Stardock's Wardell On Matchmaking Out The 'Jerks' on Gamasutra is an article about the coming Phase IV update for Impulse based on conversing about the topic with Stardock honcho Brad Wardell. Along the way Brad explains how their new "ready to play" feature will attempt to reduce the amount of time you spend playing with jerks:

"When you play online with random strangers, how many people are jerks? I don't know how else to put it. Random people are often jerks," Stardock CEO Brad Wardell told Gamasutra regarding the reasoning behind Ready to Play's conception. "I wanted to come up with something that solved that problem."

When you launch a title through the system, Ready to Play knows you own that game (and since it identifies games based on their executable files, it works for any game, not just those bought through Impulse), and it will attempt to find other players who both own that game and who score similarly to you on a rubric of gaming priorities.

"You [rank] a bunch of categories, like how competitive you are," explained Wardell. "What matters to you in someone you want to play? Are they a similar age to you? Do they have a good PC? How competitive are they? Are they all about winning, or are they about having fun? Do they value their time? You don't just get to say, 'Yeah, max them all out.' You put them in order of importance."