Good questions raapers2, but you could add some more:
(3) Why games with high RR requirements and a strict NMR-Policy are weighted the same as games that any unreliable player can join and in which tons of phases get missed due to default or disabled NMR-policy?
In the latter kind of games, the Luck has a very big part in the final result. Well, it's not luck if you are a reliable player who purposely join such shitty games to take advantage on unreliable neighbours. It's premeditated tactic.
Instead, the games in which almost nobody NMRs and, even if so, the phase gets repeated are much harder to win. They should weigh much more.
(4) Why unbalanced maps are kept in the count? If you win 2 Africa against the same 7 people, you should get the same V-Points (in theory, assuming these games ended at the same exact time). But the importance of your win is abslolutely different if you were Morrocco in one game and Mali in the other.
There are dozens unbalanced maps here. Try and play China in a Colonial, or Huron in an Indians, or Nomads in a Haven, or...
(5) Why different Victory conditions are not kept in the count? Why huge maps produce huge results? I still think that it's much harder to solo in a Classic (VC=50%+1) than in a WWIV (~20%). Also, this system overvalues such a victory: say you could get to 50 SCs with Sichuan growing faster by grabbing your 6-7 weak or NMRing neighbors in Asia, while the strong and reliable guys were stuck fighting each other in South America. It's just luck! They could do nothing to stop you, but you got a lot of V-points for having "beaten" them, while you haven't even interacted with them.
All great players at the top of the vHoF, I must say. But the top-top are mainly those who played more WWIVs than others, it can't be a coincidence.
(6) Does to rate games that lasted only a few turns make any sense?
http://www.vdiplomacy.com/hof.php?
gameID=6764Finished: Autumn 1902 - open the whole link to see how it was rated.
(7) Should you have a minimum number of games to be rated? I mean, in the top 100 we have players that play less than 15 games per year. To not mention what games.
(8)...
The issue with a rating system on this site is that it's asked to compare uncomparable things. The games put in relation to each other are extremely uneven and often they're not even about the same sport. Because the difference between a RR99 Migraine in which no turn was missed and an "open to anyone" KW901 is not only the number players. Likewise it's not only the number of players the difference between a IvG and a Classic, or between a Classic and a WWIV. Any the settings.
The Elo keeps in count your current rating to produce an expected result to be used in as many 1v1 matches as your opponents in the game are.
It's like taking the Top 100 tennis players and, basing on such ranking, produce expected results for other sports. Then you make them play 1v1 chess games and update the rankings. Still basing on the expected results of such ranking, some of them play several 4-players Texas Hold'em games and you update the rankings. Then you make a 100-runners marathon at the end of which the winner will be probably the new #1 of world tennis, because he'd have beaten all the other 99 in one time, scoring a disasterful number of points.
(And this marathon would still make more sense than our WWIV games, because the winner actually interacted with all his opponents, who *all* had an actual chance to beat him.)
You can't compare different sports and expect a meaningful result, raapers, any the system you choose.
But it's fun trying and it's fun talking about it.