If I understand correctly, my request to link my new USCF membership to my old one should have been sent to Walter Brown. Mike Nolan indicated in a recent thread (uschess.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=530) that Walter was out of the office indefinitely. This fits with my not receiving a response to my 6/10/2005 email to Walter requesting my two USCF ID numbers be reconciled.
Is there someone else currently handling situations like this? If not, is there any estimate when Walter will be able to handle these?
There were over 700 e-mails in his inbox (after eliminating spam), they’re being sorted through and reassigned to other staff, though some of them (especially corrections to rated events) will not get done until we can train additional people on how to process them.
I’ve been working on a program that the staff can use which will automate most of the tasks needed to resolve duplicate IDs.
There can be four or five steps to fixing a dup, depending upon when it happened, why it happened, and whether either or both of the IDs have a rating or any pending events.) There are still a few areas, especially dealing with merging ratings history, that need to be defined further to cover as many situations as possible.
5-10% of the potential duplicate IDs reported by players or TDs turn out not to be duplicates but two members with similar names. In some cases the ratings history has been so intertwined between the two IDs that it is very difficult to figure out which events belong to which players.
I’m also working on a new e-mail routing system so that in most cases e-mail will be sent to a ‘situational’ address rather than to a specific employee. That way we can route the e-mail to someone who has been trained to deal with the problem and is available to work on it TODAY rather than have those messages sit in someone’s e-mail inbox, especially when that employee is out of the office.
Yeah, these sound like rather mundane projects (especially compared to things like rewriting the ratings system), but I think they will have a significant impact on the USCF’s ability to respond to member situations and requests efficiently.
I also hope he is not the victim of any staff cutbacks, or worse, political shenanigans.
I have known Walter for years in Illinois. He is an unassuming person, preferring to eschew the spotlight in favor of good old-fashioned detail work, accomplishing necessary tasks behind the scenes.
When he is on the TD staff of a major tournament, he makes it seem as though the tournament is running itself. The less a TD is noticed, the better the job he is doing.
Is there a different address that I should send a followup email to? I have not received a response to the June 10th email I sent to wbrown@uschess.org.
This has been resolved as of yesterday. My thanks to Mike Nolan for guidance on handling this. Judy Misner was incredibly quick in responding. A big thanks to her and anyone else involved in resolving the issue.