I was testing new user experiences and i noticed that custom matches for new players are [?] ranks even though i selected my level, the button choice after creating a new account. Won’t this prevent other users from having a guess to how strong you are? Can we do what KGS did and do [25k?] instead of [?].
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As I’m sure you know, it was because all players started at the middle rank (median? mean? something) with super-high rank-uncertainty so [?] said “we simply don’t have enough data”.
Your argument that “since I told you my rank, you have more data” seems sound.
I think “one” would have to dig into what did we do with the uncertainty of self-selected ranks, and is the threshold for [?] too tight. Because there’s still an argument that says "although you told us what you think you are, we still need a few data points to get the uncertainty down and be sure you had a clue 
"
Right, I’m not saying don’t have the question mark, i’m saying have a rank with the ? so people know about where they are if they want to accept their match. Like [25k?] instead on just [?]
It seems to come down to precision vs accuracy.
I’m hearing you suggest that, notwithstanding the provisional nature of a new member’s ranking, a degree of precision should be shared, i.e., “##?” instead of just “?”.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach. Greater precision may be helpful … as long as it’s well understood to be unvalidated. And therefore it might be entirely inaccurate.
Right, what my rambling answer said was that we have an uncertainty threshold before we want to even hint what their rank is - even if they told us what they think it is.
BUT I suspect this could be tuned to say [25k?] instead of waiting till we are confident to say [25k]
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I wonder why we didnt that when the beginner/intermidate/advanced selection into registration was made…
When ppl register as “advanced” for example, and start with 1.0k rank, lets just show them as [1k?] instead [?]