Some thoughts on mailed in selections ….

Without going into all the rules, competition entries have to be checked (or corrected) for validity. A simple race time error does not cause an entry to be invalid as long as the horse name can be discerned and is unambiguous.
The contentious rule is the 'one hour before the off' rule. For mailed-in selections the time-stamp on the mail is all important. In my experience, this time stamp can be relied upon.

For the most part, the system works fine.
Final days can be problematic as can mailed in selections for other competitions (apart from the foru divisions).

swifty thank you for the points you raise above, all of which make perfect sense.

The following touches in part, but not in full, on the debate that sometimes arises regarding emailed selections.

The situation that you’ve outlined does raise its head from time to time and, whilst some of us only ever post in a selection by email when the Forum is down for some reason, there are, as you say, many competitors who for many genuine reasons need to post in their selections by email, including on the final day.

There are also occasions when a competitor posts a final day selection on the penultimate day thread, and those too are probably for genuine reasons – for example, they are away and simply unable to post on the final day thread. Equally there will of course be competitors who are looking to “get in early” with their final day selections.

I don’t think it’s written into the Constitution, however in the Prem Imlac has a rule that seems to work well for all. When he posts the final day thread, he leaves a window of half an hour, or possibly even an hour, for competitors to post in their selections on that exact thread, whether by email or other means. When that time period ends, he then posts up emailed or other selections from the penultimate day thread, and any of those latter selections that match a selection already posted on the final day thread are invalid.

I’ve never seen any objections at all to the above, so maybe Imlac’s policy could in some way be formalised into the Competition Rules.

Your point around settlers hovering over their mailboxes or actively having to go out and look for final day selections by email or whatever means is also absolutely spot on, and that simply cannot happen. All four of you – Imlac, yourself, KC and Reged – do an absolutely wonderful job on here for us, day in day out, and it’s massively appreciated by every competitor in every division. The contributions by undecided too, in the form of the stats that he produces and the competitions that he runs, are also hugely valued and appreciated.