Online grading list: publication of players' game results
Posted: Sat Aug 14, 2010 12:58 am
I want to return to a topic that appeared briefly in January then vanished over the horizon.
ONLINE GRADING LIST: PUBLICATION OF PLAYERS’ DETAILED GAME RESULTS
Detailed results and more. It’s not happening yet!
I don’t doubt the Board’s intention to do it. Their thinking was reported briefly - see http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1386 - in Adam Raoof’s account of the Board meeting of January 2010. There was some comment, but coverage was slight and the official website report of the meeting (to follow “in due courseâ€) is not yet in evidence. Anyway, plans seem to have ground to a halt and I think the topic is due for an airing. I shan’t be brief.
You probably know what happens at the moment. ECF Full Members get a list of their results, covering the latest grading season, immediately after the July grading list is finalised. This is an entitlement of Membership. The list can also be purchased for £5 by Standard and Junior Members, and for £10 by non-Members. I suppose about 500 lists, including bought ones, went out this year, by post or email. Mostly email. They have elicited 6 queries as to accuracy so far, but a lot of errors had already been picked up by the Preliminary Check done a month earlier. This is done before all the results are in, and is a much bigger operation. It goes free of charge to all emailable Members of any stripe (something over 1,700 emails this year). It isn’t an entitlement of Membership; it is sent as an error-finding exercise. I don’t know how many it found this year, but the responses were queueing for a flat-out week and went on coming long after that.
You’ve guessed my opinion of this. A frenzy of emails once a year is a ridiculous way of doing it when you’ve got a website you could use all through the season. The ECF grading team had a look at it last year and concluded that extending the online list was practicable. Crucially it had the support of Carl Hibbard who would be doing most, if not all, of the programming. The Board met in January 2010. It considered three possible plans which the team had thought reasonable, and chose the fourth. The plans were something like this.
(1)
Publish details for everyone, à la FIDE and Yorkshire. It needn’t be just players’ game lists. Other possible goodies include tournament crosstables and details of league matches.
This was not the team’s recommendation, though it had support. Attractive as it is, it would be politically impossible in the ECF because printouts of games are an advertised benefit of Membership.
(2)
Publish details for ECF Members only, à la Chess Scotland. This was not the team’s recommendation, though it had support. It is open to the objection that, in a sense, it penalises Members by showing their results to all their non-Member opponents, who themselves remain uncheckable.
(3)
Publish details for ECF Members only, but with a password given only to Members. I think this was the team’s recommendation, as far as anything was. It had not escaped their notice that passwords can be passed on. I don’t quite know what the team’s thinking was on this. I’m not sure what mine was. Probably nothing more complicated than “We don’t prevent sharing of the passwords which the ECF uses already, and the sky hasn’t fallen in.†But on reflection, if we’re not publishing the details of non-Members, an illicitly got password won’t give a non-Member his details. He just gets what he gets in (2).
Others may have had more sophisticated viewpoints. The Board had its own, and resolved on
(4)
Publish details for ECF Members, but each Member has access to his own details only, via a unique password. It starts to sound like internet banking.
It certainly removes any incentive to share your password. I believe that was the Board’s intention. Unfortunately it raises other problems. I have no doubt the unique-password thing can be done, but is it worth the trouble and the administrative complications, for the tiny outcome envisaged by the Board? It’s a minimalist plan with a maximum of bother. I don’t think the Board have found a programmer who’ll do it, and they’ve had half a year to try. I know they aren’t expecting any developments in the near future. They had a meeting at the British, and the topic wasn’t even discussed.
I wasn’t going to say the next bit, because it’s a non-issue. Data Protection Act. I have heard it suggested that the Board had the DPA in mind when they chose option (4). It sounds implausible to me. We knocked that one on the head when we published names and grades on the web in the first place. The DPA is the last refuge of the foot-dragger, and I do not accuse the Board of foot-dragging.
Incidentally the Board’s plan excluded Basic Members. I’m not sure this was politically wise, given that Basic Members are included in the email frenzy we’re trying to get rid of.
____________________
Anyway. Where do we go from here, given that the status quo is not an option? The Board, with the best of intentions, have fixed on a plan that no one seems willing and able to program. It must be unfixed, in favour of one that somebody will and can. I have a sort of feeling this means losing the password. My choice would be option (1) if it were politically possible. Since it is not, I will swallow my dislike of (2) and settle for it as the best thing we’re going to get. It’s gettable. Carl is still willing to program it, Board or Council willing.
The list would include players’ current-season results, obviously, so that players could report errors. The site would need to be updated more often than it is at the moment. Once a month, say. Interestingly, it could be multi-tier to reflect the different categories of Membership. For example, Basic Members could get just a list of their games in the current season so far. Standard and Junior Members could get previous season as well, and Full Members could get any season at all. These are only illustrations of what could be done. Other possibilities, for a premium service, might include the goodies already mentioned in (1). All of this is doable without passwords.
It won’t come overnight. It might come gradually, I don’t know. There’s a lot of programming involved, and I won’t be doing it. But I think we might improve on zero progress in half a year.
____________________
For completeness: there are financial implications, which the Board will have considered when they made their decision in January. I don’t know the ECF’s income from sale of lists @ £5 and £10, but whatever it is we will lose some of it. No Standard Member will pay £5 when he’s getting a superior service from the website anyway. On the other hand...
It seems reasonable to hope for large numbers of new Members, considering the much enhanced service on offer. This could turn out to be not just the right way to run a grading website, but a nice little earner as well.
ONLINE GRADING LIST: PUBLICATION OF PLAYERS’ DETAILED GAME RESULTS
Detailed results and more. It’s not happening yet!
I don’t doubt the Board’s intention to do it. Their thinking was reported briefly - see http://www.ecforum.org.uk/viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1386 - in Adam Raoof’s account of the Board meeting of January 2010. There was some comment, but coverage was slight and the official website report of the meeting (to follow “in due courseâ€) is not yet in evidence. Anyway, plans seem to have ground to a halt and I think the topic is due for an airing. I shan’t be brief.
You probably know what happens at the moment. ECF Full Members get a list of their results, covering the latest grading season, immediately after the July grading list is finalised. This is an entitlement of Membership. The list can also be purchased for £5 by Standard and Junior Members, and for £10 by non-Members. I suppose about 500 lists, including bought ones, went out this year, by post or email. Mostly email. They have elicited 6 queries as to accuracy so far, but a lot of errors had already been picked up by the Preliminary Check done a month earlier. This is done before all the results are in, and is a much bigger operation. It goes free of charge to all emailable Members of any stripe (something over 1,700 emails this year). It isn’t an entitlement of Membership; it is sent as an error-finding exercise. I don’t know how many it found this year, but the responses were queueing for a flat-out week and went on coming long after that.
You’ve guessed my opinion of this. A frenzy of emails once a year is a ridiculous way of doing it when you’ve got a website you could use all through the season. The ECF grading team had a look at it last year and concluded that extending the online list was practicable. Crucially it had the support of Carl Hibbard who would be doing most, if not all, of the programming. The Board met in January 2010. It considered three possible plans which the team had thought reasonable, and chose the fourth. The plans were something like this.
(1)
Publish details for everyone, à la FIDE and Yorkshire. It needn’t be just players’ game lists. Other possible goodies include tournament crosstables and details of league matches.
This was not the team’s recommendation, though it had support. Attractive as it is, it would be politically impossible in the ECF because printouts of games are an advertised benefit of Membership.
(2)
Publish details for ECF Members only, à la Chess Scotland. This was not the team’s recommendation, though it had support. It is open to the objection that, in a sense, it penalises Members by showing their results to all their non-Member opponents, who themselves remain uncheckable.
(3)
Publish details for ECF Members only, but with a password given only to Members. I think this was the team’s recommendation, as far as anything was. It had not escaped their notice that passwords can be passed on. I don’t quite know what the team’s thinking was on this. I’m not sure what mine was. Probably nothing more complicated than “We don’t prevent sharing of the passwords which the ECF uses already, and the sky hasn’t fallen in.†But on reflection, if we’re not publishing the details of non-Members, an illicitly got password won’t give a non-Member his details. He just gets what he gets in (2).
Others may have had more sophisticated viewpoints. The Board had its own, and resolved on
(4)
Publish details for ECF Members, but each Member has access to his own details only, via a unique password. It starts to sound like internet banking.
It certainly removes any incentive to share your password. I believe that was the Board’s intention. Unfortunately it raises other problems. I have no doubt the unique-password thing can be done, but is it worth the trouble and the administrative complications, for the tiny outcome envisaged by the Board? It’s a minimalist plan with a maximum of bother. I don’t think the Board have found a programmer who’ll do it, and they’ve had half a year to try. I know they aren’t expecting any developments in the near future. They had a meeting at the British, and the topic wasn’t even discussed.
I wasn’t going to say the next bit, because it’s a non-issue. Data Protection Act. I have heard it suggested that the Board had the DPA in mind when they chose option (4). It sounds implausible to me. We knocked that one on the head when we published names and grades on the web in the first place. The DPA is the last refuge of the foot-dragger, and I do not accuse the Board of foot-dragging.
Incidentally the Board’s plan excluded Basic Members. I’m not sure this was politically wise, given that Basic Members are included in the email frenzy we’re trying to get rid of.
____________________
Anyway. Where do we go from here, given that the status quo is not an option? The Board, with the best of intentions, have fixed on a plan that no one seems willing and able to program. It must be unfixed, in favour of one that somebody will and can. I have a sort of feeling this means losing the password. My choice would be option (1) if it were politically possible. Since it is not, I will swallow my dislike of (2) and settle for it as the best thing we’re going to get. It’s gettable. Carl is still willing to program it, Board or Council willing.
The list would include players’ current-season results, obviously, so that players could report errors. The site would need to be updated more often than it is at the moment. Once a month, say. Interestingly, it could be multi-tier to reflect the different categories of Membership. For example, Basic Members could get just a list of their games in the current season so far. Standard and Junior Members could get previous season as well, and Full Members could get any season at all. These are only illustrations of what could be done. Other possibilities, for a premium service, might include the goodies already mentioned in (1). All of this is doable without passwords.
It won’t come overnight. It might come gradually, I don’t know. There’s a lot of programming involved, and I won’t be doing it. But I think we might improve on zero progress in half a year.
____________________
For completeness: there are financial implications, which the Board will have considered when they made their decision in January. I don’t know the ECF’s income from sale of lists @ £5 and £10, but whatever it is we will lose some of it. No Standard Member will pay £5 when he’s getting a superior service from the website anyway. On the other hand...
It seems reasonable to hope for large numbers of new Members, considering the much enhanced service on offer. This could turn out to be not just the right way to run a grading website, but a nice little earner as well.