Eligibility Votes - March 2022

[hamish olson]

Hamish said the following: -


Jim for example referenced this document https://www.chessscotland.com/internatio...sentation/ and claimed it was the same as the motion (accompanied with a generous offer to enlarge the size of the link).

However the residency in that document is  "permanently resident" , whereas Douglas had clarified earlier that the residency now is just any residency, including students. 

***

But the full statements says :- 

• If the player is 18 or more years old, has he/she been permanently resident in Scotland for at least two years (if a junior, that is under 18, the equivalent time is one year) ?
  

Is this not a more complete conditionally requirement Hamish?

Yes exactly Jim.

The new motion has a different version that is less stringent, and allows more people to potentially represent Scotland than was previously the case. 

Whether that is a good thing or not is another question, but there must be transparency about this and it must be communicated such that everyone knows that the change is happening.
You understandably claimed earlier there was no change to the criteria in your post to Walter, and used that document (which I repeat is a different set of criteria, albeit subtly) to justify that claim.

In full the new motion (you have just quoted the old rule above) says :

"16.2.3 Has the player been resident in Scotland for at least two years* immediately prior to the date of receipt of an application to Chess Scotland for an initial FIDE registration or a transfer to Scotland?"

There is no mention of permanent residency in the new motion, and Douglas has already clarified in the thread that this new way of doing things includes students, which the 2018 document we have just been discussing excludes  - a substantial change that I don't think would have been noticed if I hadn't asked Douglas.

The fact that this is so opaque, such that even people as au fait with Chess Scotland workings as yourself are getting mixed up, is a perfect illustration of why I am concerned.

This change should have been, and should be, communicated transparently and voted on.

It should not be (or have been?) implemented by subtly tweaking wording from documents that few have read, and without a vote.
It should be stated explicitly in the motion, and a case should be made to the voting membership. Something along the lines of "This new wording no longer excludes temporary residents such as university students, as was previously the case."

To be clear I'm not suggesting that people are deliberately trying to be misleading in any way. Communicating all these things is hard and a lot of effort has been made in general on these motions (all those documents...).