Yet another discussion which spun off of what to do with the main tournament.
Anyway, rerankings. The current system is as follows:
-Take the champion and runner-up of a division, and pit them in a round robin with four first-round losers from the division above. Top four from that pool end up in the higher division, bottom two in the lower.
It's not a bad system; we used it for nearly 60 seasons after all. Its main advantage is that is generally very effective at ensuring only deserved upgrades/downgrades take place, since each dueller fights five matches.
The problem is that it creates 42 matches to vote on in a single week. This is, needless to say, daunting - by comparison, the "big weeks" in the main season have only 16 matches. Between that and the lack of writeups for the reranking matches (inevitably, given the workload that writeups would require), the week is a low interest one. A quick check of the numbers shows that Week 6 creates by far the smallest discussion threads and also has the lowest votedraw. This is bad; it's a dud week.
My proposal is that we switch those 42 matches to a mere 6. These 6 matches would have writeups, like normal matches, and would generate more discussion since there are fewer of them, and each match has high, easily understandable stakes.
Basically, at each division border, we take the finalist from the lower division and pit him or her against a first-round loser from the higher division. Win the match and you punch a ticket to the higher division. For the champ and runner-up it's "one last win and you upgrade", for the first-round loser it's "last chance to prove you belong". Easy to get psyched about.
The only question is how to pick the first-round losers to face a downgrade possibility. I've tossed around a few ideas, but my suggestion is going to be to pick the two first-round losers with the lowest numeric ranking. Typically these are the duellers who need to prove they belong, and it's a fairer method of choosing than my other two thoughts, which were either to pick the duellers who lost by the largest margins (unfair because of the "lol you drew Fou-Lu" factor) and the duellers who lost to the duellers who lost to the finalists (even though it's a variation on what we did in the old system, it feels a bit arbitrary and luck-based).
I imagine the champ would face the lowest-ranked and the runner-up would face the second lowest-ranked in the usual fashion of seeding. Again, only first-round losers are eligible (this last part would hold regardless of what system for choosing the downgraders we use).
So, in summary of the idea, here's what I believe the ups and downs are:
Advantages:
-Fewer matches with more tangible stakes will generate more interest, leading to...
-Actual discussion in the season topic for week 6 (or whatever it becomes)!
-Better voting numbers
Disadvantages:
-Less accurate method of division rebalance, since upgrades and downgrades are more likely to happen or not happen just based on spoiling luck
-It creates 6 matches' worth of additional writeup work for the season (mitigated some if we kill the team match, granted)
I feel the good outweighs the bad, here. Thoughts?
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Postscript of related queries, which may be worth thinking about here, or in the season schedule topic, since they relate directly to reranking week workload:
1. Should we kill the team match?
2. Should we put a break week after reranking week? (might also be a good time for NR/bonuses... dunno)