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0 Subject: TSN Star System - Fair or Phony?

Posted by: Rex Davidson
- [37492717] Wed, May 23, 2007, 14:42

Below is a "Board" I started at TSN yesterday. Most gamers who might agree with me are more likely to post here than there. Or maybe nobody much cares about what they do over at that website.
1Rex Davidson
      ID: 37492717
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 14:43
I recently received an invitation to join a friend list from a TSN member whom I’ll call Member M. I decided to explore this member’s Profile page before replying. I learned that he has been a member since September, 2006 and achieved a Five Star rating. Quite an achievement, I thought, for someone who had been a member for a mere eight months. Since I am a Four Star member myself, I decided to study his profile to discover how he managed to achieve such a lofty status in so short a time. As it turns out, I still don’t know.

In a mere eight months, this member has entered 268 teams in five games. Of those, 66 (24.63%) have finished in the top 25% and none have finished in the top 100. His ratings for Participation, Performance and Community are 22.58%, 99.84% and 100%. It’s unclear to me how the above results qualify for a 99.84% Performance score. This is especially mystifying when further research resulted in the information contained in Table A below.

TABLE A
Part% Perf% Comm% T100 T25% Member since
Member A 100.00 99.50 1.88 2.44% 75.61% Aug, 2004
Member B 100.00 99.99 0.00 8.94% 72.07% Jan, 2001
Member C 88.80 99.76 0.00 34.48% 89.66% Mar, 2003
Member D 100.00 99.99 2.25 16.97% 77.58% Feb, 2001
Member E 74.32 99.83 2.63 3.85% 73.08% Mar, 2001
Member F 98.91 99.96 2.25 9.00% 65.00% Jan, 2003

This is a table of selected members, all of whom have a Four Star rating. I’ve chosen not to list names but have included the ratings for Participation, Performance and Community as well as the percentage of teams that have finished in the Top 100 and Top 25%. All have been members for at least 2 ½ years, participated in multiple sports and a significant number of their teams have finished in the top 25. As you can see, two teams have performance ratings considerably lower than M’s and one is about the same. In the case of Member C, over 1/3 of his teams have finished in the top 100 and just about nine out of every ten teams finish in the top 25%. I don’t understand how this achieves a Performance score lower than that of M. It would seem TSN’s definition of performance is considerably different than mine.

Please don’t get me wrong. This isn’t meant as a knock on Member M. Everyone has the right to participate in whatever way he or she chooses. It is, after all, Fantasy Sports and there is no right or wrong way to play. My beef is with TSN and how they come up with the various percentages and with the “Star” system in general.

The following table lists four more members I found during my research. Guess what they have in common with the members in Table A?

TABLE B
Part% Perf% Comm% T100 T25% Member since
Selected Member W 40.00 63.22 100.00 0.00% 40.00% (4/10) Apr, 2001
Selected Member X 20.45 71.28 100.00 0.00% 8.57% (hidden) Dec, 2005
Selected Member Y 10.58 71.42 78.92 0.00% 35.00% (7/35) Sep, 2006
Selected Member Z 10.46 69.77 100.00 0.00% 15.38% (2/13) Sep, 2006

Give up? You may be as surprised as I was to learn that the four members in Table B have also been admitted to the Four Star Club. Members Y & Z in Table B have been members all of eight months and have entered 48 teams between them. Member F has entered exactly 100 teams in multiple sports. As to Member W, can anyone tell me how someone who enters just ten teams in six years can possibly be a Four Star member?

It quite obvious the occupants of Table B achieved their Four Star status, in large part, via the category TSN calls Community which they describe thusly, “Your community score tells you how you rank against other SportingNews.com members in community participation and quality.” It would appear that this is some sort of cumulative total of postings over a set period of time. I'm not sure how one determines the "quality" participation in any objective way.

I’m not sure when “Community” became a part of Fantasy Sports. No doubt many members enjoy “blogging” and posting to the various boards and it contributes to an overall positive experience. However it isn’t really fantasy sports. Even if one concedes that “Blogging” is a valid part of Fantasy Sports (which I don’t), surely it isn’t as important as actually having teams that do well. Does anyone think that talking a good game is as good as actually having one?

The closest to any sort of explanation I can find is the following response to a question in Member Services:

They (Stars) represent your ranking in the sporting news user community (italics mine). Fyi, every part of the profile is separate from the other. Some people might be high ranked because they play well; others because they play many games, are on the boards or blog often. All components of your activity on the site are mixed together to make up your total rating.

It appears that the lines between The Sporting News in general and TSN Fantasy Sports in particular have been blurred.

I suspect I won’t get a lot of support on this as the members in Table A don’t generally visit these boards and those who do, such as the members in Table B, are the principal beneficiaries of the current system. Actually, the group in Table A do participate in other Boards, just not the ones at TSN. I guess they feel the other sites are devoted to true fantasy sports achievers as opposed to wannabes.

Any thoughts? Anyone else thing this rating thing needs some adjusting?
2Great One
      Sustainer
      ID: 053272014
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 15:01
Not only does it need adjusting, it should be scrapped altogether. To me, the system seems arbitrary and an inadequate measure of just how proficient a player you are.
3Tree
      ID: 29082512
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 15:01
but more importantly, where do Umaga and MVP fit into this?
4Great One
      Sustainer
      ID: 053272014
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 15:17
I think the star-system is showing that Tree won!
5dpr
      ID: 02262419
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 15:46
Yea obviously the stars just represent how much time you spend on the site be in by creating more teams or making more posts then it does how good you do playing the games. The only one of the categories that includes any performance criteria would rather see you get 15 top 25% finishes out of the 50 teams you field a year than finish top 100 with both of your 2 teams you play with.

That said who cares. As far as I have seen the stars aren't used for anything in the games I have played. Except for the smugness of a few people on the board which doesn't matter if you don't use them anyways there is no reason to wory about a low star rating.

You want to see how you rank up look it the hall of champions (assuming you have been playing the game enough years to qualify)
6Great One
      Sustainer
      ID: 053272014
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 15:50
Yeah, if I played in 10 leagues and won every single one of them... and never blogged or whatever... I could be ranked behind some clown who played 100 teams and didn't have success at nearly as high a rate?
7Balrog
      Dude
      ID: 02856618
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 16:01
The thing that really gets me about the system is they list my current 3-star rank as: "High Flying Diaper Dandy".

8Perm Dude
      ID: 474282310
      Wed, May 23, 2007, 16:11
#6: Worse--you might be ranked behind someone who played only a few teams, all poorly, but posts on the blog many times a day.
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