As we see more and more users experience this issue, we figured it might be good to point this out in a news post. With the help of Community Manager Der8auer and other attentive HWBOT members, we have identified a bug in our HWBoints engine. In short, the code that recalculates a user's League Points and League Rank is triggered only when a new submission is included in the user's top-15 global or top-20 hardware points. As a side-effect, the points and rank are not updated in case a score loses points or would fall out of your top-15/20 best submissions.

We are aware of the problem, and are fairly certain we know the origin of the bug. It will take some time before we can find a solution, and have that solution take effect. Our HWBoints algorithm has grown quite complex over the past couple of years, and any change to the code must be analyzed carefully. Our database now counts well over 800,000 benchmark results. Any line of un-optimized code may potentially hog the database's resources, and cause a temporary issue at the site.

As a reminder, the League Points and Rank are calculated based on the Top-15 Global and Top-20 Hardware submissions in your profile. To determine the sets of scores, the engine lists all your submissions and orders them ascending by amount of points. The 15/20 submissions that should be accounted for are then flagged as "best submission". Afterwards, the engine sums up the points of those submissions, and ranks users accordingly. The analysis of points is triggered by a new submission. The engine will first check if the new submission is the best in the global or hardware ranking. If so, the engine calculates the submission's points and checks if it is part of the Top-15/20 best submissions.

You can track the progress of the issue via our Jira Issue Tracker: link.

Sorry for your inconvenience.

The HWBOT Staff.