Hello, I'm starting a new discussion on this topic for two reasons: the previous one was getting too long, and when there are multiple pages the forum places you at the first page instead of the last page where you can add a message, so you have to manually navigate to the end to write a new post. Also, for some reason, every time I reach the last page it asks me to log in again before I can write, and after logging in it brings me back to the Home! Good thing it's time to start a new thread.
I wanted to give you a fresh list of considerations that emerged from some difficulties during the registration for our last tournament; when you have time, take a look, and if needed I can elaborate on the reasons behind each request:
- “Add unpaired player” should allow registration only with Surname, without First Name.
- When typing some characters in “Add unpaired player” and players that match the filter appear, add the birth year (field “B-Year”) to the displayed information.
- The default rating for a player not found in FIDE lists should be 1399.
- When expanding a team, allow adding a player not present in FIDE lists by Surname, and optionally First Name and Elo. Also allow adding a player from the unpaired list. There should therefore be five options: from the user's players (as now), from FIDE (as now), from FIDE ID (as now), from the unpaired list, and with just Surname, First Name, and Elo. “Add player” from list or unpaired should allow a search filter. Consider whether a player added on the fly by Surname should end up in the user's player list—I'd say yes.
- When you do “New team from selected”, focus should immediately go to the name field so you can start typing right away. This is a golden rule that should be applied everywhere; don’t force the operator to click with the mouse to begin writing.
- Sometimes FIDE doesn’t separate Surname from First Name with a comma, so if you add a player from FIDE with these characteristics, even though it’s found it won’t let you proceed because the First Name is missing. That obviously isn’t good. It can be solved by “guessing” which part is the First Name and which is the Surname, but that may not be simple. In my opinion the best solution (as highlighted in the first point) is to accept registration with only the Surname.
- A brief note on importing a file for registrations. We talked about it, but I think we should allow Bulk registration at least for unpaired players. So adding unpaired players should be able to accept a list of players from a text file or even just a box where you paste the list. The format is up to decide, but I think a simple “Surname,FirstName,Elo” one per line would suffice. Alternatively, the line could also allow a FIDE ID (I don’t think there are surnames that are only numbers). At the end of Bulk registration it should produce a report on the number of lines pasted and how many players were actually registered, highlighting any lines that couldn’t be processed for any reason (e.g., nonexistent FIDE ID or parsing failure). It would remain to consider whether a Surname present in FIDE lists could be captured by the list itself, but that risks becoming complicated (homonyms, sometimes with identical Surname and First Name, plus other tricky situations). Better keep it simple: add only the Surname. If no First Name is provided accept without it, and if no Elo set it to 1399. So lines like “Paperino,,1756”, “Paperino,Paolino” or just “Paperino” are all valid.
Hey, can we consider the issue of double Bye and the inability to generate a round after a team withdraws as fully understood and solved for the future? I assure you it was a really unpleasant situation… when there are prizes in addition to the tournament people aren’t very understanding! :)
Thanks and goodbye, as always,
Claudio.