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I have deleted the following sentences from the main page:
In a Swiss tournament, the first criterion is the Number of Wins Score. In a McMahon tournament, the first criterion is the McMahonScore instead.
My reason for doing so is that I think the phrase "first criterion" is likely to cause confusion. Does it mean "criterion used to decide first place"? If so, this is (or should be) adequately explained on the respective pages for Swiss and McMahon. The current page was created to clarify the calculation of iterative direct comparison, so I'd prefer to avoid digressions.
If other feel that "first criterion" does in fact need to be mentioned on this page, then I have no objection to it being reinstated, but please add more explanation.
Number of Wins Score is used in Swiss. It is not used in McMahon (even though some pairing programs show it nevertheless). So reference to Swiss is more relevant than reference to McMahon. If you remove Swiss, then McMahon must be removed more urgently. Therefore I have removed also the reference to McMahon on that page.
Let me clarify: it wasn't the reference to "Swiss" that I objected to; it was the introduction of the undefined term "first criterion". By all means do mention Swiss on this page if you think it's important.
My reason for mentioning McMahon was to make it clear that "Number of Wins Score" differs from other concepts of "score". (Sometimes it is easiest for people to understand a concept by comparing it with a different concept.) However, I will make no further edits to this page for the next few days; I will wait to find out what others judge to be most clear.
First criterion is commonly used for placement order parameters and its meaning is implied from the word. When there are tiebreakers, then the first tiebreaker is the second criterion. E.g., in a McMahon with MMS - SOS, MMS is the first criterion and SOS the second (and the first tiebreaker).
Thanks for the explanation. I haven't seen the phrase "first criterion" before; I don't believe that it's explained elsewhere on SL.
Maybe because you have not read rec.games.go during its more active years? - SL misses a lot that is not explained here yet...
Neither have I - I found SL before r.g.g.. It would be good to import the goodies into SL.
Of the dozens of thousands of RGG rules discussion articles, I have saved the most interesting ones for me locally. Still thousands. It requires weeks of sorting and researching in them. Time currently I do not have. More likely, the contents will find its way into some books (my planned Go Rules Encyclopedia) first. If you can't wait, you need to locate RGG archives and study in them yourself.