Okay... regardless if you insist that the problems are server side, the flaws are still in the system as a whole. And I didn't mention the biggest problem of all that half the time the timers aren't even there/don't start or end. This has been a problem for at least a year+, supposedly it worked fine before idk, but it hasn't worked consistently the entire time I've been jumping in tf2. Maybe even this is a server side problem and not a skillsrank problem idk. Given how cleanly made this website is, I doubt it, though it could be related to how slow the players/maps/hiscores database section of the website is. Redwine seems completely absent from this site and tf2 jumping so I feel like it's going to take a new, separate website. The non-functional timers issue just seem completely random, and happens regardless of the map/server/amt of ppl in server/plugins on server. It's happened to every server afaik that uses skillsrank. It'd be interesting to test actually, if the issue persists when using skillsrank that doesn't store web stats.
By your logic all it would take is a different web setup and it'll be fine. Someone would have to look thru the skillsrank code to validate that and make test cases for it. The code is a mess to look at though lol, not too much documentation on what's going on in it. I wonder what tools exist for debugging code while running it on a server... Honestly though there are a lot of unnecessary features in skillsrank that I'd purge if I ever seriously attempt changes.
If you want to look I still have the code Cranck gave out like a year ago, may be outdated:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/hrpyzm112au31eq/cskillsrankv3.spEdit: that code is like 4k lines long. For one thing it's just bad coding style to put that much code in a single file rather than splitting it up, but I also have a hunch that a lot of it could be made more efficient... There's also functions whose bodies are completely commented out with no documentation as to why (In layman's terms, commented out functions mean they don't do anything).
And I think it is possible to get a system offline, it'll take a mod pretty sure. There's a comparable speedrun system for cs jumping that works offline so it may be possible for tf2. It's still vanilla cs, just starts a timer and demo when at the start of the map and ends them at the end. Cs has it easy though cuz all their maps have timers built into every map (buttons at start and end). Speedrunning offline on the map of your choice seems like such a great thing to have. As it is there's just no standard for it, no way to tell when to start/end the timer. And it'll likely be impossible unless a timing system like skillsrank works offline.
As for making it cheat-proof, if there are exploits I have a hunch ppl will take advantage of it. Like the wonderland lag glitch, I know for a fact people have used it in speedruns. The hook is just an example of a plugin that could possibly be put on sketchy servers which ppl may exploit. The iT/chillout servers are trustworthy, but others? I don't think so... Sure we should be able to tell if a time is cheated, but imo a cheatable system could and should be an avoidable. Cheated times have remained on the hiscores for months, it's pretty clear no one wants to go through it and manually remove them.
Quba idk why ur so pessimistic, I know personally I'm turned off from speedrunning purely by the flawed system in place. If there was an ideal system in place I'm confident there would be a lot more higher caliber jumpers, better times, and overall just more fun competition. The skill ceiling can only go up and up if I've learned one thing from cs jumping. Their WR times even from a few years ago have been smashed by today's jumpers, not to mention their community is still strong (stronger than tf2 jumping), even though the game is like 10+ years old. I agree with burger that the timer should be more like the kz timer not the surf timer.
And stim that sounds pretty neat, though I'm far off from making anything.
