For few years i’ve been thinking that ogs doesn’t need the mass-timeout protectiong thing anymore. Server has grown so big, that it can handle just fine some random rank drops caused by corr timeouts, and having those users then “sandbagging” their way back back up again.
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If I may take it one step further…
The motivation for annulment appears to be: (a) to prevent bad actors from acting badly and (b) to protect ethical players from the associated harm.
Despite best intentions, it fails on both fronts.
(a) If malicious time-out players want to mess with others, they can repeatedly open multiple accounts and continue doing so. There is no practical limitation on repeated access given free email accounts.
(b) Meanwhile, committed ethical players who get paired with these offenders are penalized by wasting their valuable time with a timed-out game that gets annulled, depriving them the benefit of a ranked win.
Even being new to OGS, I’ve already experienced the frustration of a timed-out’come. While waiting, my opponent tied up my ability to challenge others in the ladder (that I’m otherwise enjoying).
Our game was annulled when my opponent finally timed-out 3 days later. The small consolation of a win would have felt more appropriate.
Given how rampant this seems to be, I’m afraid I should brace for a lot more of the same.
EDIT - Just a thought: For those who do not want their rank to benefit (become inflated?) due to time-outer’ers continuing to abandon their games, perhaps one could be given the option - i.e., to annul or to take the ranked win.
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I’ve been resisting getting into the discussion about this because we have been over and over it in the past.
I do appreciate how a newer person would be curious to think it through though.
In a smaller group discussion (the Community Moderator team) we reached the conclusion that if we can get “auto-vacation” into correspondence games, then the balance of arguments for and against serial timeout feature is tipped to “against”.
The risk of opening the discussion up again is that we hear all the dissenting voices again and lose that resolve 
One thing that is clear: this is not a black and white issue. There are arguments both ways, and there will be negative consequences either way. There are negative consequences of keeping the darn thing, and there will be arguments against removing it. And there will be suggestions for getting around those and arguments against those suggestions.
Whoa, see why I avoid talking about it? 
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Ha! I sorta’ kinda’ do see why. 
These latest exchanges are partially my fault for have resurrected a 1yr-old thread, as I tried to find out where things stood.
Apparently, they stand pretty much where they stood at least a year ago. (Perhaps the confluence of limited programming resources & some community politics?)
As a newbie, I continue to be dazzled by how deeply functional this OGS site is. Maybe as my currently limited experience expands, my initial view on this topic may evolve. Meanwhile, I’ll try not to become a burr under anyone’s saddle. 
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LOL welcome and thanks.
A timely meme:
Edit: I forgot to mention:
^^ totally just this at the moment.
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This issue reminds me of
A wonderful thing about Jobs is how he always thought before answering, and started with context “You know…”
And he thought about what he was doing and why.
I’m not sure why this issue is like the answer to “how to run a business” though.
We’ve looked deeply into the “why” of this issue. I could write a paper on it. So it’s not like you’re saying “it’s not that hard you just have to ask why” (which is one of the things Jobs says). Maybe you’re saying “you need measures, you have to be able to measure things”. I’m not convinced this is a gap here either. Sure we could know more about “how much is the impact of this or that”. Maybe we have to wait till we’re building OGS 2.0 when we can put those measures in at the foundations, like he did for Apple 2.0 factory…
… in the mean time we’re focussing our precious development resources on carefully chosen areas that matter the most: this hasn’t reached that level yet.
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Will patiently await iOGS 6.
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The folklore aspect, that this serial timeout rule is part of the status quo and this affords it an undue amount of respect.
You know … it’s easy to criticize. Anyone can do that.
And to assert things are “left the way that they are because of folklore”.
It’s odd to keep doing that after you’ve had the explanation though.
This isn’t left in “because it’s folklore”. It’s left in because we had a detailed discussion of the reasons why it’s there, we understand why it’s there, and we know what remedy needs to be in place before it can be removed.
We even know what is more important to spend our time on than fixing this right now.
I saw your suggestion that we could just try removing it for a while and see what happens. This wouldn’t be fair to the folk who made their case for the protection it affords them when RL hits.
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With all due respect, I don’t think you understand the purpose of the serial-timeout rule. The purpose is to protect players from a catastrophic loss of rank when they are prevented from playing their games due to an emergency (such as getting hit by a bus). Some players abuse the rule by deliberately engaging in serial timeouts to get rid of games where they think they are at a disadvantage. They are airbaggers who are wedded to their account. They are not like sandbaggers who “want to mess with others” per se. Because they are wedded to their accounts, opening new accounts, as alt sandbaggers do, is not an option for them.
That said, I should make it clear that I favor abolishing the serial-timeout rule.
Because of the fix (1st post of this thread), I understand that airbagging (through the serial timeout rule) is not longer possible, but sandbagging still is.
Is sandbagging common in correspondence games?
I included involuntary sandbagging. People who have hundreds of ongoing correspondence games and suddenly timeout many games can easily drop 10 ranks. I don’t know how common it is but I’ve seen that several times.
People who get hit by a bus have bigger problems that their OGS ranking, which will eventually heal.
People who committed to hundreds of ongoing correspondence games have clearly overcommitted.
Not feeling much sympathy in either situation. Sorry. 
It’s never been about sympathy. Rank is not a reward/punishment. It’s a number that helps with matchmaking.
If a user times out of a bunch of games at once, they they will go down in rank, and the next time they log on they will crush their opponents.
I haven’t been following along super closely this time around (this topic pops up often), but wanted to make sure that the intent of rank is clear.
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And unless they’re intentionally sandbagging, this sucks both for the person with the deflated rank and the people they have to play against.
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Not expecting sympathy. I was simply explaining the factual basis of the serial-timeout rule. You apparently overlooked that I was not arguing in favor of it: I favor abolishing the rule. But my personal belief does not prevent me from discussing facts.
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This feels like a compelling point, thank you! I do see this perspective now.
However, my response above was to the seeming concern of unfairness to have one’s rank lowered due to an accident … or having signed up for too many games to handle.
Protecting others against players whose rank is artificially low can never be solved. Every new player to OGS with some experience with the game of Go is another example of this phenomenon. And experienced players can open as many newbie accounts as they desire.
Can never be engineered out of the system.
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Thank you for this, and I’m sorry if I mistook your larger point. 
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