Awesome thread for so many reasons.
One question I have is what actually constitutes "collecting" information, or whatever the technicalities of COPPA say? If you aren't actually identifying the minor, are you falling under COPPA standards? In other words, writing Ryan V on a website doesn't identify anyone or anything. How many Ryan V's are there? Tons. I have to assume (yes, with all jokes considered) that posting a minor's first name and last initial does not violate COPPA. And, to that extent, where exactly does COPPA protection stop? Does tournament reports on the 'gym with first name/last initial violate COPPA? If not, I can't imagine posting pairings is any different.
I'm very interested in this development as a whole. I'm pretty technically savvy, though not compared to most of you young bucks out there nowadays. I'm curious if there is a simple way to try texts (even if that idea is not being looked at as much as internet). TOM spits pairings out in some form of HTML, making it relatively easy to parse the info. So, could some more technically savvy person write a simple script to parse the parings (maybe even as simple as copying and pasting, don't have TOM in front of me) data (ie, name, table #, etc) into a database. Then, have the database (maybe even a spreadsheet) auto fill pre-entered phone numbers (this will be a pain, but truthfully not that complicated after the first tournament----mind you, I'm thinking something along the lines of a cities marathon), maybe even have them entered into an online database by the player, then have that number pulled off onto your local database/spreedsheet. The idea is to copy the table from pairings, then post into spreadsheet/database and have that autofill the phone number based on name recognition, then have the table number (also extracted from TOM with their name) pushed to their phone. Might be more simple to push them to twitter or even email with a simple mailto function. Its late and I'm rambling...
