My opponent timed out of a ladder challenge (https://online-go.com/game/9609153) in the endgame, and it looks as though neither my ladder position nor my rating has changed. This doesn’t seem right, since the game was basically over at the point he timed out.
Thanks,
Deepee
Your ladder position didn’t change because you are already above the position your opponent was when you challenged him.
Your rank didn’t change because of the measures in place to stop successive correspondence time outs cascading into incorrectly large rank drops. Your opponent timed out of 2 ladder games before yours, and thus only the first time out affected a rank change.
With the old system, only your opponent would be protected and you would still see a rank increase but in the new system, this has some undesirable side effects and thus, unfortunately, the winner also experiences no rank change.
EDIT: Yes, I know the above sucks, but from what I’m told it’s the lesser of two evils.
I’m a bit surprised by this - I hadn’t gathered that this was the outcome.
I don’t think this is the lesser of two evils at all. I will be extremely unimpressed if I am winning against an opponent, and they are also losing to other people to the extent where they decide to cut their losses and time out on everyone, so they only “pay” in the rank loss for one match timed out.
This is the greater of two evils, because the “innocent” parties pay the price.
I think the lesser of two evils would be if you suffer multiple timeouts - bad luck. Play some more games and recover your rank. At least the damage is contained to the person who caused it.
GaJ
I think the theory is, in terms of the integrity of the whole rating pool, that missing data is a lot healthier than wrong data.
The ladder position probably didn’t change because your opponent was no longer part of the ladder, since timing out in a ladder game removes the player from the ladder. Your opponent timed out in the game before yours too.
That only holds if you don’t believe that timing out counts as losing.
“Oh, he didn’t really lose, he’s really quite good, he just timed out on all his opponents. Those results are just missing data.”.
I personally don’t see it that way at all. They are real data: this person lost a bunch of games. Being able to actually finish is part of it, IMO. Particularly, when timing out is such a handy way of avoiding a loss.
GaJ
I’m inclined to agree, and from past discussions I have had with anoek I think he does too… to an extent. But I think there are other concerns that make it not so simple. I know he ran a lot of testing and I’m sure he’s working hard to find the fairest and most accurate ratings for everyone. This is still very new, I think over the next month or two they may start ironing out some kinks once they have some reliable observations and comments to go off 
Thanks everyone for your replies. My opponent was definitely higher up than me when I challenged him, but as @Senffarbe pointed out, he probably fell off the ladder before I had a chance to beat him!
As for the issue of timing out and rank changes, I agree with the argument that timing out = losing, but maybe there is some common pattern of behaviour that I’m not aware of…