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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Ratings Abuse?
        
(Message started by: browni3141 on Aug 11^th, 2012, 2:34pm)

Title: Ratings Abuse?
Post by browni3141 on Aug 11^th, 2012, 2:34pm

http://arimaa.com/arimaa/gameroom/risingStars.cgi
Someone has been creating guest accounts and bashing bots. Sharp2011Blitz has taken the hardest hit. It's rating used to be around 2300 and it's now around 2100. This seems like intentional abuse to me. Should we ignore this, or should something be done about it?

Title: Re: Ratings Abuse?
Post by Fritzlein on Aug 11^th, 2012, 7:49pm

I would vote we do something about it, except that only Omar can stop it (by, for example, finding the offending IP address and blocking it) and Omar recently said "See you in September", implying that he's not around to take care of this kind of stuff in the mean time. If you want to give it a whirl, send Omar e-mail directly or use the contact page: http://arimaa.com/arimaa/contact/

I wonder what the motivation is? Assuming this is all one person, they can't want the glory of the top rating, given that they keep starting over. (Also if they didn't keep starting over, they would eventually not be stealing rating points any more, so the problem would fix itself that way, and not need any intervention.) Perhaps it is someone who doesn't want to give a genuine e-mail address, so they have to make up a new fake one every time, since they can never be mailed the password to re-login. But if they never give a genuine e-mail address, there is no way for Omar to contact them to negotiate an end to the ratings distortion.

One way to get around this would be to require a password even for the first login, so that a valid e-mail would have to be given. But that adds an extra step in the way of the first play that would deter some folks from even trying Arimaa. The number of clicks to first play is already a bit high, and should be lowered if possible, not raised.

Another way around this is to have all games of guests be unrated automatically. That seems more reasonable to me. For the privilege of having a rating, you would need to register and give a real e-mail address.

Probably this serial guest doesn't give a hoot about ratings anyway, and would happily play all these games unrated. Problem solved. I don't mind endless unrated botbashing. I really hope this isn't someone we know under another name who wants to be a nuisance. I much prefer to think this is someone outside the community who hasn't thought for a second that dragging down bot ratings would be bad for the game room environment.

Title: Re: Ratings Abuse?
Post by Hippo on Aug 12^th, 2012, 9:46am

on 08/11/12 at 19:49:44, Fritzlein wrote:

Another way around this is to have all games of guests be unrated automatically. That seems more reasonable to me. For the privilege of having a rating, you would need to register and give a real e-mail address.

I vote for this. And in principle the ratings could be recalculated with this rule applied backwards (as they were recalculated in the hanzack case).

I am not sure how much guests increased ratings in usual cases.

I am not sure how to cope with nonserver bots like ziltoid, but seems to me making these games unrated as well is better solution.

I am not sure how the interface would work ... as the bot gets the rated/unrated info (and should specify it when creating a game). I remember that marwin was codded diferently for rated/unrated games.

Title: Re: Ratings Abuse?
Post by odin73 on Aug 12^th, 2012, 4:34pm

I agree with Fritzlein und Hippo. All guests shoud play in unrated mode. This seems to be the easiest and fastest approach.

Anyway I doubt that the person (I assume that for the highest rated guest accounts, it could be one and the same person) who played games against the best bots neither isn´t already in the community nor a beginner. How to earn the skill to win against such strong bots without training and much exercise in the gameroom?
I have the impression that the very high rating should somehow discourage a part of the community players. For me the intention of this person may have the taste of something like "come and see how easy it is to win against top bots and to gain a very high rating. I find your (at least of all non-top players of the community) modearate skills and playing style weak. For me it´s easy to gain much rating from your top bots".

Title: Re: Ratings Abuse?
Post by omar on Oct 23^rd, 2012, 8:47am

There is one problem with making guest games unrated. The guests won't be able to play bot ladder games since those have to be rated games; and one of the things I promote to new players is the bot ladder. So instead I'm going to restrict guests to playing games only against bots upto 1500. That still gives about 10 bots on the ladder which they can play against to get a flavor of Arimaa when they first login. After that they will need to create a regular account to continue.

This will help prevent guest accounts from getting on the Rising Stars page; however, this isn't going to stop the rating abuse problem since who ever is doing it can create fake regular accounts and continue playing the higher rated bots. Here we just have to ask who ever is doing it to stop. I've tried to trace who it might be, but the IPs of all the guest accounts are different. They are probably using some anonymizing service.

Also we have to keep in mind that since the release of David Wu's android app, it's possible for new players to come in having lots of practice against a strong bot. So I expect that over time as there are more sources for playing Arimaa outside of the Arimaa gameroom the ratings will decrease gradually. We might eventually have to increase the initial rating of new players to compensate.

Title: Re: Ratings Abuse?
Post by Arimabuff on Oct 24^th, 2012, 10:52am

I am sorry but I think that any kind of retribution for something so venial, I mean if there is any harm done we can't even define what it is, would be far worse than the problem it would supposedly fix. Why be so vindictive as a first reflex to any kind of eccentricity around here. Had we followed that kind of policy in the past, we may have discouraged our current world champion from playing any further and the world of Arimaa would have suffered a great loss. Fritz, you of all people should know better than that. If there ever was someone whom I knew to be willing to beat his swords to plowshares, that someone would be you. So let's all quit the warpath and bury the hatchet, and not in someone's head for once.