Rémi Coulom wrote:
But the ICGA is nothing more than what its members decide to make of it. There are periodic elections, and anybody is welcome to be a candidate for president.
Elections. Elections for the members of the Executive Committee will be held at each
Triennial Meeting, with elected officers taking on their duties at the end of that
meeting. Nominations are to be made by petition no later than three (3) months
before the elections. The ICGA Journal will announce the candidates at least two (2)
months before the election. At least five (5) members’ signatures are required on each
nominating petition. All candidates for election must have been members of the
ICGA for no less than two (2) years. Officers are elected by a majority of those
present and voting by secret, written ballot. Runoffs will be held if no candidate
receives a simple majority. The candidate with the least votes will be eliminated from
the ballot for each runoff, until one candidate receives the simple majority.
And any volunteer is welcome to help with organization. Being president of the ICGA, or organizing a big event like the ICGA tournaments is a lot of work. You won't find candidates for that job easily.
This is true. I know from first-hand experience
It is also very unfair to give the responsability of the decaying interest in computer chess to the ICGA. Since 1997, all computer chess tournaments have decayed. Programs are too strong, algorithms have not changed in more than 10 years. Nobody except a few freaks is still interested in computer chess. Interest in computer chess will continue to decay, whatever anybody does.
Where am I (solely) blaming the ICGA for this?
If anything, they could be blamed for not realizing this reality has changed. The current WCCC format is a nice example of this. It made some sense when computer chess was a big business with large monetary gains to be made. It makes much less sense now.
You advance or you die. The current organisation is sitting still or degrading, and it will die.
If computer chess gets too dead to be interesting, I'll move on to something new and compete in that.
Without the efforts of the ICGA, the WCCC would have been dead long ago.
This I do not believe at all. It probably wouldn't look like the event looks now, though. But I'm not sure that's a bad thing.