Rating Opponent Sportsmanship?

The internet is a wonderful thing, but it also creates some odd problems that stem from two factors: our identity is anonymous and our actions have no consequences. What that does is it can cause nice people to be impatient, and not nice people to be worse. So what can happen?

- people can say rude things
- people can go on vacation to prolong a loss
- people can get frustrated about different styles (some people resign early, others never resign)
- people cheat
- people are impatient...

You get the picture. So we're thinking about creating a reputation system. This is how it would work:

Everyone starts out at a "10". Then, when you finish a game your opponent gets to rate you, and you get to rate your opponent. "How was your opponent's sportsmanship?" - GOOD or BAD. You don't have to rate, either.

If your opponent rates you GOOD, then it raises your average. If your opponent rates you BAD, then it lowers your average. BUT, how much that affects you depends on your opponent's past ratings. If they RARELY rate anyone badly then their rating has more effect. If they FREQUENTLY rate people badly, then it doesn't affect your rating at all. 

In addition, if you rate someone else positively, then your own rating goes up a TINY bit. But, if you rate somebody negatively then your rating goes down proportionally to your own positive/negative score. If you RARELY rate anyone badly, then your own score won't go down at all. If you FREQUENTLY rate other people badly then your own score will go down a lot.

It won't be obvious what your opponent rated you or what you rate them. Scores will not be updated immediately. Also, your rating will be shown as a tiny meter next to your name, but only in places where it matters (like when you are looking at a seek page).

Thoughts? :) 

sounds great

then we can know who has good sportsmanship and who plays nicely

That's a possible idea. Of course you have to worry about stuff like giving eachother good ratings, people who just give you a bad rating because they lost etcetera. But if you insist on a way for players to see whether members show good sportsmanship or not then I guess that's a good way to do it.

But could you please explain the part that says: 

"In addition, if you rate someone else positively, then your own rating goes up a TINY bit. But, if you rate somebody negatively then your rating goes down proportionally to your own positive/negative score. If you RARELY rate anyone badly, then your own score won't go down at all. If you FREQUENTLY rate other people badly then your own score will go down a lot."

If you rate someone negatively then your rating goes down proportionally to your own positive/negative score? Explain that to me Also I don't think you can blame people for giving bad evaluations: they just may be playing people with bad sportsmanship. Maybe it shouldn't effect their rating too badly then, but why should your own rating go down then? Maybe your own rating should only go down if you give someone with a good average evaluation a bad evaluation, but then only if his evaluation is already steady and based on lots of evaluations. 

And with this system, people will initially get weird evaluations since there is no steady evaluation yet. How will you meet that problem? 

great questions. yes, if you rate someone negatively that won't really affect your own rating unless you are somebody who is always rating other people badly (either a grump or a jerk or both).

yes, we will need to tweak the algorithm a little as we get settled in, but there is no real way to simulate this, so we'll get in and start. if it isn't working we'll wipe it clean and start over with new numbers within a few days. trust me - we'll get it right. 

i'm happy to hear from anyone with questions and especially anyone who opposes this. to me it is like ebay scores but better :) 

If we have to rate a person as GOOD or BAD I see confusion arising over how to rate an average or only very slightly inconsiderate player. Eg, you say "gg" at the end and they don't reply or they say "thx" instead of "u2". Would "AVERAGE or GOOD" vs "BAD" ... or "Did he display poor sportmanship (yes/no)?" make the dichotomy clearer... ie, we're trying to weed out the bad apples who drag out losses with vacation time or ultra-slow moves, or who say rude things?

Otherwise I love the idea! I think this will improve things.

 shouldn't matter. if they are sore loser all of the time then the score they give you won't matter much, and it will only hurt them.

I see no problems with this - though as you say we'll only learn as it's implemented.

"If you RARELY rate anyone badly, then your own score won't go down at all. If you FREQUENTLY rate other people badly then your own score will go down a lot. "  I think this should work well - by & large people are very friendly here & there are few problems (so far for me anyway) so unless someone's out to cause trouble I see no reason why anyone should feel the need to rate badly a lot - & they'll suffer for that anyway.

 & I like the simplicity of just a GOOD & BAD.

 agreed. people need to be more tolerant of other people's different ideas.

I don't agree with that. First of all, that's a generalization that isn't true for everyone. And second of all, not everyone can and/or should spend time teaching those that are not as good. Do you think it is rude from Kasparov when you meet him on the street and you ask him to give you some chess tips, or to play him a game, and he declines? 

I like this idea, but I think it would be much simpler just to allow us to turn off chat. What I don't see can't hurt me. Most of the rude comments I run into are from people with only a few games under their belts or those who are obviously kids. 90% of those are "hurry up" related. Comments from higher rated players are mostly "resign now you're wasting my precious time" type.

 The planned algorithm seems to encourage giving lots of people GOOD feedback even if they are just neutral to build up "firepower" to punish someone who is really rude. Won't lower level players' (who run into more bad apples than those who only play 1800+) naturally have to fire off more bad ratings? Does this discourage people from wanting to play new players (with their distintive 1200 ratings)?

dude, you didn't see the "disable chat" link yet? :) it is there. 

as to your other questions, players with less than 5 games have a provisional feedback rating that does not show up. new players will mostly be playing other new players i think. that is how it usually seems to work in my opinion.