An analogy I would make is with grades at a university. These are
taken very seriously; there is no doubt more possibility for
corruption than in the USCF rating system. There are people who have
cheated the system in various ways, no doubt even including people
giving money for grades in rare cases.
There is not any organized attempt to determine whether an
individual's grades were tampered with. When it does come to light, it
is usually very much like Sam's case; someone cannot understand how
this individual received such a grade, and pursues the inquiry. We
certainly have no special checks on our honor's list students.
I would not expect to find that the USCF has better system for catchin
abuse than a university.
As for quality control, the university and the USCF do very much the
same thing. They monitor inflation/deflation of grades/ratings, and
use various tools with varying degrees of success o try to make sure
they do not get out of control.
All in all, the USCF rating system is one of the few things the USCF
has gotten right. There are many worse areas to focus on, and it seems
strange to pick on the ratings system as a major feature of USCF
incompetence. The magazine, management, and promotion are all far more
im****tant problem areas.
Note to those who remember the distant past: I still feel that the
lowering of K factor for high rated players is not a good decision.
However, I would not call this incompetence or abuse; simply a
disagreement.
Jerry Spinrad
On Apr 6, 8:23=A0pm, The Historian <neil.thehistor...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> On Apr 6, 6:11 pm, "jeremy.p.spin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
"
>
>
>
>
>
> <jeremy.p.spin...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> > This was the incident which I praised Sam for in an earlier post. It
> > is amazing that this could be summarized as a case where a board
> > member was forced to resign because of a dispute with the rating
> > committee. This was a pure and simple case of ratings fraud. There is
> > nobody at fault here except for the board member.
>
> > It is easy to say that the ratings committee should catch this, but
> > very hard in practice. There are too many pieces of data coming in to
> > check whether every one is legitimiate. The rating committee's chief
> > job is to set up a good system, not to police it. Every rating system
> > can be manipulated by a cheater placed in a position of trust. It is
> > rare for a TD to cheat in this way; unfortunately, it is not the only
> > case. I do not hold the rating system or the rating committee at
> > fault, just as I would not hold the national basketball league at
> > fault if a referee is found to be in the pay of gamblers. The fault is
> > all on the trusted individual.
>
> > For those who tout FIDE's superiority in all things, FIDE has had
> > ratings manipulations schemes as well. In this case, Sam did a good
> > job exposing a cheater; blaming it on anybody but the cheater (in
> > particular, making it seem like the cheater was a victim!) is a very
> > strange way of looking at the case.
>
> > JerrySpinrad
>
> I agree the fault is on the 'trusted' individual, but one can make the
> case there should be some sort of oversight applied to title
> applications. I haven't the faintest idea of how this should be done,
> or indeed if USCF needs to place such oversight in place following
> Tannergate. P Innes, as usual, doesn't make any sort of argument one
> way or another other than waving his hands and screaming.- Hide quoted
tex=
t -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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