I manage a few ladder tournaments at my club, called CIF - Club Internacional de Foot-Ball. We have managed to have good numbers of participation - more that 90 players and almost 1,000 games per season.
But, despite the success, I want to keep it running well, but for that we (desperately...) need a few improvement on the site. I describe herein the most relevant ones.
The biggest critic we face is that it is extremely difficult to find somebody to challenge. This is, in part, because everybody is playing a lot, but in reality it is very difficult to challenge players. When a player registers the results of a game, that player challenges immediately, reducing the chances for others to challenge him. This is being frustrating for some players and I'm afraid that they will leave the tournament. My suggestions are made in order to help to solve this problem. Two new features would help on this, namely:
1. Loser has an "idle time" after a game
The idea is to have some time during which the loser remains "idle" for X days, after finishing a game. The goal is that this player is available for being challenged during these X days, thus allowing other players to challenge him. The winner does not have this "idle time", as a benefit for winning the game. This solution will allow more chances for lower ranking players to find challenge opportunities.
2. Not able to challenge too many times
In this case, the idea is simple. If a player challenges more than Y times, he has to wait for a period of Z days to be able to challenge again. For example, a player that has played 3 games, him being always the challenger, he has to wait 5 days before being allowed to perform a new challenge. Of course, during this period of 5 days, it is likely that he will be challenged by a lower ranking player.
I really believe that these two features will make the rankings more dynamic.