Governors let's welcome the President in his first meeting as president!
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Governors let's welcome the President in his first meeting as president!
Welcome to our 2013 October quarterly online meeting. The public can view the meeting. Governors, officers and members of the executive can post and vote. At the moment there is one motion on the table dealing with CFC employment rules. There is an important policy discussion regarding compliance with the new NFP Act. The first attempt was voted down by the governors and we will need to regroup and get this done as we have just a little more than a year to comply with the act. I am looking forward to some constructive and useful discussion.
If this is the wrong thread for this comment, my apolgies in advance, but.....
It appears there has been no weekly rating update done this week. Is there a problem?
Michael von Keitz had decided to do the weekly rating updates on Fridays instead of mid-week. He did this for the first time the week before last. He had planned to do the same this week but was not able to do the update because he fell ill. He will get this past week's update done ASAP and will have future rating updates done on Fridays and membership updates done on Mondays. That is the plan for future updates.
That is a very bad idea. Wednesday updates are perfect, they allow enough time for TD's to get their tournament submissions in from the prior weekend, and allow TD's and players adequate time to prepare for the upcoming weekend. We didn't just pick wednesday willy nilly, it is the optimal day for the update. It has been that way since December 2007 when I instigated it. Prior to that, they were done every 3 weeks, if that. We must not now begin another backslide in services. We've seen this movie before.
I agree with Bob G, Egis and others who say Friday is the worst day. It negatively affects the operations of weekend tournaments. I think Bob G is likely right when he says due consideration was given years ago when the updates went to weekly, on Wednesdays. Wed. does seem to remain the ideal day.
Also, no reason has been publicly presented to put forth the alleged merits of moving to Friday, which may be severely challenged.
There have been absolutely no complaints about the current system (after CFC taking much abuse about it previously), except when Michael does not get it done Wed. night. And generally he is cut some slack by members to come in with it sometime on Thursday. So why fix what isn't broken??
Bob A
In my opinion we should have continuously updated ratings as they have in the USCF with the updates being unofficial until the beginning of the next month (or it might be bimonthly). Unfortunately to be able to this now we would have had to set an automated website rating update system when we updated the website at considerable cost a couple of years ago and we did not do that.
My impression is that things are broken and hence the attempt to fix it. I can have a conversation with Michael about the reasoning behind the changes (update the ratings by Friday and update membership data by Monday). It is Michael's attempt to organize the work that he has to get done in a way that makes sense to him. If the ratings being updated on a Friday is a concern for someone why not just use the ratings from the previous Friday?
You are welcome to talk to him. I have been exchanging emails with him. I will be talking with him shortly either on skype or the phone. This morning I had my lesson with Viktor Gavrikov, sent out several emails related to CYCC, talked to someone on the phone about issues related to a future Toronto YCC, am waiting for a CBC Windsor television reporter to arrive to do an interview on Windsor chess and the WYCC. There is a local CBC radio interview from last week which is airing today which will probably result in a bunch of new kids looking to start chess lessons. Last night while I was teaching my beginner/intermediate class they were at my student Rohan Talukdar's house interviewing him and his parents. The parents invited me to attend but I couldn't leave the class and now I am checking in on the governors meeting. As you know from personal experience the CFC president tends to stay busy especially when he is involved in local chess along with the national responsibilities.
I don't feel strongly on this issue of Friday versus Wednesday but am willing to listen to what you and the governors and our executive director have to say on the issue.
Is this a discussion about the terms of an individual's employment? If it is maybe it should not be discussed in a public forum. Ultimately, terms of employment are a management responsibility ie. the executive.
I don't see it as a term of employment. The work needs to be and is being done, the question is more one of policy: when should new ratings be available?
I happen to agree that ratings and memberships should be available by the time people wake up on Thursdays. Of course the whole system should have been automated years ago, but even under the current system I think this represents the best compromise.
I'm with Bob - I'd much rather see ratings updated regularly (preferably weekly if that can be maintained, twice weekly otherwise). When I was directing constantly I fielded questions from players all the time on the rating system and I told them but I also told them they could do it themselves with a calculator reasonably quickly and accurately.
Besides an ED is ALWAYS wrestling with the fact that some TDs are faster to submit reports than others and short of every tournament using online boards posting to the web (which even were it possible isn't my idea of a tournament I'd want to play in) you're never going to get it exact.
All a rating is is a best estimate of your strength at that time. Players routinely play 50 pts above or below their ratings and less commonly up to 200 above or below. You never know which player you are shaking hands with when you sit down to play!