Hi All:
I sometimes think it would be nice to be able to generate a list of current TDs (name and level info only) selected by level and area (range of zip codes or State). My question is, would most of our TDs object to an affiliate being able to do this. Should a TD be allowed to opt out of the search. I anticipate it would be used mostly by an organizer wanting to find TDs for one or more events.
What to do about trying to contact the Tds on the resultant list is another question.
Regards, Ernie
Searching for members (even just TDs) by zip code raises privacy policy issues, though if we restricted that capability to those with access to the TD/Affiliate Support Area that might be less of a problem.
One idea that occurs to me is to search by the zip code of the tournaments that the TD has run or worked at. Of course some TD will show up all over the country that way. But at least that way we’re not giving out where the member lives.
We added a field to the membership database a while back for “Public Contact Information”. This would be a field that a member (such as a TD or a Delegate) could use to provide some contact information, be that a phone number, mailing address or email address, that he is willing to have the USCF give out.
Obviously it could be different from the phone number, mailing address or email address that he uses for his membership or for other, more official, communication with the USCF.
As long as it is kept up to date, you can currently look at the TD list (uschess.org/tds/tdlist.php#NTD is the current list with the cursor starting on the NTDs). That gives you TDs by state, and you can copy and paste that list into a spreadsheet for sorting. Since it only gives the state it may be less useful in TX as opposed to RI. Also, it does not indicate whether or not the TD is currently active or what type of tournaments the TD has directed. To get that you would have to go into MSA (and hope that the TD does not have a particularly common name in the TD’s state).
Because that information is already listed on a website, I don’t see any normal reason to have an opt-out option on a simple TD name list (an abnormal one might be a person that is trying to track down the zip code a person is in and keeps submitting requests for a list using different zip codes until finally figuring out which one the TD is in).
As long as we are discussing something that hasn’t even gotten into the design phase yet, it would be nice to be able to select based on type and size of tournaments directed in a specified time range (though a TD might not actually be listed for a tournament if only MSA is checked and if the TD was the chief of an event and all of the section positions were allocated to others).
Contact information may be something that could be opted-in and is not given unless the opt-in has been done.
