read their terms of service, too
They specifically prohibit scraping “their” information:
TOURNACHESS
6. PROHIBITED ACTIVITIES
You may not access or use the Services for any purpose other than that for which we make the Services available. The Services may not be used in connection with any commercial endeavors except those that are specifically endorsed or approved by us.
As a user of the Services, you agree not to:
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Engage in any automated use of the system, such as using scripts to send comments or messages, or using any data mining, robots, or similar data gathering and extraction tools.
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Except as may be the result of standard search engine or Internet browser usage, use, launch, develop, or distribute any automated system, including without limitation, any spider, robot, cheat utility, scraper, or offline reader that accesses the Services, or use or launch any unauthorized script or other software.
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Use the Services as part of any effort to compete with us or otherwise use the Services and/or the Content for any revenue-generating endeavor or commercial enterprise.
Hi, folks. This is me. Some clarifications:
I’m not doing any screen scraping (loading full web pages and then parsing information out of them). I am only using the (unofficial, unsupported) APIs that are part of MUIR. I cache (save) ratings so that I don’t hit the APIs constantly for the same information. Player ratings are the primary, required information I need to operate.
The “Directorships” part was an answer to a problem someone had where they couldn’t find an easy way to find a list of their TD experience that included the number of players per tournament, so I added that. Again, it uses the APIs and not scraping pages.
As for the terms of service, it’s an off-the-shelf set of terms. Don’t read into it too much. Reasonable usage, I would be totally fine with in an automated fashion and would be happy to clarify that in writing later on. Bots (search engines, AI companies) are incredibly aggressive at gathering data, and I’d prefer to not allow those because they can crush a system like this.
I have full intention of being a good citizen here, so if there are any major concerns, please let me know and I’m happy to adjust!
This is a brand new system that is only used by me in any real way at the moment.
One more update: I disabled the directorships view. When I added it, I was looking at much shorter lists of TD history than your example here. The APIs need some work to be able to get all of that data in an efficient way, so I’ll just keep it off to avoid the possibility of it causing a problem.
Feel free to contact me directly anytime with any questions or concerns - russell@tournachess.com
Yeah it starts chugging even at around 500 events.