The rating system has always been a fun thing for the site and the community. Trying to enforce a set way a squad should be rated, along with the vast differening opinions of this community is pointless.

I leave comments more than I rate squads. I am also fairly inexperienced so my comments probably aren't worth that much. I find comments help my much more with improving my public squads than ratings.

But if the rating system is changed to show which are more competitive I will get behind it.

Where is the "both" option?

I would fully support a "competitive" ranking system that is enforced in some way. Heck, I'd volunteer my time to help curate this system. One of my favorite threads on the wizards boards when I was new to the game was Nickname's "The Evolution of the Metagame" (http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75862/19476462/The_Evolution_of_the_Star_Wars_Miniatures_Metagame). The first dozen or so posts in there listed competitive metagame squads, and that whole thread taught me more about squad building than any other thread on the forums. I would love to see something like this again, as getting a good look at what is competitive in the meta (both currently and in the past) is fun and helpful for new players and veterans alike.

On the other hand, however, I see no problem with a rating system for "fun" squads. Some people don't ever play DCI, and don't care about the meta or how competitive something is. That doesn't mean they don't put time into squad building, and it doesn't mean that they should not receive any recognition for good squads (good being defined in this sense as fun to play or creative, not necessarily competitive) in the form of high ratings.

If the system were to get changed in some way, I'd like to see two ratings for squads: Competitive and non-competitive. If you only do one or the other you will be excluding a portion of the community from the system, which I believe is worse than the current system where everyone (competitive and not) gets the same ratings.

I thought about making one, but I realize people would confuse that with using one rating system for both types of measure - which is what we in fact have now. Those end of being "meaningless" when people use them completely differently from one another.

Otherwise though, great post, thanks for contributing positively to the discussion. I like the idea of separating the two from one another in a more clear way.

That's what I am trying to in fact judge with this poll, so thanks for commenting on it, as poll language is always limited.

Based on the poll options, I had to vote "no" as the most representative.

It's entirely subjective and you can't read much into a high rating than "people like it" (or are abusing the system). They might like it for creativity, competitiveness or any reletive combination of the two and all seem like perfectly legitimate reasons for a high ranking to me.

Can a really great Vong squad be a 10 even though it'll never compete in the gencon champs tourney? I don't see why not.

It seems silly to try to enforce one's subjective definition of what they like or how someone else should rank something.

What the system needs is accountability and transparency.

That's solved by making the selected ranking visible to everyone both from the squad level (I can see the name of everyone who ranked the squad, and what they gave it) and the member level (I can see all the squads/designers this member ranked and the rank they gave each).

Everyone becomes accountable for what they rank others. No more anonymous "1 bombing" nor "pimping" friend's squads. People will be more likely to explain unusually high or low ranks to avoid credibility issues.

And transparency allows seeing the ranks from people you trust. Like with movies, you can find a good and a bad review of every movie out there so is it really good or bad--well, you know the names of the reviewers and you eventually build up trust in certain reviewers tastes that mirror your own and then give it more merit. I'd like to be able to do the same with squad ratings. So if I trust fingersandteeth's judgement for example, I don't care if a squad is averaging 4 overall--if he gave it a 9 I know to pay attention.

thats what i was goindg to suggest. I think that some squads should be rated on creativity and effectiveness, and fun even but not if you are intending it to be a DCI squad for a tournament. If there was a seperate option for dci that would work great. IMO

I voted no.

As others have already said I do not see much point in trying to standardize the rating system as the whole system is too subjective. I do agree that more transparancy would improve those who abuse the system slightly, but then again it might not make much of a difference at all. But I believe it would be worth a try.

-I generally rank for creativity. However, if a distinctive squad wins a regional or gencon, I'm probably giving it a 10 especially if the player posted it.

-So, obviously, here has got to be a better way of ranking. I am curious how other gaming sites approach this. Also, I noticed that youtube now uses a "thumbs up or down" approach for their videos. So, there are alternatives to ranking that don't use a numbering system.

I was never a big rater to begin with and will mostly do it now in response to someone who rates and leaves a comment for one of my squads. It seems to be a courtesy. And when I rate the squad my comment will normally define the purpose whether it is fun or competitive or a creative idea.

But yes in the big picture the rating system here is pointless, there are enough haters who jsut rate 1's and bring down scores because they get a weird kick out of it.