Our rating system awards or removes points similar to ELO, starting from a baseline of 1000. Beating a higher-rated player to a question will earn a boost in a category, and being beaten by a lower-rated opponent will cause the rating to fall.
Currently, the ratings are largely informational. Players can get a snapshot of where they stand in each subject, and track their growth over time.
We're looking forward to all sorts of ways we can use this data in the future. One such avenue is predictive - we can use two players' rating data to compute win percentages in a matchup between them. Another way we can use this information is to more accurately seed players entering our tournaments.
But we also want to hear ideas from the larger community. Given that we've got this new and valuable data, how would people like to see it used, both on the Qblitz site and in quizbowl more generally?
