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fred, on Nov 20 2009, 01:12 PM, said:
[The fundamental problem in my view is that just about everyone wants to know how well other people play, but many people do not want other people to know how well they play. There are also plenty of people who really don't want to know how well (or more likely how badly) they themselves actually play.
I actually think, if you had a system, it seems simple enough to have a policy that would satisfy all of the constraints you mentioned. Show people ratings for potential partners/opponents when joining a table with an empty seat, but don't show people ratings for themselves. Allow people to "opt out" of broadcasting their rating, but make the default option to show the rating. And if a player really wants to know how they're rated, they don't opt out, and can ask their friends -- or they can "opt in" by clicking on "show me my rating" somewhere in an options menu. I think the majority of users don't bother to change options, so that way you can cater to the desires of the majority without hurting the desires of the minority.
You can claim that the vast majority will just turn off broadcasting their ratings, but I don't think so. From my experiences on okbridge with the Lehman rating in its infancy, a lot of people did not, and turning it off also sends an important data point -- that the owner is not happy to broadcast his rating.
