Is This Intentional Or Missing Data?

By chance I came across this seeming anomaly in the following league match:-

https://www.chess.com/club/matches/1221540/games

It's a match with an upper ratings limit and as often happens, a player ('Da_Crusha') has drifted above that limit and will be excluded from the final cut. The curious thing is, the endpoint returns all usual data on this player with the exception of their rating...

see: https://api.chess.com/pub/match/1221540

A typical player: "username":"aardvark92","rating":1253,"timeout_percent":0,"rd":55.9,"status":"premium"

Da_Crusha:
"username":"da_crusha","timeout_percent":0,"rd":45.06,"status":"basic"

It's not clear to me why the rating should be omitted - any ideas?

Although I asked previously, I never did get an answer from support. 

https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/bug-or-inconsistancy-in-team-match-endpoint

I also wanted to give the link on @Tricky_Dicky 's topic with the same question, but he was the first. As he wrote there in the last message (and I completely agree with it), it is made intentional. 

And in fact I like it in this way. If you want to know (using API), how many players from registered on the match could take a part, just count only those, who have a rating.

I must have seen your thread when you posted it but I didn't make the connection with my problem.

I can see the logic problem here. If registered and out of range, there is no API flag to indicate, so they just removed the rating to indicate non compliance. The idea is sound except if you want to know the rating then you have to do another call. I can live with that.

My big issue is the lack of spec and documentation.

But there's an inconsistency here that really needs fixing and it's this...

I help run the Knockout team-match league & we often impose upper ratings limits as well as a fixed minimum number of players per team of ten. But we've noticed that when a team reaches just ten players and one or two of those players drift above the rating limit, the software still counts the 'excluded' players.

We had exactly this situation in one match in which two players were excluded from a team of ten but the minimum ten players was achieved, so the match started on time. The problem then was that the two players outside of the rating range were excluded and the team had to start with just eight players!

This makes a mockery of any 'minimum players' requirement that organisers put in place.

@stephen_33, that is certainly an issue. I have seen that situation before and the match will start even if the excluded players mean the board count goes below the minimum.

That is a web site fault. I think a bug report has been posted but don't hold your breath. Support is not fit for purpose ATM IMO. I got a request yesterday asking for example of a bug for something that was fixed nearly a month ago and was known to have been fixed.

Absolutely and that's becoming a major issue.

I brought this up many weeks ago in another topic on the doc's for the club-matches endpoint. I'd wasted quite a lot of time re-writing code to incorporate Live matches into a program I use for producing a listing of players in all Daily matches in a club (for a friend on the site), only to realise too late that finished Live matches are now included at the end of the listing of finished Daily ones, in the club's-matches endpoint.

But you'd never know that from reading the documentation. I got the impression that with everything else that's going on, the staff simply don't have time to keep things properly updated? The CHANGELOG rather seems to back that up.

The API is such a useful resource that it would be a great shame if it was allowed to fall into disrepair. Also counter-productive for chess.com because some of us are adding value to the site by the activities we're involved in.

@stephen_33 Yes, this bug is well-known. It also happens from time to time in 1WL. First time I met it (more than a year ago), I was so disappointed. We participated in event with 20 simultaneous matches with rating range of 40 points (like 1700-1740, 1740-1780, etc...) and 3-6 players in each. I spent substantial amount of time a few days before the start, asking registered players to change a match, because their rating drifted away and we have not sufficient amount of players in many ranges. But finally there were no need for it, because any started matches (with two or even one player) were counted as legal by TD. Only later I knew that it is a usual proceeding in many leagues. So you have two possibilities:

1. Accept the situation as it is.

2. Shift responsibility to team's administrators. If match started on less than 10 boards and the other team could provide a proof (like screenshot made no earlier than one hour before the start) that they have had more that 10 players with correct ratings, you count a win for this team. It will stimulate team's administrators to bring more players on match (and thus, pass the limit of 10 players anyway).

There is also a third (ideal) solution: write a report and ask chess.com to change a bit their system (firstly remove players with unsuitable rating, then check number of players on the match and not vice-versa like it is now), but I did it more than a year ago. And I guess many others did it as well...

As @Tricky_Dicky said, it could take a lot of time. I recently saw that a minor bug, on which I sent report twice (6 months ago and 3 month ago) was fixed. I never got response on it. The other minor bug is still presented, so I recently sent second report (first one was about 3-4 month ago).