The person gained the advantage by escaping unfairly, avoiding the undesireable losses or pressure to play?
Why is it not cheating to escape from a tournie game, but it is cheating to escape from any other game?
Or are you advocating that timeouts in general should not cause loss?
In this context I assume that a cheater is someone who exploits the TO-rule to avoid losing rating on losses while keeping getting rating for wins.
It’s my assumpion, maybe you don’t agree with me.
Those players in my log were timing out many games but without having any gain, so it seems to me.
I think that timing out in tournaments can be annoying, but I’m very tolerant because I’ve seen personally that tournaments can be misleading, expecially at first. I too subscribed initially too many tournaments without understanding how long they would take and how many games I would play simultaneously because of different tournament’s rounds triggering at the same time.
But, coming back to the cheating issue, I don’t think any of them got rewarded by timing-out a 35 moves game. Conversely, I fear that those honest players that resigned all of their games could have made more damage on their and overall rating/ranking, because they lost games also against weakers players.
Some did timeout or resign at first move, so games were annuled.
Some did timeout while playing, so games were annuled (except the first of streak) by the TO-rule.
But some did resign only when they realized that they couldn’t manage so many games, so all those games were actually lost and ranked.
I see - so if a person timed out a set of games where on average they were winning and losing the same amount, as opposed to only timing out losing ones, then they are in a different “bucket”: that would be the “it’s OK to bail on a tournament by mass timeout” bucket rather than the “escaping losing games by mass timeout” bucket.
I guess there are indeed two separate concerns - two problems introduced by this rule 
I fear I don’t get the joke.
Having annuled 10 games against a random mix of opponents is simply nothing done. A waste of time, if you prefer. More or less annoying according to your sensibility.
To resign them all, conversely, means that you’ve lost against stronger players (as expected) and also against weaker players (deflating your rank).
If you’re 20k it could be negligible. If you’re a strong player it could be a bump in rating for everyone.
We’ve seen though that this bump will be fixed automatically by the rating system after few “normal” games. So no big matter anyway, as long as you’re able to find good games to play. I had no problem about that.
I only smiled at the point that this rule is spawning multiple problems, so it’s even worse than we thought.
Overall that may be the case, but for each individual player, particularly those who had a hard earned win, it is an escape.
Also it is a small grenade into the tourney.
Personally I find the attitude that messing up a tourney by dropping out is “perfectly OK, nothing to worry about” to be quite wrong.
This is somewhat going around in circles, because you have stated the exact reason why the rule is there: to stop the rating pool being inflated. When the bump for the players involved evens out, overall we all get boosted by this happening, if it were to happen.
The point of my previous post is that the mass timeout rule
Provides a hypothetical way to cheat by escaping losing games - yet to be proved it’s used that way enough to worry about
Provides a way to drop out from tourneys with no penalty whatsoever. Definitely is used this way, to the consternation of this impacted.
GaJ
I gave 2-3 concrete examples on the other thread. Each a serial timeout offender, each timing out when losing games. Just bc you don’t remember them, GAJ, does not mean they don’t exist. In fact, for you to claim they don’t exist is a real slap in the face. I don’t take it personally so much as I am flummoxed that you would use your inability to recall any examples as a justification for the practice to continue. The fact that this is a resurrected thread on the old subject bought up, yet again, by another victim of the policy should be reason enough to believe its an issue.
Here, for the record, I’ll give you the latest example. See Xalexander (13 kyu). https://online-go.com/player/555174/ This one might be because his internet craps out of any other reason that you might give to lend an excuse to the guy. If that’s the case, and his cable crabs out every couple weeks or his dog dies every two weeks or whatever, then he Shouldn’t Be Playing correspondence games! One must look over his compete 7 page history to see how it works,he plays winning games quickly, losing games slowly, and then times out if the losing games in bulk over 3 day period. To look at the individual games is to see hundreds of moves…some individual games 200+ moves in, simply timed out.
Some (AdamR?) might argue: look, see with this example if these all counted, what a mess it would do to the rating system on OGS. No it wouldn’t…simply code that if ANY player times out of five games in a row (all of which are rated), any remaining games are placed on freeze/administrative vacation, and they must contact a Mod to resume play or have news games and explain. Second offense, no more correspondence games. Boom, solved. His opponents no longer need to be victimized with hundred move dead end games against a bailer. And other offenders, given the unbiased, ever-vigilant, 24/7 policy restriction coding, would be identified immediately. No “wait for reported cases”, no “pencil and lists”. Use a computer for what a computer is good at! And, five games one way or another is NOT going to affect the rating of thousands of games over thousands of players. But even if one argues that 5 counted timeout games would affect the rating, fine don’t count them, but still place this “flag” coding into the OGS system to ID the offenders and block them from correspondence games. Even that would be a huge improvement!!!
There is no justification, none whatsoever, to call these Win By Timeout. There’s no winner here, there’s no rank change, at the VERY least, these should be labeled as Unscored Due to Timeout or Annulled Due To Timeout. Why doesn’t OGS do that? There would be an avalanche of complaints and the system would be forced to change.
I don’t properly recall why any previous examples tabled didn’t “make it onto the record”.
It’s important to note that whether or not I personally remember them isn’t important. What’s important is that the fact they exist is tabled in the debate.
Maybe it would be good to collate them with the Xalexander example you have given here.
Unfortunately the next onerous task that remains is to look at each of those timeout batches and see if the games affected were random or all losing.
If they are “random” then this is an example of a person (as you say) that ought not to be playing correspondence because they can’t meet the commitment to finish their games (the first “bucket” I mentioned).
If the timed out ones were all losing, then the person is systematically cheating - then they are “exhibit A” in the case for changing the rule.
GaJ
No need exhibit A, no one should play corr games if they timeout of dozens of games in a row over mutipple days and do it repeatedly. Seriously, you’re making this harder than it needs to be. See my post above…five in a row, automatically flagged by the system, explain it to the Mods to play corr. Do it again (even if internet poops out every couple weeks, “insert your favorite real reason here”), they’re blocked from playing corr games. Doesn’t matter why.They can play OGS live games, just not corr games.
There are two considerations, you’re only addressing one of them.
The first is whether particular conduct by a player warrants banning them. That’s what you are arguing for.
Note that there is not currently a concept of “can play live, can’t play correspondence”.
The second consideration is whether the existence of the mass timeout rule is a factor here, and whether this person’s record shows that the rule is being used for cheating or not. And therefore whether the rule should stay or not. That is actually what this thread is about.
The rule CAN be used for cheating (I have given other examples of players doing just that) and that is enough. Close the loophole. I have given ideas on how to do that (including ideas two posts back on how to keep the games unrated and still find offenders). I have updated that post, and hope that you will take another moment to read it now that I have updated it. Thank you, GAJ.
if there is a discussion to be had about the timeout rule… fine. i wont pretend i care.
this dicussion however is getting out of hand! it has reached a point where the solutions provided are far more intrusive and troublesome than the problem they try to solve (creating 2 accounts, banning players). its probably time to step back and reevaluate.
the best reason to keep the timeout rule in my opinion is not to protect the rating system anyway. it is to protect the players who time out. i favour a benevolent system like this one over the need to punish every slight transgression some here seem to feel any day, even if there are minor exploits.
Did you have a look at the user example recently posted? That’s not a minor transgression…
It would be possible to prevent all timeouts from happening by using the “no time limit” setting for every correpondence game. Of course it would mean that games will never end if either of the players stops playing, but i’m afraid that’s the only way to stop each timeout.
And for those who were most likely losing their games, it’s a relief 
I think they generally cancel each others out.
As GAJ noted, these are not slight transgressions.
The word “banning” is used by you and others. No one is getting banned. If they are identified by the encoded “flagging” that they time out of corr games in series and more than once, they are locked out of the time settings for corr games (the same settings used to determine “long” vs “short” games now in the Play tab). Can they still be on OGS? Sure. Play regular short games, blitz games, live game tournaments, do tutorials, etc.? Of course!
That is why the REASON they serially time out of corr games — my country has bad internet, I’m a cheater, I had to go to work long hours — doesn’t matter: Their current situation is not compatible, or fair to opponents, in long correspondence games.
I take it none of you have read “Freedom and The Control of Men” by B.F. Skinner.
Regardless of whether it’s necessary for the rating system (because if it is, as stated, this entire thing is pointless), you won’t get rid of “the cheaters”, you’ll just a) remove a mechanism that’s helpful to a lot of people and b) force “the bad guys” to amend their strategy.
Either way, you won’t get that fabled “win that should’ve been”.
As for the tournaments, I prefer Kosh’s approach. As TD, limit the number of times someone can register for the same tournament and subsequently drop out by timeout/disqualification.
Slightly off topic but did I read somewhere on here that tournaments might be a big reason for timeouts (the alternative being mass resigning and taking the rating hit, which I can see as not appealing!). Might there be any mileage in introducing an option to withdraw from tournaments? Could outstanding games be counted as wins/byes in the tournament but annulled for rating? Maybe not totally satisfactory to the winning victim of an escaper but at least they would get the credit within the tournament.
You can already withdraw, though it will count the forfeits as losses.
My suggestion there would be to simply introduce unranked tournaments. All the fun without the hassle.
Here is the way I think: problem → anlysis → solution
The rule is the last part. Problems where here before the rule: cheaters, escapers, timesettings, ranking, rudeness and so on.
If the solution isn’t good, let’s change it. But let’s keep clear what comes first.
I would also add something that doesn’t apply specificly to GaJ: I am tired of this discussion because it seems to me that 80% of this topic is about PRIDE.
He’s an escaper: he offended me!
He’s a timeouter: he offended me!
He messed up a tournament: he offended me!
He doesn’t believe me: he is offending me!
He doesn’t remind what I said before: he is offending me!
There are countless statements in this topic that only refer to pride, with colourful expression like “is a slap on my face” and so on…
So many people feeling offended, annoyed, betrayed, tricked, what else?
I’m here to play Go and enjoy the game. My pride is harmed enough by my real life. I don’t want to waste my time worrying about a loser whose only satisfactions are to inflate his rank and to escape when he’s losing a game. Poor man.
I sympathize with players that have a busy life and still try to play in the remnants of time.
I sympathize with those that didn’t understand that a “weekly” tournament can take over a year to finish.
With those that didn’t figure in advance that multiple rounds can start unpredictably and submerge you with tens of games.
With those that didn’t understand well the difference between resigning and just leave.
I also sympathize with those little cheaters that can’t find better joy than trick the rating system to feel stronger.
And I sympathize too with mods and TD who have to deal with all those cases.
If some math is working badly, let’s try to fix it. But it’s impossible to fix everybody’s hypersensitivity.
Exactly and people don’t want to do that so they time out instead (someone mentioned further up). My thought was that if there was a third way to leave tournaments people wouldn’t need to time out. And then any remaining time outers would be disappearing people, who we presumably are not much concerned with, and cheaters, who would then be more easily identifiable. I guess there will always be a few temporary life event cases but at least the pool of suspects would be reduced.
Xalexander is “exhibit A” in my opinion. I have looked at all the games in all the clusters in the most recent 150 games. The large majority are losses, some are inferior positions, and only 2 or 3 are wins. The wins appear to have been sacrificed so as not to break the string in each case. All this, plus the repetitive pattern over a long period of time, is decisive evidence of cheating, I think.