[Samm1895]

What is a Barometer movement?

What are the stars after Compatibity?

[paulg]

Barometer means your scores are available when everyone has played the board, so you can find out your running score in a tournament rather than waiting until the end.

BBO is a very different place at the moment and the typical BBO user has a different profile to previously. At the moment many groups of people are coming online together from the same club, so they are learning together and playing together. In essence they typically have far more BBO friends than a new player.

In the past, when an individual joined BBO they were on their own and looking for potential partners. BBO introduced the compatibility feature to help that process. I don't think it's overly complex, just looks at where you are from, systems you might play, and maybe tournament rating points?

The more stars, the more likely you are compatible. Any recommendations should be taken with a pinch of salt.

[spadeacemd]

I am skeptical of the usefulness of compatibility stars. I, an intermediate player, am 5 star compatible with beginners to advanced players. I hypothesize anyone I am 5 star compatible with is 5 star compatible with each other. I have limited experience (only 5 partners) to be able to grade how useful the rating is. None are 5 stars. Of the 60 players I have noted compatibility with from the two clubs I have played at, other than the 3 0's the compatibilities I see nearly always are 1.5, 3, 3.5 & 5. So of the possible 11 gradations, in reality there are barely 5. One thing I think is a deal breaker for a partnership and doubt BBO uses as an input is postmortem analysis. If one loves it and the other loathes it, the partnership will last at most 2 sessions. Another is history. If one moves on to their life immediately after the session ends and the other spends more than twice as much time learning from the history as the session length, the two are incompatible. Both traits tend to go hand in hand. BBO has knowledge of both private chat during a session and how much time a player spends at the history tab so BBO could use both as inputs to compatibility. I do have a 1.5 star compatibility with a partner who is nearly the polar opposite of me w.r.t. the two traits yet when we play we are always on the same page so the partnership is working. I don't know how BBO could foresee that.

[pilowsky]

That's really annoying! barometer is a combination word. Or portmanteaux if you want to be a smartypants. It is derived from baro- meaning pressure and meter meaning to measure. The original meaning was to measure the pressure in the atmosphere. Since it sounds like a cool word, and because the average Joe doesn't speak Latin, it has come to mean anything that measures a fluctuation. In science, a baroreceptor still measures fluctuations in pressure, so it is confusing if you know the real meaning of the root word (that's root as in original...). FYI a barofart is 0.147 psi max. If you want to use it in a sentence. Or baroflatulence in Latin.
As for compatibility, that could mean anything at all. Your system is compatible, your logins are equivalent, your playing strength is compatible. Many advanced players write 'novice' for various reasons and vice versa. The matching algorithm is no doubt as useful as the village matchmaker.