Yes, i agree with you. My point is that a “few marks” aren’t going to hurt anyone anymore than a few losses would. Incidentally, I was “permitted to win” my last game in which I was sandbagged, I don’t find this completely atypical–it helps keep a sandbagger’s rank down. I’m glad I have at least voiced my issue (and i didn’t realize there is a convenient way to notify administrators). Typically, I “block such users (short lived as their user names may be) from accepting my games” in the future. I’m pleased to have stimulated some discussion about this issue, but I don’t really have anything further to add. So thanks to all concerned!
I think that is very unfair to say. I would not be happy if I was marked as a sandbagger when I really am not. You can’t just turn a blind eye to the “few people who are marked”. I would rather lose to an actual sand bagger then have people marked unfairly.
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Yes, exactly this.
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I have written on sandbagging in several other threads, because I spend a lot of time dealing with it, so some of this post may be familiar to regulars here. I am going to keep this informational and not try to address specific points by previous posters. Sandbagging is a huge problem on all go servers, and non-moderators have no idea of its scope. There are two types. The type that most players know about is rank manipulation, where players throw games to weaken their rank. This is the kind that players can see by looking at someone’s game history. The amount of sandbagging done like this is trivial. The other type, which players cannot see, is alt sandbagging, in which players create a new account, which is obviously provisional to start. I estimate that alt sandbagging accounts for 95% or more of sandbagging. Of course, not all alt accounts are for sandbagging. If the account has a special purpose (such as speed or board size different than the main account), then it is legitimate and may rank up normally.
The mod team investigates all reports, including all sandbagging reports, and I proactively ferret out alt sandbaggers by various means. Lots of players file SB reports because they can’t believe they lost to someone weaker (probably more than half of all SB reports). In most of those mistaken reports, the reporter (usually DDK) lost because of one or more very bad moves. In some cases the opponent is much stronger than their rank because they are a strong player who has come here from another server. I wish they would rank up by playing bots, or put their rank in their account name until they rank up, but that is not required.
I ban sandbaggers almost every day, sometimes dozens of alt accounts. Here are the protocols I follow: All sandbaggers get one warning. Thrown games and non-games (those with just a few moves) are annulled. Alt SB accounts that haven’t already ranked up are banned immediately, because they have no right to exist in the first place. If someone continues to rank manipulate or to create more alt SB accounts, then all their accounts and all future accounts are banned.
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I’m just saying that we would expect to see more cheaters/trolls, if people choose to not report cheaters and trolls. This was in response to the original poster expressing a reluctance to report cases to the moderators.
I’m not sure what the absolute prevalence is, but maybe a moderator could answer that based on their data.
I see that @Conrad_Melville just made a post commenting on the scope.
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This is easily our biggest barrier to moderating… A horrifying percentage of people here put up with some pretty terrible behaviour (not just sandbagging) without saying anything. We can’t possibly find every problem user on the site without help from the community.
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I think related to the sandbagging thing at least and I can imagine other situations. “SOME” situations “we” put up with it I would assume because we aren’t always entirely sure about a situation. I can say I have come across situations where I believe something could be reported but also not worth reporting because I am unsure. This can be situations tied to someone sandbagging, or botting, and sometimes even chat offences.
I am not saying that its okay just that I know that it can be hard to report sometimes when you are unsure if a situation. Of course we could say “if you are unsure just report anyway.”. But, I think as people who are also busy sometimes we hate to waste your time.(and even if you say we are making it worse) unfortunately our brains don’t always click with “what is the best choice of action”.
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if an efficient and fair automation could exist it would already be in place. because I’m sure that managing those boring behaviors is surely not what the mods enjoy the most to do.
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Now we know how it works. Lets create another account and play SB games. lol
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When in doubt, just report. We’ll just blame our fresh intern, @Vsotvep, if the pile becomes too big. 
But seriously, any report is welcome.
Remember that we’re volunteering: you’re not wasting our time by reporting, we wilfully choose to waste our own time 
At least it’s on the planning for some things, like some automation to help with scoring stage problems, mass cancellation or escaping. However, there’s not much automation in place yet…
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I can tell you what I least enjoy doing, is dealing with a user who finally got their first report, only to look at their history and see they did the same thing to 1,000 other people and nobody said anything… you might think you are being considerate and sparing us additional work load, but actually investigating and closing a false report is much less work than investigating and dealing with a problem user that doesn’t get reported.
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Reporting users who beat me by too much
Joking, promise I check the Game History first!
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I definitely know I “should” just report but there is a human error that sometimes tells my brain “maybe its not worth it”. Then I listen to it and just don’t :-).
Well, this is what I meant by it can be confusing. Because not everyone is going to see it that way even if you say so. I agree it “SHOULD” be that way just unfortunate that a majority won’t because there will always be something in there brain saying “maybe this is a waste of time”.
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Thank god everyone ignores air bagging or I’d be banned cuz of glicko lol
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I hope there is no misunderstanding as what I wrote never was intended to discourage players to use the “call a moderator” button. At reverse it was an acknowledgement of the mods usefulness and a direct answer to the OP.
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My lament was not regarding your advice, but current user behaviour (or lack thereof)
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That’s silly.
Of course it doesn’t work well if you’re not going to use it.
The answer isn’t to add another feature, the answer is to use the mechanism you have.
If you aren’t willing to put your name to your complaint about sandbagging, by reporting it to the group of people who are here for handling exactly this sort of problem, then something is wrong.
If your suspicion is so weak you aren’t willing to stand by it, then as data in a “crowdsource sandbagging reporting system” it is no use anyhow. You’re probably just sore that you lost, and you want a way to lash out. For sure such a system would be overrun by exactly those kind of reports.
It’s the act of reporting it to the moderators that forces you to be accountable for it and think about how you are going to answer the question “why do you think this was sandbagging?”. Get rid of that and you get trash data.
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Worth noting that OP was not aware of the in-game report feature. Was resolved later in the thread.
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I was responding to “I’m not going to report it to an admin” IE ruling out using such a feature, whether or not it existed or was known about, seemed silly (but guilty as charged, I didn’t read the whole thread).
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