Just wondering if there’s been a cultural shift on the site or something. I haven’t played here a ton since Western Server Challenge and coming back I decided I’d cancel any game where my opponent can’t even say “hi” in the first minute or two. The result has been… a lot of cancellations.
The main reason for cancelling is just I’ve noticed if someone can say even just one word to you at the start of the game they’re much less likely to engage in antisocial behavior later on like abusing disconnects etc.
But I thought even during WSC when people were just packing in tons of games people were still mostly at least greeting each other before a game. I don’t usually want an in-depth conversation or anything, even just a “hi” or “glhf” seems polite.
And yeah, not asking this to be forceably fixed, that doesn’t solve anything (looking at you Pandanet). Just wondering if other people have noticed a change or it’s just me.
I’m not sure if there has been a shift in such trends, but I just wanted to share some general related thoughts.
Some players might prefer not to chat at all. No one is required to say “hi” and it should not be viewed as rude if someone just remains silent. Depending on the time settings, some players might find it distracting and unwelcome to engage in any chat at all, and perhaps their choice to keep silent is simply reflective of that acceptable and personal decision.
I would say that what strikes me as most rude and anti-social about what you’ve described is your behavior of cancelling games purely because someone has not responded to your “hi” chat. Excessively and needlessly cancelling a bunch of games begins to approach trolling behavior.
While you’ve tried to justify it with this explanation:
I would say that this is a flawed line of reasoning that applies prejudice based purely on someone’s chat behavior. Just because someone has remained silent, it does not mean that they are going to later commit some abuses. You are merely making that unfair assumption and then disrupting games by cancelling early.
@anon35497988 Thank you for the insight. I watch a lot of games, especially among DDKs, and I believe you are correct that people who fail to give a greeting are more likely to be malicious escapers, stallers, and score cheaters. I never thought of this before, or of using it as a means of vetting opponents, so I can’t be accused of cherry-picking evidence to support a prejudice (i.e., I believe your observation is honest and correct).
It should be noted that some of those bad behaviors in new players are caused by ignorance of the accepted practices and even the rules, rather than by maliciousness. However, it is usually easy to tell the difference, and I can remember only a handful of malicious score cheaters and stallers who put on a polite mask to camouflage their bad behavior.
It is true that canceling a lot of games can get you in trouble with the mods, though that too may be a result of circumstance, as in your case, rather than trolling. When I was a mod, the standard was that you can freely cancel the games you create as an open challenge, because it is impossible to vet the opponent in such games. However, you are expected to play the games that you accept. I don’t know if this policy is still in effect, because it isn’t written down; it is really a matter of logic rather than of arbitrary rule-making.
One alternate strategy you might use to get better games is to spend some time in the general chat and the Forums, and then directly challenge your acquaintances in those places. That way you can see how they behave in advance and check their game history to see if they are polite. You might also join a ladder and challenge only players you have vetted; of course, you may still encounter rude players who challenge you, but overall, this would reduce the number of problems with cheating and stalling.
I think the majority of my OGS games these days are organized in off-site leagues, which are always very pleasant games, they just aren’t OGS-rated. Good thought about finding a ladder that suits me though, the ones I’ve been in were for local clubs and not very active.
I take issue with the framing that I am being intentionally malicious somehow. When I’ve complained to mods before about abusive play, a common suggestion was better vetting opponents. The games I’m talking about are automatch at normal speed so there’s no way to vet them before starting play.
This is a good point: is there anything in the UI to indicate an opponent is using zen mode or a physical board so unavailable for chat? That would definitely be helpful.
If there has indeed been a cultural shift, then the situation related to your assessment - that people who don’t greet are more likely to be antisocial later on - could also have changed.
I don’t recall @yebellz saying that you’ve been “intentionally malicious”.
But rude behaviour it definitely is when you (sort of) rage-quit a game just because your opponent doesn’t talk to you when you talk to them, doesn’t smile at you when you smile at them, etc. etc., never mind whether intentional or not, knowingly or not, and that’s all you have been educated about, like, “you’re welcome”.
Here’s again what he wrote:
Meanwhile you’ve been given many reasons why someone might not chat at all in a game, and there can be many more, like social phobia, depression or just having a bad day and not want to talk when the energy is barely enough to play.
It’s simple: this server is for PLAYING in the first place.
That we can also chat is a surplus feature, and no-one is obliged to use it.
anon35497988 created both of those games. Unless OGS policy has changed (how would anyone know?), he is entitled to cancel them for any reason. Moreover, you are assuming a time interval of one minute, when it might just as well have been nearly two minutes.
He’s entitled to cancel them for any reason but the reason he’s giving is a rude one.
“I will cancel anyone who does not give me a reply ‘hi’ within one minute” is rude, as has been laid out clearly here.
It’s rude because many folk don’t want to or are unable to chat. Chat is optional.
Also, this approach to cancellation will lead to excessive cancellations, which in turn will lead to a caution about abuse of the cancellation function
The “cancel” function is intended infrequently, not routinely.
The way that you would know this is:
Common sense consideration for the other users. Frequent cancellation is a pain for other players, this seems obvious to anyone who considers the effect of it on others.
In the absence of working that out, folk who frequently cancel are politely asked not to do that, for the above reason.
It may well be true that fewer people are saying “hi” these days - it’d be hard to get a qualitative measure of that.
This being the case, it’s important to understand that it’s totally optional to say “hi”, and attempting to enforce conversation on your opponent is not allowed here (AFAIK).
The way that you know it’s not allowed is because the Terms of Service disallow harassment, and trying to force your opponent into a conversation is harassment. Or by trying to do it and being asked not to.
@trohde The misuse of quotation marks for “intentionally malicious” is a misleading, presumably accidental, representation of the argument at hand. Since the auto-quotation of the OP’s words preceded the sentence with the quote marks, the latter are redundant. Consequently, the reader is misled into thinking that the quote marks refer to a disagreement about whether those specific words were said by yebellz. In other words, the quote marks set up a straw-man argument. Again, I presume this is nothing more than an innocent writing mistake. But it is an important mistake.
“Trolling behavior,” the phrase that yebellz used, is by definition intentionally malicious. This was somewhat diluted by speaking in a very confusing way of behavior that “begins to approach” trolling. Approach how and by how much? Where is the line, and how is it defined? And most important: how would anyone know? The OP should perhaps have phrased the issue as an insinuation that he was being intentionally malicious, rather than as an absolute fact; however, it is possible that his use of “framing,” admittedly a bit unclear, meant exactly that. In other words, the OP may have meant that the conversation was being framed as, or put into the context of, intentionally malicious behavior. If that was what he meant, he was right in my opinion.
“[R]age-quit” is unjust hyperbole, the attempt to temper it with “sort of” notwithstanding. It is as ludicrous as someone saying “Conrad is a (sort of) murderous bstrd.” Rage quitting is when someone escapes from a game because of a large point loss or a game loss, not when they cancel a game they created because of a rational standard (whether or not it is true) that silent opponents have a higher probability of bad behavior.
That is completely irrelevant. The existence of legitimate reasons not to chat does not affect the OP’s observation that bad actors overwhelmingly tend not to chat. The OP’s actions reduce his exposure to such behavior regardless of other people who do not chat. Favoring silent players over players who don’t want to play silent players is pure prejudice, because no rationale for such favoritism has been given. If a rationale were given, then the distinction would be a bias rather than a prejudice.
That is true, but also irrelevant, because the OP is not trying to oblige anyone, as he says in the end of his post: “… not asking this to be forceably fixed….”
I don’t think so. He did not say the quote you attribute to him. Your version has him speaking in harsh peremptory terms like an ultimatum. He did not do that. He spoke in terms of what he would do for himself, as an explanation, not as an ultimatum. Your version also says “one minute,” whereas what he said was “first minute or two.”
As explained above, whether anyone wants to chat or not is irrelevant. Yes, they are free not to chat, but to deny recognition of an equal preference to be greeted is pure prejudice when it lacks a rationale for favoring one over the other. Mark well: I am not speaking of cases where someone personally berates an opponent for not giving a greeting—that is abusive harassment. But the OP has not done that so far as we know.
Your fourth paragraph contradicts your first paragraph, unless you are also referring to cancellations involving games the OP accepted in addition to games he created. However, I already pointed out to him that distinction in my first post here, so I am not sure why you are confusing the issue by lumping the two together (if that is what you are doing).
You second numbered point is confusing since you have not indicated whether it refers to all cancellations or just cancellations of accepted games. Care to clarify? If you mean all games, then we are back to the contradiction with your first paragraph.
Moreover, plenty of people cancel games they create when they suspect (or know for a fact) that their opponent is a sandbagger, botter, or frequent escaper.
I don’t think anyone has disagreed with this, and the OP explicitly denied wanting to see that done. I am puzzled by your belaboring of a non-issue.
This is completely false with regard to the OP based on the information in this thread. He did not try to force anyone, and explicitly said he didn’t want to. Or do you have information we are not privy to?
^^^ this is what I was referring to. This (lots of cancellations) is mild form of harassment (or “obstruction” if you prefer) that the OP said they carried out.
They didn’t realise it was not what we support here at the time they did that, and they did not do it with ill intent, for sure.
Nonetheless, this approach to “dealing with” opponents who don’t want to chat is not going to work at OGS.
I was also intending to include the other kinds of behaviours that go on where people have the idea that their opponent is being rude not replying - more literally chasing a reply in chat. We see that, and it certainly is harassment.
The information that I “have privy to” is a report queue full of people complaining about cancellations and disconnects prior to play… the community does not like or want this (along with the other replies in this thread that confirm this not a left-field idea).
Does that mean you agree with the many points you have ignored?
Actually, I was paraphrasing the OP’s word (“forceably”) from the quote I had previously cited.
I know that is a form of harassment when done repeatedly against particular players, but how is it harassment when done on a one-time basis against silent players. If a silent player doesn’t like the cancellation, they can just stop accepting games from the OP. (You do realize, don’t you, that I already addressed in my first post the cases of cancelling accepted games, which I agree shouldn’t be done.) You still haven’t clarified whether your strictures refer to all cancelled games or just cancelled game that had been accepted.
I am genuinely astounded that you don’t seem to know what the OP’s main point is. I suppose he brought this on himself by confusing the issue with his dislike of silent players. However, he stated his main reason in the second paragraph of his first post, and it is not what you say it is. He is simply trying to protect himself against antisocial behavior and gave the specific example of disconnects. If that isn’t understood, then the whole conversation is at cross-purposes.
Again, being rude by not replying is not the issue. And who said that chasing a reply in the chat is not harassment? Certainly not me. Why are you even bringing that up? It has no relevance to this conversation.
In your last paragraph you continue to lump together all cancellations, which is not useful as already explained, and you even throw in disconnects, which are not under discussion. The OP has no disconnects in his last 150 games (I didn’t look any further).
Your post still leaves in doubt just what the current policy is regarding game creators cancelling the games they created. The OP’s cancellation record is nothing like what one sees from a cancellation troll, as you and I both know.
I didn’t read the many points I ignored, I ignored them. I find it quite difficult to respond to your posts, because they dive aggressively and legalistically into rat holes that ultimately are not productive, or at least I can’t respond to productively.
But I will try.
I think it is fair to say that the OP’s main point was not about how to respond to people who don’t say “hi”, they were asking whether anyone else has noticed that saying “hi” happens less.
And you are right to say that the OP sabotaged their own thread by announcing the way that they deal with this perceived problem - which is cancelling after a minute of no saying hi.
By the time I joined the thread, the discussion was firmly about the latter behaviour.
I was attempting to address your question of “how would you know what the policy is in these cases”, and to restate and clarify what it is and why it is so.
It’s possible that in some of my words I attributed some of the more general things we experience to the OP in a way that was not justified, so I guess it’s nice of you to leap to the OP’s defence in that respect.
I didn’t make any judgement on the OP’s particular case - I wasn’t even addressing it, other than to observe that it is rude to insist on chat (which I think it is).
However, I don’t understand this:
I think my post made it quite clear what the policy is: cancellation is expected to be an infrequent event, and not to be used as a routine response to things that happen all the time.
The judgement of this is in whether a person has lots of cancellations that are drawing complaints.
Where a person does have that, they will be contacted and it will be explained to them that cancellation is not to be used as a routine response, and asked to find ways to avoid this happening.
FWIW there are players who do not want to play with folk who won’t chat, they have learned what the policy is, and they find ways to make it work for them.
