mjlef wrote:Not that anyone cares what I think, but here goes:
Forums are like newspapers. The General Topic is the "front page". Just like a newspaper's sections (Sports, Local, Business) most of the articles that can be categorized as one of the special sections go in those sections. But when something very unusual comes long like USA winning the World Cup, it appears on the front page, with related articles being in the Sports section. A new event is generally placed on the front page too.
So I favor allowing announcements of an upcoming tournament of significance be allowed to be on the front page (we could list examples). Results would still go in the Tournaments section. It would be fine for an announcement of a tournament to also be moved to the Tournament section after some reasonable period, so that it would not clutter the main page if it gets lots of comments.
Another solution is a single sticky on the pain page titled "Upcoming Events". It could be maintained by a moderator. Users would send in important events, which would get edited into this sticky posting, and periodically purged of old events.
Talkchess is THE PLACE that people go to find computer chess information. We want to attract new engine writers, engine lovers and anyone else with an interest in computer chess. So lets have a nice "front page" to invite them in.
Mark
Actually, it's not correct. The front page of talkchess is not the general forum. On the front page, you have a choice between 3 forums. If you want to know about tournaments, you look at tournament forum. It cost you one click, regardless of the forum. How hard is that ?
Some people are arguing that ICGA, or ACCA, or whatever else is may be, are special snowflakes, that deserve more consideration than other tournaments.
The way newspapers decide what goes on the front page and what goes in the sport section, is by trying to estimate interest. Indeed, newspapers want to sell more copies, so they put on the front page what people care about, so they want to buy the news paper.
The interest in ICGA or ACCA or *insert yet another obscure OTB tournament with a handful of participants* is slowly converging to zero.
How many participants are there in ICGA or ACCA tournaments ? And how many have applied to participate but did not pass the qualification stage because there was so much demand they couldn't accept everyone ? Right...
On the other hands, events that draw a lot more interest like TCEC respect the rule and get announced in the tournament section. And it doesn't hinder their popularity, btw.
IMO, this whole debate is yet another hopeless and pathetic attempt at trying to draw attention to old and fossilized organizations like ICGA, because almost no one cares about their tournaments anymore...
Always the same people, making the same empty arguments...
Theory and practice sometimes clash. And when that happens, theory loses. Every single time.
