2/17/2015

Dropping and deleting entries

There are times in a tournament when, for whatever reason, someone goes away and you don't want to see their name again anywhere. A whole team might leave early (as happened to us at Penn), or a judge walks out never to return, or a kid comes down with the yaws—the possibilities are endless.

To delete a whole school: DON'T. There is a function where you can delete a school, all the entries and judges in one fell swoop, but it's hard to imagine when this might be a good idea. Before a tournament starts, you might want to make note, permanently, of unpaid fees. Deleting a school destroys the record of their pre-tournament shenanigans. During a tournament, deleting competitors renders all the people they competed against incomplete. Inevitably there will come the day when you're working on a tournament and a school gets deleted in the middle of things. This is the day that you will rue.

To delete a student: Drop the student. That's simple enough. Fees owed for the student will remain, as will the count of students judges are theoretically covering. If you go further and delete the student, there's no record of that student's existence, and the people who debated that student are screwed.

If a dropped student comes back: Undrop the student. It happens that students reported as sick are miraculously healed. Next to any dropped student's name is an undrop button. If you undrop someone, you might have to force in a forfeit or two, but any rounds actually competed in will stand, and life can go on.

To delete a judge: Mark as inactive. You can delete a judge, probably without too much damage to an event, but this will leave no record of the judge, or of a team's coverage requirements and the like. On the other hand, you can toggle active and inactive till the cows come home with no damage to anyone whatsoever.

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