i mean there is a window with 4 things a circle a ray a clock and… an apple what means that?
the english is the best i can do i am from chile and speak some english
The circle represents your Overall rating. This includes all rated games.
The lightning bolt represents your Blitz rating. This includes only those rated games with Blitz time standards (faster than 12 seconds per move).
The clock represents your Live rating. This includes only those rated games with Live time standards (starting at 12 seconds per move and under about 4 hours per move).
The turtle represents your Correspondence rating, This includes those rated games with Correspondence time standards (over about 4 hours per move).
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Always thought of it as a camel. 0.0
@OGS Team is it possible to make some explainations on the profil site, or a link to an explaination site?
At least some words what the symbols stand for.
I mean now I know the meaning of the symbols, but in the beginning I remember it was very hard for me to understand the meaning (or find a FAQ ot something else).
I mean its a little bit pity, when you have a good system, but the (new) people dont understand it, only they can’t read it.
(And its not the first time that people ask about this)
Just as a sidenote, if you hover your mouse over those symbols you can see the text tips “Overall”, “Blitz”, “Live” and “Correspondence”. Maybe that’s not enough?
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Hm… I didn’t regonized this until now. The Area where I have to wait for the popup its very small and I have to stay there for a second. And: If I dont know that I have to wait, why should I?
And the second thing, In the beginning I didn’t know what blitz, corespondence, Live and overall stand for.
blitz = Blitzkrieg? a temporarly rank? How fast I am playing?.
Corespondence = Make Chat contacts? or Forum activitys?
Live: Is there a form, where I can enter my Reallife results?
In the beginning I really didnt’ understand how the rankingsystem works
(Why does it go up and down with diffrent opponents? Why did it raised in the first days very quickly and now its stuck?)
Is it about the board size? Somethime when I played 9x9 then the red one increased.
But there is a flash as Icon maybe it is how fast I set the stones? The blue isnt moving. Why? (there is a turtle icon, maybe I should play slower for the blue one? or it counts only goodness of the slow moves? but how?
I really didn’t know.
Where can I get informations about it?
Maybe on ‘Ranklist’? → no, there are only other players (they probably know all this stuff, and I’am stupid.
In my ‘profil’? → no thats where I am right now, here is nothing
‘Overview’? → no its empty
‘Help’? → no its only how I start and playing games (I already know) make reviews tournaments, groups and stuff (maybe later, when i understand the basics, I even still dont understand the rankingsystem)
The forum? → …phew…many posts there, how am I suposed to find something about the rankingsystem?
Maybe I ask? → No, that is silly, probably I overlooked a link, I should take a look again on the ogs-site.
→ Oh there is a game, maybe I play at first, to understand the rank system isn’t important.
It took me 2 or 3 weeks to find out, that in the forum is a FAQ and its not only about the forum rules.
then I found:
I get explained that ogs is using the ELO system and its very complex to calculating ranks.
I read that some player dont understand why his rank goes down after a lost game, what I clearly understand, why I didn’t read the article
And a I found a the link to wikipedia The ranking system
where they explain go rankings in gernerell, but there is noting about the turtle and blitz so i skiped it.
Until a week later (again on the searching how about the rankningsystem works) Now I read teh article ‘why the rank is going down after a lost game’
and I learned that the ranks are relative. So I’am courios enough to read long wikipadia article.
Eventually I read ‘Docs on ratings?’ where Wulfenia give someone finally the answer that I was looking for. That live, blitz and corospondence result to the overall rank and now i finally know the meaning of the turtle, the blitz, the clock and the circle.
After a year, now I know all this stuff and i like it, but in the beginning it was an odysee.
The informations are there, it was only hard to find them.
Probably other players figured it out sooner, but I still think a link to the FAQ under the rank diagram could be very helpfull, (or better a site where all explainations are togehter) could lower the not-understanding-frustration in the beginning.
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I see your point. We will probably document that better in the future. 
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I have few games behind me, and still 25k temporary. Whu still si temporary? It is a small remark mentioned so I need to finish one game, but I did it and nothing changed.
@jacdzi: You mean provisional? That’s correct, you did play the last game you needed and you are no longer provisional now.
That is great but it overlooks one problem. You can’t hover with the pointer over the symbols if you’re visiting the page on an iPad or similar device, and not a computer with a mouse… I’ve been visiting for a month or so now, and it was only this other day I did it for the first time on my computer. All the other times it’s been on an iPad so I had no idea about that function.
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This thread is outdated since Jul 2017. At this point the OGS rating system changed to glicko2. The rating system changed in many aspects. All info in this thread about Elo on OGS is obsolete.