Since our review process has been slow again recently, and because there hasn't been an update in general in a while, I wanted to provide some transparency on what the CGA team is working on.
Agenda
Why are variants from September and October still under review (UR)?
Why aren't results for the NCV Tester Application out yet?
Where is CGAbot (@CGA) again??
What's coming up?
Why are variants from September and October still under review (UR)?
Simply put, our team is small, and unfortunately we've been busy with in-person stuff like school and/or work. As usual, because our timezones differ, I for example have been needing to stay up until around midnight to be able to test for a decent amount of time with other CGAs.
The oldest variant currently UR right now was posted on August 19; we have 11 NCVs and 4 WoFs UR in total right now. Just in this week alone, we at the CGA team have reviewed and published the results for 6 variants, and we hope that this pace can be maintained or sped up even more (obviously not making the testing itself shorter, just making the delay between testing sessions shorter so that we don't waste time).
Why aren't results for the NCV Tester Application out yet?
(See the original announcement for the applications here)
We've received a pretty decent amount of responses to the form during the time period in which we ran it; although the submissions ended on October 9th, we haven't been able to fully review every submission yet.
NCV Testers are extremely valuable to us since they are voting members just like CGAs, and they offer to us even more perspective. At one point years ago, we had around 10 voting members on the team. So, that being said, we definitely haven't forgot about them, since part of the reason why we made the application in the first place was because of the CGA team's situation now.
If you applied during the window (and are accepted), @qilp will contact you with a welcome message in chess.com messages (https://www.chess.com/messages).
Where is CGAbot (@CGA) again??
Simply put, @CGA is unable to view new posts, although we can still update messages on old posts recognized by it (for example: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-circle-challenge). This is likely due to changes in chess.com's forum API, although I don't have the full details and this is speculation on my end as well. We have been resorting to manual checks, which sometimes results in errors; this has also slowed down reviews, since we need to confirm the requirements accurately being labelling a variant as UR.
What's coming up?
I'm not allowed to say much yet, but we're working on a program that is somewhat like a public version of CGAbot. This change will not only hopefully eliminate Requirements Not Met (RNM) posts, but will make everyone's life easier in general.
Here's a sneak peek:
So yeah, a pretty exciting change!
In addition (although not confirmed), the 2nd rendition of the 4 Player Speed Chess Championships will possibly start in December this year or early 2024. Join the 4 Player Chess club to receive the notification when the announcement is posted.
If you've read this far, thank you! Hopefully the recent events haven't discouraged you all from posting new NCVs for WoFs for us to review
Previous updates:
Hi there, Custom Variants community!
Since our review process has been slow again recently, and because there hasn't been an update in general in a while, I wanted to provide some transparency on what the CGA team is working on.
Agenda
Why are variants from September and October still under review (UR)?
Simply put, our team is small, and unfortunately we've been busy with in-person stuff like school and/or work. As usual, because our timezones differ, I for example have been needing to stay up until around midnight to be able to test for a decent amount of time with other CGAs.
The oldest variant currently UR right now was posted on August 19; we have 11 NCVs and 4 WoFs UR in total right now. Just in this week alone, we at the CGA team have reviewed and published the results for 6 variants, and we hope that this pace can be maintained or sped up even more (obviously not making the testing itself shorter, just making the delay between testing sessions shorter so that we don't waste time).
Why aren't results for the NCV Tester Application out yet?
(See the original announcement for the applications here)
We've received a pretty decent amount of responses to the form during the time period in which we ran it; although the submissions ended on October 9th, we haven't been able to fully review every submission yet.
NCV Testers are extremely valuable to us since they are voting members just like CGAs, and they offer to us even more perspective. At one point years ago, we had around 10 voting members on the team. So, that being said, we definitely haven't forgot about them, since part of the reason why we made the application in the first place was because of the CGA team's situation now.
If you applied during the window (and are accepted), @qilp will contact you with a welcome message in chess.com messages (https://www.chess.com/messages).
Where is CGAbot (@CGA) again??
Simply put, @CGA is unable to view new posts, although we can still update messages on old posts recognized by it (for example: https://www.chess.com/clubs/forum/view/wof-circle-challenge). This is likely due to changes in chess.com's forum API, although I don't have the full details and this is speculation on my end as well. We have been resorting to manual checks, which sometimes results in errors; this has also slowed down reviews, since we need to confirm the requirements accurately being labelling a variant as UR.
What's coming up?
I'm not allowed to say much yet, but we're working on a program that is somewhat like a public version of CGAbot. This change will not only hopefully eliminate Requirements Not Met (RNM) posts, but will make everyone's life easier in general.
Here's a sneak peek:
So yeah, a pretty exciting change!
In addition (although not confirmed), the 2nd rendition of the 4 Player Speed Chess Championships will possibly start in December this year or early 2024. Join the 4 Player Chess club to receive the notification when the announcement is posted.
If you've read this far, thank you! Hopefully the recent events haven't discouraged you all from posting new NCVs for WoFs for us to review