Helen Warren wants to delete the ratings of deceased USCF members.
Sam Sloan
I disagree. I think these ratings should be kept for historical
purposes.
Here is what she said, at
http://www.uschess.org/org/govern/HWofficvis.html
Updates (changes) are sent from the dBase file to the individual
responsible for maintaining the ratings on the Website. This
responsibility is now in the hands of a volunteer outside the USCF
office who sporadically works on the ratings. These updates are then
merged with the old Web file, replacing those whose ratings have
changed., adding new ones, but not deleting those of the deceased.
Members who have lapsed are kept in case they later rejoin, but there
is no reason to keep members who have died in the ratings.
EZoto
if it is true shows an insensitivity here. There are many people
including religious people who have a great respect for the dead. Has
she contacted the relatives of these people? Records of people who have
passed away are important even if it is a chess rating. If she thinks
this is petty then think again. I don't know the legal rights of USCF is
to take such action so I can't comment. I also don't want this to be a
flame war either.
EZoto
Isofarro
wrote:
>Sam Sloan wrote:
>
>> Helen Warren wants to delete the ratings of deceased USCF members.
>>
>> I disagree. I think these ratings should be kept for historical
>> purposes.
Ratings are supposed to be a mathematical approximate of current
playing strength. Note the word current. How do you measure current
playing strength? By participating in tournaments.
So obviously, dead people should remain on the rating list, as long as
they remain active tournament players.
Ios.
--
AnyBrowser Campaign: http://www.anybrowser.org/campaign/
alt.html FAQ: http://www.html-faq.com & http://www.alt-html.org
alt.html QuickStart: http://rock13.com/webhelp/usenet/newbie.txt
Web Dev Wiki: http://www.allmyfaqs.com/
Sam Sloan
<Kbac...@cavemanchess.com> wrote:
>In article <3BDBCDB0...@bellatlantic.net>, EZoto says...
>>
>>Just to let you know I don't agree with your craziness Sam but this issue
>>if it is true shows an insensitivity here. There are many people
>>including religious people who have a great respect for the dead. Has
>>she contacted the relatives of these people? Records of people who have
>>passed away are important even if it is a chess rating. If she thinks
>>this is petty then think again. I don't know the legal rights of USCF is
>>to take such action so I can't comment. I also don't want this to be a
>>flame war either.
>>
>>EZoto
>>
>
>You're kidding about the legal rights of USCF, right? It's their rating system,
>their records.
>
>Kevin L. Bachler
>
You're kidding about it being their rating system, right?
It is our rating system. We, the members of the USCF, own the rating
system, not Helen Warren.
You may recall that Helen Warren and her crew nearly destroyed the
rating system earlier this year with the fiddle points plan.
Helen's statement that "there is no reason to keep members who have
died in the ratings" is incredible.
There are many reasons, too many to list, but here are a few:
1. Chess players are interested in ratings for historical purposes. We
want to know whether Capablanca was rated higher than Alekhine for
example. Even low rated players who were not famous are interesting to
us chess players.
2. Most rated players have devoted a considerable portion of their
lives to chess. When they die, they want to be remembered as a chess
player. Even if their rating was 1372, they still want to be
remembered for that.
3. When playing over games of players, we want to be able to look up
their ratings. There are millions of games in chess databases. If we
see somebody playing an interesting move, we want to know if his
rating was 1372 or 2372.
4. Elimination of fraud. It does not happen often but there have been
cases of fake tournaments where dead players supposedly played.
5. Most importantly, it costs zero to keep a player in the rating
lists, but it costs time and effort to remove his name.
I do not think that anybody agrees with Helen Warren's view that
"there is no reason to keep members who have died in the ratings".
However, because of her being on the Executive Board, funny things
have happened. As an example, on her list of dead chess players, the
name of James Hurt appears. James Hurt was a well known Northern
California player who died last year. Now, if you search at
http://www.64.com/uscf/ratings and you search for Hurt (only), what
you will find is Eric Hurt (Hurt, James E.) Click on that, and you get
Eric Hurt, a Kentucky player rated 1430. I presume that Eric Hurt is
his heir.
Going back, if you search for Hurt,James you get "Hurt, James ID
number changed to DECEASED".
All this is silly and I doubt that the executive board was consulted.
I hope that it will be changed back.
Sam Sloan
Frank Romano
>
> It is our rating system. We, the members of the USCF, own the rating
> system, not Helen Warren.
>
You're kidding, right Sam? Your statement fails the laugh test.
> You may recall that Helen Warren and her crew nearly destroyed the
> rating system earlier this year with the fiddle points plan.
>
Why do I get the feeling you're disagreeing more with Helen than her idea. You
obviously dislike everything she does and never (to my knowledge) say anything
positive about her. Now, if Bill were to make the same suggestion, I'm certain you
would come up with at least 5 reasons why it's such a good idea.
> There are many reasons, too many to list, but here are a few:
>
> 1. Chess players are interested in ratings for historical purposes. We
> want to know whether Capablanca was rated higher than Alekhine for
> example. Even low rated players who were not famous are interesting to
> us chess players.
>
Capablanca and Alekhine are in our rating lists? I have not seen their names.
Maybe I should look a little harder?
> 2. Most rated players have devoted a considerable portion of their
> lives to chess. When they die, they want to be remembered as a chess
> player. Even if their rating was 1372, they still want to be
> remembered for that.
>
So put the rating on their tombstones. E.g. "Here lies Sam Sloan - rated 1372"
li...@orc.net
> Helen Warren wants to delete the ratings of deceased USCF members.
> I disagree. I think these ratings should be kept for historical
> purposes.
Where can I donate a floppy disk so that Helen can preserve old ratings?
StanB
"Frank Romano" <f_ro...@dejanews.com> wrote in message
> So put the rating on their tombstones. E.g. "Here lies Sam Sloan - rated
1372"
Well the "lies" part is right.
StanB
Sam Sloan
<f_ro...@dejanews.com> wrote:
>Why do I get the feeling you're disagreeing more with Helen than her idea. You
>obviously dislike everything she does and never (to my knowledge) say anything
>positive about her.
Not true at all. Helen Warren has done very good work on a key
project, which is deleting deceased life members from the USCF
Membership lists. If you read her report, you will see that she
provides a list of life members who have been dead in some cases for a
long time, such as Edna Horowitz, wife of Al Horowitz, who died more
than 20 years ago.
Another example is James A. Scherer who I mistakenly believed was a
poster to this group. He died in 1990.
Her report is aptly entitled "How I spent My Summer Vacation". We need
to be very thankful to Helen Warren for doing this work. We also need
to give George DeFeis a special diploma, the Idiot Award, for two
massive errors by DeFeis which Helen Warren reports. One is that the
names of deceased life members previously provided to the office still
had not been removed. This means that the USCF was still mailing Chess
Life to Edna Horowitz every month for example.
The other more seriors error by DeFeis was that he did not send "LM
Notes" to the Life Members by first class mail.
This was an incredibly stupid act by DeFeis because the entire purpose
of LM Notes was for the office to learn which life members were
deceased. It was not intended as a propaganda vehicle for Tim Redman
and Tom Dorsch, who got to include political messages in LM Notes. The
purpose of LM Notes was that if the named recipient was dead, the post
office would return the envelope marked "deceased". Then the USCF
could delete the person's name from the Life Membership roles.
By not sending LM Notes by first class mail, that made it that the
post office simply trashed those where the recipient was dead, just as
it trashes hundreds of Chess Lifes every month where the recipients
are deceased. It is difficult to imagine how DeFeis could do such a
stupid thing. It seems that Harold Dondis was right when he said that
George DeFeis has a low IQ.
Here is what Helen Warren says about this on:
http://www.uschess.org/org/govern/HWofficvis.html
"The failure to send the first issue of LM Notes by first
class mail was a serious setback to the discovery of deceased LMs.
Although this mailing has generated contributions of about $7,000
(6/12/01), the non-delivereds would have provided a fruitful basis
for running through the SSDI site. Hundreds of deceased LMs continue
unremoved. This is a massive project that may take a very long time
to complete, but with the proper tools for screening, it can
eventually get done."
So, on this point, Helen Warren has done a lot of good work and needs
to be commended, even though I disagree with her when she says that
the ratings of deceased chess players should be deleted from the
online ratings lists.
Sam Sloan
li...@orc.net
> By not sending LM Notes by first class mail, that made it that the
> post office simply trashed those where the recipient was dead, just as
> it trashes hundreds of Chess Lifes every month where the recipients
> are deceased. It is difficult to imagine how DeFeis could do such a
> stupid thing. It seems that Harold Dondis was right when he said that
> George DeFeis has a low IQ.
If what you say is true, this is incredibly stupid.
li...@orc.net
> This was an incredibly stupid act by DeFeis because the entire purpose
> of LM Notes was for the office to learn which life members were
> deceased. It was not intended as a propaganda vehicle for Tim Redman
> and Tom Dorsch, who got to include political messages in LM Notes. The
> purpose of LM Notes was that if the named recipient was dead, the post
> office would return the envelope marked "deceased". Then the USCF
> could delete the person's name from the Life Membership roles.
I forgot to mention: Of course, this is entirely understandable.
If all of a sudden hundreds, perhaps thousands, of return mail envelopes
came back to the USCF, people there would have to do work in deleting the
deceased Life Members.
Work is intolerable, and so thank God it was avoided by the Postal Service
simply discarding the undeliverable mail.
StanB
Kenneth Sloan
> On Sun, 28 Oct 2001 05:25:03 GMT, EZoto <ez...@bellatlantic.net>
> wrote:
>
> >Sam Sloan wrote:
> >
> >> Helen Warren wants to delete the ratings of deceased USCF members.
> >>
> >> I disagree. I think these ratings should be kept for historical
> >> purposes.
>
> Ratings are supposed to be a mathematical approximate of current
> playing strength. Note the word current. How do you measure current
> playing strength? By participating in tournaments.
>
> So obviously, dead people should remain on the rating list, as long as
> they remain active tournament players.
Well...one approach might be to modify the rating system to use
life/death as a predictor of future performance. But, this is
considered to be politically incorrect.
--
Kenneth Sloan sl...@uab.edu
Computer and Information Sciences (205) 934-2213
University of Alabama at Birmingham FAX (205) 934-5473
Birmingham, AL 35294-1170 http://www.cis.uab.edu/info/faculty/sloan/
EZoto
Ratings: Dead or Alive. How much space on a hard drive can the name of all the
deceased chess players who were rated take up for pete's sake!!!!!???? Capablanca
may have been deleted but he is the exception to the rule don't you think? As for
the rest it should just have a list for the deceased chess players by themselves.
EZoto
doanf...@home.com
> Chess
>Ratings: Dead or Alive. How much space on a hard drive can the name of all
> the
>deceased chess players who were rated take up for pete's sake!!!!!????
> Capablanca
>may have been deleted but he is the exception to the rule don't you think? As
> for
>the rest it should just have a list for the deceased chess players by
> themselves.
>
>EZoto
So far as I know, no one has talked about clearing dead people out of the USCF
internal databases. This would just be the information on the Web site. One of
the most common TD screwups is to use the ID of a player with a similar or
even spot on same name when it's actually a different individual than the one
you want. (The clerks at USCF make the same mistake often enough themselves).
It is not necessarily helpful to have ten ex (and a number of "expired")
members on the Web for each real member.
Tom Doan
NN
someones rating. But it makes no sense to estimate a late chessplayer's
strength by his last rating. Let's for example say that Victor Kortschnoj
suffers from vaskular dementia, but keeps on playing tournaments due to his
love for chess. If one looks up his rating in some 50 years or so and gets
the nonsensical rating 2043, one may think: "What a mediocre chessplayer".
Personally I think, it would make more sense to collect a monthly issued
rating list. Then one would be able to follow the ratingdevelopment of each
and every chessplayer.
Comparability is another issue. Try Jeff Sonas http://www.chessmetrics.com/.
Okay, one may want to find out wheather Capablanca was higher rated than
Alekhine, but unless both players rating steems from the same period of
time, one cannot deduct who was stronger.
I have to agree with Helen that a current rating list should only consist of
players who are still alive. (But instead of totally erasing data, I would
rather store them somewhere else.)
Robert
John & LaVerne McCumiskey
Sam Sloan wrote:
> Helen Warren wants to delete the ratings of deceased USCF members.
>
> I disagree. I think these ratings should be kept for historical
> purposes.
I would agree with this...but see more below...
> Here is what she said, at
> http://www.uschess.org/org/govern/HWofficvis.html
>
> Updates (changes) are sent from the dBase file to the individual
> responsible for maintaining the ratings on the Website. This
> responsibility is now in the hands of a volunteer outside the USCF
> office who sporadically works on the ratings. These updates are then
> merged with the old Web file, replacing those whose ratings have
> changed., adding new ones, but not deleting those of the deceased.
> Members who have lapsed are kept in case they later rejoin, but there
> is no reason to keep members who have died in the ratings.
It sounds like what I've heard in the past. In my opinion, and from the
perspective of good computer and records management, I believe it is a
reasonable idea to remove the records (read -- delete the records) of
deceased members from the ratings database, both on the website and
regular ratings database used by TDs. Further, any records deleted from
the main ratings database should be archived in a separate database for
historical purposes. The archived data base of deceased players should
be made publically available to anyone who wishes to download it and a
link to historical ratings could be set up on the USCF web site.
This serves two purposes. 1) For those of us who download the database
for regular use, it will hopefully contain a smaller amount of data that
we would want to use (faster downloads for us 56K types) and; 2) Anyone
who wishes to search the historical record would be able to do so if they
desire.
John McCumiskey
-------------------------------------------------------------
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn
the world, but to save the world through Him. John 3:17
Greg Kennedy
> Helen Warren wants to delete the ratings of deceased USCF members.
>
> I disagree. I think these ratings should be kept for historical
> purposes.
I agree with Sam Sloan. (Did I write that??!) ;-)
These ratings of deceased players should be kept
for historical purposes.
However, there is a problem if these ratings are
not removed from the current listings. Consider
the lists for the state of Indiana, for example. In the
number one position- presumably the strongest
chess player in the state- is a little known fellow by
the name of Jan Timman. Not an Indiana resident,
and not yet dead. Hmm. Moving quickly down the
list, we see that for some time Billy Colias (long
deceased) has occupied one of the next few slots,
displacing yet another Hoosier chessplayer from his
rightful position. Emory Tate, I believe, has surpassed
this deflation-proof obstacle and moved in closely
behind "Hoosier" Jan Timman. Now, below Colias,
it is clear that every single Hoosier chessplayer is
ranked incorrectly by (at least) two positions, due to
these inaccuracies- inclusions of non-residents and
the deceased. I wouldn't want to even try to
estimate the further errors in the list, given just how
incredibly obvious these two were.
Computers were supposed to make such things
as this easy- but apparently not for some.
ofergneezy
Are you sure she would know how to use it?
EZoto
be in the archives separate and available whenever needed.
EZoto
li...@orc.net
No, I am not.
Bart Van Hoorebeeck
> if it is true shows an insensitivity here. There are many people
> including religious people who have a great respect for the dead. Has
> she contacted the relatives of these people?
In my country dead people also seem to remain on the rating list. I can
tell you people find it strange, morbid and even hurting to see a dead
relative /friend on such a list.
Can't be too hard to just keep those ratings in a consultable archive
no?
Bart
EZoto
EZoto
Stewart Q Sutton
"EZoto" <ez...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:3BDDAEBB...@bellatlantic.net...
But this is the USCF we're talking about. Where technology is concerned,
the USCF couldn't find its organizational ass with both hands and a roadmap.
Hell, they don't even maintain their own online rating list - as far as I
know that is done by a kind soul in Chicago. Have you ever went to their
website? It was supposed to be second to none and I literally think it has
ended up being second best to having "none."
And the USCL server is not that bad. I like the interface better than ICC's
blitzin, and there seem to be fewer headcases than on most of the servers I
have used; but lets face it - USCL is the place where the Maytag repairman
goes when he wants to be alone. None of my local friends have switched (or
even logged in once!) from ICC to USCL even though they are USCF members!
And every time I read about another attempt at upgrading the USCF's pathetic
computer systems, I hear the sound of numerous toilets flushing another
$100,000 of members dues down the drain.
Bruce Moreland
morbid. The rating list should be a rating list, not a cemetary.
bruce
"EZoto" <ez...@bellatlantic.net> wrote in message
news:3BDBCDB0...@bellatlantic.net...
StanB
"Bruce Moreland" <bru...@seanet.com> wrote in message
> The idea that people should be left on the list after they've died is
> morbid. The rating list should be a rating list, not a cemetary.
What about people like Sam Sloan who occasionally play even though they've
been brain-dead for twenty years?
StanB
Bill Smythe
two. Opponents of players who have recently died may wish to update their
information.
Bill Smythe
Paul Rubin
After the year or two, the info should still be retained, but maybe
separately from the normal ratings list.
Sylvain Leroy
"Bart Van Hoorebeeck" <bart.vanh...@ufsia.ac.be> a écrit dans le
message news: 3BDD73B2...@ufsia.ac.be...
> EZoto wrote:
>
> > if it is true shows an insensitivity here. There are many people
> > including religious people who have a great respect for the dead. Has
> > she contacted the relatives of these people?
>
> In my country dead people also seem to remain on the rating list. I can
> tell you people find it strange, morbid and even hurting to see a dead
> relative /friend on such a list.
>
How much time in Belgium?
Bill Smythe
> After the year or two, the info should still be retained, but maybe
> separately from the normal ratings list.
Yes. That's what I meant.
Bill Smythe