I am very pleased to report that today (2016/07/08) I got a responce from King Eric hisself. Scroll down to read it.
Vote Chess Opponents Not so very long ago it was a fairly simple matter to get a vote chess game started. I would submit an 'open seek' and within a few hours it would be accepted by a team of players ready to play. When I received notification that the open seek had been accepted and I would navigate to the game page, it was common to find several of my teammates had already joined the game and were eager to get started. Once a challenge had been accepted, it was very very rare that there would be a reason to abort. So rare, that when it did occur, I felt obligated to send a message to the opponent group with an apology and an explanation of why the game was aborted. The only reason I can recall, that it ever became necessary to abort a game was when it was a mis-match due to low ratings or too few players on the opponent team which usually results in time-outs and poor performances on the board. That is still the primary reason. A couple of years ago I began to encounter a new type of opponent. These were groups with very few members; sometimes only one or two or three and sometimes they were all the same person with multiple identities. I would abort these games and send a message explaining why and then submit a new open seek and quite often the same opponent would take the new challenge. I would abort again and message them asking them to not interfere with my efforts to get a vc game started and this was often met with an attitude of defiance. I would then contact website support, explaining the situation, sometimes getting support, sometimes not. But the occurrence of individual admins accepting open seeks, intending to 'go it alone' against a group has now become the rule rather than the exception. The once rare necessity of aborting games for this reason has become commonplace, to the point that it now usually takes two or usually three attempts in as many days or more, before a vote game will start vs. an acceptable opponent. There is no official definition of how many individuals it takes to make a team, but certainly one person cannot be considered a team but rather a massive and defective ego. I suppose as few as two people could be considered a team, but I think for the purposes of the groups I manage it would be only fair to have a minimum of five; because my teams know our opening well and are serious players. Out of five on the opponent team there are probably only two or three who will actually participate in the selection of moves. To make matters even worse; about six months ago, the notifications which used to be sent by the website announcing a new vote chess game have stopped working. I and several other admins have submitted tickets to tech support concerning this problem but nothing has been done. Without these notifications members do not know a new vc game has begun and the only people who join the new game are the admin who submitted the open seek and the admin who accepted it; one person on each team. To work around the websites shortcoming; I have been posting new vc game notifications in group notes and group news but turnout is still only about 25% to 40% of what it used to be. And that still does not improve things in the opponent group. I have tried messaging opponent admins encouraging them to do the same as I have done but they often become irritated and in one case the opponent aborted the game when I suggested they take measures to get more players. So for now, I will allow when there is only one player on the opponent team, but only because the website is not being helpful in this matter. The only other alternative I can think of is to simply discontinue our vote chess program until the website fixes the problem, which may take a long...long...time. A few days ago I submitted an open seek and when it was accepted I received an alert. Other members also received an alert and there was good turn-out for the game. When it was discovered we had to abort that game due to an unsuitable opponent, I submitted another open seek and when it was accepted and the new game started, I did not receive a notification and it appears no one else did either. I believe the admin should be able to stipulate certain conditions when submitting an open seek; such as the number of members or a minimum rating a group must have to accept a specific open seek. I also think it would help if the admin who accepts the open seek would be made known to the admin submitting the seek so that certain conditions could be worked out. They hardest thing in vote chess these days is simply getting a game started.
HELP!
Thanks for the feedback, Wormrose!
Michael, can you handle this?
Looks like we need a ticket to add some parameters to Vote Chess seeks:
- Minimum club size
- Minimum games played
Also, can you test where vote chess alerts are or are not working? If a new game starts, club members should get an Alert in their alerts panel.
Below is my most recent complaint to the website.
I am very pleased to report that today (2016/07/08) I got a responce from King Eric hisself. Scroll down to read it.
Vote Chess Opponents
Not so very long ago it was a fairly simple matter to get a vote chess game started. I would submit an 'open seek' and within a few hours it would be accepted by a team of players ready to play. When I received notification that the open seek had been accepted and I would navigate to the game page, it was common to find several of my teammates had already joined the game and were eager to get started.
Once a challenge had been accepted, it was very very rare that there would be a reason to abort. So rare, that when it did occur, I felt obligated to send a message to the opponent group with an apology and an explanation of why the game was aborted. The only reason I can recall, that it ever became necessary to abort a game was when it was a mis-match due to low ratings or too few players on the opponent team which usually results in time-outs and poor performances on the board. That is still the primary reason.
A couple of years ago I began to encounter a new type of opponent. These were groups with very few members; sometimes only one or two or three and sometimes they were all the same person with multiple identities. I would abort these games and send a message explaining why and then submit a new open seek and quite often the same opponent would take the new challenge. I would abort again and message them asking them to not interfere with my efforts to get a vc game started and this was often met with an attitude of defiance. I would then contact website support, explaining the situation, sometimes getting support, sometimes not.
But the occurrence of individual admins accepting open seeks, intending to 'go it alone' against a group has now become the rule rather than the exception. The once rare necessity of aborting games for this reason has become commonplace, to the point that it now usually takes two or usually three attempts in as many days or more, before a vote game will start vs. an acceptable opponent.
There is no official definition of how many individuals it takes to make a team, but certainly one person cannot be considered a team but rather a massive and defective ego. I suppose as few as two people could be considered a team, but I think for the purposes of the groups I manage it would be only fair to have a minimum of five; because my teams know our opening well and are serious players. Out of five on the opponent team there are probably only two or three who will actually participate in the selection of moves.
To make matters even worse; about six months ago, the notifications which used to be sent by the website announcing a new vote chess game have stopped working. I and several other admins have submitted tickets to tech support concerning this problem but nothing has been done. Without these notifications members do not know a new vc game has begun and the only people who join the new game are the admin who submitted the open seek and the admin who accepted it; one person on each team.
To work around the websites shortcoming; I have been posting new vc game notifications in group notes and group news but turnout is still only about 25% to 40% of what it used to be. And that still does not improve things in the opponent group. I have tried messaging opponent admins encouraging them to do the same as I have done but they often become irritated and in one case the opponent aborted the game when I suggested they take measures to get more players.
So for now, I will allow when there is only one player on the opponent team, but only because the website is not being helpful in this matter. The only other alternative I can think of is to simply discontinue our vote chess program until the website fixes the problem, which may take a long...long...time.
A few days ago I submitted an open seek and when it was accepted I received an alert. Other members also received an alert and there was good turn-out for the game. When it was discovered we had to abort that game due to an unsuitable opponent, I submitted another open seek and when it was accepted and the new game started, I did not receive a notification and it appears no one else did either.
I believe the admin should be able to stipulate certain conditions when submitting an open seek; such as the number of members or a minimum rating a group must have to accept a specific open seek. I also think it would help if the admin who accepts the open seek would be made known to the admin submitting the seek so that certain conditions could be worked out.
They hardest thing in vote chess these days is simply getting a game started.
HELP!
Thanks for the feedback, Wormrose!
Michael, can you handle this?