How about having vacation come on automatically for anyone who has Timed-Out of two consecutive correspondence games and still has more correspondence games going?
The site provides very generous vacation allowances so I think it’s reasonable that it might be used for the benefit of the site as a whole in such cases.
The current arrangement of mass automated annulments is disrespectful of the game and the effort put in by effected opponents. The often proposed solution of counting all results is apparently damaging to the ranking system. No perfect solution exists but I suggest this might be an improvement. Thoughts anyone?
Seems like a good idea to me. Of course we can’t let vacation time get too much, but the idea is good. Perhaps it could be toggleable in the settings.
You’re suggesting to count the two timeout games (that is, the winner actually gets the ratings boost and the timeouter gets the ratings drop; that means to remove the part of the code that makes a special way that those games are handled and just treat timeouts for what they are), but before additional games are timed out in succession, vacation mode is automatically kicked in for that player. Is that right?
I like it…solid outside the box thinking. The only thing I wonder about is that the cheaters will simply end vacation and start timing out their losing games again immediately. Perhaps if they timeout again in succession, their account is locked and they must contact a Mod to resume play, which gives the Mod a quick look at their Timeout history and the player has a chance to give their reason for timing out serially (my house burned down, etc.).
I admit I hadn’t considered changing the status of the second T-O but that seems only fair and reasonable.
I am suggesting vacation be triggered automatically and locked on until the “Has Recently Timed Out” flag is removed in the usual way. When vacation is fully consumed then the less than ideal, current arrangement would resume with no requirement for input from Mods.
Before anyone bothers to say it; Yes it is still possible to inflate rank under such a system but it is more effort to inflate rank and less effective than is currently the case. Under the current arrangement vacation can be used to optimise abuse of the system by allowing cheaters to better synchronise their defeats. I’m suggesting vacation be used to reduce cheating and I’m confident that the automatic use(and loss) of vacation will dissuade some from pursuing that course.
Thankyou @Tongue for helping me to clarify my proposal. There are a number of different permutations that could be considered but I think it’s worth having the conversation. OGS’s biggest strength IMO is it’s correspondence games. Every T-O detracts from that experience for users and the current arrangement actually provides an incentive for some to do so, damaging the OGS brand.
The way I see it it’s not supposed to deal with serial timeout abusers, so no need to bend the argument to appease anyone here. It’s a solid idea to prevent someone’s calamity from also ruining all their correspondence games. No need to lock anything. It’s a helping hand to people who for some reason don’t or can’t login.
Perhaps if they timeout again in succession, their account is locked and they must contact a Mod to resume play, which gives the Mod a quick look at their Timeout history and the player has a chance to give their reason for timing out serially (my house burned down, etc.).