Unfair ranking system if the sites are down?

Hi, just joined a few weeks ago and started solving challenges. Checked out some of the people who are in top 50 and in some cases a lot of the points seem to come from sites that are down and the domain is for sale. For example: http://www.cstutoringcenter.com/ and mathchall.com

Just two examples of websites that are down and I see people in the top ranks who have close to (~30000) points from each of these websites. That's 60000 points that new users like me cannot compete with because the sites are down now.

Not being petty about it but just wondering if the admins plan to do anything about that or if that is taken into consideration while ranking? Is there something I am missing here because the way I understand it right now the ranking system seems to favor those who came here early. After all, the whole point of this website is to 'rank' the best problem solvers in the world and it cannot be taken seriously if people who came earlier have an unfair advantage due to these websites being down.

This has already been discussed before, and I'll steal quote part of dloser's response here:

Quote from dloser

Looking at it from another angle: why would past achievements get worth less? Taking it to an extreme, let's assume we have an old challenger that has only old dead sites linked. By this time, his score is practically zero. Now a new challenger comes along and linkes a few newer sites, giving him roughly the same score the old challenger once had. God, in his hatred for hackers, kills the servers of a bunch of hacking sites, including all the ones the new challenger had linked. We are now left with two challengers who, in terms of original score, have achieved the same, are only linked to dead sites and yet one has much more points just because he got them more recently.

Is it really that unfair to keep the score? Isn't it also unfair that some are older and got a head start on gathering these valuable points? How about people that simply have more time to spend on doing challenges? Etc.

If you just want easy points, there are still lots of sites that will give you that - ThisIsLegal, RedTigers Hackit and hax.tor.hu give plenty of points for (fairly) little effort, depending on what you know. But personally I think the score is fairly arbitrary and you shouldn't pay that much attention - it is more an indicator of how many hours you spent solving challenges. It certainly is not an absolute indicator of skill - there are many people much more l33t than me that aren't even ranked in the top 50. To me, value of this site is that it connects you with a community of like minded people and provides a gateway to many sites; the ranking is secondary. But maybe that is just my opinion.

Works both ways. If we remove points for dead sites, then when the sites which you are solving now vanish too, your points will be removed also

Wechall (or at least the sites linked to it) are dynamic. I am in favour of keeping points acquired from dead sites because yes... you cannot achieve points from a b c but users after you will not be able to achieve points from sites x y z which you were able to. All is fair here.
What is not fair is removing points for earned achievement. If you didn't find wechall early enough or wasn't born early enough, this is noones fault, therefore noone should be penalised.

As for score - it's just a number. No indicator of skill - This is why I keep mine hidden despite being in the top 20 somewhere. The other big argument is that site creators *waves* should not be able to rank for their own site. Now personally I think it's more impressive to be able to write a good challenge than solve a good challenge (Gizmore is still trying I see ;D) so this is moot also, but a discussion for another topic...

Sorry that I am not my usual cheery self. I blame dloser.

sabretooth

Quote from Akorlith

Dec 22, 2017 - 10:49:38

If you just want easy points, there are still lots of sites that will give you that - ThisIsLegal, RedTigers Hackit and hax.tor.hu give plenty of points for (fairly) little effort, depending on what you know. But personally I think the score is fairly arbitrary and you shouldn't pay that much attention - it is more an indicator of how many hours you spent solving challenges. It certainly is not an absolute indicator of skill - there are many people much more l33t than me that aren't even ranked in the top 50. To me, value of this site is that it connects you with a community of like minded people and provides a gateway to many sites; the ranking is secondary. But maybe that is just my opinion.

I guess you are right. I was not looking at it that way (the rank being an indicator of the amount of hours spent). I was looking at it from a purely competitive point of view where a rank indicates someone's ability. I guess I got carried away because of the tagline for the site that says something about 'best problem solvers in the world'

Quote from sabretooth

Dec 22, 2017 - 11:08:10

As for score - it's just a number. No indicator of skill

Like I said above, guess I wasn't looking at it that way. Because I am new here I am still trying to understand the dynamics of this environment. The way it was advertised to me personally (by a friend) was from a purely competitive perspective -- "why join? Because it allows you to integrate scores across all of the challenge sites and then see who has the patience, perseverance and skill to solve the most"

I also do not take the scores too serious.

As Like for IQ, you cannot measure hacking skills easily... but sure; score is an indicator.

The biggest flaw in our current algorithm is probably that time is not taken into account, and more score mostly means more time spent.

I remember when i played rankk.org for 2 weeks to get to highest rank as fast as possible.... it probably was my prime time

Haven't read the disgussion that much, but one option would be to add additional ranking for the active sites only.