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While trying to figure out how to make a new ratings system work, I have
been looking into the database to see what is there. One of the tables is
called Ratings, and it is for the rating system I have described as hidden
and useless. Only three games have been rated. These are an example game
David Howe made to test the ratings system, European Chess, and Shatranji.
Given the scant use of this ratings system, I think it would be alright to
discard it. What I want to replace it with will be more prominent and
easier to use, making it more likely that people will use it. What I'm
trying to decide on right now is how to represent the data in the database.
It could go in the Item table, the Person table, or both. Putting it in the
Item table makes it easier to calculate the average ratings for a game,
while putting it in the Person table makes it easier to list someone's
favorites. I'll probably go with putting it in the Item table. Since
userids are uniformly lowercase and all the keys in the Item table are
mixed case, it should be safe to add userids as keys in the Item table. The
userid would be a key to a two-character string representing how someone
has answered the two questions. To calculate an average rating, I could
then scan an Item row for lowercase keys, add up the values and divide.