Welcoming beginners and OGS rating system (A compendium)

[shinuito]

@qnpnpmqppnp

You will likely either roll over your opponent or get rolled over, in any case not a pleasant experience for those involved, and the main solution proposed is to get better so you can escape the trap that is your current rank.

I mean that was one of the reddit solutions…

I don’t think that’s a solution even, it’s just saying that you might avoid this when you move upward.

There are threads of discussions about avoiding [?] players

How NOT to select players with the question mark rank?

Hello, even though I have set the selection option to be +2 above/ - 2 below my rank, the site often selects players with the question mark rank, beginners who often prolong lost games etc. How to set the options so that such players are not selected? Regards, S.

and I agree with the sentiment of

@Groin

Everyone was once a ? Player and have to enter the rating.

Whether we should have a button that allows you to turn off match ups against [?] ranked players I don’t know. It might be better for the people that just get their games cancelled, and for the people cancelling the games. However what if a large fraction of people around the entry point turn this setting on and new players just can’t really get games because no established players want to play them?

@qnpnpmqppnp

and (ii) ensuring that most [?] players you face are not too far off your own level (there will of course be exceptions with people purposefully or not choosing the wrong entry point, but still better than all of them being forced to pick wrong).

The thing is though, there’s not guarantee at all that anyone knows how to set their own rank correctly.

Realistically people will either choose some rank they have on another sever, maybe they’ll pick 5d from a fox rating, or 10kyu from a pandanet rating which probably won’t correspond well to OGS ranks, or, and I imagine more likely, they’ll tend to underpick their actual rating - The logic being that you don’t know exactly what your rating is on this server compared to another, and if you underestimate you’ll get some easier games and rank up, while if you overestimate it might not be a whole lot of fun on the journey down.