🕸Fergus Duniho wrote on Fri, Mar 9, 2012 04:40 AM UTC:
Christine,
We have two ratings systems on this site. One is so hidden that you didn't
even see it. In the example game you gave, Battle of the Six Armies, the
game has not even been made available for ratings yet. And for games that
have been made available for ratings, such as European Chess, you still
have to go to another page to see the ratings. This ratings system strikes
me as useless and should be replaced with something better.
The ratings system you are actually referring to is the page ratings
system. This is available for all pages, not just games. Since this also
uses a five-point scale, one option would be to migrate the data from this
to what I am proposing. Another option is to leave it as a separate page
rating system. What I am proposing is specifically a game rating system
that would appear only in the headers of pages describing the rules of
games.
Asking how often a game has been played provides a measure of popularity,
and it gives a measure of reliability to the rating given to a game. Also,
there remain other ways to play games besides Game Courier. There is
Zillions of Games, ChessV, Fairy Max, over-the-board play, play by postal
mail, play through other websites, and play through dedicated programs.