i had this wild idea..
what if this forum gives out dan or kyu certificate to our members.
i think there are many members who are willing to earn their certificate.
How to assess their rank is another hurtle we might have to discuss but it seems to be an intresting idea.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Interesting idea, but can I ask why? Most of us already have KGS/Wbaduk/national Go association ranks.
Perhaps this could be used for an actual "Malkovich Rank" of sorts? Sorry, I am a little confused about what you are suggesting here.

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All About Go | Go website featuring lessons, history of Go, downloads, articles by professionals and more.

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.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

it can be a soruce of income?
edit: to elaborate more.. i spent $1000 to get 3 certificate from Microsoft. MCP, MCSE, MCSE+i
i can brag that i am a MCSE. well i did it for job search...
anyway.. it is a certificate that proves that you are certain rank.
some people might pay $20 for that piece of paper.
right now it's name value is not as high as Korean Baduk Club..or Japanese Baduk Club..
but who knows..it might become valuable as theirs.
then it will be a soruce of income.

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

Maybe I really can make it to Malkovich 17k, then!

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be immersed

The biggest problem is simply finding someone strong enough to evaluate the level of play for those interested. Actually, Eric Dai's forum did something like what you suggested, and for them it was plausible because...well, they had Eric Dai.

The "certificate" they gave out was really just a picture which provided an estimated rank along with a pentagon graph that showed some stats on a player's attack, defense, etc. etc...kind of like Pokemon lol.

Go stats sound cool. It would be awesome if there was some accepted way of measuring different parts of a players strength, then we could get cool graphs like those from the chunnin exam in Naruto

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"There are no limits. There are plateaus, but you must not stay there, you must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you. A man must constantly exceed his level." -- Bruce Lee

we can base our rating off other server's rating. something like "if you have kgs 3d account then you are 3d so we will certify you as 3d."

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"The more we think we know about
The greater the unknown"
Words by neil peart, music by geddy lee and alex lifeson

But it is easy to get a KGS 3d rank if you are really only 1d by having a lucky run with a small number of total games, so no rank based on internet games should be based on less than 100 games.

Not only that. Due to all the variables involved - time limits, time of day, level of drunkenness or seriousness (yours and the opponent's) - it is highly unlikely that any dan rank can be guaranteed within 2 ranks or any kyu rank can be guaranteed within 5 ranks.

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Still officially AGA 5d but I play so irregularly these days that I am probably only 3d or 4d over the board (but hopefully still 5d in terms of knowledge, theory and the ability to contribute).

I never think of ranks as being more accurate than 2 ranks, ever.

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

Let's issue certificates for the best word/move ratio in Malkovich games.

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Help make L19 more organized. Make an index: https://lifein19x19.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=5207

Hey, there's a thought: We could add a button to flag good moves, and only show it in the Malkovich forums. Separate from the 'good post' in general, kind of a golf clap after an insightful move.

This post is unrelated to the current topic.

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Someday I want to be strong enough to earn KGS[-].

There's a difference between "best" and "perfect"

Two things, first-- the point of that wasn't the rating algorithm as much as it was combining all those different sources of games and rating them all together. (Play your drunk games on a different account and don't tell the system about that account, hehe.)

Second, I mostly agree, with one exception. Say I lose to a 4k in an even game in a tournament. In subsequent rounds, the 4k beats a 3d and a 4d in even games. AGA's algorithm notes that I lost to a 4k in an even game and docks me a massive amount of rating points. KGS's algorithm realizes that the 4k was probably not 4k and retroactively changes the impact that game has on my rating. KGS's algorithm is a massive improvement in my mind, especially if you don't play that many rated games.

(KGS's algorithm could be improved further to reduce the drift it is famous for, I think. If it did that, I think it would be nearly perfect.)

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
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My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

Not quite. All games in a single tournament are rated simultaneously, so if that 4k goes on to beat a bunch of strong player you're okay. The real problem shows up when that bogus 4k beat you in one tournament, and then beats up the dan players next week in a separate tournament. The AGA ratings don't propagate data backwards in time, but it is on the to-do list.

I might qualify for a "web search challenged" forum certificate, since it seems half of my posts are asking questions that I could have easily answered with a web search.

(For those keeping score, the other half of my posts make bold assertions which are easily refuted by the results of a web search.)

I guess I shouldn't have glossed over that for brevity like I did...



That makes me happy

_________________
That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

This is actually an aspect of the ranking system that I don't care for that much. If everybody improved at the same rate, I would be more inclined to accept it, but I don't believe that's how it works in real life.

For example, suppose that you are 1k and I beat you in a game. To me, that means that the skills that I exhibited on that day were enough to win against you.

Now suppose that you didn't like losing to me, so you go home and study as much as you can. You do tsumego problems day and night, study pro games, get reviews at your club, and so on.

Suppose also that I don't feel like studying, so I sit on my couch and eat potato chips all day without studying. A couple of weeks later, let's say that your studying has payed off, and you advance to 2d. Meanwhile, I'm still sitting on my couch eating potato chips.

Is it likely that my skill has improved simply because you have started to win more games? I don't think so.

If everybody improved at the same rate, or if all people's ranks were static, I'd be all for this approach. But realistically, people do not improve at the same rates, in my opinion.

That is, just because player A is better than player B today does not mean that it will stay that way for very long. If we were trying to establish a maximum likelihood estimation of some static measure, then I think it'd be the way to go. But with something that grows as dynamically as rank, I don't think that it's an appropriate way of measuring.

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be immersed

That's the drift problem I refer to. I think WHR is not (as) susceptible to it but don't have time to verify that ATM.

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That which can be destroyed by the truth should be.
--
My (sadly neglected, but not forgotten) project: http://dailyjoseki.com

What is whr?

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be immersed