True, my personal preference would be:
I don’t remember if mentioned, if auto vacation stays in should automatically turn off if they login. Especially if they start another game!
I don’t really like suggesting subscriber-only perks, but maybe auto should be? Like, if someone has an active subscription they probably won’t just leave the site forever and leave their opponents waiting?
In my original thinking, I believe that time settings should be strictly adhered to (similar to how being late is discourteous), while vacation is a form of grace between players (to handle certain special circumstances – correspondence games take a long time, which is unavoidable). Abusing vacation to break the agreed schedule is discourteous. Note that the key here is abuse, not use. Unnecessarily prolonging games is truly frustrating.
I think we all share a common goal: finding the best balance between protecting real-life emergencies and maintaining game etiquette. We want to protect those who need grace, but we also want to respect those who are unwilling to be forced to wait.
The suggestion I initially proposed might help. Replace auto-vacation with a grace system. It could be limited to a shorter number of days (similar to Uberdude’s idea of ‘limiting auto-vacation to a shorter period’). It would also allow the opponent to decline when they feel it’s an imposition. Development-wise, it could be compatible with multiple correspondence games simultaneously. In terms of user experience, it would be simply an optional prompt like, ‘Your opponent may be facing an unexpected situation – are you willing to grant them a grace period?’ – triggered after multiple timeouts or extended timeout periods. The reason I think this should be independent of the existing vacation system is that it’s difficult to handle situations where some opponents are willing to wait while others are not.
By the way, auto-vacation creates a clean judgment environment: the system has already given you every possible protection (auto-activating vacation). If you still time out, the the most likely explanation is intent, malice, or irresponsibility. Then your vacation gets exhausted (I’m not sure if there are additional penalties). This accountability mechanism is great and encourages friendly play.
But — could the cost of waiting, in some cases, far outweigh the value that accountability brings? The freedom not to be forced to wait may be more important than the certainty of confirming malice.
I’ve been behind on forum threads, just catching up here.
(no-vacation custom tournaments is in now).
I like this idea “welcome back” kind of thing.
It’s kind of a hassle (because it forces us to remember how they got on vacation) but it could be worth it to do this.
One thing I’m not clear about though - how do we make sure they play the waiting move?
Perhaps the welcome back takes them to that game 
“user online” event may happen automatically because someone turned on the computer. It doesn’t mean user actually has time to make the move now.
Not necessary. Auto vacation is to help in emergencies. If they login, emergency is over. If it’s not emergency, normal vacation is right there. 
However, if it’s difficult to implement (system needs to differentiate between auto and normal vacation), I guess it’s not that important.
Although I do find it irritating for people (certain people, I’m sure there will be a bunch of them) to rely on auto to get out of agreed time settings… As long as I can avoid it with game settings that prevent it.
Oh wait, no vacation is a setting only for tournaments, no individual games?
This is a bit orthogonal to the thread, but I wonder if vacation should only accrue for days where the player plays a move in a game. That would somewhat bound the amount of vacation a player can spend per average game - if they have to spend many more days playing than being on vacation, then their opponents will generally experience playing them, rather than waiting for their vacation.
I think I’m currently permanently maxed out on vacation, because I’m quite inactive. If there are many players like me, then we’d be very annoying to play against.
Also I’d like to see how popular this setting is
No.
They could still be in hospital and just open chat on phone to read.
And they would not expect for vacation to suddenly turn off.
It should be always easy to predict when vacation will be turned off after it was already turned on. There would be surprised users, they would timeout.
No. Chat is not more important than a game where you left your opponent hanging. If you have time to chat, you have time to turn your vacation on properly.
it’s much more easy to read chat on tiny screen than make a move on 19x19 board
those who aware that vacation will be turned off, will go to settings as soon as they open ogs
those who not aware, will just timeout. YOU SHOULD NOT EXPECT THAT USERS WILL UNDERSTAND THE INTERFACE
Keep your caps lock to yourself, darling.
I don’t understand this point.
You don’t need “auto” to “get out of agreed time settings”.
I’m not seeing how “auto” would be significantly contributing to cases of game-extension where people want more time in a correspondence game. If you want an extension, you can just turn on vacation.
“Auto” is most likely to (and intended to) assist in forgotten-game-timeout and “can’t get to OGS” timeout, rather than “darn, I want more time”.
Let’s say we agree on a 1 day per move game.
I’m interested in playing a fast correspondence game, that’s what I expect and what I want to do.
If there’s auto vacation, you never need to be on time for our agreed time settings. You just turn our fast corr game into whatever time setting, you get what you want but I don’t.
I know there’s a number of people who consider us fast correspondence players something between evil and irrelevant, however we would like to play to our preferred settings. Just how I find it silly to agree on 28 days per move and then whine when my opponent takes the whole 28 days to move, the “don’t bitch about my game speed if it’s within the agreed settings” should apply to everyone.
However, I just explained in detail because you asked 
. I’m kinda at peace with the fact that the decisions tend to favour the opposite team 
. If I can create individual games, like tournaments, with no vacation enabled, I’m OK.
vacation in some tournaments doesn’t work
custom games need that option too, then it would be possible to create true 1day/move game that is not tournament.
I think you can, as a workaround, create an invite-only two-person tournament. As a side benefit, you’ll each get a trophy.
I’m a fast corre person too.
But I’m still missing how auto-vacation is the problem.
Even without it, don’t I just turn on vacation hen I want to get a slower game?
How is auto-vacation making a difference?
Clearly it’s now technically possible for this to be added.
It hasn’t been added yet just through caution - one step at a time.
“Vacation disabled tournaments” are there to solve a specific problem: a whole group of people being affected by one person’s desire/need to go slow.
It’d be interesting to hear any voices against extending this to any custom game.
Ease of access. Opponent doesn’t need to turn on anything, by default the strict time settings stop to matter, since they extend automatically. For the ones who want to abuse the system, of course.
I do see what you mean now.
That’d pretty quickly come to and end though, on a correspondence time scale, right?
You have to remember to turn it off again each time you “cheat” this way, and even then the most you can extend anything is one month, per year.
If vacation can NOT work, it shows clearly.
If it doesn’t say it doesn’t work, then … it does.