Jatopian wrote:
I have found ratings generally quite useful; typically if a hold is rated lower than 6, I'll regret playing it...
Wow, I adore this statement. First, because this sort of if/then is usually causal: "
If a hold is rated lower than 6, I won't play it"
(i.e.,
because it's rated lower than 6, I won't play it). So my first reading is that Jatopian will regret playing the hold
because of its low rating.
Beyond that, though, "
regret"
is typically factive--its complement must be true. (e.g., I can't say "
I regret moving to Sweden"
because, well, I didn't move to Sweden). So my second reading of the sentence, in which the if/then is taken as a simple indicator and not a causal relationship, is essentially, "
If a hold is rated lower than 6, it indicates that when I play it, which I will, I'll regret it."
Which makes me think,
then why did you play it?
I know neither is what Jatopian had in mind. Sorry, it's just my job to do these things.
Anyway, I think ratings are indeed quite helpful. Less so to me now that I'm a ScoreWhore who'll play anything at all if it means more high scores; but quite useful when I was starting out and looking for the "
good"
holds to play. It wasn't perfect, but perhaps it did let me avoid some bad ones. And it also serves the purpose of being informative to the architect--an overall rating of 3.1 indicates that perhaps you've done something wrong in your design.
