SmoothOper wrote:You think this is interesting? There must be something wrong with you.
Maybe you shouldn't go around saying there is something wrong with people when they have a valid argument.
You find me puzzled about this accusation, which is the reason I think you misunderstood what I was saying. When I re-read all our posts, perhaps you thought that my original remark about "reasons" ...
jug wrote:If you don't have interesting games, the reasons are probably lying elsewhere

was referring to YOU personally. I see now & could agree, that that sentence could be understood in an insulting manner, but I assure you that this was not intended. Rather I intended to hint, that the reasons to blame lie in the different server-environments. Sorry for being imprecise there. When you write something, it's often not clear, that it can be ambiguous. Sadly, that's one the disadvantages of text-only communication methods (without seeing the counterpart or hearing the intonations).
If that is not what caused your infuriation, you have to point out to me what you found irritating in my statements.
After seeing about 15 posts bickering about the correct use of terms about "rational/decimal/floating" rank, I thought I add something more substantial to the thread

... which seems to have an unintended opposite effect.
hyperpape wrote:What servers are you thinking of, jug? I think KGS uses nominal ranks for handicaps.
And I think the original complaint makes a lot of sense. Why should the system pair two players with a handicap that it *knows* is larger than is necessary? Surely a too small handicap usually makes slightly more sense than a too large one.
The advantage is that the system is simple to understand, and I guess I'm ok with that. But 2k vs 1k = even, 2k vs 1 dan = 1 stone is also easy to understand.
As one of the developers of DGS I know, that at least DGS uses an even game for a rank-diff of only 0.6k (e.g. see
http://www.dragongoserver.net/rating_ch ... 0&komi=6.5 for expected game-settings on DGS for users with a 0.6k rank-diff (need DGS-login e.g. guest-user)).
I think the old OGS was similar, though I'll have to admit I also thought the real-time-servers (IGS, KGS, Tygem, etc) where using ratings (not ranks) ... I guess I was misinformed there. One more reason to dislike such a server-behavior like the OP expressed
