@quicksilver:
one thing that's changed in the last 9 years:

all the repeated drama from ladder runs,

that's been enough to cause many players to realize that bayesian elo has a big problem.

As I have said, there was a competitive scene in the days way before you joined. People knew about the flawed ladder system at least since Doushibag dethroned The Impaller way back in 2011.

People were way more blatantly gaming the system in the past than nowadays since now we have guys like MoD and also the general community heavily shaming the stallers.

Hey, happy one month anniversary. It's been two days, 23 hours on this move, figured I'd catch you here when you show up in forty minutes or so. It's been a lot of fun. Because of guys like you, i don't get to play on the 1v1 ladders. That's right, this is just one of the games people are stalling against me, and by far the most eggregious. I've got four games running right now that AVERAGE over 2 days, 12 hours since their last move. So I get to make a move every three days in these games while you guys steal the $30 I paid to play on this site. Have "fun" with your "strategy" - although I can't see how logging in at 5am to make a move every three days in a losing effort is "fun" and I can't see how you can be proud of this "strategy". This seriously sucks, and I really wish you'd stop.
https://www.warzone.com/MultiPlayer?GameID=1229199

since now we have guys like MoD and also the general community heavily shaming the stallers.

... this is exactly the problem - makes life much much worse as there's lots of shaming / toxicity / ganging up on people / intense fighting

Edited 9/23/2020 13:30:37

lol Norman, I remember those early days, thank you for the reminder!

Indeed, some of the old strat community (among others Doushibag, Duke, Impaller, Teddy, BP, crafty, and a newbie called Math Wolf) quickly developed an insight in how the system worked. The reason for the poll and ensuing discussion was that Doushibag, among several others, were already illustrating the flaws of it for this setting in the most eggregious way. (And that was before expiration, as the ladder was at that time less than 3 months old! (the time for games to expire in the early days)

That game was March 2011, only about a month after the 1v1 ladder and memberships were introduced.
(Easy to remember and check as I joined before the ladders and I bought my membership because of it as only members could join at that time). Stalling and problems with BayesElo are effectively as old as the ladder. I actually had forgotten that my proposed solution (a decay function linked to activity), applied in a modified shape in MDL, is apparently as well.

For anyone interested in this topic, I'm currently looking into different rating system and trying to create one that could be used by Warzone. I've created a discord server where discussion can take place: https://discord.gg/yD79E8

just as it took quite a while to have multi-player ladders added,

The ladders used to be single player? How does that work?

Great post Farah.

Here in the USSR we use a Elo rating for our tournaments based on chess. We are open for discussions or better elo methods.