@fuzzycat
Some people thuink that the wiki is "poison to their mind", they don't want to be tricked into going there. Also some think that 'somebody' gets ads money from the wiki ... :)

Maybe all people that think the wiki is useful, should put the wiki link as their website in their profile (if they don't already have one). This way all their posts will contain at the end the wiki link!!!

if somebody makes money from it, it sure isnt me ;-)

I think a lot of people just envy the wiki authors, because they were capable of actually creating something, and actually contributing something.

Look at the post footer!

"As for the number of games played – it does play a role in your elo, rank, score (I am still confused as to which is what. How about we call them Apples, Oranges, and Banana?). So it’s not ALL about rating, even the # of games played perhaps only play and small and insignificant role."

I think a good way to look at the scoring is like this:

ELO is your CURRENT rating. This is the number displayed next to each player's name while they are playing (most likely a number between 1300-2200). Your "ELO RANK" is based on your position versus everyone else's ELO. Right now, riser has the highest ELO with a rating of 2110, so his ELO RANK is 1. I have a rating of 2026 right now, and my ELO RANK is 12.

Your RANK is your overall position against everyone else. You can have a very high ELO and a relatively low rank, and you could have the lowest ELO and still be #1 in terms of rank. This is because your RANK charts how well you've done over ALL the games you've played (whereas ELO only really reflects how well you are doing currently).

The SCORE is the number that determines your rank. Your SCORE can only go up.. after every game, you receive 1/(ELO RANK) points to your score. So, if riser finishes another game with the 1st place ELO RANK, he will receive 1 full point to his score (because 1/1 = 1). If I win my next game and my ELO RANK moves up from 12th to 10th, i will receive 0.1 points to my score (1/10 = 0.1).


The previous system only kept track of the ELO rating. There were two problems with it. The first is that when a player reached a high rank, they were reluctant to play any more games on that account, because there was a good chance they would lose points and thus lose their high ranking. The second was that somebody could be rated very high for a long time, but then have an unlucky streak and drop very far in the ranks, and that would be that - they would receive no recognition on the ranking pages for their previous accomplishments because of a little bad luck streak.

The new scoring system solves both of those problems.. since your SCORE can never go down, it effectively 'remembers' your good performance in the past, even if you are on a bad streak. It also encourages top players to keep playing, because even if they reached some astronomically high ELO, their SCORE won't go up if they aren't playing and others will eventually catch them.

As far as the number of games played - if you think about the way the scores are calculated, the number of games played DOES affect your RANK, of course, because the more games you play, the more points will be added to your score. However - it only makes a difference among players of similar ELO scores, and even then not a very big difference. A player who can't get their rating above 1600 will never get into the top 25, because they are only receiving something like .001 score points per game. They could play 500 games, and would only have a total of 0.5. So they won't be too overranked. They will, though, be ranked above some other player who can't break 1600 but has only played 100 games. The same applies to the high rank tables. If someone is capable of maintaining a high 1900 ELO, and plays lots and lots of games, they will have a high rank, perhaps higher than someone who has kept a low 2000 ELO but not played as many games.

I don't know how clear that explanation was, but my point is that the number of games you play does have some effect on your RANK, but it's not a huge effect, and it won't catapult a mediocre player into the top 25.

Now, as more games are played, the main problem is that it will become harder and harder for new/infrequent players to reach the top ranks, because most of the current top players play a lot of games (as you would expect), but that's why Ryan is proposing the RANK/SCORE reset, and I already gave my thoughts on that above.

I will now end each post with.
--
WARNING: The contents of this post is from an unofficial person.

I have a website too!
And before you start screaming that this post is offtopic, please remember that the scoring/ranking system is explained on my site ...

i am all for a full reset of scores and rank and elo.

PLEASE don't reset the ratings, they were earned "fair and square" on the same system. No k value was changed, no 1500 point bump, etc. I don't know about others, but it's still the only thing I care about. No matter how you cut it, the number of games played is a component of your rank, and I certainly will never play enough to catch up even if I get 1st every game until I die.

Resetting the rank and giving out awards may make sense, much like gpokr. In gpokr, if you didn't, the top X there would have 5 trillion dollars and be absolutely unreachable. And I think rank here is the same to a certain degree. But let's not underestimate rating as a valid indicator of talent - no matter how many points you're getting for rating, you must be good to a certain level to be at 1700 or 1900 or whatever in the first place.

you are great kwizatz. i totally respect you.