Thanks Ghost. So then why dont you have your new rankings up boss?

Something with the data was messed up I believe.

vamo is correct.

What exactly IS wrong with the data Ghost? If its complicated computer speak, please dumb it down for me, I understand the finer points of tennis swings, not internet functions.

So Ghost, when do you think you will be able to post the new rankings?

The times that I use to order the games before calculating were screwed by the update.

Ghost, question. As far as Ghost-Rating, when someone goes CD and another takes that great power over, are Ghost-Rating points similar to Dip points in that the person that went CD leaves their Ghost-Rating points behind and the new person also contributes their Ghost-Rating points to the pot?

oooh... good question MM

So, are the times important, or should the game id's be sufficient to give an order? As long as one or the other is always used (which I realize this is broken now).

@ Tantris:

The rating depends heavily on in what order games are played, because it considers the result in a game to be representative of the relative skills between players at the point where the game has ended.

So, to answer your question, yes, it could be calculated like that, but it would yield different results.

The by-date approach is more in terms with the philosophy of the G-R system, and is consistent with what has been used up to now.

and obviously the times are important, or else they wouldn't be holding TheGhostmaker up like this.

Well, I agree....but, if the dates are lost, wouldn't game id's be nearly the same. I mean, assuming everyone played 1 game at a time, they would be identical. The only difference is in the overlapping games. It is a question of how you handle changes in your ghostranking from other games, during the playing of a game. If the dates are screwed up, what do you do?

Ghost, question. As far as Ghost-Rating, when someone goes CD and another takes that great power over, are Ghost-Rating points similar to Dip points in that the person that went CD leaves their Ghost-Rating points behind and the new person also contributes their Ghost-Rating points to the pot?

1. In the current method, A CD takeover is viewed as the same as being in the game from the start, because the database doesn't/didn't record it as a taken-over position.

2. In a fully featured implementation, the player entering CD looses the game and receives a penalty too. The new player has a multiplier to adjust for his weaker/stronger position. The other players continue to play as if there had been no CD, averaging out the ratings of the two players and the time when there was CD (in that time using the rating of 0).

"So, are the times important, or should the game id's be sufficient to give an order? As long as one or the other is always used (which I realize this is broken now)."

If I ran it with Game ordering, I would then have to sort it out next time around into "New" and "Old" Games, and then calculate, etc. or restart the whole calculation. I'd far rather do this by the end times than the start times.

There are backups etc. So this data isn't lost forever, it just needs to be collated, essentially.

When you calculate actually makes quite a difference to the results. Again, this whole thing would be neater in a proper implementation.

In addition, I have a break from school coming up now, so am taking a do it once, do it right attitude.

On a related note Ghostmaker, do you have any plans for implemented the rating system to variants, should they eventually be realized on this site? I just made thread about this on the developers forum. http://forum.webdiplomacy.net/viewtopic.php?f=23&t=365

Just answered it :)