As etiquette is really about respecting others, enhancing mutual positive experience and not creating negative experience for others, and one general answer is “do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” I was thinking maybe rather than seeking answers for specific situations (e.g., if someone is taking 6 days 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds for each move in a 7-day max correspondance game and all the other games in the tournament finished 3 years ago is it ok to politely inquire as to whether it might be a possibility to consider thinking about potentially entertaining the idea of making moves in a manner that could lead to finishing the game and allowing ourselves and the rest of the players to move on to the next round before the sun expands into a red giant and all of our ice cream melts) we could share “How I would feel if …” scenarios which could help us understand the potential emotional consequences for others if we do the thing we’re having etiquette uncertainty about.
If anyone is interested, I will begin with reversing my own etiquette question “Is it OK to ask someone if it would be possible to play faster” into “How would I feel if someone asked me to play faster?” My own answer (albeit as someone who plays as quickly as I can, which can range from several seconds per move if I have time on my hands to 1 or 2 days per move if life is happening) would be slight annoyance with the question followed by understanding where the other person is coming from as I sometimes would like others to play faster, followed by politely apologizing and telling them I will try and then making an effort to accommodate their preference.
I don’t mind players who play slowly. Take your time, we’re having fun.
I do mind people who are probably going through their rebellious teen phase and they are acting like “nya, nya, it says nowhere I can’t pause my game and keep y’all waiting, so I’m going to pause just to prove how smart I am, I’ll keep the whole tournament forever if I want to”, just because they find it funny. I believe they also find fart jokes and juvenile pranks funny. This is probably the height of their wit and also their day, so let them have it.
But they’re not funny, or smart, or witty. They are just annoying and childish.
I may have exaggerated in my example to protect the hypothetically innocent, but I have seen tournaments that have been active for over a year (as here: OST GO ). My tentative solution is that as a relatively quick player I should stop joining 7-day/move tournaments where players have every right to take the amount of time permitted by the rules, and I am now playing only 1-day per move custom games and 3-day ladder games.
If I were the person holding back a whole tournament (no matter if we all agreed it would be slow), I’d like to be notified by the organizer, to get my games over as fast as possible and then only join slower tournaments or play two-people-only games.
If I were playing slowly in a pre-agreed slow, non-tournament game and taking my full, pre-agreed time, I’d be very very very much annoyed if I were asked to move faster.
I LOLed out loud, ROTFLing on the floor, LMAOing my ass off
But, even though I probably am one of OGS’ slowest players (if not THE single slowest player), I can understand @BearAware’s point—and I love such sentences that roll on like a river, sometimes fast, mostly slow … dabbling, pattering, gurgling, burbling, babbling, purling … like the games I play … and I hope it’s not about one of the games I am playing
Funny thing is, I was playing someone once who played sooooo slowly, and when I took a look at their other games they actually asked one of their opponents if they could play faster. The irony …
Anyway, the speed of play was just an example of using self-inquiry as a means of understanding the effects of one’s own behaviors on others in order to know the answer to etiquette questions. As a non-Go example, let’s say I’m wondering if it’s OK to not get someone a birthday present as their birthday is on January 3 and I just gave them a holiday present last week. Rather than look up the answer in an etiquette book or ask others (which could be useful as well), I might ask myself how I would feel if I didn’t get birthday presents because my birthday was right after another gifting holiday (and the point here is not to create a post answering this example question).
