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Subject: Re: Fair conditions?!

Author: Mike S.

Date: 17:46:18 10/31/03

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On October 31, 2003 at 19:53:05, Harald Faber wrote:

>On October 31, 2003 at 00:03:05, Mike S. wrote:
>>(...)
>>Would you call it FAIR when a major competitor of yours wouldn't be tested at
>>all??
>
>When the competitor does not the least to be able to be tested, well, for me
>this looks as if the competitor does not want to be tested at all.

It doesn't matter if the competitor (it's programmer and/or publisher) want's to
be tested or not. I'd even say it must not matter. Test are not only for them,
but for the fans too, even mainly for them who are or may be customers. You can
compare this with other tests of all kinds of products, cars, cameras, washing
machines. An independent testing organisation shouldn't be dependant :-)) from
decisions of people related to the product. I think this is obvious. So they
don't have to wait for any permissions or efforts to have a program tested.

(I've already written once or twice, that if think the common SSDF practise to
have the progs sent to them - for free obviously - is somewhat doubtful,
considering their independance.)

Also, the qualitiy of the SSDF ratings would be in question when important
engines are missing. Some years ago there was a similar situation, and it was
just courtesy of the SSDF not to test some important programs because the
publisher said he didn't want it, but the users certainly didn't appreciate the
decision.

When publishers and progammers want a testing lab which they can *control*
completely, what and how to test etc., than they would have to create *their
own* testing organisation. I guess we share the opinion that this isn't
realistic, because some companies would have invest money to get results, they
are not happy with (and most probably can estimate before anyway).

As for the usage of general.ctg, I would rather have used a simple
database-generated tree as a replacement. But this would probably have it's
downsides too.
http://www.talkchess.com/forums/1/message.html?325009
I guess the King fans would call that unfair and say, why don't you use
general.ctg like already done in other similar cases...

It's a compromise, and therefore, not perfect.

mfg.
Michael Scheidl



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