Ladder Results

I asked a question in Chat recently “Where can I find the rules of ladder results”.
I also found a very old forum question which I have added to raising it to the top.

Specifically I am suspicious about certain correspondence players attitudes to time limits.
I suspect that players are progressing their games at the slowest rate to allow their ranking to be downgraded only after they have had a run of losses.

If I remember the original rules a match when completed resulted in the winner taking the place of the losers place if higher and the loser dropping one place. Do I remember it correctly.
Is this what we want the rules to be?