Hear, hear!

Well said! My sentiment exactly!

On any given day, there will be a number of users who have managed all the puzzles of the last 7 days (since there are many familiar nicknames that have a gold star behind them in the rankings almost every day). The only way to distinguish yourself from the other "complete" solvers in the 7-day rankings would then supposedly be to have done better in the timed puzzles, which would serve as a tiebreak, so to speak. Those of us who aren't particularly good at timed puzzles would then never have a chance of reaching the top of the 7-day rankings (and I don't think that would be unfair either).

But then there are other variables that can be stacked in an attempt to get a higher 7-day ranking:

As discussed by jomapil and others above, you can earn points for extra puzzles for up to one month, which means that you could deliberately refrain from submitting them for some weeks and then submit a month's worth of extra puzzles within one week (or someone could be simply "catching up" on extra puzzles without being concerned about the rankings);
Regular 12x12 puzzles need not be submitted on the day they are published, meaning that you could delay one and then benefit from having three rather than just two 12x12s counted within one week;
Book puzzles don't all earn the same number of points, so for a record attempt you could save a cache of solutions to "high-rated" book puzzles and submit one of those every day;
Even if there still were a fixed number of points between each bonus puzzle target (and even without the current bug), solvers don't reach their bonus targets at exactly the same time. This asymmetry could be used by refraining from solving a bonus puzzle immediately if you reached the target the day before the start of your record attempt.

Yes, but as long as the 8 points per extra puzzle are duly counted in the all-time rankings (and included in the calculation of the last-30-days averages) in wouldn't break the rules if, for the purpose of calculating last-7-days rankings and for that purpose only, any number of "extra points" higher than 56 were to be counted as exactly 56 points. However, even with a 56-point limit on extra points in the 7-day calculations, the variables I listed above (along with inevitable minor bugs such as the current variation in the number of points between bonus puzzle targets) would still mean that the ranking system would not be perfect.

To make up for the (insignificant) shortcomings of the ranking system, I have a constructive suggestion: If someone earned a gold star on the current and the preceding six days, their gold star could turn into a special "7-day gold star" (bigger, with more lustre or something like that) or a diamond. That way, even if for some reason others made it past them to the top of the rankings, they would have a visible symbol that they belonged to the select group who managed all of the regular puzzles of the past week. Which would probably make all of us less prone to being annoyed about others having more points because they were better at timed puzzles or put in more time to solve book puzzles or used some of the tactics listed above or whatever. (To encourage subscription, Patrick could make the special gold star – and the regular one, for that matter – dependent on users solving not just the regular puzzles but also the extra puzzle of each day.)


Agreed! At some point I took a long hiatus from calcudoku.org and I may well do so again in order to accomplish a bit more in real life But I think that anyone who is or has been a regular user and who can afford the subscription fee should pay it to support the site. Also, let us all be realistic in our expectations and not too demanding when it comes to non-essential stuff like the ranking system and enjoy what really matters on calcudoku.org: the fun of solving all those challenging, ever-developing puzzles!

Bram - That is the finest post that I have ever read on this site! Very comprehensive and well thought out. Your final words are most meaningful. ...."the fun of solving all those challenging, ever developing puzles" At the end of the day that is what matters most!

Excuse me for everyone who are not in agreement with me.
Throughout the reading of the exposition of Bram ( very complete and very clear ) I remembered a new proposition to agree with anyone. The ranking of All Time is meaningless ( for me ). So why not to substitute that ranking or create a new ranking based in a period of the last 30 days, maintaining simultaneously the present 7-days? So the people consult and accompany the ranking with they are more identified.
I think this is a solution that satisfies all the people!

People, we already have a 30 day ranking. Why put Patrick to work on that when he could be focusing on something else from his looooong to-do list?

But if Patrick were to implement a new ranking afterall, I support sneaklyfox's idea of a point / day member ranking.

Perhaps we are all in agreement that the 30-day ranking is more precise than the 7-day ranking (although in regard the extra puzzles, one could do all 30 or 31 puzzles on the last day and then for the following month if the extra puzzles are done to date the ranking is higher). Then Patrick could have the "rankings" link go directly to the 30-day page instead of the 7-day page since it would then be the one that everyone would see if they clicked on "rankings". And I think what jomapil might mean is that we have the point total of 30 days. Right now the 30-days page shows the average number of points per day in the last 30 days which is a little different from a straight total...

Yes, Sneaklyfox, it's that what I want say. And you complete my suggestion with a more complete note.

I'd like to see a 180 day ranking.

I have another suggestion to be considered if you find correct.
It's another variation to the several ideas about points limit and I think it's easier to implement: Patrick submits every day a number of regular puzzles ( say 15 ) and we only solve till a limit ( say 10 ). If anyone solve more than these 10, only the best 10 will be considered ( with a limit of points or no ).

I just thought I'd offer my view in that I do not find the all-time rankings meaningless in any way and would hate for it to be substituted for something else! As I only compare myself to Great Britain rather than Europe/ the world, the all-time rankings offers a lot more to strive for personally.

I think the best idea would be to introduce a new ranking; average points per day for all-time (I think this has been suggested before), I would find that really interesting, especially in my country.