First, I ask to forgive me for bad English. Secondly, the tone of my treatment may seem harsh to someone. This is not due to disrespect, but from the fact that the topic of the message is painful for me.
I encounter players who leave the game, when they lose, more and more often. These players do not play pass, do not resign, they just leave the opponent to sit and wait for the end of playing time. As a result, the opponent wins by timeout, not by points or resignation. Such a victory looks only as a lucky coincidence, but not as a result of the player’s efforts. I think it’s humiliating.
I admit that there can be insurmountable circumstances that force the player to leave the game, but in that case it is necessary to resign and apologize to the opponent in the chat, if possible. Leaving the game without resigning, without explanation, looks like a tricky attempt to catch an opponent, hoping that the opponent will not wait for the end time either, and win by timeout in a game that has already been lost.
I admit that people leaving the game may not know that they violate Go’s etiquette in this way. But I do not think that they do not understand that they force the opponent to wait and humiliate him. I’m inclined to assume that only selfishness and stupidity do not allow such players to admit defeat with honor.
I have too little free time to play Go and do not want to spend it on those who are not able to show elementary respect. I do not think that anyone should spend the free time of their lives on people of this kind. Therefore, in the near future I will form a list of escapers, which I met, and publish it on the forum so that other players can put the escapers on the blacklist and thus avoid unpleasant impressions and save their time.
Sometimes they time out deliberately in correspondence games for a purpose: gaming the OGS system. They finish winning games quickly (thus taking the ratings bump for all of those wins), then lose by timeout a string of games they are already losing, thus gaming the OGS system which changes their rating only based on the first timed out game in a series of timeouts
Note that you can take some care to avoid timer-outers in some circumstances. Where I have choice (eg ladder challenge by me for example, or accepting a challege) I always look in the person’s game history first, and if there is a string of timeout, then I avoid them.
I like mine becuase it shows that I hardly ever time out, and I also resign when I know that I have lost
I agree with you that the fact that a quarter of the games where I win the opponent timed out is not great, though it isn’t truly awful… if the number were more like 50% that would be awful. What are yours like?
Thanks for your answer. But the problem is not even in correspondence games. When an opponent leaves such a game, you can simply start a new one. I’m talking about live games. In this case, you have to sit and wait for the time to expire (and sometimes it takes quite a long time).
In live games, there is not always time to check the opponent who accepted the invitation to the game. So I’m thinking about a preventive measure. If the player has left the game, without resigning, if he did not apologize to the opponent within 24 hours - this is, whatever one may say, a violation of the etiquette of Go. I want to create a public list of such players so that other players do not waste their time on them.
It is necessary to fight with escapers. These people undermine the players’ confidence in OGS. A few of my friends have already left here, having played enough with the escapers.
I agree (basically) with your idea to publish a list of these players. However, there are several things that I think you should be careful to do:
First of all, you should always send a short message to the person and tell them that their name will be listed as an impolite time-outer. If they do not reply with a valid excuse (in a reasonable time) then publish the name – otherwise do not publish (as mentioned previously by yourself, there can be special circumstances that force such time-out, although these are rather infrequent).
Then you should keep the list current. By this I mean checking to see whether or not this person continues to time-out in other games following our game with them. If they do not time out for some reasonable number of future games (even though the have lost them) then their name should be removed from the list (we might consider them to have been “cured” from the “time-out syndrom”). How many games? In what period of time? I don’t know, but perhaps 5-10 games or within 30 days? Whatever, it requires you to be somewhat busy in order to be fair and avoid being impolite yourself.
Others may have additional suggestions, but these are ones that I think must at least be followed in order to be fair yourself.
I totally agree and understand. But do not spend more of your time and nerves on some list. Honestly, it’s not gonna help in my opinion. Can only cause more bad blood. I do not have any better solution though apart from like lowering the escaper system to something shorter again
Just try to understand the other side too. Some poeple are more emotional than others. Maybe he/she tried really hard and had a losing strear recently… They just really wanted to win, or felt like they were winning in the beginning, and it just really made them sad to suddenly lose. I mean it still sucks, but you know, none of us is perfect
This assumption is not based on any hard evidence, but I think it also gets better with rank (after so many losses people start to be more imune against them ) so maybe there is something to look forward to on your journey.
One suggestion that I hope will help. Don’t accept games with a large initial time eg: 40min + 5x30s. Try setting up your own games with a fischer clock such as 2min +30sec upto 5min or whatever suits. The fischer clock is excellent for minimising wasted time in live games.
I may be in the minority here, but I believe it is your opponents’ prerogative to use his/her allotted time as they see fit. You agree to the time controls, knowing how long the game could potentially last. So if someone else decides to wait you out and turn the game from a contest of strategy into a contest of patience, that is a valid tactic.
Is it rude? Yeah. It sucks to sit for 40 minutes without playing to finish the game and claim your victory.
But them’s the rules.
FYI It happens on Chess servers ALL THE TIME.
Although online Chess players are not generally known for polite behavior, I can understand that it’s distressing here since we believe Go players should behave in a more honorable manner.
I personally go into longer live games (>15 minutes) with a book or something at the ready, so as to use the time productively for study even if the game is stalled.
I do also agree it would be nice to have a system in place to penalize those who chronically lose via timeout. But it would be a task to implement.
Maybe there could be an option to rate your opponent at the end of a timed-out game. After accruing a certain number of downvotes a player’s handle will be labeled “time waster” until he/she completes 10 or 20 consecutive games without another downvote. Of course, that just opens another window for unsportsmanlike behavior within the system.
Thanks to everyone who reacted to my outburst of outrage, friends. I will not keep any lists. Obviously, human stupidity and selfishness should be taken for granted and there is no need to spoil blood because of them.
Hello everyone! Thanks a lot for all the inputs, I think almost everything about this issue was covered in all the answers. I also don’t agree with the measure. In fact, you can see tons of those lists on KGS profiles, and of course that never helped at all to solve the problem.
The OGS team does give importance to this matter, and that’s why there is a 2 minutes (or was it 3?) limit that forces escaper’s resignation. But before I said almosteverything was covered, and that’s because you missed the important Call moderator tool. That’s one of the tools we use to try our best to keep track of every bad behaviour in the site.
Whenever we see a report of an escaper, the least we do is give the user a warning, and we always keep record of all that. So: does he/she respond to our warning? does he/she apologize? did he/she do it before? etc etc. We consider all those things and act accordingly in an unified effort. So, long story short, Use it!
And remember: we never ban users straight away without giving at least a warning or if there aren’t enough reasons for banning, so don’t fear of being a caller so to speak.
Actually I do have another suggestion for you @DiMantis. And sorry for the shameless “plug” but if you are having escaper issues and would prefer serious longer games, you can consider joing OSR and playing in our leagues (openstudyroom.org / https://online-go.com/group/1843).
As we are a smaller community it is like playing with friends and I have yet to hear a single complaint on any game. The downside of course is that there is not ALWAYS someone avilable for a game, but lately it seems to be getting better.
I’d second the “call mod” thing. If someone’s consistently a problem user, the mods can and will deal with it, provided that you let them know it’s happening. I had someone get super hostile in chat after a game, so I reported them. They’d been doing the same to other users, so they got a warning from the mods and a chat ban.
I think one of the best things about the Go community is that there’s a serious effort to put a stop to this sort of thing. The chess response is usually “don’t play games with that user,” while Go communities and OGS in particular are much more proactive.
Etiquette aside, it’s my opinion that five minutes is too long to expect a person to wait before the forced timeout. I would rather see that period put back to the original two minutes, or at least no more than three minutes.
I think this is an extension of the fact that playing on line is very faceless. Most people don’t even say “Hi”. I usually try to start a conversation with the other player. If they make no effort to respond I am less likely to play them again. Adam’s links look interesting.
Agree. And I find those that take the time to upload an avatar are usually ethical, timely, friendly, and involved in the OGS community. Call it a simple gauge, but i prefer playing others with a photo avatar
apart from like lowering the escaper system to something shorter again 
I will not keep any lists. Obviously, human stupidity and selfishness should be taken for granted and there is no need to spoil blood because of them.
