[lojban] Re: A ranking system for Lojban speaking proficiency?

[Robin Lee Powell <lojban-out@lojban.org>]

On Wed, Nov 16, 2005 at 08:27:34PM +0100, Arnt Richard Johansen
wrote:
> 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.

For the record: Jay Kominek has implemented a little program using
Chessmetrics (http://www.chessmetrics.com/CM2/Formulas.asp) rather
than ELO.

> 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.

We've discussed what to do in the second case a lot, and we don't
think this works, because if someone always lies that they are
better, their score will not ever go down very far.  Other
suggestions have been allowing players to agree that they are about
the same rating (a draw) and then either discarding mismatches
(which is probably even worse) or calling them a loss (which
penalizes honest mistakes).

-Robin

-- 
http://www.digitalkingdom.org/~rlpowell/ *** http://www.lojban.org/
Reason #237 To Learn Lojban: "Homonyms: Their Grate!"
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