Active/Inactive/Deceased/Merged ?

[John Upham]

I am so glad that I do not yet show as deceased. I will however remain inactive, probably for ever.

I'd like to be shown as inactive but I suspect I need to become deceased first?

Perhaps if I read my own name in a Times obituary notice my status would change?

[Richard Thursby]

Perhaps if I read my own name in a Times obituary notice my status would change?

Perhaps it might inspire you to set up the John Upham Awards? [Yes I am aware of the lack of evidence for the story about Alfred Nobel reading his own obituary after newspapers mistakenly thought he had died when in fact it was his brother.]

[Neil Graham]

I wrote something about this on another thread - but rather than trawl through myriad posts I'll try and go through the arguments again.

If you are currently playing chess you are "active" - if you aren't clearly you are "inactive". Now we are all well aware of players who after a period of inactivity return to playing after a break. Unless someone dies they are never deleted from the ratings records so it doesn't create a problem reactivating a player's record.

What does cause a problem is the number of players who according to this thread are "active". Let's take the most common example - players called "Smith" - there are 225 rated players called "Smith" or similar (Smithson for example). However there are over four times this amount (1048) of unrated players. Some of these have profiles such as "J Smith - Club Unknown - no rated games ever". I hazard a guess that there are hundreds of players on the rating database with similar profiles. These will remain as active and of course never be removed till the year 2525 - if they can survive.

Surely if a player has played no rated games for the past five consecutive years they should be marked as "Inactive". This will stop the database being cluttered with players who clearly aren't participating in chess currently and give a much clearer picture of our core membership.

[Brian Valentine]

I wrote something about this on another thread - but rather than trawl through myriad posts I'll try and go through the arguments again.

If you are currently playing chess you are "active" - if you aren't clearly you are "inactive". Now we are all well aware of players who after a period of inactivity return to playing after a break. Unless someone dies they are never deleted from the ratings records so it doesn't create a problem reactivating a player's record.

What does cause a problem is the number of players who according to this thread are "active". Let's take the most common example - players called "Smith" - there are 225 rated players called "Smith" or similar (Smithson for example). However there are over four times this amount (1048) of unrated players. Some of these have profiles such as "J Smith - Club Unknown - no rated games ever". I hazard a guess that there are hundreds of players on the rating database with similar profiles. These will remain as active and of course never be removed till the year 2525 - if they can survive.

Surely if a player has played no rated games for the past five consecutive years they should be marked as "Inactive". This will stop the database being cluttered with players who clearly aren't participating in chess currently and give a much clearer picture of our core membership.

Partly through the rating team misappropriating an ancient concept, there is a misconception underlying Neil's thesis. In the old days we had just one standard play list and so the switch made a lot of sense as Neil sets out. A clear set of rules can determine a player becoming "inactive". This idea was muddied with the introduction of rapid chess it became less useful and this got worse as the other 4 lists were published.

On onverting to the monthly system the Board determined that all data was retained on the new database. We also concluded that total trasparency was desireable, so that there were "eyes and ears" authenticating the ratings. Hence we have the clutter held partially hidden in the unrated section of the lists, which supports the publishing of results from long ago. However we conform with GDPR rules so we hijacked the Active/Inactive switches to mask records in certain circumstances.

As well as of losing this facility, there seems no advantage in deemimg players active/inactive. We have a clear picture of players (the rating system is not the best place to measure "membership") by looking at the list of rated player each month. Amongst other things we also record the number of active players in each list each month.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"These will remain as active and of course never be removed till the year 2525 - if they can survive."

I suspect many people will not get the Zager and Evans reference,

[Matt Mackenzie]

I did