Here are some examples:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/p/toy...

http://www.amazon.com/Harry-Potter-...

This delay is already well known to the super-admins like the CG Librarian. For example, when she moves some games from one Ivanov to another, the win percentage does not change instantly. Likewise, after Magnus's win today his statistics aren't instantly changed. Those headers are computed and cached away by a program that runs in the wee-hours of the morning. If you come back tomorrow you'll see that his stats may have changed a bit, but it's not instant.

The reason to want to do it this way is one of software efficiency considerations: so that when people pull up Carlsen's page the software doesn't have to compute his favorite openings for the millionth time that day.

To make matters more complex, we also have a concept of "minor players" vs "major players" which simply has to do with the number of games. I want to stress it has nothing to do with how good or poor of a player they were--for example, "NN" is a major player, while Captain Evans is a "minor" player. That doesn't mean Captain Evans was a patzer, it just means we don't have many games for him, and therefore we do NOT precompute a cached header. The technical point to this distinction is that with minor players it's no longer worth the administrative overhead to create a cache file for them, it's actually more efficient to compute their statistics on the fly every time their page is loaded.

Oh, and did I mention, the delay is not always 24 hours? Every night the software works on recomputing headers, but if it finds that there has been too many mass changes, it tends to the highest rated players first and leaves the rest for the next night. So in theory it could take a as long as week for a low rated player to see an update to his header. Very unlikely, but possible.

<FIDE.com player card>

<fide.com player card>

<fide.com card>

<FIDE player card>

<FIDE card>

<fide.com>

or something else?

Note that it is a priority to us that the end-user is perfectly aware that clicking this link will cause them to leave Chessgames. That's why the ".com" is somewhat important to us. We're not one of these sites that prohibits linking to other sites but we don't want to steer confused readers in the direction of fide.com for no reason at all.

Furthermore Taylor is a "minor player" (no offense Richard) and therefore the delay factor has nothing to do with his case.

Now, if the new rating list came out, Richard would be correctly identified and our record on him would be updated with a current FIDE rating. Then the link would appear and everything would be kosher. But as things stand we have the data and are hiding it.

<Note that it is a priority to us that the end-user is perfectly aware that clicking this link will cause them to leave Chessgames. That's why the ".com" is somewhat important to us.>

Speaking as a computer layperson, I find the additon of ".com" to be confusing and unnecessary. But if it's necessary for some reason, so be it.

Yes, that was it exactly. Sorry if it wasn't clear the way I put it.

I like <FIDE player card> without the ".com" also. I'm sure most people would realise they are leaving chessgames.com (how can they not?), but even if they don't, is that a problem? They'll learn that it is sooner or later and I can't see there are any especially bad consequences if a couple of people are temporarily confused.

here's a suggestion that's very easy to implement and which i think would make site manouvering quicker and more convenient for many:

* make the <Earlier Kibitzing> and <Later Kibitzing> links take us to the *top of the kibitzing area* of the previous/next page.

looking at the html source i noticed that the link-anchor is already in place, hence adding #kibitzing to the links is all it takes. in particular for certain user forums where the owner has 10+ screenfulls of stuff in his/her profile section, this would be a big time saver when browsing the kibitzing, but it would also come in handy for most player pages.