[c3cummins]

Regarding the compatibility "star", I have a friend who had 3.5 stars (told to her by a friend). The next day she had NONE! Naturally she was upset! So, are you (BBO) giving out and removing stars arbitrarily? This would certainly seem so.

[fred]

c3cummins, on 2014-May-15, 08:37, said:

Regarding the compatibility "star", I have a friend who had 3.5 stars (told to her by a friend). The next day she had NONE! Naturally she was upset! So, are you (BBO) giving out and removing stars arbitrarily? This would certainly seem so.

A given user's compatibility is largely a function of who is asking the question. So your friend might hear about different numbers of stars depending on who is looking at her profile.

Also, if your friend is not online and someone asks to see her profile, the compatibility stars will not appear at all - that could explain the zero stars.

Whatever the explanation, we have a formula that is used to determine the compatibility between any two BBO members. There are necessarily some arbitrary elements to this formula (since it essentially combines various types of apples and oranges), but it would not be accurate to say that BBO (or any of our staff) is "giving out and removing stars".

As we learn more, fix bugs, etc, the formula may change (presumably for the better). But once the formula stabilizes I expect it will be unusual for a given user's compatibility rating as seen from some other given user's point of view to change much (if at all) from day to day.

Fred Gitelman
Bridge Base Inc.
www.bridgebase.com

[kenberg]

A lot has already been said.

Friends and enemies: I mark JEC as a friend. I have never met him, I have no expectation whatsoever of playing with him or against him. If he is online I quickly see that he is playing, and I often go kibitz him. fred is a "friend", as is kit (Woolsey), Bob Hamman, Zia and several others, all for the same reason. I have marked no one as an ememy, and enemies list is not my style. There are a few who, in player notes, I write "kia" for "know it all" or perhaps "expert?" to indicate my view of his self-rating. This is for my use and I would not want it to be part of a data base.

Perhaps players could voluntarily fill out a short questionnaire. I often end up agreeing something such as "your profile" pard. There is not much room on that profile. I think more could be done in that regard.

As to personal compatibility, I'l cope with that myself. Half way through I may well decide that it will be a cold day in hell before we play together again, but that's llfe, I finish the boards. Which reminds me: I am very incompatible with people who leave in the middle of a hand. As far as I am concerned, you could make that a deal breaker. I accept that on rare occasions an emergence may arise.

[hrothgar]

Wow...

This is starting to remind me of the good ole days on OKB, trying to explain how Lehman's were calculated to Carl Hudachek.

I think that you might want to choose something other than "stars" to indicate degree of compatibility.
Stars are already overloaded and folks associate this with skill levels and the like.

I think that you're better off following a clustering based approach.

Sort people into different clusters
Give the clusters very innocuous names (I'd go with mythological creatures: Griffins, Dragons, Unicorns, ...)

Tell people that they are most compatible with their own cluster
Identify 2-3 other clusters that they match well with.

I think it will work well, however, "Better off Ted" suggests otherwise.

[Antrax]

I applaud both hrothgar's suggestion and his taste in television.

[barmar]

Being friends or enemies with someone is not currently used in computing your compatibility score with them. We already provide color coding for friends and enemies, so this would be redundant. The goal of the compatibility score is to help you judge people you don't already know.

The way we use friend/enemy lists is by looking at the number of friends and enemies each of you have, and the number of people who have you each listed as friends and enemies. If you both have similar ratios, we consider you more compatible.

[barmar]

fred, on 2014-May-15, 08:54, said:

A given user's compatibility is largely a function of who is asking the question. So your friend might hear about different numbers of stars depending on who is looking at her profile.

Not just largely, it's totally dependent on who is looking.


High compatibility doesn't mean "So-and-so is a nice partner", it means "You and So-and-so have more things in common."


This isn't Match.com, we can't depend on everyone filling in a questionnaire. So we're trying to make do with what little objective information we have.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on 2014-May-14, 20:32, said:

One interesting (to me) point is that compatibility does not seem to be reciprocal. If I flag Bloggs as a friend, and Bloggs flags me as an enemy, then we shall each see differing compatibility when viewing the other's profile.

The ratings are supposed to be symmetric, but I noticed a bug in this last night, regarding how we calculate masterpoint similarity. I'll be fixing that today.

Since marking someone as a friend or enemy doesn't change your compatibility with them (see my previous post for how we use friend/enemy lists), the problem you describe doesn't occur.

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2014-May-15, 09:33, said:

This isn't Match.com, we can't depend on everyone filling in a questionnaire. So we're trying to make do with what little objective information we have.

You're right. You can't depend on everyone filling out a questionnaire.

At the same time, you can make a decision to prioritize a good solution for the individuals who will fill out a questionnaire rather than developing a highly biased implementation for everyone which risks discrediting the entire concept.

[hrothgar]

barmar, on 2014-May-15, 09:26, said:

Being friends or enemies with someone is not currently used in computing your compatibility score with them. We already provide color coding for friends and enemies, so this would be redundant. The goal of the compatibility score is to help you judge people you don't already know.

The way we use friend/enemy lists is by looking at the number of friends and enemies each of you have, and the number of people who have you each listed as friends and enemies. If you both have similar ratios, we consider you more compatible.

Garbage In, Garbage Out

I'd like everyone to conduct a simple experimenting.

Start by checking your compatibility with some of your favorite partners
Next, check your compatibility with various stars.

In my case, my compatibility with a partner who I play with every week is one star.
My compatibility with a randomly selected set of stars averages 2.5 stars and with many its listed as 5.
I'm guessing that most people will experience the same.

Next, consider how people are going to set their expectations about this new system.
(Hint, first thing that they're going to do is to see how compatible they are with the stars.)

[barmar]

hrothgar, on 2014-May-15, 09:46, said:

Garbage In, Garbage Out

Nothing in, nothing out.

As I said, this doesn't have to be perfect. It only has to be better than throwing darts.

Do you think it's likely to make you select less compatible partners when you go to the Partnership Desk?

We don't currently take systems listed into account. But now, instead clicking on everyone in the PD, looking at their profiles to see if they look good, you can narrow it down to people with several stars. This will hopefully make your life a little easier.

[1eyedjack]

barmar, on 2014-May-15, 09:38, said:

Since marking someone as a friend or enemy doesn't change your compatibility with them (see my previous post for how we use friend/enemy lists), the problem you describe doesn't occur.

uday, on 2014-May-13, 11:46, said:

atm, we're just experimenting, but we factor in ( unordered) profile-country, real location, language, masterpoints, avg adjusted points earned per hand, #people who mark u as a friend vs enemy , award symbol, starriness

I eventually plan to include ( for tourneys , anyway ) times played together , # friends in common

for the MBC ( main bridge club ) we're going to ultimately need a real/rich profile, i suspect.

Someone needs to make up their mind.

kenberg, on 2014-May-15, 08:56, said:

Friends and enemies: I mark JEC as a friend. I have never met him, I have no expectation whatsoever of playing with him or against him.

I suppose that if we have no intention of playing with someone, then it matters not what our compatibility rating with said individual states.

[barmar]

1eyedjack, on 2014-May-15, 10:40, said:

Someone needs to make up their mind.

Where is the contradiction?

If I mark you as a friend, it doesn't have any different effect on our compatibility than if I mark JEC as a friend. We look at the total number of friends and enemies that each person has, not whether those two specifically are friends/enemies.

[barmar]

barmar, on 2014-May-15, 09:38, said:

The ratings are supposed to be symmetric, but I noticed a bug in this last night, regarding how we calculate masterpoint similarity. I'll be fixing that today.

This fix is in. If you still see cases where you and someone else see different compatibility with each other, let us know.

[scarletv]

Factors that could make sense for me:
similar completion rates for tourneys or main bridge club
similar speed in using the claim button
similar keywords in profile (better would be a catalogue of what is in scope and what you prefer)
similar avg points per hand
selfrating of skill
Possibility to reduce the compatibility rating (don't want to play with again)

Factors that do not make much sense for me:
number of friends I have or don't have
number of enemies I have or don't have
number of masterpoints (that mainly shows if you played the specific tournaments or not)
language not only for the bug being simply copied from the IP code
country not only for the bug being simply copied from the IP code
starriness

Instead of an increasing friend list I find assigning categories to players a very good way to see if I want to play with them again or not. I reduced the number of friends significant since that is available. Enemies I am using very rarely as it is not good when a TD is not able to talk to enemies. I can hardly believe that good partners should have a similar way to work with friends/enemies/categories.

[u4eni4ka]

I don't care about country, languages or masterpoints... seems the new feature is not useful for me...

If You find a way to estimate if my results with a particular player are higher then my average results and if this is true for the other player as well - I would find it useful. Also, if I'm compatible with a player, and He is compatible with a third player - it is very possible that I'm compatible with the third player too - so if I haven't ever played with a player this may give me some orientation.

For me my enemies are TOTALLY unacceptable as partners, so .... no need to be scored with more then 0 stars..

[WrecksVee]

So when can we sort by compatibility? This may be garbage in, garbage out BUT I would be curious to look at all the five stars to see if they seem to be a possible good partner.

My regular partner has not been on line and I eagerly await to see our rating. See the various Misadventures of Rex and Jay if you what to predict what might be expected IF that was the data source. We have been regular partners for nearly 10 years despite our differing views of many facets of the game. Given the factors listed for this I expect a high rating rather than the outliers shown in the Misadventures which are used by us to sort out partnership disagreements.

[FM75]

Speaking of ratings systems for compatibility...
I have noticed women's dance shoe advertisements in the left side of the screen lately. Surely you know that I am male. (I recently bought some birthday gifts online. Of course, I know why they show up there.)

Sure, those advertising matches are not perfect for you, since I don't click on them. But they really don't bother me!

I am willing to bet that the day everybody thinks the compatibility rating system is good will be the day after everyone voluntarily stops using the windows client. It is probably also a safe bet that you will always have more complaints about it, than compliments.

I like the idea, and I have not seen any ratings that I found unusual. If I hit one, I won't lose sleep over it either. I will click on a woman's dance shoe advertisement.

[jaywalk]

If I have no compatibility stars, what does that mean? No one will ever want to play with me! How do you get compatibility stars?

[Jakhammer]

This is great - another dimension to the bbo experience - and it seems amazingly perceptive!