were not punched and no other controls punched in sequence. International rules are not as clear about the distinction. MeOS assigned DNF if there is no finish punch, otherwise it assigns MP. After each meet, someone has to go through the results and adjust the classifications.
I would hate to use DQ for any of those cases. I think it should be reserved for cheating, like going out of bounds.

Our software sometimes randomly assigns DQ to competitors that fail to punch the finish and our computer operators (depending who's on the job) sometimes fail to correct this. If' I'm on the computer it's the first thing I do when someone downloads an incomplete or incorrect result - check it's the correct classification. I'll assign DNF if someone gives up midway around the course. I'll leave it as MP if someone unintentionally misses a control, which did happen on the weekend.

We did also have three DQs on the weekend at our MTBO carnival that did relate to people going through OOB.

I know the standard assignments, but I am talking young kids, where all of the above designations are things that may have a newcomer not keen on returning. We had an event where in one age category we had one kid who had been learning orienteering the past few weeks, but the rest were newcomers. The course was 0.9 k, in a park, but they had limited time for the O station, thus limited time for explanations, some followed each other, made the same mistakes, no time to do over. The point is they are all as DNF in the scoring. The O-score then got combined with the scoring for the other stations, which means only one kid in that category got any points for the total. I guess we could have looked at the splits, but everything had to move fast for the final overall scoring. I wish we could have had a setting that sorted also the kids with an MP and two.

Just stumbled over Geco - may have found my solution; anyone have worked with it yet?

An option (if your club is willing to buy result management software) is Autodownload (soon to be SI-Timing) - it has a global setting in the event setup (Enable Credit All) that allows download operators to simply credit all controls and thus record a timed result. Another option is to define controls in kids' courses as optional rather than mandatory, with a further option of a time penalty for missed controls.