ECF Director elections for 2012/13

[David Robertson]

...who could deliver miricals in there spare time...or just offer to serve with there `limited` talants....

Where to start? Christ Almighty, where to start?

[Stewart Reuben]

Adam Raoof >Irrespective of the truth or otherwise of anything quoted above, it won't affect the entry fees for Torquay - they will be comparable to previous years.<

Adam is not standing as Home Chess Director. He will probably be elected Marketing Director. I think it is improper for him to try to tie the hands of the 2012-13 Home Chess Director, probably Alex H and the 2013 Congress Manager, yet to be appointed.

Entry fees would not be increased across the board. That would be grossly unfair to, for example, the U8 which is a one day event.
In 2009 I was very short of time and simply increased the entry fees for the Torquay congress by 20% across the whole event. Nobody commented.

[John McKenna]

"The Guide has this to say... It's a planet with an ancient and mysterious history... the Circling Poets of Arium... sing an incredibly long and beautiful song... The second, much longer, part tells of all their bickerings... It was a descendent... who invented the curious tale of impending doom... to rid themselves of an entirely usless third of their population..."

The song went something like -

And you tell me over and over again, my friend.
Ah, you don't believe we're on the Eve of Destruction...

[John McKenna]

Btw, 'usless' = selfish

[Krishna Shiatis]

I also think there is a world of difference between “Where was Krishna last Wednesday night?” and “Where was Krishna last Wednesday night? We all know there was murder. I’ve heard Krishna has knives in her kitchen. Is there any connection between that fact, that proven fact, and the murder? I don’t know. It was a stabbing, so the killer did have access to knives. What do you think?”. This forum, and a blog we all know, has tended towards the latter, and followed it up with “Krishna has not responded. That is the sort of thing a guilty person would do. Let’s assume she committed the murder and speculate what her motives might have been”*

*Given recent sense of humour failures, I would like to say that I have no reason to believe Krishna committed a murder last Wednesday.

??? Hello! Have you lost the plot? I know exactly where I was last Wednesday - what is your alibi for whatever it was that never happened?

It did feel like murder reading through your post though

[Krishna Shiatis]

I had wondered whether you were, what we in the North call a WUM (wind-up merchant), I mean no disrespect in that, and I accept that you are not. But it takes a breathtaking lack of self-awareness to go around calling people liars and ethic-less and then to be outraged at rather minor rebuttals. I choose to believe it is innocence. And that as with the Graham Greene charactor you are "like a leper without a bell, walking around meaning no harm."

Again, more inaccurate bile. You claim to "mean no disrespect" and maybe in your head you are thinking that you are not being disrespectful. However you do not show any respect yourself through your words.

I think that you are very angry inside about a lot of things and it does tend to spill out at times in what you say. Sometimes your posts are lucid and you make some good points. Other times you write some really abusive stuff which seems to come out from nowhere.

[Angus French]

Well now where to begin.

It would help if people read what was in a post before scurrying to condemn what was not said. It would also help if some posters were not dammed by a certain inflexibilty of thought.

I said I believed that the candidate was not suited to be ECF President - in an election I would think this is a view I am perfectly entitled to hold. I was then asked to flesh out my vague thoughts, so I added flesh.

I made clear that I believe the candidate to be a decent, hardworking individual and a good arbiter.

That's all very well but what had stuck out previously was this:

I'll start you off with a statement on the SCCU website in 2,000.It's a long and sorry tale.

LIST HAS SERIOUS OMISSIONS
19.8.00, updated 21.8.00

Your Webmaster unexpectedly got a copy in the post yesterday morning. As a Grader, presumably. Thanks, BCF, and he's not complaining, but he'd have been happy with it by email. Must have cost a packet if they've posted it to all of the 100-odd graders.
Can't say we like the bilious cover, but otherwise the presentation is hard to fault. Standard and Rapid grades are not, after all, in separate lists. They're all very readably on one line.

Unfortunately, the good news stops there.

The List is considerably smaller than previous ones. About 10400 names, compared with something like 13 or 14 thousand last time. The shortfall cannot be entirely due to the excision of duplicate names. It is presumably something to do with the various omissions.

We hear, from a Yorkshire correspondent, that no one's in from Yorkshire. This seemed to surprise him, as well as us. It isn't a Yorkshire declaration of independence; the YCA grader says he sent his results. The content of the List has also been severely criticised, on grounds of completeness and accuracy, by another commentator who was so offensive about it, though not to the SCCU, that we've forgotten his name on purpose. He was substantially right. There were always going to be omissions, especially in a List produced under such time pressure, but one has come to light which is very serious.

Events omitted:
(a) The List does not contain a list of events graded. However, some events were omitted because not received, and others because received very late in July. The late ones will no doubt be on the CD.
(b) Some - the Director has found at least 35 - were omitted because the grader forgot to give the time controls. This prevents a file from processing.
(c) It appears that events played in 1999, which means June to December, were accidentally omitted from the calculations. This is why the incidence of A grades is so implausibly low. It's something to do with the twice-yearly cycle which (in theory) applied last year. A few events may have escaped this mishap, and we guess that winter leagues are OK if the grader simply dated them 1.1.00 as graders will.

It's possible - investigations continue - that 1999 games went in as "previous-season" ones. This would mess up the grade categories, but not the grades themselves to quite the same extent.

followed by this:

For all the myriad balls-ups that the ECF has engineered in its history, there is only one that still haunts the soul of the ECF establishment, that is talked about in hushed tones in a way that the Keene-Miles "incident", the Reuben-Keene "incident" are not.

It is the time when the English Grading system imploded. The time when the the grades were wrong, when thousands of players did not in fact get a grade - and when congress organisors were making physical threats against office staff - such was their frustration. The costs were large - eating up almost 15 per cent of the entire game fee and - in the days before widespread e-mail, leading to the pulping of the grading list and its reprinting.

The man in charge of this disaster was Director of Grading Roger Edwards.

I read what I believe to be the relevant pages of the SCCU archive on BCF news and on grading matters: here and here and got a different picture. Harry Lamb's post corroborated my impression. It seems to me that the problems stemmed from the introduction of new software and processes and were manifest BEFORE Roger’s appointment.

[Roger de Coverly]

It seems to me that the problems stemmed from the introduction of new software and processes and were manifest BEFORE Roger’s appointment.

Rereading the SCCU archive and recalling some personal memories, the 1999 list was both wrong (on investigation) and late, whereas the 2000 list was merely wrong, but obviously so.

[John McKenna]

Thankfully, no one's to blame for the introduction of less than really useful s/w (that undoubtedly introduced itself). Human error is being replaced by computer error. Thus we will soon be absolved of all responsibility for everthing - computer says, "I cannot tell a lie... I did it with my little hatchet" (no, surely that must be widget).
Philosphers have postulated that the universe is nothing more, or less, than a gigantic hologram generated by a cosmic computer, so even you-know-who is not responsible.

[Roger de Coverly]

Thankfully, no one's to blame for the introduction of less than really useful s/w (that undoubtedly introduced itself).

The 1999 upgrade was a cultural change as well. Although many graders had developed private systems for result processing, locally the underlying system required no more technology than mental arithmetic and a pen. Admittedly a calculator or adding machine made the process faster and a typewriter would make the results neater. But all that had to be done was to tabulate the results for each player, look up their grade in a previous list (or guess/estimate if a new player), and add up the result plus 50* the excess of wins over losses. They would then send the event, the player name, resulting total and number of games played to the central coordinator.

The new system changed all that to one where each individual result was captured and sent to the BCF. Again that sounds simple, but the process of identifying new players was flawed. Instead of allocating a code at or before the first graded game, a process of matching name and date of birth was relied on. This in practice proved unreliable, possibly the hardware then in use, or the software language weren't powerful enough. So players ended up duplicated, repeated three times or more.

[harrylamb]

Hi Martin

I would point those interested in facts to the two letters the candidate wrote to the Management Board at the time more or less accepting the points outlined in my earlier post - one of these I believe is available for viewing on the SCCU.

You keep saying this but I cannot find the document or any reference to it in the SCCU archives. It would also appear that Angus French cannot either. Could you point me to the URL where it appears?

Cheers
Harry

[Martin Regan]

You keep saying this but I cannot find the document or any reference to it in the SCCU archives. It would also appear that Angus French cannot either. Could you point me to the URL where it appears?

I have said it once.

http://www.sccu.ndo.co.uk/0001/grad.htm. Bottom of page.

[William Metcalfe]

I will try and bring this thread back on track instead of it being a flame war.
What do we want from a Ecf president do we want a figurehead or do we want a president who is formulating policy.
My view is i want a figuehead the Ceo and the board should be making policy decisions.
I will wait till i hear Roger speak at the Agm but if he is still talking the same reteric as his statement i will not be able to vote for him.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

I will try and bring this thread back on track instead of it being a flame war.
What do we want from a Ecf president do we want a figurehead or do we want a president who is formulating policy.
My view is i want a figuehead the Ceo and the board should be making policy decisions.
I will wait till i hear Roger speak at the Agm but if he is still talking the same reteric as his statement i will not be able to vote for him.

Surely you mean those you represent have instructed you to take this approach, or given you latitude to take this approach?

[William Metcalfe]

some have left it up to me i am awaiting instructions from others.I was stating my personal view.