Jack, I mean no offense, but I really don’t think you have enough experience in this area to comment. As far as I know the TLA process is not “largely automated” – linking the self-entered TLAs to the magazine is one of Mike’s future wish-list items, and most organizers do not use it yet anyway. The person in charge of TLAs before Joan made a number of errors, which in several cases resulted in TLAs not appearing at all. The job really should be done by someone a couple of levels below her, but with the staff stretched as it is (pace Sloan’s claims of “bloat”), they had to transfer it to one of their most experienced people.
No, TLAs have not been largely automated, though that is still something I’d like to see happen. Organizers seem less interested in that, though.
(Off topic, and probably should have a separate thread under “Tournament Organization”
I think there are several reasons why the “self-enter” TLAs have not caught on.
- The interface is still unwieldy and takes some work to get used to.
- Related to above, entering a large and complex tournament (as opposed to a small and straightforward club event) is a lot of trouble. I think the last time I used it, I just plugged the print TLA into the “other information” field.
- Most people don’t want to do it themselves. They want someone whose job it is to do it for them. It’s not just that the professional can do it just as well; most of the time, he can do it a lot better. Do you repair your computer or your car yourself when something fails? Some people do, but they’re a small minority. You’re trying to sell people something for which they perceive no need.
And the [i]coup de grace [/i]is that after I spent an hour or more trying to format [i][b]one[/b][/i] TLA the way that the program required it. the end result was [i]still[/i] a TLA in which I could [i]not[/i] have it display the important information in the right places, which had redundant information which I would prefer to be only listed once, and which omitted still other key details!
I would [i]love[/i] for the TLAs to be automated, but not at the cost of making the players (even more) confused. Right before Joan started doing the TLAs, when Chess Life began to use this same system for processing TLAs, it took [i][b]much[/b][/i] more work to get all the corrections made than it used to take to actually create the TLAs in the first place. It would be great if the TLAs could be imported from a WORD (or similar) document in some automated system.
My impression is that Joan, however, is now doing a very good job with the TLAs, probably indicative of how conscientiously she does her work.
The 2nd generation of the TLA interface (which has not been made available to organizers yet, due to delays in getting it fully integrated into the TLA process at the office) DOES support importing the body of the TLA from Word documents.
However, I have concerrns that will largely defeat one important aspect of the first version of the new TLA system, which was to be able to categorize all the details of an event, ie deconstruct it so that it can be reconstructed at will.
Why is that necessary?
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For searching purposes
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For analytical purposes
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For tracking purposes
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To be able to display the TLA on the website in a READABLE format, as opposed to the jargon-laden condensed Chess Life TLA format, which is fine for a space-limited publication but not for the Internet
Maybe #4 isn’t important for organizers who only expect to draw from the same pool of experienced players that they always draw from, but I wonder if those players bother looking at TLAs at all?
For organizers who are looking to bring in new players to their events, or for players who aren’t as familiar with TLA jargon, isn’t it important to be able to explain things IN ENGLISH?
Moreover, how many times have we read about how tournaments are declining in attendance? IMHO, aiming TLAs at the experienced tournament crowd rather than trying to bring in new blood is a major contributor to that.
There was a fifth reason, which is that if we know all the details of an event, then that puts us one step closer to being able for the USCF to handle entries for those events. (Not all organizers are interested in this, and there are a number of obstacles to overcome, but we still get several inquiries each month from organizers about when or if we intend to offer this.)
Mike why not try to get the best of both? The Freeform ability and a basic restricted view of the info. The current format is really tricky to deal with when there are variations to what is expected. For example last year when we did a multi section tournament divided in to groups of 8 with possiblitys of one group of 10 or possibly one of 6.
So I suggest you have one big freeform field that can handle imports from Word or whatever. Then you have summary fields but you add the ability for the organizer or TD to put in Does not Apply or something like that.
Then you have the ability to create your on the spot TLA from that but present it along with the Freeform Version.
You can even add features to search just the Freeform versions or the more restricted fields.
I agree with wzim. The concept should be similar to that of tagging on the web, with the freeform being the main entry and the tags adding the capability of searching, analyzing, automation, etc.
The only trouble is that either the tags or the freeform may be contain mistakes that make them out of synch. However, that may be a small price to pay for giving the organizer the flexibility of presentation that they need. Presentation style can be a competitive advantage or marketing plus.
The most significant fields needed for categorizing should be required, and a default presentation could be provided that just takes those and generates something similar to what there is now. But the freeform, even two freeforms (magazine TLA and web/html TLA) should also be provided.
What would really rock is if the freeform had tokens that would pull the raw data from the fields to generate the TLAs, making the freeforms just templates. This starts getting into Content Management but would definitely require more effort than we probably can spend. On the plus side, having a template/token scheme would solve the data synchronization issue.
I suspect that could get us right back into the problem we had with Version 1, a template with enough variability to handle nearly any kind of event someone might throw at it is going to be complex, possibly too complex for people to be willing to use.
The idea of trying to construct a template from a formatted TLA is intriguing, but definitely not a 15 minute project.