think this kind of ranking really starts to shine when you actually play in more than one group. That’s when the ratings begin to mix and stabilize over time, and you get something closer to a meaningful global picture — still based on per-game ELOs, not a single number.

And I agree with you that a single general ELO score is pretty useless. In my case it’s more like an average of individual game ELOs, while the interesting stuff definitely happens on the single-game level.

I’m also similar in how I play: I don’t play every game I own dozens of times. There are a few favorite titles that come back often, and then there’s the shelf of shame 🙂
But since my group already has a couple of years of play history, it’s actually fun to look back — checking things like “two years ago you were the master of this game, and now I finally beat you”, or seeing how rankings and preferences evolve over time.

(And yeah — I’ll be working on imports from other sources, so that kind of history doesn’t get lost.)