Ladder Site Online...

[Scatha]

No serious ranking in any game allows the same person to be ranked multiple times.

This gets back to the distinction between ranking and rating. I think that that statement is true of ranking but false of rating. This is why I'd prefer to see an option to not rank accounts or a rule which means only the highest rated of a player's aliases is ranked; for instance Demogorgon could have been rated but not put into the ranking because Leocrotta was further up.

Insinuator, just to play devil's advocate here: would you have no problem with a player whose strength was about 1500 creating an alias? What if it were a stronger player but they were creating an alias with enough handicaps that they had good reason to believe that the strength would be no higher than 1500?

[Doc Paterson]

Yes guys, I think most of us know that Insinuator has little to no understanding of elo, and that he is not even processing our/your arguments. When, oh when will you learn to ignore him? It's just not worth it, so just stop allowing yourselves to be baited.

[Dauntless]

OK, here goes.

I was quite upset about yesterdays Rigors post, but I have had the chance to talk this over with Rigor today and to settle the missunderstandings that had occured.

I did not keep my alias secret from Rigor for some mysterious complex diavolic plan. Its a lot more simple. He never asked me. Today we talked that over, it seems that he supposed that some previous post should hint me to do so. However I was waiting for a private question, demand posted on the ladder site or any official statement to do so from the ladder admin position.

Since Rigors intentions were made clear by yesterdays post, Im am revealing my alias now.

My second nick is Goldilocks.

Sorry to have kept some of the curious players in anticipation for so long, I had my reasons to do so....

Peace out

Dauntless

[plk2_]

Since the ice seems to be broken, here is the continuation of alias: mine is Primus_Pilus.

[Scatha]

Out of curiosity, a question to both of you (no obligation to answer, but it might help general understanding if you did):

What did you use your different accounts for? What made you choose one at a given time rather than another?

[Dixie]

First of all, I just want to mention that I am not really part of the ladder (created an account 4-6 months ago and only ever played one game), and I have a rather poor understanding of the elo. I have been loosely following the recent discution about aliases, though, and I have some thoughts I'd like to share.

It's about Rigor's suggested system. My thought was that to comply to any kind of system, the alias players would have to find some kind of advantage in it. Rigor's system sounds all fine and dandy, but why would people declare their alias, if not only out of good will (and for some hazy good atmosphere; for why would the atmosphere be bad if nobody knows they've got aliases?). Finding big enough an advantage for people to restrain from aliasing might be hard, though.

The second way to eliminate (or at least reduce) the problem would be to remove the need for aliases. So far, the main reason I've seen people using aliases for is "casual play" or "experimental play" (correct me if I'm wrong). In that regard, why not allow an account two statuses: "Serious play" and "casual play". I see two ways to go about this:
1) Each account has two ratings ("serious" and "casual"), and there are three rankings ("serious", "casual" and "both").
2) Accounts still have only one rating and there still is only one ranking, but when playing casually, an account's elo will not be changed from the result of the game (win or lose). If the opponent was playing seriously, maybe the casual player's rating could be considered a bit lower for determining the impact on the serious one's elo.

Now obviously, there'd need to be someway for accounts to declare they are playing casually. I don't know if adding a tag at the end of the name is possible, or if a simple verbal declaration would suffice. Also, it has to be clear form the start: a player shouldn't be allowed to declare they were playing casually when they are loosing on turn 16, maybe not even on turn one when their random faction selection falls on the faction they are weakest with. Can such statements be made in the game lobby and recorded somehow as proof? I do not know.

I don't know if such a system would be doable or would please the community, but I find it more realistic than Rigor's suggested one for reasons stated above.

[Rigor]

why would people declare their alias, if not only out of good will (and for some hazy good atmosphere; for why would the atmosphere be bad if nobody knows they've got aliases?).

because we are a small community, everybody knows each other (and can guess from their playstyle, language, personality, and the disposition to take a risk who this person might be), and if you always have to suspect that somebody is playing with an alias, it makes you feel angry at a certain point.

about your two statuses: i seriously recommend playing less ladder and more normal games in order to have this experience - ladder is ladder with no such distinctions. only "serious" if it pleases you. or as serious as you can be about "just a game". it is so popular because we keep it rather serious: thats what the majority of our members wants.

a quite lot of people feel more comfortable if everybody has just one account. if you dont want to do it for me, just do it for the others that could fill about two classrooms.

[Huumy]

My second nick is Goldilocks.

I totally owned that nick Just saying...

[Dreadnough]

My second nick is Goldilocks.

I knew it, I hoped it wasn't true and asked Dauntless, he didn't want to answer, but I knew it.

They never played a game against each other and while Nani is on position 1 and 5 Dauntless is on 2 and 4.

[milwac]

Hi everyone, I've been reading this thread for quite some time now. Missed a couple of posts maybe because they more or less said the same things so I decided to skip them. Important things first :

I am not that great of a PHP/MySQL coder but can certainly help maintaining the code and implement bits and pieces of new stuff every now and then. (The broken database search for example, just try searching for only those games with a replay attached) So please let me know if I could be of help.

I don't have much idea of how the ELO should work, or how sites like FICS (freechess.org) do it, I am some 1700+ there and have a (supposedly) high RD (Rating Deviation) A high RD or volatility as it is sometimes called suggests that the same player can play very good or very bad on any given day as compared to his stated ELO. I think a similar term is present in programming judges like TopCoder as well. We can add something like that to our system and that could be a measure as to how much can we trust a players rating. (It could also possibly tell whether Demo is actually multitasking all the time or not -- if considering volatility his rating is still nowhere close to 2400, or his volatility is too low, he is indeed mulitasking with a high probability)

A few more changes that I may care to suggest. But first my opinion on the issue. I am a low rated player but I do like Wesnoth. That's what prompted me to play ladder. Initially when I discovered this alias thingy it put me off. But I didn't want to see leo banned either. Especially because he confessed to his aliases himself. Also after HODOR suddenly reappeared in the scene all of a sudden (not quite maybe) I began watching his games and was pleasantly entertained everytime. I'd even go to the extent of saying that aliases could be allowed for original purposes as this one. HODOR's persona (as a ladder nick) very well surpasses that of his original alias (no matter who he might be, if he indeed is an alias) and it's good that he remains secret.

Even so, judging by all the pros that there could be, the cons exist too. Some of us are deeply disheartened; some angered at the very thought of being 'cheated' at some point. So well, the solution must be to try and eliminate the crime than punish the criminals : read 'rule breachers' (because this doesn't end the crime anyway).

So here goes a few suggestions, they are not some IP/MAC based scheme to track physical locations and determine the possibility of an alias. This is way too far fetched and unnecessary (not to mention NOT fool proof) in my opinion. I'd say let public aliases be there, and also private aliases - like HODOR for that very purpose of a new and different playing style - and employ a few simple change of ELO rules and implement a better query interface on the database. From now on my reference to a private alias can be thought of as an exception to the no-alias rule, for reasons mentioned above. Also a public alias will refer to a 2nd, 3rd or 4th alias of the original. These suggestions are definitely not fool proof and the possibility of an alias will still be there, but it'll be very rare if at all, more so because if somebody gets discovered now after so many have already confessed themselves, it'll be no less of a crime

a. Increase the provisional period of a player. This allows a private alias to rise up to the level it should be. In HODOR's case 1900-2000 (Sad as it may be Loys have it too easy on Hodor, and it's easy to pull him back if he goes too far). I don't know by how much, but this can be figured out from statistics (help needed!) from the database. It will certainly help further if all good alias players have revealed themselves. [Already suggested in this thread previously]

b. For any game with a provisional player a regular player's rating only changes by +1/-1, (or any minimal value). Initially it may seem that new players will find it harder to get a game, but actually this is not entirely true. (I can provide justifications later if somebody's interested). Again this is specifically to target private aliases. [This is also already suggested]

c. Implement a function similar to volatility, something which tracks steepnesses as well as sharp fluctuations of rating curves. Also can be done via statistics, but whoever does this has to do some reading up. It will be some measure which says "The true rating of this player can be anything between X and Y", where X or Y could also be undefined. For example if a 1500 beat a 2000, twice consecutively and her previous volatility was very large, her rating could very well be 2000 ('fuzzy' element).

d. All games involving public aliases would in all cases take into account the rating of the original. A public alias will display the true rating but not necessarily the true alias. Helps in a little anonymity whenever needed without affecting ratings in any way. Doesn't go a long way though, cause it's very easy to see to whom this alias belongs to.

e. Implement some improved querying for the database, with a lot of new parameters. Say anyone should be able to run a search querying for "give me all (P1,P2) with P1_rating >=1800 and P2_rating >= 1800 and P1 and P2 having no games in common with DATE <= two weeks before". However this should not be done for admins to catch alias players but just so that the ladder remains more open and accessible. Also a strong player will have a lot better to do than play with his own aliases every now and then, to escape all these minor shortcomings(If he does so, better let him do it and keep his aliases and have some pity on him on the account of his having no life). If you'd notice all of leocrotta, Dauntless, Cremember, plk2 would've been long 'exposed' if something like this was in place. Please don't take the word exposed in a wrong (thief, cheater) sense. It just means, aha, I think I know who you are, but I can't prove it, so I'll just be wary of you

I could think of some more, minor modifications.

On a side note, a lot more can be done without this alias issue in the picture. Like moderated comments on games, an improved profile interface and stuff like that. I'd say I dropped into post only because I somehow wanted to see these changes in the site and not specifically provide a solution to the alias issue, as it is, the conception of the ladder was itself a great idea!

Hoping everything settles down soon and all players get back to the ladder!

Cheers,
milwac

[Oook]

Milwac - thanks for a very constructive post there

Of your suggestions, a.) and b.) can both be put into practice with the current ladder code, and I strongly agree this should be done.

With regards to FICS, I believe it uses the Glicko system, which as you say measures volatility as well as strength. Glicko is in the public domain, and I believe you can download a python implementation. It works in a similar way to Microsofts Trueskill system, which is not in the public domain, but has a free calculator app.

So if you wanted to upgrade the ladder code in line with suggestion c.), one of those might provide a good shortcut? The Glicko system also deals with points a.) and b.) nicely. Players with quite uncertain ratings (e.g. new players) will have a high RD. Under Glicko, the higher your RD, the more points you will win / lose each time you play, to help you move to your correct rating quickly. The higher the RD of your opponent, the less points you win / lose - a result against a person with a poorly known or volatile rating tells the system less about your strength than a result against someone with a very consistent rating.

Hope this helps, and good luck with any work you do on it

[anoel]

well the decision was not very democratic but i like it so i dont complain.

i am experienced with statistical software like spss, excel, r and a bit s-plus, sawtooth, but i guess that wont help you.
in programming i know only a bit html, javascript and such things - nothing really helpful...

[Quetzalcoatl]

If I recall things correctly ladder codebase even don't run (at all) on recent php versions and to fix that heavy refactoring of each source file is needed...

[Cremember]

sorry im a little late here, but i guess its better than never.

as many of u already know, my second alias is Horde_King, and see_me_no_more is another one taht i used long time ago.

i would like to apologize to those of u who feel offeneded by me playing with these aliases, and i totally understand the reason of u guys being upset. with most of the issue have already been discuessed over and over ag, i will share my opinion on this very briefly:

the reason why i created the second alias was:
1. playing under a different style,, (aggresive orc)

2. add some "new" blood to ladder.

my view on the discussion is neutual. i can understand it from both side. so from now on, i will just follow the rules by not play under the nick of Horde_King or any other aliases.

PS: i agree with idea of a new ladder.

sinserly

Cremember

[neki]

LOL, Cremember: "For the horde, baby!" I beat you so badly, Horde_King! Was wondering why I couldn't find you online to beat you some more!