Hoshitori Contest: 3rd Year!

[Ian Frank <ianf@dai.ed.ac.uk>]

The Nagoya basho this year will see our 13th Hoshitori Contest, so we're
into our third year. Thanks to all who've participated! It's almost
entirely automated now, so hopefully it will keep running and growing
over the next couple of years, too....

For all those interested, I've included below a few admin-type issues
that would be interesting to discuss. Good luck to all this basho...

        - Ian.

O Promotion/demotion rules. 

   We seem to be out-growing our banzuke system rather rapidly, with
   lots of people clustered around M1 and Komusubi ranks. There
   has been some discussion about alternative promotion/demotion rules
   in the past, maybe making use of the win-loss equivalents of the raw
   scores. This time, the banzuke included the win-loss scores of each
   player over the last 6 banzuke. Can someone suggest a new scheme
   based on these? I'm sure that between us we can come up with
   something...
   
O Retirements

   We also need need some rules for removing shikona from the hoshitori
   banzuke. Currently, there's a total of 124 players on the banzuke, but
   some players haven't actually participated for quite a while.  It would
   be good to be able to `prune' players from the banzuke after a six-basho
   absence, say, but this rule is kind of arbitrary. A better
   promotion/demotion system would integrate this better.

O Web Registration

   The submission of entries via the Web has made life a lot easier,
   as it does all the spell-checking and assignement of hoshitori ranks
   automatically. Some people have had problems with their passwords,
   though. When I get on to a WWW server that allows NCSA access protocol
   it will be easy to allow people to set their own passwords. In the
   meantime, I've changed the registration script so that if you forget
   your password you can now re-register (with the same or a new
   shikona) and a new password will be sent to you.

O Mystery shikona

   I haven't kept particularly good track of the changes in shikona that
   people have made... Hopefully, only the latest shikona of each player
   appears on the banzuke, but if one of your old shikona is there too,
   please  let me know. I've identified the owners of all the shikona used
   in the last six basho but there are others from earlier basho that I'm
   unsure of (list below). If you recognise any of these as your own,
   please e-mail me.

   Bakahanada,
   Dekaitsu,
   Hoshinoumi,
   Kahnbinohana,
   Katsuyama,
   Kiichiro,
   Kiyonobaka,
   Kobono,
   Kokonosushi,
   Kotonozima, 
   Kyokuteumi, 
   Nomisugi,
   Oshiri,
   Puchimaru,
   Raiden,
   Raiin, 
   Shingao,
   Tatsunoyama,
   Tetsunobuta,
   Umeyama,
   Wasumaru.