Spotlight
newbieA (1781) / StonyDrew (1733) ®"undead turtled vs orcs" ~newbieA
[21/10]
newbieA has rightfully claimed the ultimate spot and is ranked number 1!
[19/10]
StonyDrew is now king of the hill and ranked number 1!
[09/10]
newbieA smells the fear on the top as he grabs 2nd place.
[09/10]
vvd has fought plenty to become one of the Top 5.
[02/10]
newbieA has fought plenty to become one of the Top 5.
News
While the Wesnoth servers are down you should take a look at the nice Wesnoth Journals which also has info on how to connect to the alternative servers that work, and why not hang in #wesnoth to catch up with all the other 'nothians.
Once server's back and running you'll notice we've upgraded the site. Mr russ has done plenty of his magical things to it and the one you'll be the most interested in is:
the revoke game feature
By using the profile's recent games history you can now undo any game that you have reported as a win within the last 14 days by pressing Details/Feedback and then the Withdraw-button. You can also contest the result of another players supposed victory over you if that player made a false report - just press the Contest-button in such a case and the "win" will be deleted.
The above is of course a very powerful tool and we chose to implement it because it helps making the ladder more self-sustainable and it's also minimising admin interventions. As with any other tool it can be used to cheat with. We've of course foreseen that and also taken measures. First of all, we'll shut down your account if you abuse that function and we can always bring back the old result if we want to since nothing ever really leaves the database, hence you can't do much damage even if you set your mind to it.
Second, and more interesting, is the fact that we keep track of how each player uses this function: In every players Profile there's a cell called Revoked Games. In it we can all see the total percentage of games that a user has had some kind of trouble with. There is also a break down shown in parenthesis that tells us the number of games by the player that has been
(withdrawn victories by you / victories contested by others / contested losses by you). If you withdraw a game you regretted reporting it as a victory, and you effectively undo it. If the "loser" questions that you reported a game as a victory and believes you have broken the rules or reported falsely somehow (s)he can contest your victory by undoing the game.
So, by looking at a players profile you'll know the chances for getting in some kind of conflict with that player about a game report. If e.g. Chomsky has a revoked games value of 5% it means that 95% of the games he participates in there is no conflict and no problem from either players perspective. If, on the other hand, you take a look at Nozick and notice he has a revoked games of 20% it means that for some reason in average every fifth game he plays has some kind of result conflict associated with it. The more exact nature of his actions can be seen in the breakdown in the parenthesis. In short: If you want to avoid problems then avoid players that have played many games but still have a high revoked games percentage.
You can of course also always change your mind if you withdrew a game or contested it and if you do so within 14 days. Just re-vist the game details and press the correct button, and the game will be valid once again.
We'd however like to strongly advice you to take the usage of this function seriously and to avoid contesting results if you haven't mailed or otherwise contacted the other player!. If you really can't get hold of the person and (s)he has no contact info available or doesn't reply, then you can go ahead even if you didn' get hold of him/her if you think the rules support your decision and that admin would agree with you.
In general though, you can choose to try to work things out like an adult or act like an little kid. The climate on the ladder becomes whatever it's player base makes of it. We as admin can only offer guidance, try to enforce rules and improve the code for the site itself, but beyond that it's up to you guys & girls how nasty or friendly you want to play it all out. In our mind the most important thing isn't the winning or the fancy statistics - it's having fun and contributing to a friendly community. You play a vital role in it, not just by not being mean towards others, but also in the way you handle the ones that are mean to you - vendettas and/or cheating never solves anything and will eventually just wreck your reputation. Also, cheating isn't allowed, even if you do it against a supposed cheater. Keep that in mind folks. And if you can't, well, then we'll just shut down the site sooner or later since we won't tolerate a hostile environment. However, we're confident it won't come to that point as a great majority of the players in here seem to be friendly.
improved giving feedback
The loser has now the ability to upload a replay of the game if and only if the winner hasn't done so already. In order to keep integrity and the feedback useful we've also made it impossible to give feedback once it has passed 14 days from the time the game was reported by the winner.
p.s. Yeah, the elephant has a meaning. Anyone that knows what php is would know it 
- new name rule
2008-07-`3 - New features available
- sportsmanship
2008-07-11 - New ladder version available
- site frakked by MySQL
- site upgrade to come..
- site update
- svn up and running...
- about provisional & k-values
- logo wanted
newbieA (1781 / +70pts)