The comment for this tournament:
200503052011 LACC - SATURDAY SWISS LOS ANGELES CA 2005-03-05
is “Received on diskette, Not reviewed since last update.” What does this mean? It doesn’t seem to be rated, but similar ones after it have been.
Damon Slye
That means the event is in the process of being entered or validated by the USCF staff, since the event was submitted on diskette as opposed to submitted online.
I"m not sure what an appropriate short phrase is to indicate that the event is being worked on, but has not been checked for errors since the last time anything was changed, so we don’t know if there are still any errors remaining or not.
That could mean that there are still memberships to be tracked down or ones that are still being entered, or that the TD had to be contacted to help resolve some issue, and probably a half dozen other situations that I can’t think of at the moment.
In the case of an event submitted online by the TD (which is not the case here), it could also mean that membership exception requests have been submitted but not yet acted upon by the USCF office. (Walter Brown reviews these on a daily basis.)
Mike Nolan
How about “Waiting for Walter”? 
Or, more seriously, perhaps “Awaiting office action”.
Bill Smythe
Okay, Thanks for the quick response.
It may not always be waiting for office action, it may just be waiting for the TD to enter more data then run a check on it.
‘In Validation’ probably seems about as descriptive as anything else.
Could someone check on this tournament? It was played two months ago, and it still hasn’t been rated.
…
Thanks 
That event was originally waiting for 7 membership issues to be cleared up, 2 lapsed members and 5 missing IDs. (And that’s in a field of 12 players.)
At this point, the missing IDs have been added but there are still 3 non-members in the event.
At what point does USCF give up on the non-members and let the member-players have their ratings?
I don’t know that there’s a hard and fast rule for that. For events submitted online we do a weekly status check and e-mail the TD to remind him/her that the event hasn’t been rated yet. Walter Brown gets a daily report of events entered by the office but not yet rated.
What rule would you suggest?
Along the same line, what would you suggest the USCF do about TDs or affiliates who don’t respond to requests to resolve membership issues in their pending events?
For example, should we rate the event after a reasonable effort to contact the TD/organizer to collect memberships but warn, sanction or suspend the TD and/or affiliate? (And if we do that, what happens to the NEXT event from that TD or affiliate, or to other events that have been held and submitted but not yet rated.)
Keep in mind rule 23C is VERY clear that all players must be current USCF members, and under 23C the organizer is supposed to collect dues from those who cannot show any proof of membership. In this context, ‘organizer’ probably means ‘sponsoring affiliate’, or at least that’s probably where the hammer should fall. (In practice, I think the TD gets the blame most of the time.)
(BTW, I don’t know what contact the USCF office has had with the TD or sponsoring affiliate for this event, so let’s keep the discussion in the theoretical rather than about this event or any other specific event.)
No suggestion…simply a question, and a difficult one, at that.
Where are the results? I see that the tournament was finished 3/6/05 and was received 3/18/05 but has not yet been rated. My understanding was that all memberships were good the day of the tournament, but perhaps by the time the USCF got around to rating them, some had expired. Is this the hold-up??
If you’re going to ask questions about specific events, please give the USCF EVENT ID if you have it so I don’t have to guess what event you’re talking about. Failing that, give me the event name, dates, city, chief TD, affiliate etc.
Memberships are required to be current as of the ENDING DAY of the section.
I just ran a check on that event:
May 4, 2005 19:02:15
Event ID: 200503065811
82 errors found.
5 warnings found.
Tnmt ID: 200503065811
USCF Event ID: 200503065811
Event: ILLINOIS STATE ELEMENTARY CHAMPIONS
Affiliate: A5010322 GREATER PEORIA CHESS FED
Chief TD: 11335381 CHRISTOPHER A MERLI
Sections: 4
Dates: 2005-03-05 - 2005-03-06
Received: 2005-03-18 Entered: 2005-03-30
City/State: PEORIA, IL 61604
About half of the errors appear to be missing IDs, presumably for new members, the rest are lapsed members.
I would humbly suggest that you contact the TD or affiliate to find out what’s going on, it appears there are a great many memberships missing from this event. Where they are is unclear, but apparently the USCF office hasn’t gotten them yet.
Thanks for the Information. BTW… The USCF EVENT ID was not availabe on the “Events Received but Not Rated Page” although the event has been listed there since Late March.
I wish the Organizer had used the online entry. It is so easy and gives you immediate feedback on “ERRORS”. Another thing that I use is in WINTD there is a screening function available to catch out of date membership problems. Keep up the good work.
Thanks again!!
That event must have been received just before we started assigning the Event ID as part of the logging in process. I don’t know if it was sent to NY or TN.
The chief TD and affiliate can access the latest validation report from the TD/Affiliate Support Area even if the report was mailed to the USCF, but they do have to have registered for access to TD/A, of course. (And once you’ve got access I think it’s easier to upload the event than to drop it in the mail, but of course I’m biased. )
If I could go to MSA and look up this info, including the errors and warnings, I could contact the affiliate and “nag” them without having to bother you, Mr. Nolan! Thus you would delegate a lot of enforcement on data entry right back to your membership…and I’m sure there are plenty of willing “enforcers” out there.
Seeing 82 errors and 5 warnings, its’ shocking to see so many errors sent in from a director. Its’ more shocking to find out the director is a ANTD!!
The number of errors has little to do with the skill level of the TD or the organizer, it has more to do with the type of event.
I spoke to an NTD earlier today who recently uploaded a large event with over 200 errors on the initial validation report, most of then for players where the payment has not yet been processed. (Keep in mind that the affiliate may send in the membership payment separate from the TD sending in the rating report.)
As I recall, there were over 800 errors on the first validation report for SuperNationals III (5320 players).
Presumably in the case of the Ilinois event there is (or should be) a stack of membership forms that need to be sent to the USCF office and processed. I don’t know why that hasn’t happened. Perhaps the forms were sent to NY and not handled properly there or not sent on to the TN office. Perhaps the forms got lost in the mail. Maybe the forms arrived, but without a check for the dues or with insufficient information to be processable.
MSA only has records of rated events, events that have not yet been rated are listed on the ‘Tournaments Received’ page, which will generally show the affiliate and chief TD.
For privacy reasons, I think it is inapproprate to have the full validation report available other than to the chief TD and the sponsoring affiliate.
Even reporting the number of errors can be highly misleading. A large number of errors might only mean that the memberships were handled separately. A small number of errors may prevent an event from being ratable, depending upon the nature of the error. We CANNOT rate an event, for example, without all players having USCF IDs. (It can be rated with non-members in it, but not with missing IDs.)
If we have an event with a missing ID and no name for that player, there’s really no way to assign an ID yet.
Followed your humble suggestion. Emailed the affiliate. Affiliate says “We have contacted the USCF. They will address the issue.”
Go figure.
This is the reason I like to be the organizer and the director. True, its’ harder for one man to be the ‘organizer/director’ with anything higher then a category D event. There are a number of organizers after the event going into the red to cover the prize money, trophies and everything else. Every state has had an organizer dip into the membership money, just to pay the prize money or whatever. When the organizer can get back into the black, the memberships will be paid.
Now the rule is, the director should send in the tournament when all the memberships have been reported. Even with the standard old rule of 7 days, players will be looking at the director, asking why the event is not in or why its’ not finnished. The organizer can be one person, or it can be a group of people, or it can be a company. The organizers have never had a deadline of seven days to send in memberships. If the organizers are a group of people, they would be pointing fingers at each other why nobody has paid the memberships.
That just place the director as the only person the players can point fingers at. If the director cannot get the tournament rated, it very much destroys any chance the players will come back to any of the events. One bad organizer can damage a good director for years. This is the reason I have no wish to be a hired director for any large events. If the organizer does not have the money to cover the cost of the event if it goes south. Would tell the organizer to look for a different director.
If a ship has two Captains, the ship has a better chance to sink!
Douglas, I used to help teach small business management at the college level.
There is PROVEN EVIDENCE that partnerships tend to be more successful than sole proprietorships because the partners help each other get things done and keep each other on the ball.
I think that’s true in the relationship between the TD and the organizer/affiliate.
IMHO, the only reason that the organizer hasn’t had a 7 day requirement for sending in memberships is because the USCF has never really defined what an organizer is.
I think progress is being made on getting the Illinois event rated, but I’m still not sure who dropped the ball on that one, or why.