On-line rating (discussion)

Important information.
Starting this season, SEM_56 will also be helping me with running the tournament. He will be compiling the list of valid reports and monitoring confirmations, just like the hosts of other tournaments do. I hope this will help us update the standings more frequently and give me the opportunity to improve the program. I've updated the first post for the season.

I've moved a few posts about our problems from the Forum to here.

I suggest introducing an unofficial practice – an unwritten gentleman's agreement – not to inflate your rating in the seasonal tournament by regularly winning against players who are significantly weaker.

Sure, but I'm not going to forbid anyone from doing anything, ignore any games, or force anyone to play against someone.
When I first appeared on HW – Spring 2008 season – there was a very interesting battle for first place between Scorp and Pasha. They played against each other until the last day. It wasn't clear until the very end who would win. Maybe our contenders for victory in the seasonal tournament should play against each other more often?

I'm not talking about any official ban yet (although I wouldn't mind, but the rating hosts are terribly slow and conservative; they don't even want to do something as simple and necessary as not counting games in the rating where less than 5-10 games have been played).

I don't understand, who are the "hosts"? I worked alone for 9 months; Roman offered help, thank you.
I'll explain my "terrible slowness and conservatism."
First, the rating was calculated using the SS-D formula.
Then, Stiky suggested a new formula for calculating. There was a discussion, and Stiky manually calculated the Alternative rating in parallel for six months. When people were convinced that the new formula was better, there was a vote, and Stiky's rating became official. I'm calculating it now. It's not within my authority to change what the forum has approved.

If you, Valentin, want to change the way the rating is calculated, your algorithm should be as follows:
- clearly think about what you want to propose;
- write formulas suitable for programming;
- program it yourself or find a programmer;
- suggest that the forum discuss your system;
- calculate using this system for a couple of seasons, get concrete results;
- conduct a vote – which is better – your system or the one that exists now.
And then, if the forum likes your system, it will be the official formula.

Personally, I like Stiky's system. I've always been interested in statistics and reading reports, and the numbers next to the nicknames don't matter much to me, but they create some competitive interest and attract players.
Therefore, I won't take on any new initiatives. Moreover, I don't see any real and clear proposals.

I remember there was an idea to create a separate tournament rating. Did anyone take on its implementation? In my opinion, it would be more objective and skill-based than the seasonal one, because the level is different, and the opponents are not chosen there...

I had that idea. Moreover, I wanted to include tournaments on other resources, because many people play in different places at the same time. Vik even sent me information about the Baevsky tournaments. It's a lot of work; there are a huge number of tournaments; you have to keep track of everything and update it constantly. There's no time. For me, it was important from the point of view of organizing the draw. But many guys who constantly play in tournaments never win anything. That is, they would not be included in such a rating, and it would not solve my problem. I have to use some kind of "subjective" rating. When we organized the draw for the Favorites, numOne and I independently compiled lists based on our perception of the players' strength, compared them, and almost everything coincided.
If anyone wants to work on a tournament rating, no one will stop them; it would be interesting to see.