The rating system predates me. 7/7/6 and all. So that means more than 12 years old at least. It used to be all done on paper.
Since I agitated for and then helped create the new websystem, backend database, and all of the online league management tools, reports, etc., I'm pretty aware of how things developed in the post-millenial era.
Back when we went electronic (rant: one of these days we will get to waiver electronically. Hopefully before I die.), a big concern was data collection and protection-- privacy. We originally decided to go 100% private. I don't recall why we elected that policy. I believe I agitated then for ratings to be public too, but went with the crowd. It was new, we didn't even have a system yet, and we had bigger things to build.
Fast forward to today-- and ratings are considered 'semi-confidential'. Which is to say, league admins and the like can see them, and they get distributed to captains for draft purposes, but they, along with most everything else in the database, are hidden from public view.
I think that's a bad idea. Here's why:
a. Transparency is good. Seriously. Almost always. A clear line of sight means more info for everyone. Giving people info let them help themselves. b. More eyeballs mean that mistakes and oddities get pointed out. Obscurity does not improve security or sensibility in most cases. c. Peer pressure is an effective soft tool for compliance. For real. Everyone in the league knows each other. Gaming the system has no consequences when it's in the dark. But if you could heckle your friends on the field after someone skates through a dicey score....
You get the picture. Bad scores hurt the league. The obvious way is people underrating themselves to build powerful teams. But overrating can hurt everyone else on a team too, and damage the experience of participants, especially newer players (getting smeared every week is not fun. Parity has it's place.). Fairness would seem to dictate good ratings. Right now that entire responsibility falls on overburdened volunteers who run leagues. We can make this a public process for everyone, since everyone benefits from a good system.
I'm pretty sure the waiver is electronic, and at the draft you can see everyone's ratings (total points). In my opinion the rating system isn't very good, and I've told the board this in the past and given my suggestions for changing, but I imagine that changing it could be quite a bit of work.
It should be noted that the board does spend time trying to rerate players most years to correct any "bad" data.
I just printed my waiver, addressed an envelope, applied stamp, etc. But I'm retarded.
At the draft can you see players' points, but can you see points on cores? By that point they're done and approved right?
I do know that re-rating takes place, but I believe it to be haphazard.. or at least, the outcomes I've seen I assume to be haphazard b/c they are so far out of line as to be funny. It's hard to do, takes a lot of work, requires knowing a lot of players, and really understanding the game at the league level.
You can see the cores because officially all players even those on cores get "drafted", there were certainly comments made at last years draft about some core players "ratings"