I would be happy with 'all time' records, that would be perfect actually but failing that I'd rather see the records pertaining to the current team size as it is most relevant.

At the moment we see the records as they stood when the team was small size (unless the category was never played as a small team) and 95% of the time they are inferior to the records we have set as a larger sized team that are shown on our 'team records' list. It's just annoying.

Agreed. Also annoying that the issue has been brought up many times, with zero commitment by anyone to fix the problem (or even acknowledge it, if my memory is correct).

Perhaps so, but I think let's give Terry a bit of grace in that regard. There are far more to-do's going on "behind the scenes" day-to-day than any of us know. While some suggestions (etc) may not always get a direct answer, Terry has to make judgment calls as to which posts to reply to, which matters to change/fix, and what priority each "item" should take.

We should give him credit enough to recognize that even if they don't always get a direct reply, people's thoughts are heard [i.e., not ignored] and duly considered.

"Okay, at some risk of irritating people, I'm going to re-post here to reiterate what I said before: I think the Hero Game could use a good tweak in how it chooses the day's topic. It's "Thematic By Name" today. We did that all of two days ago."

Hmmmmm that is very weird. Not only should there be no repetition of exact categories, but you shouldn't even have the same top level (sports, movies, etc) category within a 8-10 day window.

Is it not doing that? Because the code should be doing that!

Looking at the Heroes topic selection, what if I used the expert topic selection algorithm for it? Expert does have some sports topics for example, but they are fairly carefully chosen to likely be accessible to a larger number of people. We really don't want "Pittsburgh Stealers Trivia" popping up, which is what we would get if I opened up Sports using its current algorithm.

Is expert's topic list "fair" for use in heroes?

"Personally, I'd be in favor of keeping the high score the high score no matter what the size of the team is rather than keeping individual records for each team depending on team size."

Is there agreement that this is the way it should be? Ignore team size entirely and list only the highest all-time score for your team in that category?

That's certainly the way I would want it. The high score is the high score, regardless of the size of the team. The highest score out of 5 is the same highest score out of 7, and vice versa.

I've just taken a look at the range of Expert topics available for change. Now that I've recovered from my panic attack, my vote would be to keep the Heroes topics as they are - just make sure the existing algorithms to avoid repetition are working.

I'm fine with both changes.

Terry, can we have a test period of using the Expert list idea for Team Heroes, maybe three months? Then you can assess the level of "I love this change!" to the level of "I hate this change!" comments. Granted, complaints usually outweigh compliments but if the complaints aren't as many as usual then it would be a success.

I'd love it if we used the Expert menu, but I realize I'm probably in the minority.

Trying it for a while and then asking for feedback seems a good idea. Maybe have the feedback survey page come up just before you play, for a week or so. You'd get a better idea of what people think than if you just asked the ones who comment here.

I also like the idea of testing the Experts menu.

Most definitely yes to using expert topic list and yes to all time records.

Thank you for addressing these issues.

I would also like to see the expert topics list used for team heroes.

Okay, I know I've already brought to attention that the Hero Game is behaving oddly in how the day's topic is determined ... so I realize this may be a case of "be patient, George, this will be addressed in due time" ... but just to give another case-in-point: Today's topic, "Flowers and Plants," was just played on December 20.

Definitely - the team size should not play into this. A team remains the same team even if it slips across league boundaries. While team-wide win/loss records might be kept for separate leagues (the playing field is completely different), certainly the individual scores of each member (which are used for the "best in team" classification) do not have anything to do with the environment.

Ok, I have done a complicated merge of the Team Heroes record books across team sizes.

Please check your record book and let me know if it looks good or not. Given it's just a bunch of numbers to me, I have not way of verifying whether things make sense or not.

For our team, I'll let nasty_liar (our "team statistician") give a more-conclusive reply later, but I can note that at least the "Team Rank / Best Ever" column of the record book doesn't seem to have come up-to-date. In "TV Stars Mixed," it says our best rank was 33/72, and I know that's no longer current because we came in first place when we played it Dec. 30.

As my teammate says the 'best ever - team rank' column is faulty somehow. I noticed it based on the very same topic as is mentioned above. The best team score and individual record is right but the rank is incorrect. It is showing the best rank from small team size I believe. Another piece of evidence of this is that when we claimed 3rd place in States U-W the other day I mentally noted that it was our 7th best ever team rank of 3rd on our list. It now shows as the only one.

At a quick glance it seems that most of the 'Best rank' column are showing from when our team was small size.

Thanks for helping to fix this Terry.

Fixed?

Looks spot on to me. Scores look right, ranks look fine.

Brilliant! Thanks!

Great! I'll get to topics tomorrow.

I would suggest using the Expert list and a ratio between general and specific topics of 4:1 for a start, so we'd see a specific one every 5 days, slightly less frequently than in Expert itself.

(You might also modify the GC ** topic selection either now or at the end of this round - 2 general, 1 specific and the fourth a 50/50 chance of either might be a good one for that game which can use a higher "specific" rate.)