Now that I’m thinking about it, annulment currently is de-ranking, but it only looks like the mods are “taking away” a win or a loss. I can’t help but think there might be a better way to communicate this in the UI.
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Interesting that unranked games can be annulled then 
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Oh lol then never mind. Three cheers for the option to de-rank!
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Sorry, I meant auto annulment due to mass timeouts when a player disappears.
But thinking about it I suppose there would still be no effect since each is annulled as it finishes?
Oh, the correspondence timeout rule. I can think of only one case where more than 100 games may have been auto-annulled under that rule (I’m not sure of the number). So it would be a very rare occurrence.
[Edit: Oh yes, one at a time, so it is not an issue at all.]
The side not at fault should NOT lose the reward. Why would they? None of the very valid reason for not ranking it apply to other sorts of rewards.
Same here, since I mostly play correspondence. But for live games it’s not that easy I guess.
Well a lot of times annulled games are annulled because it wasn’t a valid win. So people might have incentives to game the system by getting annullable wins.
One way I can think of (you can thank my evil brain). Find the nastiest game settings you can find, and wait for bait. Sure there’s a warning, but people don’t always check. Opponents cancel 70% of the time because of my nasty settings. 15 games in, I’ve got a shiny new badge!
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Does it let you set 30s/game? That would be brutal, as it would just be a clicking contest, not a go game, and you probably have a head start before the opponent realizes what’s going on.
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I think that this isn’t quite what you think it is.
That game was “cancelled”. During the process of cancelling, the back end marked it annulled. That could be considered a bug (*).
Moderators don’t have the ability to annull unranked games: that option is switched off in the interface for unranked games (I messed around in the code for that tool a while back, and the annull button gets greyed out if the game can’t be annulled, and unranked is the main reason for this).
*: Edit - well, let’s say an “implementation choice”. It was probably easiest to make cancelled games not affect rank by marking them as annulled, rather than telling the ranking engine about another type of game to not consider.
Curiously there are two complementary things that can happen:
- Cancellation: done by players, can’t be done by mods. Causes game to be unranked. Can be done on any game.
- Annullment: done by mods, can’t be done by players. Causes came to be unranked. Can’t be done on unranked games.
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Dunno about “skillful” but I’ll try to sum it up:
1- Ranked games are an agreement about battling for the rank, not just via go skills but via a mental attitude. People go into them with an expectation and with an agreement about the terms.
2- The “policy” or the principles the moderation team upholds regarding this are very vague, leaving too much room for judgement calls, in a way that can be unjust/antagonistic towards honest users, as with this case.
3- It is encouraging to sandbaggers in that they achieve their goal of having wasted someone’s time while discouraging for regular users in that they can’t trust the system to protect them.
4- Tweaking ranks slightly is not necessary in glicko2 where you can re-find your rank more easily compared to other systems.
Rant Version
1- Ranked games are an agreement about battling for the rank, not just via go skills but via a mental attitude. They are very different than casual games. People go into them with an expectation and with an agreement about the terms. For example, when going into a 30min + 30 sec x 5 byoyomi game, you have to take into account your free time that day since your opponent can decide to use their entire time and the game can last 3-4 hours. You would have to clear your schedule for that. Having to accept this and then also the possibility that the time you invested will have no return in terms of your expectations (ie rank) is not an easy thing to ask of users.
2- It should not be up to moderation to decide what status a game is in unless it is desperately needed for a user. The “policy” or the principles the moderation team upholds regarding this is very vague, leaving too much room for judgement calls, in a way that can be unjust/antagonistic towards honest users, as with this case. The moderator would have to be able to judge whether the deserter did actually feel frustrated by losing points or whether they abandoned with an intent of lowering rank, which is a hard thing to do (and i believe the decision wasn’t correct in this particular case). Even if it is a clear sandbagger (looking at their other games), they might have actually messed up and the other person might have actually gotten a victory against someone stronger (so, even proving they are sandbagging doesn’t justify annulling the game by itself).
3- Sure, the sandbaggers get warned but if you look at the actual result, the honest player who decided to invest time to test themselves via the ranking system this server provides has gotten their time wasted for no return, while the other party has gained the exact thing the said player was seeking. You could argue that rank shouldn’t be the ultimate goal but I think that’s for everyone to judge for themselves. Also, especially with OGS system, it is easy to adjust your rank in either direction so it is common to meet people who are 3 ranks stronger than their rank and not be able to prove it or accuse them cuz of technicalities. It is hard to gain your rank back in those situations - You have to put in lots of time and effort in investigating your opponent in a system you’re not familiar with so that you can make a convincing report. When it is hard to gain back the rank you lost unfairly, it seems only sensible that you would want to keep the rank you gained supposedly unfairly, to even things out and not fall below your rank. I would argue it is even better for the ranking system considering how hard it is for users to pinpoint/prove sandbaggers that win against them while how easy it is to notice they are cheating when they do throw the game and lose. So, in practice, it means losing ranks due to sandbaggers or having to spend time investigating them. Even if you don’t do these things and decide to ignore or be casual about it, the sandbagger clearly has reached his aim of wasting the time of a member of the community by making them get involved in a fool’s errand. It is encouraging to them.
4- The ranks are supposed to be held intact for the benefit of the community. OGS glicko provides a platform to re-find your rank even if you fall slightly below or above it. Even if OP gained rank unfairly, his strength combined with glicko2 will put him back at his proper rank shortly, without his opponents really being sandbagged. If the sandbagger has lost rank unfairly, that still shouldn’t matter much because he has been warned and should be watched (?) to see if they exhibit the same behaviour or if they find their actual rank. The short amount of time he’ll spend at a different rank til he finds his actual rank should be either deemed negligible or should be handled differently by forcing them into custom games called “im actually x rank” or by just banning these people who have exhibited this behaviour so many times that they have drastically fallen off their rank.
I find the tone of OGS team slightly offputting. I have been asked many times to not “lawyer” but the terminology and the tone used by the team seems to be asking for such an approach. The general narrative seems to be accusing the OP and many others to be seeking rank unfairly. It is as if it has been established deserting is a negligible part of online gaming and OGS users should be upholding a strange self-destructive moral code about their ranks and the system.
(Easy to see how this being pointed out specifically and with little reason would make OP take this as them not being honest or commendable?)
(As I have shown in linked games, it is very hard to get these decisions correctly and in this particular case, I believe there were clear problems even assuming the existing policy)
(The questioning of the system isn’t about the warnings/bans. It’s about their priority over annulling games that were won by honest users not involving blatant throwing after a dominating position)
(Many people, especially since they often lose games because of cheaters and technical issues)
(This seems to be asking for lawyering in return, no? As a very active user for 2 years, I didn’t know about a distinction between draws, annulments or cancellations, especially in practice. It seems to me neither do you, at least not in a clear fashion. So I don’t see the use of hairsplitting about rules and terminology. The point was that the OP was asked their opinion about the matter but the decision seemed to be opposite).
The general narrative seems to be subtly accusing the OP and many others to be seeking rank unfairly because they ask for a different policy regarding thrown games. It is as if it has been established deserting is a negligible part of online gaming and OGS users should be upholding a strange self-destructive moral code about their ranks and the system.
I think I can actually go on but I find it surprising that I would even have to. Just look at the games and the accounts involved in this case, put yourself in OP’s shoes and see how problematic this decision is. Also, please think more about the concept of “rank” and even if you don’t hold it in high regard (like myself), try to see how many others do and how it is essential for a go server to be able to let it’s users invest in ranks.
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Thanks for summarising.
I have read it, and am absorbing. I think it’s important for us all to understand the many points of view - I like that we can talk about how the place is run, and figure out what is best.
There is much that I disagree with in there, but also much that needs consideration.
A quick response would be a bad one.
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Here is a question I deem vital to the discussion: Do ranks get recalculated retrospectively? (I mean, after the resigned games by the sandbagger are annulled, do the ranks of people who lost against the sandbagger get fixed retrospectively?) If not, then do the wins by the sandbagger also get cancelled/annulled when a moderator finds they have thrown games? I think it’s only natural to expect to get your rank back if you lost to a sandbagger, much more than expecting to lose rank when you won against one. For ranks to stay intact, either a retrospective calculation after the annulments or a cancellation of all games by that sandbagger that far is needed. Otherwise people who gained rank unfairly will lose ranks but people who lost unfairly will not gain them back. Am I missing something?
Perhaps moderators should prioritize cancelling won games by a sandbagger over lost ones since those also hurt the overall ranks (though in the opposite direction) and cancelling those would help wronged users directly instead of having a chance to antagonize them?
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Rank is supposed to be recalculated after annullment.
That in fact is the whole purpose of it.
I think there’s a bug right now, after the big rank update, where that’s not working at the moment.
I didn’t hear if that’s fixed or not.
(Edit: for the purpose of this discussion, I think we should assume that they do
(Another edit: RubyMineshaft said it’s been fixed 2021 Rating and rank adjustments - #610 by RubyMineshaft )
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Yes, sandbaggers’ fraudulent wins get annulled, and the effect is to restore the lost rank of their victims. As I stated earlier, this was limited to the most recent 15 games 2 years ago and then was expanded to no limit, and is now limited to the most recent 100 games, though there is a bug involved in that at the moment, so it doesn’t yet extend as far as 100 games, and anoek is investigating that.
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Rather than dig straight into sssnakes points, I wonder if we could run a scenario?
Suppose that Steve is a sandbagger.
This means that Steve likes his rank to be 15k even though he is 10k, so that he can play with 15k people and feel good about beating them.
Steve plays straight until his rank is about 12k. Then he longs for that feeling of beating 15ks again.
So Steve choses Vince the victim, who is 20k. Steve plays 3 games with Vince, each time getting into a winning position, because he likes that feeling of winning, and knowing he can beat a 20k, then he resigns.
This results in Steve being 15k again, and also results in Vince leaping up to 17k (for the sake of argument).
Rob the reporter notices something is up here - he plays Vince and sees that there is no way he is 17k, and checks Vince’s game record. He sees what happens and reports Steve for sandbagging.
What I would expect to happen is:
- Steve gets a warning from a moderator - you aren’t allowed to do that.
Let’s say that Steve says “oh, I had no idea, I’m sorry, I won’t do that again”.
-
Rob gets told by the moderator the outcome of his report.
-
The games of Steve vs Vince are annulled, and so those two players return to their correct ranks.
Now what happens is Vince the victim goes to the forum and says “hey, my wins were annulled, that’s not fair!”.
What should we say to Vince?
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I thought retrospective calculation was gotten rid of deliberately with the recent ranking system update.
Perhaps it was a misunderstanding on my part, taking it as a part of the windowed ratings.
If ranks get recalculated in such a way, then perhaps the current system/policy isn’t bad in theory as I assumed it to be. Though it does seem very hard to recalculate the entire effect of a player’s results on the rest of the system (since the people they played will have played many others and so on), I take it it is doable via mad coding skillz and was already in use and has proven to be effective.
So, in theory, the sandbaggers will get back to their correct rank via annulments and the people they won against will have their ranks increased slightly, because in retrospective calculation, they will have lost to a higher ranked player.
Still, I find this very hard to implement, requiring tremendous amount of judgement on part of the moderator, not to mention it will naturally cause issues with a number of users that can’t be considered negligible.
About the hypothetical scenario…If Steve is denying sandbagging, then Vince should be told that Steve didn’t resign as part of a scheme but was ignorant about game/server mechanics and has been warned. It should also be made clear how the rank that was taken from Vince will be redistributed to people Steve won against, making the system function properly in benefit of everyone. If Steve isn’t denying having sandbagged, then Steve should already be banned (?). When you tell Vince “Your opponent was a cheater and has wasted your time but we just warned him and we are taking back the rank you deemed as compensation”, Vince clearly won’t be content unless he is an exceptional zen-type person.
For me, ideally, users who face cheaters would have a big say in the decision (not in the warning/banning but) regarding their games since they are the ones that invested time. If this route doesn’t seem reasonable, I prefer games not being annulled unless they are blatantly thrown from clearly won positions and (not or) the sandbagger has shown clear pattern. Moreover, if the sandbagger has shown enough pattern to be deemed as such, then it is reasonable to go the banning route which by default explains the annulments to the wronged user.without much room for inquiry or objection.
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I think that one big problem is this:
The word “just” implies that you think justice is not done here. As if something more dramatic should have been done.
Hmm - I don’t think of myself as remotely Zen, but I personally can’t see myself fussing about a game that was given to me by a cheater being annulled. As I said before - what reasonable person wants a game on their record that was handed to them from a winning position by a cheater?
That seems like something only a “win at all costs” person would argue for.
Steve didn’t deny sandbagging, he said “Oh I’m sorry I didn’t know that wasn’t allowed”.
No, Steve was warned that it’s not allowed and agreed not to do it again.
This is warping the message. We’re not “taking back the rank as compensation”, and Vince didn’t get that rank “as compensation for his wasted time” in the first place. Vince wrongly got that rank because Steve told the system that Vince is better at playing than he actually is.
We didn’t “just warn him”. We warned him, and he agreed not to do it again (may I add that if he had not agreed not to do it again, he’d have been banned - I think that would be reasonable expectation).
We’re annulling the game because the result was wrong - simple as that.
I think it’s not as bad as you assumend but not as good as you might be thinking either.
When a game is annulled, the ranks of the players involved are recalculated. This doesn’t ripple any further at that time.
Still, as far as I can see, the annullment is having an effect that it’s hard to argue against (both the sandbagger and the beginner have their ranks fixed, avoiding more sandbagging and more unintended airbagging by the victim).
I would hope that in this circumstance we’d explain this to Vince and he’d be OK with that…
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The recalculation you are referring to, which was eliminated, had to do with changes in a person’s rank due to new wins or losses within the 15-game moving window. Annulments have always been recalculated and still are.
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