And the point would be…? The only reason for tie breaks is to break ties for indivisible prizes. If one isn’t interested in the prizes, then why make it possible to show standings in tie break order? (Particularly when that would require substantial changes to both the MSA and the uploading software).
Sometimes they are reported correctly and recorded incorrectly. (I generally do a double entry in WinTD based first on the white results and then verified by the black results, catching things like an L viewed as a 1 or a D viewed as a 0 since entering the other color’s W or D causes a result mis-match error and stops entry until it is reviewed and resolved - but not everybody does that type of double-entry).
Sometimes they are reported correctly by one player and then modified by the other (with the first player having no knowledge of the modification). One case I can think of involved a player that reported a win after the first player had reported a draw, and both players thinking they were reporting the correct score (in that one the TD contacted the two players and the one reporting the draw took a second look at the position and realized that it was really a lost position).
Sometimes (particularly with small kids) there is either confusion over the results or one of the kids is overbearing enough to get the other kid to acquiesce to an erroneous result.
There needs to be a way to get the correct results. To avoid giving people an incentive for reporting an incorrect result to get easier pairings until it is corrected, there is also the suggested TD option to use the incorrect result for prize purposes if pairings for a number of critical rounds were affected by it. Some years before that option was in place there was a player at some scholastic tournaments that would often report a round one loss and then get it corrected to a win after finishing the final round game, with the resultant leap in the standings (yes, the tie-breaks were not as good as somebody who got that score after winning the first round, but the player’s total score was better than would normally be achieved if pairings had been made accounting for that round one win).
I believe there are some TDs that refuse to change scores if they haven’t been corrected within 2 rounds. To do that deliberately is indeed rather devious. I’ve never come across that myself. Most people are pretty quick to point out their score is too low. Probably not so much the other way, I expect. 
There is a difference between changing scores and changing game results (two rounds is a decent rule of thumb - but I’d accept a round one change after round four if the tournament was going seven rounds, and I’d accept a round one change after round six of seven for a pair of players that had lost rounds two through six). The scores can be retained for prize purposes but the game results should be what actually happened in the game so that the rating system has good information.
And then when that occurs, the MSA shows a different number of points than would the tournament results - and the tiebreaks used for prizes would be different than one might infer from the MSA record.
Which is another reason why using the MSA records to COMPUTE tiebreaks is a bad, bad, bad idea.
Providing a way for TDs/affiliates to enter the awards info is a different matter, but I doubt I would ever do it as I list results on the web site for the organizer and that is where I tell people to go to see them.
Part of the point is that if the results are coming out of TMS, they will be available so the work will be easier to “post” said results - in fact, participants would normally get an email to the rated result. Part of the goal here is to make life easier for organizers, players and fans so that they have more reasons to use USCF, and see the value in USCF - rather than only the value in the local guy who is running the event.
If we could go back (momentarily) to the relatively small matter of disclaimers, in MSA I still see the following, in three different places:
and:
and, under Frequently Asked Questions:
There are two problems with all of these:
- What we don’t do (tiebreaks) is emphasized over what we do. This emphasis makes us appear defensive from the outset. We should be more positive!
- The word “tiebreaks” appears too frequently. The real point is “sort position” or “rank”, not tiebreaks per se.
How about the following, in place of the above three, respectively:
Crosstables are displayed with the players in point group order. Within a point group, players are in order by their post-event rating. Players may not be listed in the same order as in the prize lists from an event.
and:
Crosstable data is shown in order by score, and within a score group in order by post-event rating. Any distribution of trophies or prize money may be based on a different ranking used by the organizer. (See Frequently Asked Questions.)
and, in Frequently Asked Questions:
The crosstable for one of my events says that I finished in 3rd place, but I took 2nd place. Why doesn’t the crosstable show that?
We sort the crosstables into point group order. Within a point group, players are in order by their post-event ratings. This order may be different from the order used at the tournament to award trophies or prizes. Tournament organizers use a variety of methods to determine final rank. These methods (“tiebreak systems”) vary from event to event, and are generally based on data which changes between the tournament starting date and the rating date, or which cannot be regenerated from the report submitted to us the organizer. (For example, the ratings the organizer used for players at the start of the event probably differ from the pre-event ratings in the USCF database.)
Bill Smythe
Pretty soon you are going to have people asking about having pictures and videos uploaded and posted on MSA of their little darling receiving his 7th to 10th place tie ribbon. Local news coverage will not be enough; they will want a posted summary on the national website so that they can use it in the future when their child applies for college.
When will MSA require an accompanying photo so that TDs/organizers can use it to verify the identity of the players? Note that on many FIDE records there is a photo of the player. Where they got some of them is anyone’s guess. What other personal data will people want to be loaded on MSA? Nefarious personages may want to know.
Having the ability to sort by place addresses your first paragraph; local reporting always has a place. Even regional paper chess magazines often included a photocopy of the USCF tournament crosstable along with a prize list- the same thing will just be easier if we take advantage of the fact that TMS can readily assist in doing this for the organizer - such that “regional” Internet-based reporting can reference MSA along with a story for complete coverage.
Again - I fail to see why chess players get so riled up about taking advantage of natural evolutionary changes in technology that makes our lives easier. Why is that viewed so negatively? Heck, I often think that if Bill Smythe had his way pairings would still use cards and shutters, and reporting would be done on a Radio Shack computer where we typed in the results instead of combining everything into useful software.
People will want to look at their results on phones or tablets and USCF “information distribution” software should be mobile friendly. Pairings will be sent to players by email or text. Money prizes will be distributed online. Paper magazines will go away and be replaced by online interactive magazines. Entries should be simplified by having databases that have relevant information cross-referenced online. I can imagine pairings being performed by apps. The issue is not IF we should do these things - the issue is PRIORITIZING these things within the importance to USCF and its members, and the availability of resources.
Why is it that we can’t understand why it is useful to have a tournament reporting system that provides actual tournament results online - but we push for years for an electronic rulebook?
When some of us take a “more visionary” approach about things we should be “looking to do” that doesn’t mean we are advocating doing it tomorrow at the expense of something that is more urgent or more important. It means that we should play with a plan, have a list of candidate improvements, prioritize them, re-prioritize as conditions change, and do what we can to set out conditions in advance so that we can design efficiently and maximize the use of resources.
I fail to see why that is something we should spend so much time criticizing.
There is still disagreement over what the efficient design is, what the plan should be, which of the candidate improvements make sense, and what priority the changes should have in terms of use of resources. Going forward with an inefficient design (rather than waiting until an efficient one can be determined) can be as bad as playing with a flawed plan (rather than waiting until a good plan is determined).
At the moment the conversation is similar to a game of tandem chess (alternating players make moves for one color with no consultation allowed) with players for one color having very different styles.
One group’s efficient design has MSA ordered by tie-breaks. On the initial screen it readily allows seeing the top places and for other awards it allows differentiating between two different players without necessarily showing which awards the players are eligible for. That group is split between uploadable ordering and ordering calculated from MSA.
My efficient design is to instead have uploadable excel prize lists that can be linked to and otherwise leave the MSA display alone. The prize lists will show who really took each prize, and if the list is properly ordered to include the entire tournament then it will show who is eligible for each prize.
It can also take into account those cases where the prize list is generated using different scores than what is actually rated (such as a player going 4-0 getting awards based on a 3-1 result because the first round was incorrectly reported/recorded and in the last three rounds the player had the benefit of weaker opponents than would have been faced with a correctly reported round one result). Note that one common method of handling that is to list the game in the ratings report as a forfeit loss with the actual win in an extra games section, but that still messes up the tie-breaks (all unplayed games for an opponent are treated as a half point regardless of what the unplayed result was) and thus any calculation would not match what was actually used.
No one is criticizing the use of technology to generally improve a process of doing things. What has been critiqued is why there is a need to make significant changes that will require time, energy, and money to do something that is, for the most part, trivial. Someone, a parent or bystander, wants the sort order changed so that they can read it on their phone. Nice for them. Seems simple. After all, why shouldn’t they see that their little princess, on tie breaks has earned the 7th rather than 8th place. But what has to be done to effect that? Reprogramming by the USCF of its manner of database management, changes in pairing software, staff time to manually make changes. None of this is trivial.
OTOH, the individual who wants to know what place his child earned could do something much simpler even though it makes more work for him. He could, first, read the disclaimer concerning sort order and listen to the TD who explains it to him. Second, he could click on the organizer/TD site, if there is one, to see what the final placements and prizes were. It might take a little time, but he could find exactly what he wants. Why he should be allowed to operate like a newborn babe and not need to learn how things work is frustrating. But even a newborn babe eventually adapts to his environment and learns to independently think and do things for himself when he gets older and socializes into the ecosystem. Most TDs will happily, and patiently, explain how things work. It is not learning the “secret handshake” but part of learning in general the intricacies of how things work together. Usually, when I explain things to a parent, they say, “Oh. Never mind. I understand now.” They are even a little sheepish that they missed the sign.
We are becoming accustomed to the speed of the internet and one stop shopping. There is impatience because someone has not developed the perfect app that gives you, and maybe only you, everything you want when you are shopping. An example of that is players expecting to see their new rating within a couple of hours of finishing an event. They become impatient and bug the director if they can’t see the changes as soon as they get home. That it takes time to process results, send in money, and verify everything to minimize error is becoming increasingly irrelevant to the chess consumer. He wants it now, d-a-m-n it, and he doesn’t care about what it takes to get it done. He wants all of the complexities cut through so that he gets what he wants right now. Not tomorrow. Now. In the opening post, we see questions being asked of the TD that could be answered if the person would just read the sign. Does he? No. He whines and complains. This later leads to demands to change the entire system of reporting to fit his need. While most others are satisfied with the system, read the signs, and understand that sort order does not mean prize order, that the MSA record is about ratings not prizes. But no, he wants his need to be met, no matter what the cost is to the USCF, programming teams, pairing program developers, and to USCF staff.
The criticisms are not those of Luddites, but of those who know that there are limits to what can be done. Not everything works more efficiently when we add technology. The bells and whistles are pretty. They are more expensive, too. And they may not save us more time or improve productivity levels. Sometimes, it just is easier and faster to write a note on a piece of paper and stuff it in a pocket to read later than lug several pieces of technology around to do the same task. Hey, in an earlier time they would have looked with scorn at having the need to write the information down on a piece of paper rather than use your memory.
It seems to me that we make a habit of overstating “perceived” issues in order to ensure that the molehills become mountains. For example - who has advocated calculating within MSA at the expense of having it reported by the organizer?
The goal of the forums typically cannot be to come up with that efficient design, any more than the website improvements could be done in the forums. The criticism here is a false one. Again, the issue is what can USCF provide that makes it easier for organizers, TDs, players, and fans, and at the same time drives utilization to USCF and creates additional efficiency for all. On SOME level, those are items that should be prioritized by USCF.
The argument you are making is primarily a straw man. No one has advocated making “…significant changes that will require time, energy, and money to do something that is, for the most part, trivial.”
What has been advocated is HAVING A PLAN and a VISION to incorporate such things OVER TIME. Service to organizers, TDs, players and fans is implicitly NOT trivial since such changes support the purpose for the existence of USCF. If we believe instead that a local organizer can provide rating, reporting, etc. - then why bother being a USCF member or having USCF events?
Changes WILL happen because technology WILL change. As those changes occur we should be prepared to advance the purpose to make changes. I agree that isn’t trivial - in fact its highly important because its playing with a plan and being well thought out.
TMS generally will have the information being discussed. Incorporating the inclusion of this in the information being reported saves TDs/organizers time on each event they report because they won’t have to post results themselves. It drives further use of USCF. It saves time incrementally each and every time someone uses MSA. There’s no question whether it will pay for itself - the only question is whether that return occurs in a reasonable time period or not.
For crying out loud, how many people before going to a chess tournament have even heard of the Swiss System? “What. You lose and you still play the next round?” “Why don’t we know how we play in round two? When my kid plays in a soccer tournament, we know when, where and whom we’re playing next”. “Why does the first seed play the middle player and not the bottom one? That’s not how the basketball playoffs work.” “How do you read this wall chart thingie?” Any TD with any experience in scholastic chess has probably answered questions like that dozens of times, and of course, many people with questions like that have them answered by other, more knowledgeable coaches or parents. Couldn’t that information also be described as a “secret handshake”?
The visionary, and likely very expensive, TMS (tournament management software), that can do everything that everyone wants, looks to be a big project which will take years to develop. From how many things you want it to do, Kevin, ( which is outlined in many of your posts across a bunch of topics), I can only imagine the size of the book that will come with the software to explain it all. Hopefully, it will not be written by engineers as then you will really need to know lots of “secret handshakes.” 
Why do we need to create complicated methodology all of the time, when simpler methods are available? Define each task you want to see accomplished and see if it can be done with simpler means than dragging out the whole toolkit. For example, I can cut a carrot with a knife. I don’t need a $300+ Cuisanart to do it. If I had 10,000 carrots to cut up, then the problem has changed and I will need a different solution which would require the Cuisinart or something better. Right now, with small events, using pairing cards works just fine. There is no need for software, a computer, printer, and/or other devices. For a multi-section event that has 1400 players, pairing software is more efficient. From what you have written, it appears that you want to force everyone into a regime that requires incorporating high levels of expensive technology. This technology will go obsolete almost immediately, so we, and I mean the USCF, better be careful what we spend our money and time on as our resources are limited. Pie in the sky ideas look wonderful to visionaries. But they can be very expensive to those who have to implement them. You get to see the sparkles in the sky. We get to see the bones littering the ground when things don’t work as advertised. Visionaries are not risk averse. Soldiers are.
Regarding your last question - Yes. Regarding whether we need to better communicate on all these issues and make things simpler - yes.
Note also that every layer of complexity you add makes it harder and harder to learn how the system, TMS or otherwise, works. The learning curve goes up as well as the expense. You have complained about why we make it harder. Ask yourself if some of your ideas don’t make it harder for TDs and organizers to present chess to the general public while operating the systems in the background. It is tough enough to get TDs now to do the work of running tournaments. If we make it harder for them, requiring more hoops to go through, how does that help chess? For the general public, chess looks like a simple game. When all of the bells and whistles are added, the game becomes more offputting for everyone involved. Some might like that, but many don’t.
BTW, it is tough enough just to wade through the differences between USCF and FIDE rules. Try explaining the logic of all of the rules to the parents. Go ahead. Just try. 
I’ve created a new topic, Knockout format (was Not Shown in Tiebreak Order) to discuss this post by Allen Priest. Any further discussion should go in that topic.
It’s interesting to note that crosstables for the ICC USCF online play are being shown in tiebreak order instead of rating order, despite it claiming “Crosstable data is shown in score group/rating order, which is not the same as the tiebreak order used at the event”