Regardless of the status of the group, or whether or not a moderator should get involved (both are actually irrelevant for this situation since @hdci won regardless), I think the core point of the post was to point out an apparent bug:
@hdci says he is certain he did not accept his opponent’s seki determination, yet the system allowed the game to end in favor of his opponent’s determination without his approval.
This is how I believe the system works:
After player A changes the status of stones, player B then can either accept (finalizing the game) or change the status, which then waits on player A to accept. Player A could then choose to accept or change the status again, which would then wait on player B. This can go back and forth until the players come to agreement, a moderator intervenes, or one of the players times out. If a player times out, then the other players proposal decides the game. I guess if neither players choose to submit, then it just goes with the systems initial determination. For ladder games, it appears that the timeout period is 24 hours from the last change.
@hdci, are you sure you didn’t just time out after your opponent had made the last change?
Although this may be intended behavior of the system, I think the stone removal phase could be handled a bit more cleanly. It’s not very obvious that the system is waiting for your approval after your opponent changes your initial approval. Those games don’t seem to show up when cycling through the “move needed” list and you don’t seem to get any notification that your opponent has rejected your approval. The only indication (if you don’t open the game) is that your name seems to be in bold next to the thumbnail.
Thus, it’s possible for a dishonorable opponent to change the status of stones after your initial proposal and hope that you don’t notice before the approval timer runs out. I believe this happened in a recent game of mine. I was the second to pass, so I marked the stones first. Then, at some point later, my opponent had made a bunch of ridiculous revisions, marking dozens of my territory points as dame. Since, I never got any notification that I needed to approve the changes, and the game did not come up while cycling through the “move needed” list, I assumed that it was still waiting for his approval. I only happened to enter that game again by chance to notice the issues. Then, after I corrected the status, the system eventually used my last proposal since my opponent timed out.
I don’t think its a “bug”, but rather just a bad design choice. There needs to be a notification when a game is waiting for you to approve changed stones, and those games should show up when cycling through the “move needed” list. Also, I would want to see games go into a moderation queue if one player times out during the stone removal phase, rather than just immediately be decided by the last proposal.