daniel_the_smith wrote: It can be defined by how many stones Magicwand gives you in a Malkovitch game ^^
More seriously, I have thought in the past that it would be interesting to run some sort of server where people listed all their handles (KGS, IGS, wbaduk, etc) and ID#s (AGA#, EGF, etc), and the server constantly scanned all those sources for games and ran them through the best available rating algorithm (WHR at the moment, IIRC). Two problems: It would need a lot of people to sign up to be useful, and I don't know if it's possible to to retrieve game results automatically from all of the different sources.
There are few things that bait me, but "best rating algorithm" is one that normally manages it 
Same with the ranking system for the Insei league and everything else, there is no best. Mathematicians spend far too much time looking for numerical purity, but every algorithm and system is only as good as the ability it has to fit to the design of the system. Professional ranks in Japan for example are awarded largely on accumulated performance, but they don't measure actual current playing strength. Therefore a 7d isn't necessarily better than a 5d, or even a 1d. But that's fine, because the ranks aren't designed to test that.
I think player inconsistency (like playing 30% of the time slightly drunk, or too tired to concentrate but ok to relax etc), time control inconsistency, and other random influencing factors affect someone's ratings far more than the difference between WHR, Glicko2, or anything else. It cannot easily be avoided that amateur ranks are completely arbitrary, and generally reflect only your actual performance against the various people you have chosen to play. KGS for example has a number of issues with its rating system, but it remains remarkably good internal consistency, thanks in no small part to the idea of rank anchoring.
It's no secret that ranks in the UK have deflated considerably over the last 7 or 8 years (by over a full stone looking at the regular tournament attendees). This is largely because an influx of new players with rapidly improving strength have pulled said points off the established players. Being able to reset one's rating helps, as to some extent does the EGF algorithm that is designed to deal with a small amount of system wide inflation (WHR doesn't have this hack does it?), but it isn't enough. We have a few dan players that will never again reach their peak ranks, and it isn't because they've got weaker.
I think all the top rating algorithms, including the basic ELO system, are good enough. The signal to noise ratio caused by player improvement and ability deviation far outweighs the merits of the improvements on predictive accuracy I think (although this is probably not the case if you play a very large number of games, 10+ a day or something, as the algorithms get much stronger with more data). If I wanted a shodan diploma, I'd go to Japan or the US, and I certainly wouldn't go to Holland or France. No one seems to have a "standardised" rank for any of the grades, so if we wanted to do L19 certificates, we could. I don't think anyone would want them, but we could do them 
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