Disaster at Queen Alice

On Saturday QA suffered a corruption of their database.  Things were up and running again by Sunday with the apparent result that all running games got canceled.  It also appears that some people who did not archive their games lost the record of them also. All my archived games seem to be intact, not that it matters because I had them all downloaded anyway.  As for me, I only had one game left and it would have probably decided first place.  My position wasn’t so hot so the likely result would either be a tie for first or a second place finish.  Personally, it wasn’t much of a disaster, but many players had put in a lot of time and effort into their games only to have them canceled and I can sympathize with them.

Still, considering this is a free site and probably one of the best ones around on which to play correspondence chess and it is run for the love of it by a fellow named “Miguel” what happened is unfortunate and he suffered some criticism in the forums which I think is unfair.  When you do something and do it well all for free and then something happens beyond your control and you go to great lengths to correct the situation as soon as possible, I think you deserve a lot of credit, not criticism.