Yeah, some kind of bug crept in recently. I've bug reported it. It has something to do with the additional parameters in the URL and the navigation link including it, breaking them.
An Unsettling E-mail from the USCF
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Yeah, because links and url page navigation is brand-new science and takes time to get right.
I'm a retired software engineer, and I know by intuition that the code that runs this site is the stuff of my worst nightmares. I don't think there's any hope of this site ever working even remotely efficiently.
A thread in the forums on the USCF site points out that a half page announcement of the life member confirmation mailing was made in the October 2016 Chess Life. (page 14)
The email was sent only to those who had already been sent postcards and hadn't responded. The idea is to ensure contact, ensure that a life member's choices haven't changed, ensure the life member is still alive, etc. Simply checking to see if they are playing doesn't accomplish all that. There's nothing sinister about it. Next time, just reply to the post card.
There's a black helicopter hovering over my Apt building now and the call letters on it is U.S.C.F!!! 
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havelock3 wrote:
I believed they explained that they were trying to flush out Life Members who are not actually alive anymore
That is reasonable.
or have fallen of the face of the planet,
That is not
and even if one gets inactivated it's simple enough to re-activate.
That should reassure members
The idea is save money by culling the rolls. I don't think there is anything sinister behind it.
There are better ways of managing 'life time' memberships.
a.) don't offer them. Gym members typically found out they out-lived most gyms that offered them... Anyway, this is the laziest way to manage it.
b.) call them up if members haven't had any USCF-related activity for a given period of time. If they ask, "why yer callin' fer??" You explain all the great things USCF is doing for chess in said member's immediate area. (LOL... /sarcasm) Then, quietly check-off that said member is still kickin'.
c.) when selling life-time memberships, normally one has to require certain personal info, such as a birthdate---which IS required in the USCF membership renewal pages. A simple SQL search could very well tell you which Life members are over the age of say .. 105. You might be inclined to believe most of those 'Lifers' are soon to be en passant if not already.
Membership management is not up to individual members to pursue---that's the purview of the consortium that created it. Sending out mailers, demanding a response every three years or else... ??? wow.
One would think that being active in rated games would suffice to keep a membership active, and that participating in a rated game would bump an inactive membership back to active status, and allow continued access to all pgn Chess Life issues.
But then one would also think that USCF has competent management, and my long experience tells me otherwise.
One would also compare to other organizations with lifetime memberships and events in which those members participate. One would find that the standard method is to send out postcards to confirm the information. As previously pointed out, there are questions in addition to "are you alive". Calling thousands of members takes too much time. The prior two posts were clearly NOT well-thought-out.
While I was pondering why it's assumed I'm not thinking things out, it occurs to me that since I actively participate in board elections and sundry other polls and what not, that it should be apparent I'm still pinging the system. One wonders if they're going to make active donors inactive if they don't respond to the email?
As noted, its about more than pinging the system. It's also about management of resources. Asking members to send in a postcard, or respond to an email is hardly a hardship, and is much less expensive than programming and/or building the systems to track 10,000+ life members through individual pings to US Chess. It makes more sense to use those funds to finance life memberships going forward (since the reserve is way underfunded) than it does to develop systems to track pings.
Again, it's hardly a hardship (lol) for an organization to track a member's activity. If a member is playing rated games, they're active. I can imagine a scenario where an inactive member shows up at a tournament to play. Instead of being allowed to play, i.e. the act of showing up to play is a trigger to make the account active, the member is turned away because they didn't reply to an email.
Which scenario is best practice? Which scenario is USCF most likely to invite? In my experience, USCF will pursue that most likely to alienate the membership.
And it would be nice if you would justify why you think this is "NOT well thought out." (hyphenation unnecessary)
KBachler wrote:
One would also compare to other organizations with lifetime memberships and events in which those members participate. One would find that the standard method is to send out postcards to confirm the information. As previously pointed out, there are questions in addition to "are you alive". Calling thousands of members takes too much time. The prior two posts were clearly NOT well-thought-out.
Well, there are these new things called "Call centers". All the kids are doing it now these days. From about the 1980s on, one could hire a call center to call a list of names & numbers presented, and wallah, they read through a script. Yes, not well-thought-out because its such a trivial concept, I know.. doesn't take a FM title to conjure up practical laymen ideas like these.
Just for the sake of biting argument, which I seem to enjoy, please define, specifically, which "other organizations" you are referring to in your statement above. I am quite curious to know which OTHER organizations used postcard as a standard means of communication these days.
No one claimed it was a hardship for the organization. We claimed it was less efficient and less effective to simply track activity. It's already been pointed out that it's more cost-efficient and information effective to use member responses. Other organizations do the same, and we already know that is considered the best practice. You've failed to offer a new or convincing argument.
I would be ticked, if i bought a lifee membership, and they inactivacted it.
Why when it would be the 3rd contact without you responding
KBachler wrote:
[...] Asking members to send in a postcard, or respond to an email is hardly a hardship, and is much less expensive than programming and/or building the systems to track 10,000+ life members through individual pings to US Chess. [...]
As someone who actually does programming for living, I can assure you that incremental cost (on top of all the stuff that must have been already implemented to handle membership issues) to avoid annoying life members (who have already made their choice and/or are clearly alive and playing) should be quite minuscule. About 2 hours of work tops, for a reasonably competent webmaster.
If the problem could be dealt with in two hours, it would have been dealt with long ago. Many life members do not use the Internet, this issue cannot be addressed on the web alone. Many life members refuse to provide data necessary to carry out business functions. Last I checked, the databases that process memberships do not currently interact with ratings/activity databases.
The US Chess web presence, its databases, its tools, are all in flux and being worked on. The problems are not as simple as you seem to believe, but there are committees where you can volunteer to help. I'm sure your volunteer efforts would be appreciated.
Yay! It worked!