You know, I was thinking, a big reason for the oddness of OGS ranks could just be the lack of support for properly rated handicap games.

Handicaps do a good job of constraining ranks in the real world... but on OGS, they seem to ignore handicap in calculating the rating change

(The only handicap game I played was a 3 stone game against an OGS 2-3d... I lost and dropped from OGS 5d to OGS 2.5d. While this was my first game, that kind of huge change for what was ostensibly a difficult game suggests that handicap didn't factor in. And better believe I'm not playing handicap again)

It would be great to see handicap become the norm. I understand a lot of folks like getting to play even games against stronger players, but I think it makes the system too volatile.

_________________
Tactics yes, Tact no...

Unless things have changed greatly since I built it, handicaps are handled very precisely (with a resolution of half a point of komi). The reason for the drastic change was that your rating was highly provisional at that time (it was only your second completed game), and even treating it as a loss against an even player, the volatility built into the system at an early stage greatly increases the proportional impact of individual games. Repeat the game and the impact will be much smaller, I promise