The plans for the Grading System

[Angus French]

I do not see the distinction between league playing and congress playing.

Collecting game results for a league is rather more involved than collecting game results for a congress.

[Roger de Coverly]

I am not suggesting updating the grades between rounds of a tournament!

You were suggesting that the result of a League game on Wednesday should be reflected in the calculations for a League game on Thursday.

My only question is why restrict this ambition to monthly - why not make it real time, updating daily?

So the calculations for the Sunday rounds would be affected by the Saturday rounds.

It's potentially just about feasible to publish continuous results in the nature of "this is what your grade will be if you don't play any more games or have any more games reported until the end of the season". The main difficulty being coping with new players and players treated as new players. It means everyone has two grades. Some might regard this as too confusing.

[Alison Bexfield]

Roger de Coverly stated I was suggesting that the result of a League game on Wednesday should be reflected in the calculations for a League game on Thursday.

Actually I was not. I was suggesting that the grading database be updated daily to reflect whatever results had been received by the administrators and input that day. This is quite different. I am well aware that league results would be input in batches whether at the end of the season in one go or in some other regular interval.

I am not a grading expert and do not propose to debate this further - I just wanted to express a view welcoming a move to more regular updates than six monthly. (I do like the sound of the Yorkshire system).

[MartinCarpenter]

The way you get it to work is you get the league results for each match in for grading when they're sent in to the league's software for displaying online league tables etc. This is very natural and keeps any potential delays in reporting things sane.

This is also why the ECF needs to make sure it has a simple LMS to offer to places not currently using one to do this sort of thing.

New players in Chessnuts? The system gives them a 'naive' grade, publishes it. These new grades often look entirely silly for a few games! The system stops them from affecting other peoples grades very much until they've played quite a few games, so there's no real effect except for the odd smile

[Roger de Coverly]

Actually I was not. I was suggesting that the grading database be updated daily to reflect whatever results had been received by the administrators and input that day.

When the developers talk about APIs, this is something that potentially could be enabled if the ECF had one. The method that the ECF uses to collect data is essentially logically equivalent to the "stick a diskette in the post or send us a print out" method as seemed the appropriate system design in 1986 for the first national system and the early 1990s for its upgrade to the collection of detail results.

[Mick Norris]

I am not a grading expert and do not propose to debate this further - I just wanted to express a view welcoming a move to more regular updates than six monthly. (I do like the sound of the Yorkshire system).

Alison

Your input has been welcome - those of involved in the running of leagues often see problems with suggested changes, but if junior organisers like you think it would be a benefit, than that sounds like a great reason to move to more regular publication

I would guess that the idea is to adapt the Yorkshire system, but that's just speculation

[Neill Cooper]

I am not a grading expert and do not propose to debate this further - I just wanted to express a view welcoming a move to more regular updates than six monthly. (I do like the sound of the Yorkshire system).

Alison

Your input has been welcome - those of involved in the running of leagues often see problems with suggested changes, but if junior organisers like you think it would be a benefit, than that sounds like a great reason to move to more regular publication

I would guess that the idea is to adapt the Yorkshire system, but that's just speculation

As another junior organiser can I also say that more frequent updates would be welcome. Particularly since I already send the results in every month or two from internal club competitions.

[Angus French]

Well, I’m sure we’d all like better services. But should we push for them not knowing what work is involved and regardless of what burden is imposed on others? Let's, please, have some consultation and a proper assessment.

[E Michael White]

I do not see the distinction between league playing and congress playing.

Collecting game results for a league is rather more involved than collecting game results for a congress.

That's only a result of historically imposed constraints. If it were up to me I would move away from list processing to transaction based when the similarities of a congress and league match become clearer and helpful. But what do I know?

[Mick Norris]

I am not a grading expert and do not propose to debate this further - I just wanted to express a view welcoming a move to more regular updates than six monthly. (I do like the sound of the Yorkshire system).

Alison

Your input has been welcome - those of involved in the running of leagues often see problems with suggested changes, but if junior organisers like you think it would be a benefit, than that sounds like a great reason to move to more regular publication

I would guess that the idea is to adapt the Yorkshire system, but that's just speculation

As another junior organiser can I also say that more frequent updates would be welcome. Particularly since I already send the results in every month or two from internal club competitions.

Neil

Thank you, I haven't spoken to Julian Clissold but assume he agrees with you too? Having a voice in favour on the ECF Board would be helpful

[Mick Norris]

Do we have any idea how many bids there are for the LMS?

[John Upham]

Do we have any idea how many bids there are for the LMS?

This

the ECF require ownership of the code

may help to arrive at a figure.

License to use maybe...

What would you say CH?

[Angus French]

Do we have any idea how many bids there are for the LMS?

Or, for that matter, how many takers there might be for an ECF LMS?

[Angus French]

Do we have any idea how many bids there are for the LMS?

This

the ECF require ownership of the code

may help to arrive at a figure.

License to use maybe...

What would you say CH?

An option might be to have an escrow agreement to provide protection in the event the provider wasn’t able to or didn’t maintain the software. But what if the quality of the software was poor or if no one could be found to take on responsibility for the maintenance? (The grading website was rewritten, if I recall, because the replacement developer didn’t understand the coding language used for the original system.)

Does anyone have any comments on the specification?

[John Upham]

An option might be to have an escrow agreement

Agreed that this would have been a sensible part of the specification.