I am glad it took me several days to read this thread, as it allowed me time to mediate my positions and consider more positive aspects of the anti-stalling feature which I had not initially thought of in my reactionary first impression.
tldr, I am, contrary to my initial impressions, okay with the anti-stalling feature, some caveats notwithstanding, and am glad the anti-escaping feature was increased to 60 seconds, but wish it was reverted to the full 5 minutes.
Anti-Stalling Feature
If I understand the discussion in this thread correctly, attempting to use this feature before the game is effectively over and all dame and teire are filled, is an abuse of the feature and a reportable offense. If this is correct, I am very glad indeed that it is, and it is a huge part of why I am now okay with this feature.
There are many things which players ought not to do, but can, and many are far harder to catch than abusing this feature this way. Certain types of AI cheating, such as setting up a script browserside to notify you with no further information if your opponent’s last move lost more than 10 points AND a pseudorandom bit was equal to 1, would be, I imagine, an incredibly difficult, if not impossible, cheat to detect. How do we react to this possibility? Do we legalize it for everyone? Even make it easier? Do we stop playing online to avoid this? Do we require all OGS players to send a live video feed of themselves as they play? Do we require custom browser clients to be used? Or do we accept that while reasonable effort will be made to discourage such behavior and deal with it when detected, some, especially more sophisticated forms such as I described above, will fall through the cracks, and we will live with that? I think it’s the latter, and rightly so. Don’t condone it, don’t allow it, but make peace with the fact that it will happen anyway.
Abusing this feature is analogous, with one major difference: abusing this feature is incredibly easy to detect in comparison. So if we’re willing to put up with the reality of sophisticated cheating existing, I think we should likewise be willing to put up with the reality of abuse of this feature happening.
A major benefit I see in it, possibly alone outweighing the negatives, is the reduction in mod load whenever this feature works as intended. I can think of a game off the top of my head from a while back where this would have been useful, and changed a realtime mod request, into a non-urgent report which could be looked into at any time. Having thought about this for the past few days, my feeling is that, if as stated above it is reportable to use it before dame and teire are filled, it will cause significantly more good than harm.
Anti-Escaping Feature
I think we already had this with the 5 minute timer, and this just makes it more easily abused in exchange for dubious benefit.
Let’s say we’re playing 10m +3x30s byo-yomi. Let’s say you blitz so fast, that you play almost the entire game before reaching byo-yomi. Even still, you are commiting by playing this time control that your opponent may take it more seriously, use up their main time in, say, 30 moves, and then use most of the byo-yomi period on each turn for their remaining ~90 moves. That’s 10m + 45m spent by your opponent, and 10m spent by you, for a total commitment of at least 1h5m. And this is a relatively standard time control. In light of this, 5 minutes is a totally reasonable amount of time to give players to fix their Internet connection without needing to rush or panic (remember, their time is still ticking, which at this time control has a good chance, 100% if they’ve reached byo-yomi, to end the game before 5 minutes by timeout anyway, and if not, they’re penalized with the lost time and disruption).
But maybe you play longer time controls. Maybe you don’t want to rely on a disconnected opponent running out of time to end it before 5 minutes. Well, to get that, take a time control of 30s + 5x60s byo-yomi. Now if you blitz fast enough that your time used is less than what the opponent leaves unused at the end of each byo-yomi, you’re still committing to playing a game where the opponent, if taking it seriously, could spend 1m each move for ~120 moves, for a 2 hour game. Now waiting a paltry 5 minutes is even more reasonable, if that was possible.
At the sorts of time controls where a 5 minute disconnection timer is more relevant then running out of byo-yomi periods, 5 minutes is the least you can promise to a player suffering Internet trouble.