Comments by Jeremy Good

Thinking about this gave me the giggles: 

-6 Beneath Contempt
-5 Contemptible  
-4 Loathsome 
-3 Hideous
-2 Miserable 
-1 Awful 
0  Bad 
1 Neutral / Average
2 Fair 
3 Good 
4 Excellent 
5 Awesome 
6 Incomparably Fine

If one wanted to have additional layers, we could initiate additional
categories, such as for 'originality.' A lot of games are original but
have bad gameplay or unoriginal but with good gameplay (I am reminded of
Ben Good's essay here about Omega Chess). Still other categories for
'fun-ness,' presentation, appearance. Categories could be optionally
listed according to ratings and categories with overall negative ratings
should perhaps be shelved into different sections of chess variants after
each receives a fair number of votes from the community of users (as
opposed to just members). 

There is one thing that disturbs me most of all about how people rate
games and I fear that there is sometimes a tendency to judge games without
playing them, trying them out. Sometimes, it is not necessary to playtest a
game, but I think too often a game is judged too much by certain
superficial aspects that have little to do with worth of gameplay (as with
books by their covers.) 

If one has a separate category strictly for rating 'gameplay' (as
opposed to other aspects), it could be a category that could only be
filled out after actually playing the game. If nobody is willing to play a
game, that would usually imply something about the nature of the game. I
suggest that as long as a game maintains a positive gameplay rating, it
not be shelved to the negative ratings section. Because a game can fail
every other mechanism or gradation of analysis, but if people enjoy
playing it, that's probably a pretty good test, in my opinion. 

'Confusing presentation, ugly appearance, highly unoriginal concept, but
amusing gameplay.'

Both schemingmind.com and brainking.com have a number of 'hidden
information' games with rules that are automatically enforced. You can
try both sites out for free. 

They also both have a lot of mini-tournaments (that members can begin) for
their variants, though neither has anything near the number of variants
Game Courier has.

One thing I like a lot about schemingmind.com and would like to see
replicated at chessvariants.org is a pyramid system for each variant. You
can join a pyramid and then challenge other people at your level. If you
win, you go to a higher level and if you lose, you go down a level (or if
you're at the bottom, you stay at the bottom).

I meant members as opposed to users, but probably there shouldn't be any
restrictions on how a rating gets generated. I just meant mechanisms so
that the value of a game isn't artificially inflated or deflated...

By 'shelve' I just want to reinforce that I don't mean, be made
unavailable, but just put in a separate section, and just as an optional
way of listing according to rating.

I'm glad my tongue-in-cheek proposed worded descriptions amused some
people as they did me. While I agree that using words like 'beneath
contempt' to describe a variant may hurt people's feelings, I do think
there is a serious reason to use a number system that includes 1 through
10. I do not think that 1 through 5 allows as much flexibility in
analysis. A '4' in a 1 - 10 system is less harsh than 'Poor' in a 1 -
5 system. 

I think there is a serious purpose in having a rating system which allows
a certain depth of analysis. That is so we can list pages according to
their rating. This will allow visitors to the site, including ourselves,
to sort through variants according to apparent quality. Of course,
popularity will not always translate into quality, but at least we can
have some sorting mechanisms in place that will help guide us through an
increasingly prolific site. 

I would like to see all 10s rated together, all 9.4's rated together, all
5.32's rated together, etc (averages derived from cumulative ratings).
This would encourage people to really take seriously the art of critiquing
games. Does a game really deserve the rating of 10? People can go to the
page on which 10s are listed and say one way or the other, thus
influencing the way in which the games are listed.

I would also like to ask that we take seriously the idea of separate
rating systems for different aspects of games 'playability'
'originality' and 'appearance.' Again, the advantage is to evolve
sorting mechanisms (sorting according to playability, etc). It would also
help the designer to know what people did or didn't like about the
games.

I would also like to hear some feedback for a separate rating system in
place for Game Courier post-game analysis, so that people who have
actually played games can then have a chance to rate them. At the end of a
game, there could be an option, 'Do you want to rate this variant?'

Best not to play this variant then, Christine, or Bond James Bond may wish
to have a word with you.

http://www.chessvariants.com/diffmove.dir/oomost-chess.html