[Chick]

How about we just scrap all stars altogether and forget the whole idea!

Fred, you promised us you would not have a rating system on BBO, and you have created one anyway. A two-tier system -- Star or non-Star. Regardless of how objective you try to be, it's still a rating system.

Let's just dump the whole idea and remove them all permanently.

[Foxx]

Chick, on 2011-September-27, 14:58, said:

Fred, you promised us you would not have a rating system on BBO, and you have created one anyway. A two-tier system -- Star or non-Star. Regardless of how objective you try to be, it's still a rating system.

Those stars are awarded for achievement, very much like the card ranks for playing in ACBL tournaments on BBO. They are earned by winning in events of national profile, and are recognition for being of expert level in your own country. They are not an objective indicator of skill, like OKbridge's Lehman ratings aspire to be.

It's true that the stars distinguish some players on BBO from other players, but a rating system? That is an overbid, by a king and an ace.

[mrdct]

How about as a mouse roll-over on the player's name or somewhere in their info there are some details of their star qualification achievement(s). Then the kibitzers can easily see who actually won something of note, but we don't need to take grandfathered stars off people.

Another thing that might enhance things for kibitzers who don't know who's who is to include a link in each star's profile to their WBF playing record; although there is a problem with the WBF playing record being very eurocentric in that it includes lots and lots of EBL events but does not include any events from other zones (ACBL, APBF, BFAME, etc.). Linking to the WBF playing record would also have the nice advantage of providing a photo of the player in many cases.

[diana_eva]

This is why the stars must have their full name in profile. Anyone who wishes to know what their achievements are can google the name and find WBF record or personal site or any other info.

[nige1]

Bbradley62, on 2011-April-20, 11:41, said:

It seems to me that anyone with a WBF title (World Master or above) should qualify for a star. Of course, there will probably be many other combinations of credentials, but that one should be sufficient.

diana_eva, on 2011-September-27, 23:34, said:

This is why the stars must have their full name in profile. Anyone who wishes to know what their achievements are can google the name and find WBF record or personal site or any other info.

Bbradley, Mr Dct, and Diana_Eva seem to have the right idea. Simplest would be:to define

star = WBF world master or person with a specified level of perfomance in specific WBF events.

• Stardom would recognise significant achievement.
• The BBO sneetch fixitup computer could determine stardom.
• The process would be objective, automatic, and up-to-date.
• (Rare) adjustments to stardom criteria would be immediately reflected in profiles.
• The result would be easy to understand, meaningful, and useful.
• Accusations of inconsistency and human favouritism would diminish.

[peachy]

nige1, on 2011-September-28, 19:00, said:

Bbradley, Mr Dct, and Diana_Eva seem to have the right idea. Simplest would be:to define

star = WBF world master or person with a specified level of perfomance in specific WBF events.

• Then the BBO sneetch fixitup computer could determine stardom.
• The process would be objective, automatic, and up-to-date.
• (Rare) adjustments to stardom criteria would be immediately reflected in profiles.
• The result would be easy to understand, meaningful, and useful.
• Stardom would recognise significant achievement.
• Accusations of inconsistency and human favouritism would diminish.

It would be no fairer than the current star policy. Spingold, Vanderbilt, and a few other events in ACBL and maybe elsewhere, are not WBF events and success in those is definitely at LEAST as prestigious as in some WBF events. I'm in favor of scrapping the whole star idea, unless everyone is made to understand that HAVING A STAR DOES NOT MEAN THE PERSON IS A WORLD CLASS PLAYER. It does not even mean he/she is a good player.

[Free]

AFAIK the point of the stars is to quickly recognize good players. With some of the current stars it seems like this goal got lost because of an initial error in star policy. Some of the stars are decent players, but not world class (Belgium shouldn't have that many stars for example, not to say none). Re-evaluating all the stars or adding new kinds of stars is a poor idea imo.

I think there's a very efficient way to award stars IF BBO would start from scratch. Reverse the system and let BBO award the stars instead of letting people apply for one. The people occupied by investigating star applications can now do something more useful. All relevant international events are already covered by vugraph, so the vugraph operators can easily ask their email addresses if the people who deserve a star are unknown. Also people with the same achievements in the past should get a star. This is a big one-time effort, unless BBO changes the criteria again ofcourse.

Obviously, some very good players won't get a star according the criteria set by BBO. But, considering the purpose of the stars, what do you think is worst:
- All stars are good players, but not all good players have a star
- All good players have a star, but some of the stars aren't good players
I think having poor players with stars is by far the worst solution, and that's the current situation btw. I also don't understand the problem with retracting everyone's star. If there's a new star policy, then there's no reason to feel hurt at all. But BBO should try to avoid this in the future, for example by setting very strict criteria which they can expand if necessary.

[fred]

Free, on 2011-October-17, 06:29, said:

AFAIK the point of the stars is to quickly recognize good players. With some of the current stars it seems like this goal got lost because of an initial error in star policy. Some of the stars are decent players, but not world class (Belgium shouldn't have that many stars for example, not to say none). Re-evaluating all the stars or adding new kinds of stars is a poor idea imo.

I think there's a very efficient way to award stars IF BBO would start from scratch. Reverse the system and let BBO award the stars instead of letting people apply for one. The people occupied by investigating star applications can now do something more useful. All relevant international events are already covered by vugraph, so the vugraph operators can easily ask their email addresses if the people who deserve a star are unknown. Also people with the same achievements in the past should get a star. This is a big one-time effort, unless BBO changes the criteria again ofcourse.

Obviously, some very good players won't get a star according the criteria set by BBO. But, considering the purpose of the stars, what do you think is worst:
- All stars are good players, but not all good players have a star
- All good players have a star, but some of the stars aren't good players
I think having poor players with stars is by far the worst solution, and that's the current situation btw. I also don't understand the problem with retracting everyone's star. If there's a new star policy, then there's no reason to feel hurt at all. But BBO should try to avoid this in the future, for example by setting very strict criteria which they can expand if necessary.

And how do you propose we decide who is a "good player"?

One of the nice things about the current method (from our point of view at least) is that it is managable. Human judgment is removed from the equation of deciding who qualifies for a star. If a given candidate doesn't qualify according to the existing rules, it is easy to (honestly) say to them "Sorry - we realize that you may well be an excellent player, but the star symbol is an indication of specific accomplishment. It is not necessarily an indication of skill."

Any reasonable person should be able to understand and accept this.

If instead we had some kind of star-panel that was assigned the task of somehow deciding whether or not a given candidate was a "good player" we would then have to tell rejected candidates "Sorry - we don't think you are a good enough player to have a star".

Many people would be upset by this.

Besides that please keep in mind that we have players from over 100 countries who log in to BBO on a regular basis. We would prefer to have the most successful players (who tend to be the best players) from all regions of the world recognized as stars on BBO. This raises at least two problems:

1) Most countries have few if any "good players" if you define "good players" to mean "approximately as good as the best players in countries like Italy, Poland, USA, etc".

2) Judging whether or not a person is one of these many countries really is a "good player" would be even more difficult than judging the same for players who have frequent opportunities to participate in "major tournaments".

I have read this thread carefully and with an open mind, but it has only managed to further convince me that we are handling this about as well as is practically possible. The bottom line is that the very first sentence of your post is incorrect - we have always said that the star symbol is meant to signify accomplishment as opposed to skill.

Perhaps we need to do a better job of explaining what exactly the star symbol means, but I believe it would be a huge mistake to change its meaning as you suggest - we really do not want to get into the business of trying to evaluate the skill of our members.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[Free]

fred, on 2011-October-17, 07:57, said:

And how do you propose we decide who is a "good player"?

Oh, apparently I deleted my small example before posting, that would've clarified a bit. Personally, I agree that's the best way to use objective criteria. But I'd use very high standards to start with, for example only (semi)finalists of top events. If that doesn't cover enough stars, then you can always add other ranks of these events ofcourse.

The problem with this approach is that you probably won't have stars in each country, but I don't know that for sure because I don't have all the data. But as an example: in open team events Belgium doesn't do good, but we had success in other classes: 2nd in the World University Team Championship 2004 and 3rd in Seniors European Team Championship 2008. So it depends on which events qualify.