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newbieA (1781) / StonyDrew (1733) ®"undead turtled vs orcs" ~newbieA
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News
Cernunnos wrote me (thanks) and raised some concerns about the new report timer feature. In short it's questioned if having the feature at all is practical.
The example given is a situation where the two same players play a game, then a rematch and perhaps even a third one and so on. For the example to work they do this in a row. Let's have a look at it with an example. I'll borrow svek for this.
Example 1
Game 1: svek wins over eyerouge
G 2: svek wins over eyerouge
Now, in this case it is true that it would be comfortable for svek to double-report. One might wonder why, if we play our games in a row without playing other players in between, svek has to leave Wesnoth, report, beat the crap out of me again, and then leave Wesnoth again to report. This doesn't seem logical or convenient, and, it isn't. At least not until now when you'll be given the rest of the explanation: e1) When svek makes a double-report in the example he actually feeds the ladder with misinformation about the time (and perhaps even the date in some cases) about the first game he won. The time(/date) stamps on it will be fake. The time/date should tell the us all when the game was finished. It may be off some second or a minute or so when used normally, but compared to the offset we'd get when doing double reporting it's not a problem. Also, let's look at another case:
Example 2
G 1: svek wins over eyerouge
G 2: svek wins over eyerouge
G 3: svek wins over eyerouge
Let's pretend we play G1 at 13:00. Then we play G2 at 14:00 and lastly we play G2 at 16:00, finishing it at 17:00. We still play all the games in a row and don't play any other players in between sessions. What's clear now is that the more games are played in a row, the larger the offset will be in the earlier games, making the problem with inaccurate timestamps bigger and bigger with every game.
So, the first explanation for why double/triple/and so on-reports are bad is that we get inaccurate info about when the game was finished. That in return gives us less info to use when we try to guess when the game was actually played. How does that matter? It does. Simply because all activity on the Wesnoth Server(s) is logged. So, by looking at when a game is reported and comparing that info with the log from a Wesnoth Server we can easily check to see if a game was played or not and by whom etc. Hence the timestamps are interesting from two perspectives: They tell us something about the real world, and they also help us verify that games were played as reported, if that need should arise.
This is however not the only reason for why it's a bad idea to not report directly after each game. Consider this:
Example 3
G 1: svek wins over eyerouge
G 2: eyerouge wins over svek
G 3: svek wins over eyerouge
Here G2 has a different outcome than in the other examples - I won against svek. Question is how we would solve this if we don't report after each game. We could of course play all the games and then both try to synchronize our reports, but that seems to actually cause more work and a larger margin for error than reporting directly after each game. It is also very likely that most players would not synchronize fully. And even worse: Say svek reports G1. He then tries to sync the report of G3 by waiting for me to report G2. I however for some reason don't report G2 that day. If I don't, svek can't really report G3 successfully without cheating. And since he can't report G3, he also can't report any other game against any other player if it was played after G 3. Why?
Because if he reports G4, which was played against another player, and G5 against yet another player, all those results would be wrong since his Elo wouldn't be the correct due to the fact that I didn't report G2. That in return also wrecks the Elo of sveks opponents in G4 and G5 (they'd lose more points in reality). Now, imagine that his opponents also play some games against others after they played svek. Then those others would also get wrong Elo, and their opponents would do the same, so the problem is spreading like a virus. It would all be easy to fix and the ladder fixes these problems automagically thanks to mr russ code, but it doesn't fix the problem until the games are all reported in the proper order and the wrong ones, if any, have been withdrawn. Since that in return relies on player interaction there is no way of telling when two players would solve their situation, and while it's not solved, all Elos of all involved players are somewhat inaccurate.
Finally, it's all a question of complexity:
Example 4
G 1: svek wins over eyerouge
G 2: eyerouge wins over svek
G 3: svek wins over eyerouge
G 4: svek wins over eyerouge
G 5: eyerouge wins over svek
G 6: svek wins over eyerouge
G 7: eyerouge wins over svek
Who would keep track of the above, and how if you never left Wesnoth? (not to mention sync problems again)
I'll admit that it's not usual that players play 7 games in a row against each other, but, the criticism raised against the timer feature seems to become more and more valid the more games you play. The less games you play in a row against the same opponent, the less it would matter if you had to tab out of Wesnoth into your browser to report a game, to then tab back into Wesnoth again.
pragmatics
It's easy to imagine cases where you play 2-3 games in a row against a user and where you don't have to sync the reporting afterwards, meaning the same player won/lost all of the games. It may be tempting to not file a report after each game and file them all together at once, as some players do on the ladder. Yes, it doesn't have to cause any problems.
It will however cause plenty of problems the more active players the ladder gets and the sloppier they get with the reporting. Problems which have been explained in more detail above. That's why it's better to simply make life easier for all involved by insuring you all have good routines when you report: Good routines are like locking the door when you leave your house/apartment: You just do it, by reflex. You never or seldom even remember doing it, but you can be 99% sure that you did it. Reporting a game on the ladder won't ever become such a reflex but we should be aiming towards something similar. And to be honest, it's not a complex procedure - you could probably have a browser running in the background and play Wesnoth full screen or windowed and simply change between the programs with the press of a button.
Lastly, let's not forget that players with routine, which is currently defined as those who have >=100 wins, don't have the 20 minute limit between reports. Why? Because the 20 minute limit is still first and foremost a spam filter, and players with 100 wins or more can in 99% of the cases be trusted to not go berserk 
Can we lower the 100 wins number? Yes, but making it too low makes it easy to get around the filter.
Please also keep in mind it's actually a rule that you report a game directly after it has been played. Reporting it a day later isn't allowed, not even an hour later. Because in that hour your opponent could have played another game, spreading his inaccurate Elo effect due to your report still missing/being filed the wrong time.
- hiscore & sportsmanship breakdown added
- skill class overview added...
- multiplayer server is up
- working multiplayer server
- site update to 0.6.0
- 1vs1 Map Changes
- Make your friends list auto-update
- some bugfixes done...
- new name rule
2008-07-`3 - New features available
newbieA (1781 / +70pts)