just play diplomacy for what it is... a game.

hmmm. but see, then i would argue that phpdiplomacy.net would lose it's competetiveness.
what's life without a bit of competition? i mean, just imagine if your life was like what you're proposing, BEATtheMeat. how would your life change if it didn't have any personal records or accomplishments to be proud of....

maybe i'm taking it a bit too far, but that's just about how i see it...no offense.

but as I was saying diplomacy is a game and will not change my life in the end, but what you are saying actually pertains to my real life.

yeah. i was typing in my comment and didn't see you second post till after i entered mine.
but, other than cutting off the competetiveness of this site, you'd also nullify what some might see as the fun of it, and people also use the point system to determine how good a player is. like, i know some people who don't play in games with people who have less than 101 points to avoid multi-accounters and/or total noobs who either don't understand the game, or always go into Civil Disorder, which makes the game not-so-fun anymore.

sorry about the blabble. i should've used more periods in my sentences........ :)

Is there a problem with people running multiple accounts in the same game? Isn't that fixable with a simple I.P. tracker?

no but i play off three computers 2 of which are mine 3rd is at my school. on the third one multiple people can use that system so if some one else were use that computer to play diplomacy it would log that the ip's are the same. now if every one played off there own computer that would work unless they use proxies which alter the ip address and the could again cause conflict

I wasn't around when points were introduced, but apparently they significantly improved the site quality in a couple of ways:
1. There were far fewer CDs with the new (current) system, as people used to join a very large number of games, play a few years, and just drop out of the games in which they weren't doing well. They'd only continue to play games in which they were among the leading powers; obviously, with so many dropouts, even those people who stayed in games had to deal with extremely unbalanced positions. With the point system effectively capping the number of games a person could join at once, people didn't join dozens of games at a time.
2. The point system allows for sorting by player experience/quality. Higher-pot games tend to have better players, because only they can afford to join such games. So new players don't join games in which they're completely outclassed by experts/veterans, and experienced players can start games and be confident that all the players will be familiar with the rules, have a reasonable grasp tactics of tactics/strategy, etc.

I've got an easy-to implement idea that would sort of solve these without causing too many problems: an option to hide everything on one's profile.

I certainly haven't seen that much metagaming among the players I've been playing with over the last year. I wouldn't be able to carefully choose my opponents without points (or more recently, ghost-rating)

how about anonymous games, where you don't know who you're playing against.

@ peregrin- take out the points, leave the record. you have a record of games won/lost.

What might be a combined approach for people is to have a 'no-rank' game option which is being used on playDiplomacy (along with anonymous no rank games). I found in the last year that the drop out rate seemed to be about the same but people here have commented on different experiences.
I have played on sites with no central scoring/ranking functioning and there does seem to be less metagaming/multiples but it still happens.
php core players seem to think that the ranking system caused a significant increase in players and I am not sure if that is the real casual relationship. Why people play here is an interesting question that needs research broken down by:
1. Playing your first game.. how did they come to play here
2. Playing here for those who played elsewhere, where did they come from why are they staying
3. for the 90% of people who dropped out in the last year (if I understand right only about 10% of the people who registered in the first year still play here and it may be much less) where did they go, why did they leave, did they leave the hobby or go to other sites.

Having understood that better, we might have a better basis to make recommendations on site structure to deal with meta gaming without introducing negative components.

I have to say, the idea of dropping the points system isn't a bad idea. I like it, at least. But it won't stop meta-gaming. These people play for the express purpose of winning. Not to increase stats, rating, anything else, no. These people play ONLY so that they can win and brag about it.

If anybody wants games with no points you can just open a very low pointed game. Something like 5 points. There will be experienced and inexperienced players mixed, but is that so bad?
People who like the point system just keep on as they do now! Nobadoy is forced to play/open games with high games, in which in my opinion, the compition would be higher

no

I second alamothe...

no. A side issue is replace points with Ghost-rating, but that's another day's debate.

Metagaming isn't nearly enough of a problem to warrant such drastic action. The point system has many merits. Edi, if you looked at the data for active players I think you'd find the introduction of the point system has a clear correlation with an increase of players, and being the major change at the time, I think it's safe to say that it's causation.

Not saying this is definately the case but two things that could have attributed to the increase in players is 1) People started telling their friends about it, so they joined ( about 20 of my friends have joined since the beggining of the school year) and 2) people could have started making more accounts so they could get more points and better records to boast around.

Well, there was a definite upspike of players when the points system was introduced, and multi accounting isn't that prevalent. Obviously this site is largely spread through word of mouth, but a lot of what keeps people here is the points system.