If you really want to read an excellent example of well written fictional prose...I urge you to go to WON - community center - hoyle board games and read the message from "Monamia".
WON.net Message Boards Hoyle (Card, Board, Casino and Word Games) Update on the Ladder System
Letter from Flipside
Monamia - 11:49am Aug 28, 2000 PST
Lead Board Admin.
This is directly from flipside.com:
In here you will learn how to manipulate statistics - how to say something that sounds nice but has no meaning - how to outright lie and make it sound acceptable.
"""Unlike other sites that have simply dropped the Case’s Ladders system along with its often vocal and competitive community, we are asking our ladder community members to collaborate with us and help us create an improved ladder system. This will obviously require some patience.
Before elaborating on this further, we believe we should first address significant misinformation circulating within this tight-knit ladder community, especially regarding the total number of Case’s Ladder players participating in Flipside.com tournaments. """
"""Tournaments currently account for less than 15 percent of traffic in Hoyle games. About one-third of those tournaments are Case’s Ladder events. Members of this community represent less than 6 percent of all traffic in Hoyle games. In addition the Case’s ladder rooms account for only 8 percent of the total Hoyle player traffic. This is a total of 14 percent compared to our Rated Rooms where traffic is about 25 percent of the total Hoyle traffic. This reference to participant numbers is not to diminish the importance of the Case’s Ladder community here at Flipside.com., but to clarify information."""
In other words - Cases was not that important to us - nor are it's loyal players.
Only a few things wrong with those statistics.
1. I would guess that less than a third of the games on WON even have any ladder connection or need of one. So the 6% figure is a misleading half truth.
2. How many Cases matches were played in rated rooms and not in Cases rooms ?... 99% of them in BG - and probably the same thing (although not as high a percentage) went on at every Won game site. So the 8% figure is an outright distortion - or worse - a pretend fact that has been determined by someone who had zero understanding of the site.
3. To say that his information is not meant to """diminish the importance of the Case’s Ladder community here at Flipside.com., but to clarify information. """ is an outright lie. That is exactly what those false - half truth figures are meant to do.
I rest my case...or Cases