Good idea is to have this kind of HQ group for tournament admins, just if Thomas was not aware of it is quite strange.
If there is this group - access should be limited only to admins organizing the event and not all admins - it seems that this is not the case now. So my proposal is to keep here only tournament managers.
It would be good to have some agreed process of decision making ... if there are 3 (or 5) tournament admins, you can open topic for each critical decision and just vote. But then there should be really main admin (Thomas?) who can do quick decision if needed - for example, VEN-CZE match decision was critical to do immediately as it was impacting schedule of Week 3, so it should be in his power to decide and others should accept it (although it would not be possibly good).
But not urgent decision like Costa Rica should be voted.
It is upsetting to me that fellow league admins have been talking about me behind my back. I would have been fine if problems were taken straight to me, because then we can actually have a constructive discussion about any issues.
I'll start with my decision with the Czech Republic-Venezuela match. The match was opened 15 minutes before the start time, and this was the fault of both teams, as neither made an attempt to set up the match before. While CZE were able to make the minimum, Venezuela were only able to raise 2 players in the 15 minutes they had. It would not be unrealistic to say that if Venezuela had the full hour to raise players, the minimum would have been reached.
I chose to contact only the two other SA's in the group (excluding @Dale00007 as his team was directly involved), because this happened Sunday evening, when the next round pairings were due to be announced. If I had contacted everyone, I would have had to wait for a reply from all before making a decision, thus delaying the start of round 3.
Both @bumiputra and myself thought that asking them to re-play the game was the best option (@adriano81 proposed to award the forfeit to CZE), and so the match was replayed. Please do not accuse me of making decisions myself, when you both know that I asked you for your opinion.
(for those that are unaware, the match was re-played with Czech Republic winning 7½-2½)
Now for the Costa Rica decision. It should be clear to everyone that they are simply incapable of playing these matches with the minimum players (in 4 attempts; the first they failed to even set up the match, the next 3 they only achieved one player). They have never successfully played a live match inside or outside of the LCWL; and with the benefit of hindsight, it is my opinion that they should not have been allowed to compete in the league to begin with, and I take full responsibility for that.
If you were running an OTB tournament, and one player failed to show up for the first 3 rounds, would you pair them in the 4th round, and make an opponent travel to the match for likely nothing? Most organisers wouldn't even pair them for the second round (as did happen in an OTB tournament I played 2 weeks ago when a player failed to show up).
Making a team negotiate a match time, making one of their admins go online at a specific time to set up the match, and then making potentially over a dozen players wait up to an hour to play a match that is not going to happen, is both unfair, and unacceptable.
While I may have been a bit hasty in my decision, it was done with the intention of trying to get a replacement team into the league for the last 6 rounds, in an attempt to avoid one team having a bye in each round.
Regarding my decision to have each match negotiated in a separate thread, I proposed this in the Rules, and this was not commented on by anyone (and I am sure I drew attention to this area, I may be wrong though). I have also re-iterated this in every news post announcing pairings. Why all the controversy now?
I am disappointed that I am the one being accused of not interacting with other admins, and yet this group was set up over a week ago and I only found out about it today (and it seems to me that this was deliberate too). This was also set up before I made either of those two decisions above; maybe if I had been invited here, we wouldn't be having these discussions now?
I seem to remember that a HQ group was discussed before the start of Season 1, and it was decided that it was not necessary. It seems that this assumption was incorrect.
Anyway, here we are. Let's stop whining and whinging, and get on with organising. And if there are still any questions about decisions that anyone has made, let's discuss them in a constructive manner, instead of saying "oh, this was wrong" or complaining to others. How are we supposed to move the league forward if we don't find ways to improve what we are doing currently?