Rakesh Agrawal has contributed many useful suggestions in AIWCF Software and Operations. He is now appointed as Coordinator of AIWCF Server Updates and is maintaining a Change List document.
Members should report bugs and post suggestions in the AIWCF WhatsApp group or contact Rakesh Agrawal by email.
Two serious problems surfaced recently and needed tackling on an urgent basis.
- At the end of November, quite suddenly, Gmail began routing move notifications and announcements from no_reply@aiwcf.org into the user’s spam folder.
- On 20th December 2021 some users found that on clicking any game they got a message: The website has been blocked as per order of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology under IT Act, 2000.
Email going to spam
Many of our players rely on email notifications and sending announcements is a basic requirement. Most members will not notice emails in their spam folder. Google suggested adding no_reply@aiwcf.org to the contacts list, but it did not help. Marking such emails as Not Spam also did not prevent future emails reaching Spam. What did work is creating a filter for these messages with Never Send it to Spam along with Also apply filter to matching messages. However, this is not a good solution, since many members would not take the trouble of setting up a filter. Moreover, there would still be a warning, You are seeing this email because of a filter you set. Saurabh Das suggested how to resolve the issue in DNS records, but this was not possible for shared accounts on GoDaddy. Eventually after some research, I found the way to make a DNS change. From 28th December 2021, the problem was resolved.
Website blocked by Ministry of Electronics
The message from Ministry of Electronics needed to be taken seriously. While it was currently only an irritation, it could later lead to our URLs blocked completely. No guidelines on this issue were available. I guessed that our long URLs with player names mentioned in the link could be the culprit. Accordingly on 28th December 2021 the site was updated with compliance on this issue. This was a big update with changes in many pages. After the site reopened, Sameeh Nazarulla and Pervez Mandviwalla noticed some problems, which were quickly corrected. Subsequent to this update, no user has reported seeing the warning from the Ministry of Electronics.
Compact Email Notifications
There still remained one more worry: Our Email notifications contained the whole game in PGN with time stamps enclosed in braces. The content would look suspicious to both Google and the Ministry of Electronics, as non-chess savvy people might think of chess moves and time stamps as coded messages. This could trigger software to mark emails as Spam and the Ministry of Electronics to block our URLs. Accordingly, from 10th Feb 2022 we are now sending very short email notifications (see picture).
Suggestions of Rakesh Agrawal
Moving before the start date in Rapid and Blitz
AIWCF rules stipulate that no moves can be made before the start date in Rapid and Blitz games (for Normal games it is allowed). On the server it is blocked with a message, You cannot make a move before the start date in Rapid and Blitz games. However, using XFCC apps like YourMove, players found a way to bypass this rule. On 26th Sep 2021, this was fixed. A player attempting to do this will get Server Error.
Column to distinguish between White/Black in Games List
It is felt that this is not necessary because from the opponent’s move like 11…e5 or 21.Nxd4 the colour of a player is already clear.
Options for Games List order
A new setting, Games List Order is added in Preferences with options: Default, Days Elapsed and Days to Time Control. Probably Days Elapsed is the best setting for most players, and Days to Time Control will be useful for players who like to live dangerously!
Display of player’s game statistics
This is implemented on the Rating Profiles page (Click Info → Rating Profiles). Here, apart from Engine-Allowed Rating Graph and Engine-Forbidden Rating Graph you will see choices for Engine-Allowed Statistics and Engine-Forbidden Statistics.
New results in red in cross tables
We are now showing results in the current calendar month in red in cross tables. As in ICCF server, results in red indicate that they will be taken into account in the next rating list
Display of results
Under Actions → View results we provided a facility where a player can see his results month by month and the effect on his rating. However, the interface was for Engine-Allowed games only. We have now provided a drop-down to select either Engine Allowed or No Engine games.
Automatic publication of ratings on 1st of every month
Presently, on the 1st of every month, the rating lists (Engine-Allowed and Engine-Forbidden) are presented after manual action by the Administrator. As with all manual operations, sometimes there is a delay before the ratings are published. It is proposed to schedule this to happen automatically. However, this has not been implemented yet.
Automatic Tablebase Adjudication Failure
On reaching 7-men positions in Engine-Allowed games we had automated the process of adjudication (Thanks to Austin Lockwood, ICCF for providing the needed information). Of late this automated process is failing. For the present we have gone back to manual operation till this problem is sorted out.
Some links not working
Some links on pages especially Webserver Guide, were giving 404 Not Found error. These have been corrected.
Buttons for Refresh and Logout on Games List Page
Instead having to navigate from a drop-down list, Refresh and Logout actions were made more convenient to use by having these functions as simple and prominent buttons.
Turning the board while viewing completed games from cross tables
On clicking inside a cross table, games that have been completed can be opened in a game viewer. However, in the viewer there is no option to orient the board. Implementation of this feature has not been done as yet.
SUGGESTIONS OF OTHER MEMBERS
Draw by 50-move and insufficient material in engine-forbidden games
After endgame table-bases were applied, we eliminated 50-move draw rule and draw by insufficient mating material. However as pointed out by B.S.Dutt, endgame table-bases are not applicable for engine-forbidden games. Accordingly, we re-instated these automated features for engine-forbidden games.
Perpetual check button removed
We eliminated a separate perpetual check button (both engine-allowed and engine-forbidden games). Positions that are repeated for the 3rd time, even if it is with check at every move, are to be claimed as drawn by clicking the Repetition button. This is in conformity with FIDE OTB rules.
Huge board size
Although we already had 3 board sizes (Small, Medium, Large) in Preferences, Tejas Jadhav wanted a still larger board size. A fourth option (Huge) was added.
List of Thematic Tournaments
Anil Anand requested to have an easy way to see a list of all thematic tournaments along with the theme moves. This is made available by providing a link Go to Thematic page on the cross tables page. A direct link is www.aiwcf.org/server/thematic_page.php
Rearranging Cross Tables
Om Prakash pointed out that the existing option to re-arrange cross tables (Start List, Total Points, Performance, Completed Games, ICCF Id) was cumbersome. Accordingly, we provided an immediate action drop-down list.