What is the point of this ladder anyway? It's a Neverending ongoing ladder with 50,000+ names on it. I've mentioned this before, but can't we revamp it and actually have it serve a useful purpose?
Have ladder seasons of 2-3 months each with a champ of each season
End of year Tourney with all season winners
Get promoted/demoted to different tiers (like sc2, GM, diamond, gold etc)
Use MMR
I'm sure there are alot of other great ideas we could implement. I know you will say no one cares about the ladder enough to justify the time and changes made. Obviously it's just a game and doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things. However people still obviously care about it if they're asking questions etc.
I think it's worth looking into.
There's two issues with this ladder. #1 is that people like having their old game history on there so don't want that wiped. #2 is that there's always been a concern with the skill ratings that someone will just collect free wins or stomp newbs to earn points with no risk of losing at all.
The point is just to get as high as you can, and if you can get #1, hold it and defend it.
That's not to say seasons are a bad idea. I think it could be interesting to leave the game history on there but erase everyone's ranks, or everyone's skill rating, and then see who is where at the end of a given season. However, if we go by skill rating it might just be whoever plays the most games to accumulate the most skills points, and if we go by the current rung ranking system, then we can run into accusations of dodging and having to enforce the people on top to play to let those below have a chance to gain...
I don't mean it's not worth doing, those are just the things to consider.