About the bug:
Try to trace() out a few messages in your make_move() function, that might tell you whether something went wrong (the logs will appear at the bottom of the game replays.)
Yeah, we're seeing the first problems with that right now- newly uploaded bots progress faster than they should because they play against a more "diluted" pool of opponents than the oldtimers did.
We'll think of something.
I'll try! I'm a big fan of open source, and I actually have a long list of components I want to open-source at some point, like for example Scribd's PDF to html5 conversion software.