alanback: hi, I am agreeing that it should not happen like you say, that people just sit on their big rating. But I think that is only one side of the story. Just to tell, I am still in the ranking, its not that what made me write this. But for example Tipau was not in the list now (he will be today again as we finished a game just now), and he one of the world strongest atomic players (if not the strongest) and takes a lot of time to play his games. but he always plays games and i am sure he is the last one who wants to sit on his rating. So my point is, that it makes the rating lists not very accurate if such players are not on it.
I can also understand, that one just has to pay the membership and there is no problem anymore, but I thought this site would also be for people who are content with the free features and I dont know if I like this players to be somehow punished. In the end I dont care that much about rating lists, but on the other hand, if there are rating lists, they should be more accurate than at the moment, where people appear and disappear all the time.

A compromise would maybe be, that only players who are not playing a game at all in a certain variation for a month should be removed, but people who are actually playing games should stay on it. But reading most comments to my post, I think you dont like that compromise as you still fear there are players just playing to stay there. And maybe you hope players will pay just to stay on the rating list.

friendly greetings,
fismoluni