[lojban] A ranking system for Lojban speaking proficiency?

[Arnt Richard Johansen <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

It has come to my attention that many beginners (and some advanced 
learners) are in search of a way of comparing their spoken Lojban skills 
with others.

One way of doing this, that was suggested on IRC yesterday, is to set up a 
system based on the ELO ranking system[1], which was originally designed 
for the game of chess.

The way we are thinking of adapting this to Lojban is roughly as follows: 
Each "match" is a conversation. After the conversation, both parties throw 
a secret ballot which indicates whether they thought themselves better or 
worse than their "opponent". If the ballots agree, a winner is designated 
appropriately. If the ballots disagree, the conversation is treated as a 
draw for the purposes of the ELO system.

There are two reasons that I am bringing this to the mailing list:

1) What are the flaws of this scheme, and how can they be resolved?
I suggested yesterday that it might be possible for someone to game the 
system by voting for themself every time. I don't know how serious this 
is. At worst, it will cause the malicious participant to better their 
score by getting a false draw against a stronger opponent, instead of the 
deserved loss that would lower their score.

2) Design and implementation of the software infrastructure.
Many of the Lojban newbies are reportedly eager to volunteer their 
computer skills to Lojbanic causes. To get this idea flying, we would need 
some way of anonymously submitting ballots for conversation, *and* 
automatically update scores. There would also have to be some delay and/or 
obfuscation, to prevent people from inferring the vote of the opponent by 
comparing their current rating to the previous one.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ELO_rating_system
--
Arnt Richard Johansen                                http://arj.nvg.org/
Many familiar with Descartes' work are likely to remember him from
philosophy courses as that French guy who was wrong a lot. --Daniel Harbour


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