I feel pretty open minded about the whole thing. Zero the stats, don't zero the stats, create an aggregate of the stats, give us stars for past work, they all work just fine for me. My only concern is how any given decision will impact the project by irritating users. FoBoT's right, no matter what choice is made, people aren't going to be happy.

If it were me, I'd probably do it something like this...

Each Phase becomes a game in the larger 'World Series'. Given future refinements and Howard's dedication to continually improving the client and algorithms, what makes us think this will be the last 'Phase' anyway? And even if it's not, does that have to be a bad thing?

I'd have a set of stats for each phase that's finished, active stats for the 'current' phase, and 'overall' stats that are the sum of all the project phases to date.

My way of doing things wouldn't be the simplest way, though, and I'm sure that there is a limit to just how much time/energy/resources Howard is willing/able to to put into the way stats are handled.

The fact that he's given the whole stats thing as much consideration as he has puts him head and shoulders above his peers in other projects in my view.

It'd be cool if there was a way that those of us willing to could help out with the 'official stats' in some way, but that's probably more hassle than Howard wants to deal with as well.