A Known problems, which club redesign should solve
- Clubs depend on reliable notifications about new und upcoming activities. In the past there were often and sometimes long lasting difficulties with notifications. As notifications are the most efficient way to bring members to events, they should be regularly checked by Chess.com's own initiative and fixed with priority, if broken.
- Clubs need additional tools for a better club communication: For unknown reasons, announcements aren't really efficient, new forums are only shown in browsers, neither announcements, nor forums or match comments can be followed by App users. As many club members use the App, all elements of club communication need to be included there.
- Multi Club Arenas could be one of the best offers for competitions between clubs. Two years after their release their code still isn't completed and does not allow League play. Challenges to clubs can't be copied from one event to another, Arenas don't have some kind of description, results are incomplete and presented in an unreliable way ... More details here In addition admins should get notifications about challenges and members about upcoming Multi Club Arenas.
- Vote chess games are suffering since a very long time and do not get appropriate updates: Members, who participate in them, invest a lot of time. They are e.g. worth to receive notifications x hours before voting periods end (to be determined by their club admins) and should get better support e.g. to access explorer and current vote results.
- Club admins should be able to pin e.g. two upcoming, current and past events to highlight the most important ones of them.
- Top players list has been destroyed months ago and needs to be restored.
- Members start pages have been voided months ago and need to be restored: Given situation is a relevant reason for decreasing participation in many clubs.
B Today's situation
B1 Difficulties for admins (introduced through redesign)
- Private descriptions are mostly destroyed and need to be restored.
- Country and location are suppressed and should be restored.
- Options for club settings have been reduced and need to be restored.
- Privacy settings have been reduced, which is a rude attack on the diversity of our clubs.
- Challenges to daily matches are more difficult and less intuitive as they used to be.
- Highest Rating list was based on daily matches and was a regularly used tool to manage daily matches. It isn't functional anymore and needs to be restored. (added on Sept. 5, solved on Sept. 7)
- Results in current matches are more difficult to be checked ... for an unknown reason.
- Multi Club Arenas are still disturbing other Multi Club Arenas.
- Last challenge to Multi Club Arenas push itself penetratingly into the foreground.
B2 Difficulties for members (introduced through redesign)
- Usual help from private descriptions is more difficult to be found and used.
- Notes are hidden, which makes passing temporarily relevant information more difficult.
- Forums are less readable than before: No reason is known, why they are different now.
- Vote chess games are more difficult to be found and followed: Sounds like a no go.
- Information about upcoming daily matches is incomplete and needs individual checking.
- Members should have separate lists for different types of current events back.
- Ranking list for clubs is less relevant than before. What about restoring?
B3 Difficulties for Leagues (introduced through redesign) (added on Sept. 5)
- General remark: Clubs, their admins and leagues are already and for long time facing several severe problems caused by Chess.com. Club redesign reinforces the tendency of weakening clubs, e.g. by discouraging club admins and confusing club members. During 2023 there is already a reduced activity in many clubs, which are usually participating in Leagues: Club redesign fuels this process by introducing the above listed additional difficulties for club admins and members.
- Reducing space of private descriptions for adding current and upcoming events to all clubs doesn't really make sense: In the past private descriptions were used in leagues to allow club admins an easy navigation, while they only exceptionally have current or upcoming events themselves. Their useful information is hidden to show most likely two empty boxes.
- Suppressing TOP Player list (based on daily ratings) and modifying Highest Rating list from daily ratings to some funny mix interferes with ongoing tournaments and mix up chances in favor of the club, which can field more players with less admin activities. Results are likely to be much more impacted by the coincidence, in which round two clubs are paired (for reasons introduced by Chess.com and independent from all participating clubs and the league as well. (several Highest Rating lists – Bullet, Blitz, Rapid and Daily – added on Sept. 7)
- Making access to vote chess games more difficult for club members will also impact results in vote chess leagues as it most likely will reduce the level of active participation. As club members are used to spend regularly a lot of time with their vote chess games (and this over months for each of them), this will surely mix up chances of clubs.
B4 Ameliorations (introduced through redesign)
- It's by far easier now to check all kinds of past live events.
- Additional information is available for announcements and forums (like # of views).
- There is a new tool to edit announcements.
- It's possible to see pending challenges to Multi Club Arenas now.
- There are additional member lists sorted by highest ratings in Bullet, Blitz and Rapid. (Sep. 7 and a few days later: Daily 960)
Let's check and discuss
There is already another forum for questions and bugs, which are (or look to be) related to club redesign.
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Links to updates about club redesign: