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Client-side Bug-fix update

By: Adam Plumb 15.6 years ago
Today was mostly a fix for some issues that cropped up from the major update on sunday morning. Here is a list:
  • Word chart now gets reset to zero every round
  • Removed some wasted white space above the game board
  • Changed "Words others got" wording to "Words everyone got"
  • Sometimes, if you ejected yourself from the game and came back, it would show an old game board, and wouldn't update until the next round. This is fixed.
I'm debating with myself whether or not to to rework the site's rating system. Currently, I'm using a somewhat hacked apart version of the standard chess rating system. Each person in a round has their rating measured against everyone else in the room to see how they are expected to do (win/lose on a sliding scale of 0 to 1), then their respective scores are compared in order to see how to did. If their score is higher than expected, their rating goes up. However, if their score is lower than expected, their rating goes down.

This system seems to be working reasonably well. However, because so many current players are old pros from the tangleword days, there are players that should have 3000+ ratings (according to their scores), but are still stuck down in the 1600s. In my opinion, the ratings system is about accurately measuring the abilities of a person relative to the other players in the room. And it could be doing a better job.

The alternative rating system I'm thinking about is (I believe) based on the tangleword approach. Add each score in a room, then add each rating in the room, then divide the sum of the scores by the sum of the ratings. Then to get each person's "expected" score, multiply that quotient by each person's rating. If a person's score is higher than this expected score, it goes up, and it goes down if it is lower. Indeed, this seems like a good plan and ratings are directly tied to relative scores, which is a good thing. I'm still mulling over whether I want to make the change, but it could happen. If it does, then ratings will become MUCH more volatile than they currently are. Some people will go way up and some will go way down. But it will be fair.