Website Issues Escalate Tom Hales - Thursday, September 17, 2009 4:00pm Greetings From Ashboro... I have watched with melancholy over the past few months as the NCCA website has slipped incrementally into mediocrity. Now it seems to be stuck in a complete information outage. Is there no minimum standard we should expect? Admittedly, I may have set the bar a bit too high during my period as webmaster. Had I not been relieved of these duties, it was already becoming clear to me that my intensity level would need some adjustment. So I was not expecting my replacement to do the same amount of work. I do not know what the minimum standard for our website should be, but the current state of affairs is not it. The 2009 North Carolina Invitational came and went, with not one photo nor game published. This in spite of the fact that our own President directed, and our Vice President was one of the players! Ditto for the 2009 LPO, and the recent 2009 NC Class. According the NCCA website, The NC Gambit is published four times per year and is available on line only. This seems to have been supplanted by Chess Chatter, an aptly named publication which at least offers some bare-bones information. I am not expecting a Pulitzer-prize winning effort , but is it too much to expect photos? Digital photography has made this so simple! I am sure many of the top players would agree to share their games, often in database format which makes them that much easier to publish. Is it too much to expect games? (Before I was removed as webmaster, my plan was to get a NC Games database together) We have not been getting timely updates for the NC Grand Prix. The current prize fund must be over $700.00 now, but good luck finding that information. Worst of all, many have noticed unexplainable fluctuations in their points from month to month, which does not exactly inspire confidence in the final tally. I suggest players in the running for prizes check totals for themselves. Prize payouts for all NC Grand Prix Events should be posted, since this is part of the formula for figuring points. This was part of the plan in the beginning. Now the Recent Results has been removed from the home page, after over one month of no updates. It reminds me of the story how the US Postal Service kept getting complaints that customers were waiting in line too long. Their solution? They removed the clocks from all post offices. I recently spoke with VP Gary Newsom about the website, and problems with the NC Grand Prix not being properly updated. To his credit, he did take some action to get this updated before the NC Class. However, I should not have to poke and prod just to get people to do their jobs. It is once again in need of updating. Must I call again? Subsequently, I also spoke to President Victor Beaman. Neither of these two seemed receptive of my offer to help by providing some much-needed content for the website. I have a ton of information ready for publication, including the March-April 2009 NC Gambit. It contains dozens of games from the NC Scholastic, photos, an interview with David High, a first-hand account of his winning game, and NM Kit Crittenden autobiography. That is just for starters. There are new photos of NM Crittenden, including one of him playing endgame virtuoso Edmar Mednis. I offered to help get this issue published in its rightful place - on the NCCA website. I also let Victor know that I have FM Ron Simpsons autobiography ready for publication (thanks again Ron). President Beaman suggested that I just publish these on my own website, which had been my back-up plan. I think this is less about politics, and more about Victor having to deal with anything. Unfortunately, there is a palpable lack of leadership in North Carolina Chess right now. According to our By-Laws, it is the President who is responsible to oversee the website. How long must we wait before our leaders either step up, or step down? Reluctantly submitted, Tom Hales